SAN ANTONIO – Investigators are looking into the possibility that someone purposely started a fire in a shed behind a home in Dignowity Hill on the city’s East Side.
The fire broke out around 1 a.m. Monday in the 700 block of N. Palmetto Street.
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San Antonio firefighters found the structure in flames, then worked to keep the fire from spreading.
Samantha Dyehouse, who lives in the home next door, says she and her boyfriend woke up to an orange glow outside their window.
She says once they realized their neighbor’s shed was on fire, they jumped up and called 911.
“It was ablaze, I mean, just seven-, eight-foot flames,” she said, describing the fire. “We tried opening our own door and it was too hot to even go outside.”
Before firefighters managed to put out the fire, the flames jumped to Dyehouse’s fence, causing damage.
“I think even one minute later it would’ve been probably our house too,” she said.
Dyehouse and her boyfriend were not just concerned about property. They also worried about people. “It was a little bit scary just thinking, ‘Ok, I just don’t know if someone’s here at the time,’ because there are usually people that live in that shed,” she said.
As it turned out, firefighters did not find anyone inside the burned shed.
Outside, though, they say San Antonio police did find someone possibly connected to it, a woman with burns a few blocks away from the fire scene.
She was taken to a hospital for treatment.
Fire investigators are still working to confirm whether the woman was burned in that fire. They’re also trying to figure out how it started.