Firefighters near San Antonio had to drive in water Thursday to fight a fire that destroyed an apartment building because fire hydrants were frozen, a fire chief said.
No one was injured in the blaze that broke out between the floor of a TPC Parkway apartment building just outside the city at about 1 p.m. More than 80 people have been displaced, a Red Cross spokesman said.
When the crew arrived there, the fire hydrant in front of the building and others around it was unusable due to the icy weather and severe winter conditions in San Antonio and the rest of the state.
“Our problem is that we walk a little bit ahead and then run out of water,” Bialick told a NBC affiliate news agency WOAI at the scene.
According to Bialick, water tenders – which are trucks transporting water – were sent from across the region to help. The trucks carried between 2,000 and 3,000 gallons of water, he said, but it could be depleted within minutes.
The video of the scene showed firefighters using trucks to spray the fire from above. Pieces of what looked like the roof and other parts collapsed.
The cause of the fire was not immediately clear.
The fire chief expected teams to be on the scene all night. The residents in neighboring buildings were also told to leave out of precaution.
A Red Cross spokesman said 32 units had been affected and 87 people had been displaced. They helped with supplies and helping displaced people find shelter.
After the winter storm and icy temperatures that hit the state, about 4 million customers lost power during eclipses, but residents told WOAI that there was electricity at the apartment complex.
According to the website poweroutage.us, on Thursday night the number of customers without power dropped to about 284,000.
According to the National Weather Service, another icy night was in store for San Antonio, with a low of 21 degrees.
It will only predict on Saturday that the temperature for San Antonio and other parts of the state will remain above freezing at night.
There are at least 37 deaths in eight states in which winter weather and freezing point are a factor or cause.
Most of these were in Texas, where 21 people died, including car accidents and two deaths due to carbon monoxide poisoning in a house in Houston that used a car for heat because there was no heat.
