SAN ANTONIO – The San Antonio Fire Department has identified five high-rise building with the same infrastructure as the Wedgwood Apartments.
San Antonio Fire Chief, Charles Hood was at the Wedgewood fire that killed six elderly people and said the images are still very fresh in his mind.
"In my 30 years I've never pulled up to a fire and seen so many people hanging out of windows and balconies," said Hood. "It was something that you just never see. And the most amazing thing for that we ran about 847 calls that day. We had not one injury of any firefighters, and we made some heroic rescues that day."
That fire prompted SAFD to take inventory of all San Antonio high-rise structures similar to the Wedgewood Senior Living Apartments.
They focused on structures built prior to 1982, that have no sprinkler systems and cater to senior citizens.
The list: Fair Avenue Apartments, Villa Tranchese Apartments, Northview Tower, Aurora Apartments, and Victoria Plaza.
Three of the five buildings identified are owned and operated by the San Antonio Housing Authority or SAHA, while two are privately owned.
Melanie Villalobos, SAHA spokeswoman, said "It's a multimillion dollar effort, and there's very little funding available for these kinds of activities, for our federally funded programs."
Villalobos said they're actually in the planning process to do fire upgrades to Victoria Plaza, and adds the upgrades will be done at no cost to SAHA residents.
"When we are able to pull the monies together we do want to work on upgrades to that building and certainly fire sprinklers would be among those upgrades, so that is likely one of the things that would come along first," said Villalobos.
"It's going to be about a three to six-month vetting process for us to talk to the builders and see if this is something feasible that we do in San Antonio," said Hood.
KSAT tried to reach out to the building owners of the Aurora Apartments and Northview Tower, neither of the owners retured our phone calls before news time.