Three Bodies Recovered After Mid-Rise Blaze

Mar 29, 05:09 AM

Current Headlines: By Dale Lezon and Lindsay Wise, Houston Chronicle

Mar. 29--Just minutes after re-launching a new search inside a mid-rise where at least three people perished Wednesday in east Houston, fire officials emerged with three bodies early today.

Shortly before midnight, fire officials decided to continue their search after suspending recovery efforts late Wednesday evening over concerns about the building's structural integrity near the interchange of Interstate 10 East and North Loop East.

Within minutes, firefighters emerged about 12:45 a.m. from the six-story office building with the first body covered in a white sheet. The victim was strapped onto a gurney and placed into a Harris County Medical Examiner's van. Shortly before 1 a.m. firefighters emerged with a second body as family and friends of the missing co-workers huddled outside awaiting final word. Minutes later, a third victim's body was removed from the scorched structure.

Then, it appeared the search was over as emergency officials packed up and drove away a little more than an hour after the new search began.

Earlier, as authorities prepared to re-launch the search, onlookers took in the somber scene where the only sounds that could be heard were falling shards of glass splintering on the pavement below as firefighters knocked out a window on the fifth floor to gain access to the bodies.

Early today, an investigator from the ME's office notified one family that had been holding out hope at the scene that their loved one -- Marvin Wells -- had perished in the blaze. Wells, an assistant pastor at a local church, was identified by the driver's license authorties found in his pocket, said Ken Campbell, the family's pastor.

As the victim's unidentified wife received the news, the woman collapsed into the arms of family. Just minutes before, the wife had been hopeful that her husband had survived the fire and as she clutched a photograph of her spouse.

The woman's daughter fell to the pavement after she saw her mother crying. They were escorted to a car.

Michael Bonner, the victim's brother-in law, said Wells didn't deserve to die such a horrific death.

"Marvin was a man who helped other people at all times," Bonner said. "It's a horrible way to die."

The rush-hour blaze made unwitting witnesses of thousands of motorists near the interchange of Interstate 10 East and the North Loop East. They watched as rescuers brought dazed survivors down ladders and desperately tried to extinguish flames that hopped from office to office on the top two floors of the six-story building.

Inside was chaos, with some survivors throwing chairs through windows to let in air and call out to rescuers. Those who left the building on their own recounted a harrowing, smoke-filled descent to safety.

District Chief Tommy Dowdy, a Houston Fire Department spokesman, said the fire appeared to have started on the fifth floor, but he would not speculate on its cause. He said he was unsure how many others might have been inside the building as it began to burn shortly after 5 p.m.

"We have no earthly idea how many people were in this building," said Dowdy, who added that the department had received a number of phone calls from trapped workers.

Rescuers were using thermal-imaging cameras, which detect body heat, in the search for victims. Dowdy said firefighters had searched "inch-by-inch and floor-by-floor."

The identities of the other two known victims, who were found on the fifth floor, were not available.

The effort to recover the bodies was suspended late Wednesday while officials determined the building's structural integrity after part of the roof caved in. It was not clear how long that would take.

Sad news for one family However, about 10:15 p.m., a Harris County medical examiner delivered the news Willie Hargrove had been dreading all evening.

"They told me they didn't think she made it," a shaken Hargrove said of his wife, Jeanette, who worked in the building for the Texas Department of Assistive & Rehabilitative Services and had not been accounted for.

He said the medical examiner told him their office would call him today with an official identification. Hargrove said he would go home and break the news to his 16-year-old daughter.

One of Hargrove's co-workers also was suspected of being among the victims.

Aletha Jacobs, who worked on the fifth floor with Hargrove, said she left before the fire started:

"I left at 5:02 ... 15 minutes later I got a call that my building was on fire," she said.

Neither Hargrove nor the other worker had returned calls to their cell phones, and their families had not heard from them either, she said.

The office building was built in 1980 and contained approximately 60,000 square feet. Dowdy said it was unclear whether its sprinkler system was activated. There were conflicting reports from those who fled the building in those chaotic minutes. Some said they heard an alarm and felt water from sprinklers. Others heard and saw nothing.

