WALTON — Ben Durr fell to his knees Wednesday afternoon as he watched his home burn.

Smoke pushed its way out of his blue, three-story house on Davis Street in Walton and disappeared into the gray sky above.

The fire wasn’t visible. Firefighters said the flames were trapped inside by the metal roof of the historic, 130-year-old house.

But even before firefighters had the fire under control, they said the home would likely be a total loss.

Durr said he was in shock.

“I’m just going through the motions,” he said.

Durr was grateful that no one was home when the fire broke out, but he said it was hard to watch the home he made with his wife and five kids crumble along with all the memories locked inside.

He paused and looked up to the sky, fighting back tears. Then he buried his head in his hands and cried.

The fire at 202 N. Davis St. was called in around 3 p.m. Wednesday.

Durr said he had just left home to go buy dog food. His wife and children were visiting her parents out of state.

Neighbor Keith Tocco didn’t know that, though.

When he heard other neighbors screaming and saw the smoke billowing from the home, there was no doubt in his mind that he was going inside.

“They say to leave that to the firefighters,” Tocco said. “But you have just a split second to react to save lives.”

He thought Burr’s wife and children were inside, so he broke out a front window and reached through to unlock the front door. The entire first story was filled with smoke, he said.

He got on his hands and knees and began crawling through the house.

“I was yelling, ‘Hello, is anyone in here? Come to my voice if you hear me,’” he said.

He found no one in the first floor of the home, and he couldn’t make it up to the next floor.

Walton Assistant Fire Chief Ben DeHaven said the fire started somewhere upstairs. It’s cause is unknown.

Tocco left the house to get a fire extinguisher just as police officers and firefighters began arriving.

Fire departments from Walton, Galveston, New Waverly, Young America and Grissom Air Reserve Base, along with Cass County Fire District No. 1, responded to the blaze.

There were at least seven tanker trucks on hand to provide water.

“It’s odd to have this many tankers in town,” DeHaven said.

But the town of Walton is working on its water infrastructure, and a pump at the sewage plant was not functioning Wednesday, he said.

“They can’t pump water to the water tower fast enough,” he said.

More than two hours into fighting the fire, emergency responders stopped work to wait on a tanker to deliver water from Galveston. What little water firefighters were getting from nearby hydrants was gone, DeHaven said.

He said it was possible that they had used all 50,000 gallons of water in the town’s water tower.

“We’ve pumped a lot of water on this thing,” he said.

DeHaven said it was a difficult fire to fight, especially because of the home’s metal roof.

“Metal roofs look nice, but in this situation, it makes a fire about three times harder to fight,” he said.

All of the heat and flames were trapped inside. Firefighters used a ladder truck to reach the top of the house where they cut a hole in the roof for ventilation.

As the ladder extended into the air, people stood outside their homes watching. They held umbrellas to stay dry in the rain.

A group of people gathered across the street in front of Shiloh Lutheran Church to pray. Young kids from the church passed out coffee to those working.

Durr could hardly watch the scene unfold. He and his wife bought the home eight years ago and had been slowly remodeling it.

It was 130 years old — one of the first houses built in Walton, he said.

Walton librarian Gordon Southern described it as one of the town’s true mansions, built by the prominent Bishop family.

But the home could be replaced, Durr said. There were memories inside that he would never get back, like years’ worth of photos and his children’s 4-H projects.

Durr said his wife was devastated by the news, and when he first called her, she was afraid to tell the kids.

They could only talk a few minutes at a time before his wife broke down in tears, Durr said.

“She keeps thinking about all we lost and can’t get back,” he said. “She wants to come home, but there’s nothing to come home to.”