HFD District 28 Chief Bob Schlieter (far left) advises a captain where he wants a line stretched at a 2-11 fire involving 16 occupied apartments at South Gessner & Gustine about 4:30 AM. Eleven engines, five trucks, two rescue squads, and support units were called in to battle the blaze which was contained in about an hour.
HFD Engine 83 was first-in and is shown pumping on hose lines at a large, two-story house fire where a woman died about 10 AM. The rare blaze inside the gated Royal Oaks subdivision in west Houston was on English Rose Street a block west of Wilcrest and a block south of Richmond. The cause of the fatal fire is still being investigated.
A young adult male perched himself with his legs hanging over an exterior wall on the roof of a 10-story parking garage in Downtown Houston about 7:30 AM. Police and Fire Department units responded to the incident at Crawford and Walker. HFD's Heavy Rescue 11 and Rescue 42 both deployed into the structure, but a police officer whose head only can be seen at the base of the roof lights to the right of the man talked to the individual for more than a half hour before the man decided to turn himself in to police without injury.
HFD Senior Captain Russ McAfee of far-west-side Station 75 politely advises a resident it is still too early to return to her apartment as the entire attic of her building is ablaze about 3:30 AM at Hayes Road and Olympia. The fire displaced 16 families and required 2 alarms plus additional 2 engines and a ladder truck. Three ladder pipes knocked much of the fire down quickly though.
HFD crews working under divisional command of District 21 Chief Richard Cole get the upper hand on a fast-spreading blaze at an occupied apartment complex on Reims Road near Harwin in southwest Houston about 6 PM. The 1-11 blaze brought out 5 engines, 4 trucks, 3 district chiefs, and numerous support units. Approximately ten families were displaced into heat index temperatures above the century mark.
Firefighter Kevin Mathison of HFD's Heavy Rescue 11 descends with a Stokes basket carrying an injured worker from a high-rise construction site crane at Post Oak Blvd. and Garretson in the congested Galleria area about 5:30 PM. The worker's injuries were non-life-threatening. Tower 6's crew, in the background of this photo, raised its platform to expedite rescue equipment and personnel deployment onto the crane as its platform could not reach the man at the top. Rush hour traffic on the busy boulevard was snarled for more than an hour.
Southwest Houston fire crews had a busy wee hours on the morning of July 24 with four working structure fires in less than four hours in the quadrant after midnight following an especially intense lightning storm. This single-story residence at Oboe and McDermed was the last of the four fires destroying most of the home about 3:30 AM. Investigators were called out to determine its specific cause; it was only a few blocks from where another house burned two hours earlier.
HFD Engine 18's crew awaits water while preparing to attack a vacant motel fire on the Gulf Fwy (I-45 South) near Cullen, just east of Downtown about 5:30 PM. The blaze spread rapidly, and 3 alarms had to be summoned to contain the fire to the 24-unit building of origin. This crew was among those that kept the fire from spreading to the south across a breezeway connecting the burning building to the former motel's main building.
HFD was called out for an apartment fire in a dead-end complex off Locke Lane at Locke Lee Lane in west Houston during a driving rain storm about 5:45 AM. A smoky, stubborn blaze had to be tracked down in a narrow attic space, so a second alarm was pulled to get more manpower on the way even though most of those units were turned around. Two apartments were damaged as was a large segment of breezeway ceiling.
HFD District 6 Chief Wallace Page commands the "C" Division of a fire that fully engulfed two structures and damaged two others, including the one in this photo, shortly before 3 AM. Engine 7 was sent to check a hang-up call at Anita and Live Oak, arriving minutes later to find a single-story house and a two-story apartment building under renovation fully engulfed. A full first-alarm was already on its way, but three additional engines had to be called in to contain fire that spread into this occupied apartment building shown on Rosalie Street behind the original fire buildings. A fourth exposed house was damaged when a wall of the structure under renovation collapsed onto it.
Crews from HFD Station 28 prepare to suppress a fully-involved cab and engine fire on an 18-wheel gravel truck about 5:45 AM. Ladder 28 and an HFD EMS unit protect two lanes of traffic for the firefighters working on the West Loop 610 near San Felipe just as rush hour commences on the busiest section of freeway in Texas. HFD policy provides for two suppression rigs to respond to freeway incidents with one expected to protect the other from oncoming traffic.
HFD crews battle a stubborn blaze at the Heights Presbyterian Church on the corner of West 18th and Rutland about 12:30 PM (exactly 24 hours after a 5-alarm conflagration destroyed nearly 400 apartments under construction only three miles away). Crews operated inside the second floor of the church's classroom building for about a half-hour amid high heat and heavy smoke before flames broke through the roof. Fire damage was confined to the classrooms shown with the adjoining sanctuary and chapel escaping all but smoke damage. The fire required two alarms and two additional engines to suppress. Two ladder pipes were used as well as multiple hand lines.
HFD Tower 6's crew prepares supply hose for its dual-nozzle tower operation at this fire that went to 5-alarms about 12:30 PM at the corner of West Dallas and Montrose just west of Downtown. Witnesses said the blaze appeared to start on the roof or top floor of the northernmost 5-story building in the nearly-400-unit complex and was quickly fanned by a brisk northeast wind that evolved into a small fire storm pushing flames to the other buildings. One construction worker barely escaped flames lapping at him on an unfenced fourth floor patio as he managed to jump successfully to the unfenced patio below, quite an acrobatic achievement that certainly saved his life. From the third floor he was rescued by an HFD ladder truck. All buildings in the complex were burned, but more than 7 ladder pipes kept the conflagration from jumping to a townhome complex across West Dallas.
The resident of this fully-engulfed house on Seabrook near Spring Hill in Houston's South Union section perished in the blaze about 8:30 AM. The fire was reported with he possibility that a person was trapped as neighbors said the resident was virtually assured to be at home if his truck (in photo) was in the driveway. HFD crews attempted to enter to search for the resident but had to resort to defensive tactics early as the home quickly became an inferno.
Only two hours after an arctic cold front blew into town, HFD was called out to do battle with fire in a vacant apartment complex fueled by a strong north wind that spread flames throughout six buildings along Interstate 45 North near Tidwell about 7:30 PM. There have been several fires over recent years in the complex, but this blaze trumped them all. Traffic was snarled along the freeway for hours.
HFD crews battle a stubborn blaze in an old two-story house attached to a modern commercial building and both occupied by an Asian bakery company. The one-alarm fire required two additional calls for help bringing a total of 8 engines, 3 trucks, a rescue squad, and numerous support units to the scene near Downtown at Dallas and Chartres about 1:30 AM.
An engine crew stretches another hand line off of Engine 8 to protect exposed apartments near a burning block-long warehouse just after midnight. The 3-11 fire at Polk and Palmer was fought on two fronts: the C side shown here on Dallas Street and the A side on Polk. Master streams from Tower 6 and Ladder 7 knocked down most of the fire within about 30 minutes.
Although there was a near-multiple-alarm two weeks ago, HFD's first official 2-11 call for 2014 went out just after 3 AM (a very late start for the year) for a fast-spreading apartment fire on Richmond Avenue near Yorktown in the busiest district for multiples in the city, District 28. The photo shows the fire at its height spreading through a common attic, but firefighters quickly contained the blaze to an area over about ten apartment units. Dozens of residents were evacuated from their units by an HPD unit on scene moments before fire units arrived.