HOUSTON – Just days before Christmas, several families have been displaced after a major fire at an apartment complex in east Houston, firefighters say.
It happened Friday at the Pines of Woodforest Northshore apartments located at 90 Uvalde Road at around 3 a.m.
According to Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, Harris County sheriff’s deputies and North Channel Fire Department units responded to reports of the fire. When they arrived at the scene, they found one unit engulfed in flames.
All residents were safely evacuated, Gonzalez said.
The fire is being ruled an accident. Investigators said a grandmother was smoking before she went to bed and put the cigarette butt in an aluminum can, which caught fire.
Resident Faith Daniels said she was awake and heard a loud “boom.”
“I went upstairs to wake up my neighbor and everybody else, I just started telling them, ‘Get everybody up, get everybody out,’” Daniels said. “A lot of my neighbors have lost pretty much everything. Especially my neighbor above me, she lost everything. But, to God be the glory. We still here.”
Twelves units were impacted by the fire.