Five Dead in Senior-Living Apartment Building Fire, 10 Hospitalized

Story by the Associated Press; curated by Dave Urbanski

CASTLE HILLS, Texas (AP) — Five people died Sunday after a fire broke out at a senior-living apartment building in the San Antonio suburb of Castle Hills, authorities said.

Firefighters and emergency units respond to a fire at the Wedgwood Senior Apartments, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2014 in San Antonio, Texas. (Image source: AP/San Antonio Express-News, Marvin Pfeiffer)

Ten other residents of the Wedgwood Apartments remained hospitalized and others were unaccounted for Sunday evening, according to Bexar County Fire Marshall spokeswoman Laura Jesse.

A total of 150 firefighters from San Antonio and six other fire departments responded to the blaze, which was reported shortly after 6 a.m., San Antonio Fire Department spokesman Christian Bove said.

The cause of the three-alarm fire is under investigation, but it appears to have originated on the third floor, Jesse said. The fire, now extinguished, left some "significant damage," she said.

About 150 residents of the 11-story high-rise were taken by city buses to a local high school. Others decamped to a hotel. The names of those killed in the fire have not been released.

Image source: WOAI-TV

Not all of the 216 residents listed on the building's rent rolls have been accounted for yet, Jesse said. The building also has commercial tenants. Family members waited at the makeshift shelter in the high school cafeteria for word of their loved ones.

"After looking at the floors, it's amazing we did not have more loss of life," San Antonio's fire chief Charles Hood told WFAA, adding that the smoke and fire was "communicated" throughout the building. He also said the building's third floor was gutted and the doors were charred by the fire.

Some residents walked down many flights of stairs, others were carried out, and others were evacuated down ladder truckers from the balconies of their apartments, Bove said.

"It was overwhelming. We tried to come out, but the exit doors were jammed," resident Vivian Casanova told the San Antonio Express-News.

It was not immediately clear when the facility was last inspected. Castle Hills City Manager Diane Pfeil told the newspaper that she was not sure when its most recent safety inspection was but said she would have that information in the next day or two.

Red Cross staff and volunteers at the shelter helped Sunday afternoon to match residents with the medications that were recovered after the building was evacuated.

Property manager Entrada Management Services was arranging to put up residents in hotels "if they don't have anywhere else to go," Jesse said.

According to Bove, the last time the San Antonio area saw a fire of this magnitude was in 2008 at Our Lady of the Lake University, but no one was injured.