HOUSTON – Fierce flames and heartbreaking destruction at the Creole On Yorktown apartment complex, as close to 30 cars and trucks go up in flames in the middle of a massive fire inside the parking lot.
Houston fire fighters fought the blaze that broke out at about 4 a.m. Monday morning.
A chain-reaction fire that reportedly started with an electrical short and sparks inside one car but within minutes spread to close to 30 other vehicles.
Luckily no residents or firefighters were hurt.
The biggest losers in all of this are residents like Chanirae Benedicts, whose own car, a Ford Taurus, she and her boyfriend bought over just the last few weeks was incinerated.
”It’s just unbelievable. I had to go see if that was my vehicle, I didn’t remember if I parked it in this parking lot or not and when I saw it I just cried. This should not have happened,” Chanirae said.
The biggest question for all of the owners of these cars destroyed in the fire is who is ultimately going to pay to replace their vehicles.
“I asked the manager who is going to pay for all of this and she just told me there was nothing she can do about it,” Chanirae said.
Yousef Alkhatip is in the same boat.
His dream car, a Mercedes A-350 sedan was also incinerated in the fire, nothing left of it, and he had no insurance on the car.
’”The apartment manager told me, do you have insurance on that car and I said no, I just bought it and she say I’m sorry to hear that and she was gone,” Yousef said.
This afternoon, we put that question to managers at the Creole On Yorktown who told me “we are not answering any questions.”
So we went further, talking to an insurance expert who specializes in offering insurance to people living in multi-family units and apartments, Jake Passero with True Insurance Group.
”I do believe this is going to fall on the actual owners of the cars themselves. If this was an instance involving the apartments themselves or people’s belongings inside those apartments, than there might be liability on the part of the apartment complex, but given this involved residents cars parked in the parking lot, I think this falls on the car owners themselves and their auto insurance companies,” Jake said.
At this point, Houston Fire Department officials are saying this does not appear to be a case of arson or an intentionally set fire, but looks like an electrical problem in one single car sparked this massive blaze.