5 Children Die in Texas House Fire

Thursday, January 18th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) â€” A fire swept through a one-room trailer in a dilapidated mobile home park near the Mexican border, killing five children under the age of 11, police said.

Rescuers found the children's bodies burned beyond recognition and huddled in a corner of the trailer's charred, mangled frame. The fire broke out hours after Maria Martinez, 30, and her seven children had moved into the park.

Martinez was away from the trailer along with her infant child and 13-year-old son when the fire began Wednesday night. Justice of the Peace Oscar Tullos said she apparently had taken a child to a neighbor's to warm a bottle of milk, locking the door as she left.

The children â€” aged 3, 5, 7, 8 and 10 â€” probably died instantly, investigators said.

``The children were consumed right away,'' Tullos said.

It was unclear what sparked the blaze. The home had no electricity, and Martinez told police there were neither matches nor candles inside.

The family was using a car battery to generate power earlier in the day, the mother told police.

``But there's no way to find a cause so soon,'' Fire Marshal Raul Salazar said. ``We just don't know.''

Smoke was still thick in the air as investigators loaded the tiny bodies into a trailer and took them away for autopsies. Curious neighbors huddled in the street.

Heat ate holes in the trailer's fiberglass and aluminum body, and blew out the windows.

``Have you ever seen a matchbox go up?'' Assistant Fire Chief Lenny Perez asked, nodding toward the trailer's scorched skeleton. ``We knocked the fire down real quick, but it was too late.''

Investigators were to continue poking through the debris at first light Thursday.

The mother and her oldest son, meanwhile, were being questioned by police. They were being taken to a shelter for the night, police spokesman Orlando Rodriguez said.

``This mainly makes you count your blessings,'' Rodriguez said.

The fire did not spread to other units in the trailer park, a strip of sagging homes hemmed by factories and fields in Brownsville, in south Texas.

Beneath a mesquite tree sat a rusting Oldsmobile with Mexican plates â€” the family car, police said. Authorities did not know how long Martinez has lived in Brownsville, or where the father of the children is.

The family had just moved up the street from a colonia on the outskirts of Brownsville.

U.S. Border Patrol agents on routine duty noticed smoke and called firefighters, who arrived to find the home completely engulfed in flames.

``There's no way to describe this,'' Perez said. ``It's too tragic. Just so sad.''