GLADEWATER, TX — “Hell. That’s what it looked like,” Greg Shepard said. “Everything was on fire.”

Looking over the charred remains of his family’s property Thursday, Shepard, his mother and other relatives were reliving the frantic dash this past Sunday to gather grandchildren and flee the rapidly advancing flames.

It was the same blaze that took the lives of a young mother and her baby.

Having been told the fire was contained, Shepard’s mother, Belinda Gober, was letting her grandbabies play outside when her other son came down the road and said it was time to go.

They gathered seven grandchildren and their pets and began to drive away from their land on Rosie Wady Road southwest of Gladewater.

“Parts of the street were on fire,” Gober said. “It was scary.”

The grandchildren, she said, were crying as they drove away — not to return for days.

The fire that torched the Gobers’ property was part of what officials are referring to as the Moore Fire. That blaze alone has burned more than 1,500 acres, destroyed about a half dozen homes and caused a few rounds of evacuations in its wake. It was one of dozens of wildfires that have burned through more than 50,000 acres of East Texas land this week.

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