The scariest event that could ever happen to someone living in an apartment happened next door to me Wednesday morning. A luxury apartment complex that was under construction caught fire and burned to the ground. Most of the structural work had been completed on it. The frame was fully erected, and the roof and subfloors had been installed. Plywood sheeting covered about 90% of the exterior. Interior work probably would have been starting in a couple weeks. The apartments stood four stories high, and it had it's own five-story concrete parking garage. All that stands now are the extreme ends of the complex and the parking garage.
I've made a small map of the area so that I can show how close I was to the fire. My apartment opens onto the back half of our complex's parking lot. The edge of my building is only about 100 yards from where the luxury apartments were. Indeed, the exit gate for our lot is directly across the street from the entrance to the luxury apartments. I and just about everyone else in our complex had front row seats to watch this huge three-alarm fire. According to the news, there were 40 fire trucks and 120 firefighters out here battling it. Every where on the map that is red is where there was a fire. Most of the luxury apartments bought it. The lumber and materials storage for construction was stored on an empty lot behind my complex. A small fire erupted there as well as in two places on our carport and on a small food mart. An office building near the site also caught fire.
It was about 1:40 a.m. when I was awoken by the sound of an explosion. This was probably the gas tank of a construction vehicle or a transformer exploding. At the time, I thought that someone was banging on the dumpsters (which are near my window). I got up and looked out the window and saw nothing but glowing orange embers floating in the sky. I got my roommate, and we went out to the parking lot thinking that our building was on fire. We looked to our right and see this massive wall of flames coming from the construction site. The fire was so massive that you could feel the intense heat right outside our patio. It was like standing over a pot of boiling water. It was too hot to venture far past the edge of our building. In fact, some of the windows in our complex facing the fire shattered from the heat.
By about 2:00 a.m., the Houston Fire Department had arrived on the scene and (with the police) had blocked off the area in a three-block radius of the fire to establish a defense perimeter. The two fire trucks that I could see couldn't come closer than the Scotland/Jackson Hill intersection. A ladder truck with a spraying aparatus arrived shortly and took up a position at Jackson Hill and Dickson. About this time, we noticed that storage lot behind our complex was on fire. My apartment manager brought out a box of small fire extinguishers, and my two neighbors jumped onto the carport to try and spray the fire. The fire department finally noticed it and doused it with the sprayer. This same pile of stuff would flare up again three more times before firefighters could get into the lot.
My roommate, six neighbors (including the above two), and myself grabbed fire extinguishers and became a small fire brigade. About 2:30 a.m., the wooden carport roof caught fire at the end. We rushed down there to extinguish it. By this time, the firefighters were moving in closer and were beginning to try containing the blaze. We managed to extinguish the fire on the carport, but it would flare up again later. A fire on the carport roof in a different location started about 3:00 a.m. The brick exterior of the carport and the metal exit gate were extremely hot from being so close to the fire. Behind us, in the parking lot of the office building housing The Council on Alcohol and Drugs, a newspaper recycling bin began smoking. A police officer soon roped off the last quarter of the back parking lot.
About 3:30 a.m., firefighters had two hoses running in front of our exit gate. The two fire trucks had moved further in on Jackson Hill (they were right between the two buildings), and another ladder truck with a sprayer could be seen along Dickson. The luxury apartments were still a raging inferno at this time, but most of the middle section had collapsed. Six of the telephone poles in front of that complex were also on fire. We got to see our telephone and cable lines melt away. Transformers on another pole gave out plunging the neighbor behind the inferno into darkness. About this time, the firefighters were spraying water on the concrete parking garage. The heat was so intense that the water vaporized on contact. Water was also being sprayed on the office building closest to my complex; it achieved similar effects. Firefighters had stormed the other office building and knocked out most of the windows facing the inferno.
By 4:00 a.m., the fire was contained. We could finally see the downtown skyline again. The intense heat of the fire was distorting our view. It was like someone had applied an "oil painting" effect to it. Embers were no longer flying through the air, and a small command post had been established at our exit gate. By 4:30 a.m., the fire was close to being extinguished. My roommate, our two neighbors, and I were at the police line at this point and were ordered to move further back. They felt that the rest of the building could soon collapse and wanted us as far away as possible. We decided to return to our apartments at this point since we doubted that the fire would regain intensity. At 5:00 a.m., my roommate and I went to get breakfast. Vast areas of the complex were still smoldering, and all but one of the exit routes from our area were blocked by the police. At 7:00 a.m., the fire department was still checking for hotspots.
I was honestly scared through a good part of this. The sky was filled with embers, and we were worried that some could land on our complex and ignite it (since it has a lot of wood on the exteriors). Thankfully for us, the wind was blowing them more or less away from us, but this means that those embers could have been hitting the homes behind the inferno. We were initially told that we may need to evacuate. I can't begin to describe how I felt thinking that I could lose everything I own. I began making a list of things that I could grab and throw into my car within five minutes of being told to leave. I am just so relieved that it didn't come down to that. Today, the arson investigators are still out on the scene, and some construction crews are beginning to tear down the rest of the building. I still have to take the backroads out of the neighborhood, so I have no idea how everyone else fared around me.
