An apartment fire forced dozens of residents to flee their units in Irving on Tuesday.
The Irving Fire Department responded to an emergency call at around 1:14 a.m. on June 7. Dozens of fire trucks had to be sent to the scene.
The fire broke out at the Bentwood Apartments at 831 S. Nursey Road.
“They started evacuating us, knocking on doors, saying ‘Hey, you need to evacuate the building,'” said resident Erica Castillo in an interview with NBC 5. “There are some people who just ran out with their pets, some with their children, and there are some people who didn’t have time to put on clothing. So it was pretty hectic.”
The fire spread so quickly that residents on the first floor of the two-story apartment complex needed to be evacuated before fire crews could start to put out the blaze.
“When fires get into the void spaces inside of buildings, it makes it difficult, but the reason we went defensive is because it looked like there was going to be some collapse,” stated Anthony Kennedy of the Irving Fire Department.
It took until around 3:30 a.m. for the firefighters to get the blaze under control, almost two hours after the emergency call.
No injuries or fatalities were reported.
The Irving Fire Department previously stated that the fire had displaced 120 residents, but that number was revised down to 73 as of midday Tuesday.
Local authorities directed displaced residents to the Senter Park Recreation Center and have contacted the Red Cross for assistance.
One resident told NBC 5 that a neighbor’s stove may have started the fire. However, neither the Irving Fire Department nor local police has confirmed the fire’s cause.
An investigation into the cause of the blaze is ongoing. No further details were available as of press time.
