A fire at Avistar at the Boulevard Apartments displaces over a dozen, leaving Johanne Maldonado devastated after losing everything just two weeks after moving in.
SAN ANTONIO — An apartment fire displaced over a dozen people on Friday.
This happened just before 3 p.m. off USAA Boulevard and Huebner Road.
KENS 5 heard from a mother of three who said she lost everything in this fire.
Johanne Maldonado was starting fresh. She’d just moved herself and her three children into their apartment two weeks ago, only for everything to be lost within minutes.
“I know… I’m just happy we’re alive and we’re okay,” she said. “They only salvaged a little tile picture of my daughter, which she made me for Mother’s Day two years ago, and some paperwork.”
Maldonado wasn’t home, but got a call from her property manager.
A fire had broken out at the Avistar at the Boulevard apartments just before 3 p.m.
“Crews found a large fire on a balcony that had spread to a common attic area,” Joe Arrington with SAFD said.
The fire, so powerful, the roof collapsed in, forcing firefighters to go on the defensive.
We’re told 18 to 20 people are displaced.
“And I feel bad for the other kids. I saw them crying, and I’m so happy my kids aren’t going to see it,” Maldonado said.
For Maldonado, memories, clothes and necessities she’d hoped would start their new life… now lost to the flames.
“It hurts to not have clothes for my kids, figuring out where I go from here, when I just started to get good, all of this just happens.”
Friday night, Maldonado and other families are receiving help from the Red Cross.
And we’re told property management has found a new apartment for everyone who was displaced.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.