SAN ANTONIO – Among the up to 2,700 calls coming into the San Antonio Fire Department during the city’s historic cold snap, two of them that came in Tuesday afternoon were “very odd,” Joe Arrington, SAFD spokesman said.
He said two apartment fires on the North Side were within blocks of each other, called in about an hour apart, one at the Solara Apartments on Parliament Street at 3:45 p.m. and the other at Chestnut Park on Silver Sands at 4:58 p.m.
Arrington says actually, both two-alarm fires are now the second and third apartment fires in the past two days in the same general area.
Arson is now investigating, he said.
No injuries were reported at either fire. All the residents who were there got out safely.
He said apartment management has now re-housed their tenants elsewhere.
“We’re seeing a lot of fires right now, whether it be from electrical issues or people not heating their home safely or whatever the causes,” Arrington said.
But for many of the victims of Tuesday’s fires, all they know is that they’ve suffered devastating losses.
“It hurts so much. It hurts my soul,” Georgina Lenero, who lived at the Solara Apartments with her husband, said.
The couple had gone to the store for milk, only to return and see their apartment on fire, which was the last to catch fire.
“It was over,” said Enrique Cruz, her husband said. They had lost everything.
Robert Davis, who lived in Chestnut Park with his wife and three daughters, was also left with nothing.
He said since their power hadn’t been restored, they were staying at his mother’s, having brought a generator to help heat her home. Then a friend called, alerting him there was fire in their apartment.
Fifteen minutes later, he said, “The property manager called, telling me that our apartment was completely engulfed in flames.”
Davis said hearing that was heartbreaking and traumatizing.
“My wife busted down in tears and the kids were crying and me going a hundred miles an hour,” Davis said.
They had lost everything that had meant something to them, even the baby pictures of his daughter.
Yet like the couple at the first fire, Davis said they are grateful to be alive.
“This is a blessing,” he said. “We’re all safe. Just trying to figure out how to start over.”
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