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SAN ANTONIO, Texas – The San Antonio Fire Department has showed that fireplace crews replied to an previous name about an scent of smoke at a Northwest Side apartment hours before it went up in flames.
The unique name on the Chisolm Trace flats got here in round 12 a.m. Tuesday.
Lisa Espinoza informed 12 News that she had positioned the decision after noticing a scent that informed her one thing used to be burning within her third-floor apartment.
She mentioned firefighters arrived, took a glance across the construction, then close off {an electrical} breaker that powered a fan in her rest room.
Espinoza mentioned she nonetheless wasn’t satisfied that used to be the level of the issue and attempted to make fireplace crews understand that.
“He still insisted it was dust. I said, ‘That’s not accumulated dust. I’m telling you it smells like burning wood,’” she mentioned.
A couple of hours later, Espinoza mentioned she woke up to even thicker smoke within her apartment and the sound of her daughter’s panicked voice.
“(She used to be) yelling, ‘Mom! Mom! Get up! We need to get out. The house is on fire!,” she recalled.
Espinoza, her family and all their neighbors in the building escaped the fire, leaving the warmth of their homes for the cold morning air.
Fire crews arrived at the complex, located in the 10500 block of Huebner Road, for the second time around 4 a.m.
They quickly got to work, trying to knock down flames which had spread into the attic.
“We did have a little bit of difficulty getting the fire out in the attic. It was in the eaves and the flashing,” said SAFD Battalion Chief Mike Mullins. “There was a blower motor in the bathroom that appears to have caught fire in the attic.”
It was the same motor where Espinoza noticed the initial smell of smoke.
She believes the fire may have been smoldering the entire time, and that firefighters could have taken more action the first time around.
Joe Arrington, a public information officer for SAFD, confirmed that firefighters had cut electricity to a heater during the earlier visit.
However, he said there were no notes indicating what other action they took at that time.
While the fire was contained to one apartment, all the others in that section of the building were left with either smoke or water damage.
Espinoza said the fire cost her family all they had.
“My little girls don’t also have sneakers. Everything is long gone,” she mentioned.
Volunteers with The American Red Cross confirmed up hours after the fireplace used to be out to supply some brief reduction to everybody displaced by way of the fireplace.
However, Espinoza mentioned she worries in regards to the long term as a result of her circle of relatives has nowhere else to move.
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