San Antonio fire leaves a two-story apartment block uninhabitable and its sprinkler loops off

SAN ANTONIO, Texas

A rapid-velocity fire consumed a two-story apartment community in San Antonio, tearing through internal safety barriers and displacing dozens of residents, according to Fox San Antonio.

Arson investigators locked down the structural perimeter this morning and confirmed that physical fire watch personnel must remain on site to monitor the main sprinkler loops, which are deactivated while the investigation proceeds.

A deactivated system has to be watched by a person

When a suppression system is shut down for investigation, for repair or because the fire took the water supply with it, the building's ability to control a new fire is gone. NFPA 25 addresses that condition directly: where a sprinkler system is out of service for more than 10 hours in a 24-hour period, the authority having jurisdiction has to be notified and a fire watch provided.

The requirement is not satisfied by an alarm on a phone or a sign on a door. It is satisfied by a person who walks the building, knows which areas are unprotected, keeps extinguishing equipment and a means of notification, and can put a fire out or call it in before it reaches a wall cavity. In a two-story wood-frame apartment block, that interval is measured in minutes.

Why an arson scene and a fire watch coexist

An origin-and-cause investigation needs the scene as close to its post-fire condition as possible. Investigators photograph, map, excavate and sample, and each of those steps requires a place to put what they remove. A structure that is open to the street loses evidence to weather, to occupants retrieving belongings and to anyone with an interest in the outcome.

So the same post does two functions that people assume are unrelated: it keeps people out of a scene, and it watches the building for a new fire. Both depend on control of the entrances and on a log that records who was inside and when.

The displacement side

Dozens of households lost their homes in a single night, and the first week is when the record is most easily lost. Residents need escorted access to retrieve identification, medication and documents, insurers need to inspect, and contractors need to secure the building. Without an assigned post, that traffic happens unmanaged and the property ends up with neither a defensible scene nor a reliable list of who took what.

A written post order that separates resident escorts from investigator access from contractor work, with times recorded, solves most of it.

The USPA position

USPA Nationwide Security provides fire watch coverage in San Antonio for buildings with impaired suppression, and staffs uniformed officers across Texas for access control and documented rounds. Properties that lose protection without warning can open coverage through the emergency fire watch desk. The national fire watch practice covers the staffing, the round log and the discontinuation record in one file.

The newsroom has covered a similar file: Four Units Damaged in Overnight Apartment Fire Near Loop 410 and Starcrest on San Antonio's Northeast Side.