CASTLE HILLS, Texas – Dozens of 911 calls made to Castle Hills dispatchers reveal panicked, fearful residents pleading for help inside the burning Wedgwood Apartments.
The senior housing facility caught fire on Dec. 28 killing six people.
"If you don't get here soon, I'm not going to be here," a resident told a dispatcher. "Oh, my throat. Please help me, please help me," begged a woman in apartment 317, not far from apartment 302 where the fire began. "Please, please stay on the line with me."
One woman told dispatchers the fire was too heavy to rescue the tenant inside unit 302.
"There is a lady in there," the caller said. "We cannot get to her because there is too much fire in there."
The woman inside that apartment, Molly Urban, 75, died.
Dispatchers told callers to leave the building using the stairs if they could.
Some callers said they were physically unable to use the stairs while others said the doors to the stairwells were locked or would not open.
"We tried to get over there but the hallway is filled with smoke and the stairwell won't open," one man said.
"We're coming for you, ma'am. I promise. We haven't forgotten about you," a dispatcher told the woman in unit 317.
"I can't breathe," she responded. "I can't make it much longer."
You can hear a dispatcher try to coach a woman as she struggles through the smoke.
"Can you get low? Can you lie down on the floor," the dispatcher asked. "It shouldn't be as bad down by the floor."
But the woman responds that she cannot get on the floor.
Several callers asked dispatchers what to do next- whether they should get dressed, stay in their apartments, or try to leave.
Dispatcher told nearly every caller that if they could leave the building safely using the stairs, they should.
One caller said she was in a wheelchair, while another said she doubted she could make it down the stairs given her age.
"We're coming, ma'am. We're going to be there, ok," the dispatcher told the woman in 317, who called numerous times.
"When? When," the tenant asked. "I'm afraid I'm going to die right here."
The Bexar County Fire Marshal's is still investigating the cause of the fire.