SAN ANTONIO – One woman is dead, and at least four apartment units were damaged after a fire broke out at a complex on the Northwest Side on Thursday morning.
The blaze has displaced residents, including a family who escaped with their newborn.
The San Antonio Fire Department confirmed that a woman was found dead at the apartment complex located near Fredericksburg Road and Vance Jackson. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Margarita Cardenas-Gaitan and her family were alerted to the fire by a neighbor who was shouting for help. “We heard the lady yelling out at the back of the apartment complex, ‘Help, help, fire,’” Cardenas-Gaitan said.
The family credits their neighbor with saving their lives, saying they might not have known about the fire until it reached their door. “If it weren’t for her yelling to alert us, we wouldn’t probably even know if there was a fire,” Cardenas-Gaitan said.
However, the family’s neighbor was unable to escape the flames. “She was stuck on her patio, and the fire was in the doorway of her patio, and she couldn’t get back in her apartment to unlock her door,” Cardenas-Gaitan explained. Even neighbors tried stepping up.
“We tried kicking the door down, but it was too hard. By the time it opened, the whole fire had burst out,” said Jesus Alvarez, Cardenas-Gaitan’s partner.
As Christmas approaches, the couple is struggling with losing their home. “We had a lot of plans for Christmas,” Cardenas-Gaitan said. “Now we can’t do those plans. We had plans to have our family come over and spend time, but we can’t do that because we don’t have a place to stay.”
American Red Cross is working to relocate the couple to another apartment within the complex, but if that isn’t possible, they have been informed they may need to stay in a shelter. Alvarez expressed concern about staying in a shelter due to the couple’s infant daughter, who has a heart murmur. “They said they’re going to send us to a shelter, but we can’t go to a shelter. My baby’s high risk,” Alvarez said.
Despite the overwhelming circumstances, the family is staying hopeful. “We’re just trying to do everything we can for our family,” Alvarez said. “There’s always going to be something that’s going to stop you no matter what.”
