Fire Marshal Provides Update on Southland Fire in San Angelo

At about 11 p.m. last night, San Angelo Fire Marshal investigators completed their preliminary investigation into what started the flames that destroyed the home at 3022 Rockbrook and eight vehicles, caused smoke damage to a neighboring home and threatened other nearby residences, said Fire Marshal Ross Coleman.

The two-alarm structure fire broke out at an unoccupied residence at about 4:22 p.m. yesterday, and when the San Angelo Fire Department arrived at the scene, the house was completely engulfed in flames. Gusty winds and cutting power to the residence caused some initial problems for fire fighters.

As to the start of the fire, Coleman said, “Right now, we don’t have any information to indicate that this was purposely set, nor do we have information to indicate that it was not. We did take samples of the area that we identified as the site of origin and we did send those samples out this morning to the arson lab in Austin run by the State Fire Marshal’s Office.”

Coleman added that investigators narrowed down the fire’s site of origin to the southeast corner of the structure in the backyard directly across from the businesses in the alley on the left side. He also said there was mulch and a lot of storage in the alley that may have played a role.

“It’s not uncommon for mulch to have some spontaneous combustion to it, especially if it’s been in the heat; but just to rule out any indicators, we pulled out the samples to rule out ignitables if they were present,” Coleman said.

Originally, bystanders said yesterday that they believed the 7 to 10 vehicles in the backyard of the house contributed to the fire.

“Contrary to some of the things you’ve seen on the internet, the origins of the fire had nothing to do with the vehicles,” Coleman proclaimed. “They were completely as far away as they could be in the back yard.”

Because of this, investigators ruled out this claim. Beyond that, however, the structure, along with eight of the vehicles were totaled. There were about 10 in all.

Overall, the damage could have been worse.

“The Fire Department did an excellent job in the preliminary stages of the fire,” Coleman stated. “Firefighters on the north and south side of the structure were there with streams of water and were there to protect the exposure. The house on the north side did get some smoke damage, very minor to our surprise, but Fire Department did an excellent job of keeping the fire from causing more damage.”

Coleman added that the Fire Department is good at handling first line attack fires, and they were very smart in their endeavors and in their strategies. He said, “Their goal was to handle this defensively and protect the exposures because, as they got there, they could see this was a fully engulfed, full-run-involvement fire.”

To ensure no more threats of re-ignition, Fire Department crews worked the scene for several hours. Coleman said the initial attack took about an hour, but crews had to deal with many hotspot areas, which took them several more.

“We had to remove debris consisting of vehicles, metal objects, large pieces of the structure that had fallen down, pull those pieces out of the way and hit those hot spots underneath; so it took a long time,” the Fire Marshal added.

Coleman also noted that indicators show the owner of the house did not live there, but he did store a lot of this stuff there.

As for the area residents, San Angelo LIVE! received a message from one of the neighbors who had this to say about yesterday’s fire: “The whole side of the 3000 block on Rock Brook Drive next to the fire was threatened with destruction. To give you an idea of who lives next to this somewhat abandoned home: a band director at CHS and his family, a group home for special needs people, a widowed tenured English professor at ASU, a police officer and others. We were all terrified today of losing our homes.”