SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio firefighters responded to a fire Tuesday morning at a building on the city’s Northwest Side that used to house a Japanese restaurant.
The fire was called in just before 7 a.m. in the 9000 block of Wurzbach Road, not far from Datapoint Drive and Interstate 10.
Mark Trevino, a battalion chief with the San Antonio Fire Department, said they were able to do a partial search of the building and found nobody inside.
“As soon as we saw fire through the roof, we did what we could to do a search, as it has been known to have some people coming in and out,” Trevino said.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
The area, along with Wurzbach Road, was closed off to drivers as firefighters worked to put out hot spots.
“There’s hot spots right now since this is an older building and it’s a lot of wood structure. It’s got heavy wood floors and it’s built on different areas. There’s layer on top of layers so we have to get in there and tear into the building in order to get to the hot spots,” Trevino said.
Fire officials say the building will be demolished. Tuesday’s fire is the third time the fire department was called to the structure, as they responded back on Jan. 27 and previously on March 6, 2022.
“The structure is unstable. It’s unsafe so the city will have to go head and make it a hazard, so that it can’t get people involved and caught into,” Trevino said.
Anahi Martinez, a resident nearby, works at a building not far from the one that caught fire.
“I have a group chat with my work employees and my coworkers and they said there was a fire at the abandoned Japanese restaurant,” Martinez said. “I came out, I just saw all of the fire trucks, the ambulances.”
According to the San Antonio Fire Department website, as many as 14 units answered the call.