PHOTOS: Jack Muimandi said it felt like the start of an earthquake. “All of a sudden, I just felt this really loud explosion,” he recalled. “Like, I felt it. The whole apartment rocked.”
The Austin Fire Department described “multiple explosions” and 15-foot high flames sparked by “encampment activity” near Muimandi’s Tech Ridge apartment complex on Dec. 30, according to the incident report — one of hundreds of fires a KXAN investigation found likely connected to homeless encampments in recent months.
In this case, fire crews reported finding “several dozen” gas tanks littering the grassy area between the complex and an adjacent movie theater.
Just under three weeks later, in the early morning hours of Jan. 18, it happened again. The explosions and fires on both days were “a result of gas tanks” and “have been attributed to encampment activity,” an AFD spokesperson confirmed.
On a recent visit to the complex off I-35 and East Parmer Lane, we spotted piles of debris and remnants of an abandoned campsite.
KXAN-TV NBC 36 Austin