SAN ANTONIO – UPDATE: The San Antonio Fire Department said the cause of the fire was due to smoking. The fire started on the first floor patio. Damage is estimated at approximately $60,000.
ORIGINAL STORY: A fire at a Northwest Side apartment complex Tuesday morning had some people in a dangerous situation.
They told KSAT 12 News they became trapped when flames and smoke began leaping up toward their second floor units at the Silver Creek Apartments.
"I could see the fire coming up over the stairwell outside. I saw the paint burning off and everything, so no way of going out the front door,” said Andrew Ramos. “So needless to say, I had to go out the back window.”
Ramos said he lived directly above the unit where the fire started. He was one of three people who jumped to the ground.
Both Ramos and another man were treated for minor injuries by paramedics at the scene. A woman had to be taken to a hospital by ambulance, according to Woody Woodward, a spokesman for the San Antonio Fire Department.
Woodward said four units in all were affected directly by the fire. However, firefighters evacuated the entire building when smoke began to creep toward the other units.
Brittany Villarreal said she woke up to one of them pounding on her door.
“I opened the door and I was all flustered, thinking, 'OK. This is the first thing I wake up to,'” she said. (The firefighter) said, “Y'all have to get out. There's a fire on the other side of the building.”
Villarreal said she immediately woke up her friends, then grabbed her most dear possession—her guinea pig named Chuck.
“We just got him out and came and sat on the grass,” she said. “We're, kind of, perplexed at how strange and surreal it is to wake up on a Tuesday morning and have this happening."
"We're just really, really, really glad that it wasn't a worse fire, you know? It could've been so much worse,” Villarreal said.
While most of the residents were allowed to return home, ten people in the four burned apartments have been misplaced.
Woodward said he wasn’t sure whether they would be relocated by the apartment complex, or given assistance by the American Red Cross. He said the cause of the fire wasn’t known immediately.