My apartment complex made it okay with a charred carport roof and some broken windows. Our cable and telephone/internet services are out. I don't know how long this will take to fix since new telephone poles need to be set and new cabling installed. It could be a few days. Our exit gate is still blocked and with probably be that way until next week. Plus, the entire area smells like the inside of a barbeque grill. Still, I'll gladly take these minor inconveniences over what could have happened any day. I've probably never been more thankful for our fire department than I am today.
Posted by Snay (Member # 411) on :
Wow!
I'm glad you're okay, and that your apartment is still standing.
Get renter's insurance! Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Arson. Insurance scam or "message to be sent."
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
Wow, you went through some scary shit there. Glad you survived the ordeal.
Fires are unbelievably destructive. Within minutes one insignificant little flame can become a singeing inferno. Never, ever underestimate that deceptiveness.
Any idea what caused the gastank to detonate?
[ June 20, 2002, 15:54: Message edited by: Cartman ]
Posted by OnToMars (Member # 621) on :
Fuck, sounds like a helluva fire.
I'm a volunteer firefighter here in sleepy South Jersey and we hardly ever get anything of significance. Last night a little house caught fire - a rare occasion of an actual structure fire - and just about every damn truck in the township and more was there.
That can be some scary shit, though. And difficult to take down.
So remember to support your local fire companies, especially if they're volunteer.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
A singeing inferno? Interesting juxtaposition of terms there...
And it took the fire department at least twenty minutes to show up? Isn't that kind of bad?
Posted by EdipisReks (Member # 510) on :
i think that 20 minutes would be considered a pretty slow response time.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
If your telephone/cable/internet lines were burned, then how did you post this message?
Seriously, I'm glad to hear that you made it through this okay. Especially the part about you pitching in with those fire extinguishers for the hot spots. It's always nice to hear about good citizens pitching in where they can help.
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
Yes, I can see where the extinguishers are important, but, even more so.... Who had the marshmellows???
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
The arson investigators seemed to have wrapped up their investigation yesterday afternoon. A demolition crew is out there now hauling away debris. I'd bet that it was arson since there was electricity connected to the building and everything on site was shut down. Plus, my roommate and another neighbor said they've been seeing teenagers hanging around inside the area during off-days. I think this might have been a little mischief that got out of hand (thanks in large part to our drought-like conditions at the moment).
The fire department actually responded fairly quickly. They got the call at 1:54 a.m. and were there within minutes. The problem is that the call didn't come in until 1:54 a.m. After I first saw the fire, I ran back into my apartment and called 911. I let it ring eight times before I gave up. I reported the problem to the city yesterday. Something had to have failed there because no one is going to ignore a massive fire for twenty minutes.
My roommate and I are looking into renters' insurance now. I don't know if that'll do me a lot of good since most of my possessions are more sentimental than valuable. The only things of value I have are my laptop, two trumpets, and my antique desk. Still, it wouldn't hurt to be covered so that I could afford to buy new clothes should this happen to me.
The telephone/DSL service is still out, so I've been posting during my break times here at work. Cable was restored yesterday evening, but that doesn't affect me much since I don't have cable. Some of the streets are still blocked off, but the police are slowly opening things back up. Our exit gate is unblocked, but we've been told to continue using the entrance gate to leave. I'm going to see if I can get a couple of pictures of what's going on this evening (I kinda wish I had my camera during the fire).
Thanks for all the well-wishes, and remember to never take your firefighters for granted. They do a bang-up job.
Posted by Snay (Member # 411) on :
Er ... I thought you DID have a camera. Whose pictures are those?
Get renter's insurance anyways ...
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
Burn, baby, burn!
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
That's what I get for rushing a post. Those pictures of the fires were supposed to be linked back to news articles about the fire (where I got some of the information). I forgot to add in the links after proofreading. The first picture is from our ABC affiliate; the second one is from our NBC affiliate. Both originally came from the HPD crime scene photographer.
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
Southwestern Bell has finally gotten the phone and DSL services back up and running. So, I'm a happy camper again. All of the streets are now open, so I was able to walk around the neighborhood. Thankfully, none of the homes caught fire that were near the complex.
Here's a few photos I took an hour ago from the scene of the fire.
Picture 1 -- This is at the exit gate to my complex. You can see the what's left of the eastern side of the building. The bulldozer on the left has its shovel sitting where the edge of the building was.
Picture 2 -- Brand new cabling is running in front of the parking garage, which used to be unseen from this angle. The fire took the top layers off of the south side.
Picture 3 -- This is what's left of the northern side of the building. In the foreground is our carport, the roof of which is charred where it meets the brick.
Picture 4 -- This looking at the surviving eastern portion of the building and the parking garage.
Picture 5 -- This picture is just to show you how big this complex was.
[ June 21, 2002, 17:34: Message edited by: Siegfried ]
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