By Cody Copeland
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
FORT WORTH, Texas — A fire at an apartment building in the Near Southside neighborhood Monday quickly grew to what the Fort Worth Fire Department called a “historic” blaze.
Investigators were still working to determine the cause and firefighters were monitoring the situation for flare-ups from hot spots that continued to smolder around midday Tuesday, according to fire department spokesperson Craig Trojacek .
Having opened in 2020, the Cooper is a new building with a sprinkler system and other modern fire protection equipment. So how did the blaze grow so quickly into a six-alarm fire requiring over 60 fire trucks and 170 firefighters?
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Roof design made it more difficult for firefighters to put out the blaze
Speaking to reporters outside the building on Tuesday, Trojacek said that the design of the building’s roof hindered efforts to extinguish the fire.
The building is “great to live in and to stick around a long time,” he said, but a rubber coating on the roof melted and gummed up firefighters’ chainsaws as they tried to cut through to access the fire.
“It was causing us some challenges of having to continually go back out and change our blades,” he said.
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Collapses during the fire added to the difficulty. Every time a section of the building collapsed, the firefighters had to pull back for safety, he said.
Void spaces in the building also helped the fire spread, as winds coming from the south pushed the flames into empty areas of the structure.
“We get a fire put out over here, just to have it pop up in a different location,” he said. “And then with it being five or six different stories, we’re moving hose lines and everything else like that.”
Construction material could have played a role
Structural engineers were still investigating the area and had yet to tell Trojacek what the primary construction material used in the building was, but “it looks to be of a mixed kind of new construction type,” he said. He could say for sure that part of the building was made of steel.
While newer apartment buildings may be built to the most up-to-date fire codes, many tend to be made of lumber, which presents evident fire risks, according to Richard Meier, a Florida-based fire and explosion investigation expert.
“When it comes to rental construction, they tend to go cheaper and use wood framing for the buildings, which, obviously, there’s some drawbacks to that when it comes to fire protection,” he said in an interview.
Also common in newer apartment buildings are truss-type floors, creating more lumber and void spaces that can help a fire move, he said. Instead of being contained to a fairly narrow area, a fire can quickly spread to other spaces.
Still, building and fire codes should work in tandem to prevent fires from getting out of control, Meier said. The building code has standards for how much fire protection should be between units, things like how much drywall is needed and how thick it should be, as well as fire sprinklers and extinguishers.
“The two put together, if done properly, should prevent a fire from getting out of hand,” he said.
The most common cause of residential fires is cooking mishaps, Meier said, citing statistics that show that 47% of residential fires start in the kitchen.
“You know, somebody leaves a pan of oil sitting on the stove, and from there that can ignite the cabinetry above the stove, and then from there burn through the drywall ceiling, or the gypsum board ceiling and into the sealed space above,” he said. “That’s a fairly common scenario on how a fire can start and spread.”
Less common causes are electrical malfunctions like faulty wires, HVAC units or home appliances. Smoking can also be a cause, Meier said, but the rate of residential fires caused by unattended cigarettes has decreased significantly in recent decades as smoking has become less common.
“And then you get into less likely causes, kids playing with matches, things like that,” he said.
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