Not in dispute was the intensity of the fire. Dowdy described it as the worst he has seen at a mid- or high-rise building in his 34 years with the department.

"There was a lot of fire coming out of this building," Dowdy said.

He explained that the wind "was a huge factor" in getting the fire under control. He said it came strongly from the south, pushing the fire toward people in the northwest corner of the six-story building.

Massive effort About 120 firefighters were sent to the scene, along with 16 engines and eight ladder trucks and assorted other vehicles, from ambulances to command and control vans, he said. The fire, first reported to the department at 5:15, was considered tapped out by 7:15, though hot spots continued to flare up throughout the evening. Firefighters were still hosing the building after 11 p.m.

Three firefighters were injured: one with smoke inhalation; one with a leg injury; and one with a back injury.

At least three injured civilians also were taken to Memorial Hermann-The Texas Medical Center. Yogeshv Bali, 47, a marine surveyor who worked on the sixth floor, was in critical condition with unspecified injuries.

Family members including his son, Dhruv Bali, 16, and daughter, Shruti Bali, 20, gathered at the hospital after being called by paramedics.

They said that at some point during the fire, their father called from his office and said he was all right. They were unclear what happened between then and the time he was overcome.

Assistant Fire Chief O.S. Longoria said a captain was treated at Memorial Hermann for smoke inhalation and heat exhaustion after being briefly trapped in a stairwell. He said the captain and his crew were fighting an intense fire on the fifth floor amid reports of trapped occupants there and on the floor above. Two rapid-intervention teams located the captain, identified as Joel "Eric" Abbt, who had collapsed.

Many heard nothing The fire caught all the building's occupants unaware. If an alarm was sounded, many did not hear it.

Bobby Motz, 48, regional manager for a transportation company on the sixth floor, was in his office with a job applicant and knew nothing of the fire until smoke began to come in from the bottom of the window. He said he went out to the hall, which was filled with thick smoke. Realizing no one could escape that way, Motz closed the door. He noticed more smoke coming from the ventilation system.

Motz and applicant James Moore, 55, got down on the floor, where they could feel heat from the floor below. They decided to throw a chair through the window. They leaned out the window and yelled to firefighters, who raised a ladder to rescue them.

Motz said he went to a hospital after suffering smoke inhalation, but he returned to the property around 9 p.m. to make sure everyone in his office was safe.

The dozen or so people in his office had all gone outside -- for a smoke break, he said -- just before the fire.

Other trapped occupants on the higher floors also broke windows with office furniture just so they could breathe, said Lesa Cobon, 36, an employee at A New Beginning Home Health Service, which has offices on the third floor.

Cobon was in the lobby getting ready to leave about 5 p.m. when she heard people saying a fire had broken out on the fourth and fifth floors. Her first instinct was to leave the building, she said, but she returned to alert her boss and other co-workers.

By that time, the smoke was too thick.

"I couldn't see, I had to come back out," Cobon said. "The smoke was just black and everywhere. It was hard to breathe. There was no alarm. Everybody just told each other about the fire."

Cobon said what she witnessed after walking out of the building horrified her. She said she saw people -- "two men on the fifth and fourth floors" -- standing at windows, throwing furniture through the panes.

"I saw one guy hanging out the windows by his arms. They got him down," she said.

Cobon said she also saw the rescue of at least three or four people on ladders.

Dawn Herring, 26, who works for an accounting office on the fourth floor, said her day was coming to a close when she smelled smoke.

"I heard people scream on the other floor, I went out in the hallway and it was filled with smoke," Herring said. "Both stairways were filled with smoke. We all had to come back in the office. Everybody panicked for a second, but then my boss broke a window with a chair."

Herring said she and her officemates tried to remain calm.

"The longer it took for the ladder to get to us, the more worried I got," she said. "Then water started coming into the building and we had to huddle together. We must have waited 15 to 20 minutes but it seemed really long."

Herring and the others were finally rescued by firefighters.

Robert Crowe, Mike Glenn, Anne Marie Kilday, Rosanna Ruiz, Armando Villafranca and Sarah Viren contributed to this report. The story was written by Mike Tolson.

dale.lezon@chron.com; lindsay.wise@chron.com

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Copyright (c) 2007, Houston Chronicle

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