SAN ANTONIO – Agave Apartments residents were forced to evacuate their homes Saturday night when a three-alarm fire erupted, drawing about 55 firefighting units.
The residents came together to evacuate and save their furry friends, including a pig named Effey.
“We saw there was an opening; nobody was guarding this door. (I) ran up the door, all the way to the fifth floor, grabbed her (Effey). We could smell the fire. It was pretty bad over there, and my husband ran in there and she (pig's owner) had told us that she (Effey) doesn’t do well with heights and she doesn't do well being picked up, so we were like, ‘This is going to be interesting,’” said Allie Roberts, Effey’s sitter.
Some residents said they were sitting down to dinner when the loud fire alarms started going off. Many of them started smelling and seeing the smoke.
One man said he believes he saw where the fire was concentrated.
“We were just walking around, trying to stay warm, and we saw the white smoke turn black. And then you can see some flames coming out of the back corner by the River Walk,” Andrew Sanders said.
While many people were able to get their pets out of the building safely, other residents weren’t home at the time. Crews spent the night reuniting pets and their worried owners.
“It seems like there's a lot of residents here who have pets, so we've seen a lot of pets come out and a lot of people being reunited with different animals. And (there are) still a few people waiting for us to go inside and retrieve their pets, so we're going to keep doing that,” said Woody Woodward, with the San Antonio Fire Department.
The Fire Department set up a makeshift headquarters at a bus stop nearby for pet owners to be reunited with their four-legged friends.
VIA Metropolitan Transit provided several buses for people to escape the cold, wet weather and have a place to relax until they could go back home.
The response to the fire was expansive. Traffic was gridlocked downtown, with a tree lighting in Main Plaza and high school football playoffs taking place at the Alamodome.
Residents of the affected building have rooms waiting for them at the Grand Hyatt on Market Street.