Fire displaces dozens at apartment complex
Lisa Jenkins moved from Louisiana to Houston to “build a better life” about a year ago.
When her building at Haverstock Hills Apartments in northeast Harris County went up in flames Friday morning, she lost everything.
“It’s all gone,” she said, sitting on a cooler in the complex parking lot.
Two dozen apartment homes were damaged during the fire and an estimated 50 people were displaced, according to Rodney Waites, program director of Rainbow Housing Assistance Corporation, a nonprofit which serves Haverstock residents.
Eastex firefighters responded to the fire at the three-story complex in the 5600 block of Aldine Bender Road near Humble shortly before 1 a.m. and worked with seven agencies to get the fire under control, according to Laurie Christensen, Harris County Fire Marshal.
No injures were reported, and investigators still don’t have a cause or origin Friday morning, Christensen said.
Most of the roof of the threestory building was destroyed. The apartments on the first and second floors were likely damaged by the water it took to put the fire out, Waites said.
Other residents who still hadn’t been placed in temporary housing waited in pockets of shade in the parking lot into the afternoon. They watched as police and fire crews inspected the scene, and maintenance workers boarded up windows.
Many of the people who live in the affordable housing complex have limited resources, Waites said, and a blow like this is devastating.
“There’s an entire group that’s lost everything,” he said. “Whatever it takes to get them to this point of getting back on some level of normalcy.”
Resident Allana Gray said she missed work because she couldn’t access her apartment to change into appropriate attire for her job.
“This is all I have,” said Gray, gesturing to the clothes she was wearing.
“We don’t have nowhere to go, no food,” added Eric Wilturner, Gray’s husband.
Waites said all the residents will be provided temporary housing in empty units at the complex, other properties owned by the same management or hotels. The Houston chapter of the American Red Cross and other organizations are working to provide basic needs like food and other household items, he added.
Several residents said they didn’t hear fire or smoke alarms go off as flames engulfed the building. They said no fire suppression sprinklers were activated and that they did not have functioning fire extinguishers in their homes.
Caroline Dalcour said she was alerted to the fire by banging on her door.
“Somebody was banging and banging and telling us to get out,” she said. “I just grabbed my purse with my bank card and money and ran out.”
Neighbors were throwing bricks at apartment doors trying to get the attention of others who were still inside their apartment, she said.
Residents estimated it took around 25 minutes for firefighters to arrive.
Some said at one point, they saw the water stop flowing from the nearby fire hydrant crews used to fight the flames, and firefighters had to seek water from another source.
Fire marshal officials were not immediately available Friday afternoon for comment on the residents’ accounts of what happened.
Representatives from J. Allen Management, a Beaumont-based firm that specializes in managing “troubled multifamily properties” and owns the complex, were not immediately available for comment on the complaints made by residents.
Rainbow Housing Assistance is collecting donations for the victims at the apartment complex’s office and at rainbowhousing.org. GoFundMe pages for some of the victims have also been created.