A fire tore through a Fort Worth apartment complex Thursday morning, forcing 13 people from their homes as flames consumed the three-story building.
The blaze at the complex in the 2100 block of Remington Street left 11 adults and two children displaced.
Fort Worth firefighters responded to the scene just before 6:30 a.m., finding heavy flames visible from nearby traffic cameras. The fire damaged four apartment units.
“We had to go from an offensive tactical standpoint to a defensive, meaning it got to the point where the buildings were too unsafe for us to be inside and try to extinguish the fire,” said Fort Worth Fire Department Spokesman Craig Trojecek, per Fox 4 KDFW.
A second alarm was sounded, and Fort Worth firefighters, with assistance from River Oaks Fire crews, brought the blaze under control in less than an hour.
For resident Monique Angol, the morning turned nightmarish after seeing her daughter off to school. She and a friend noticed smoke filling their apartment.
“I need some help right now. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do,” Angol said, per Fox 4. “We grabbed what we could. Everything is in there: my birth certificate, my social, my daughter’s clothes, my daughter’s new bed. Oh, my documents. Oh, my documents. I have nowhere to go, no family here.”
Adding to her distress, Angol’s cat remains missing.
“We tried to get him out. I think he was hiding and they couldn’t find him,” she said.
Fire investigators believe the blaze started on an upper floor, though the exact location remains unclear. The cause is still under investigation.
The complex sits just east of Interstate 30 and Highway 183, a densely populated area of Fort Worth. No injuries were reported, though the emotional toll on displaced families is evident.
The Red Cross responded to the scene to provide emergency assistance to the displaced residents.