A deadly fire on San Antonio's Northwest Side has claimed the life of a woman and displaced multiple residents from the Fredericksburg Place Apartments. According to KSAT, the blaze occurred Thursday morning and has resulted in at least four of the eight apartment units in the building sustaining damage from fire, smoke, and water. Amid the catastrophic event, a family, including a newborn, narrowly escaped the inferno, their lives purportedly saved by a neighbor's alarm.
In a tragic turn of events, the woman who alerted her neighbors to the flames perished. She was described as being "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," Margarita Cardenas-Gaitan told KSAT. Efforts by neighbors to assist were futile; Jesus Alvarez, Cardenas-Gaitan’s partner, recounted the desperate attempts to save her. “We tried kicking the door down, but it was too hard. By the time it opened, the whole fire had burst out,” he explained.
MSN reports that firefighters responded to the incident at approximately 11 a.m. Sunday at the complex located at 3425 Fredericksburg Rd, quickly escalating the situation to a two-alarm fire as a precaution. The SAFD managed to extinguish the fire's base within 15 minutes, but not before discovering the body of the woman near the entrance of her unit, where the fire is said to have originated.
The couple affected by the fire is confronting the difficulty of possible displacement just days before Christmas. The American Red Cross is coordinating the relocation efforts, either to another apartment or potentially to a shelter, which has raised concerns for Alvarez, particularly regarding his daughter's health. “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 mentioned in an interview with KSAT. Despite the harrowing situation, Alvarez and his family remain hopeful, with him stating, "We’re just trying to do everything we can for our family." The investigation into the cause of the fire is still ongoing, and no other injuries have been reported.
