South Austin condo fire: 15 people displaced from building

AUSTIN, Texas - Fifteen people are now displaced after a condo building's roof caught fire in South Austin.

What we know:

On Wednesday, Feb. 19, firefighters responded to a roof fire at the Talisman Condos in the 1500 block of Barton Springs Road.

Firefighters rescued one person.

In total, six units were damaged by fire and a total of 15 residents were displaced.

AFD ruled the fire cause as accidental, with an estimated $1.1 million in damage. 

What they're saying:

Neighbor Billy Langston saw it unfold in front of him. 

"We saw flames coming out, and then we started telling everyone to evacuate. Then, eventually, the flames took over the roof and the air compressor unit. Everything fell through. That's where it began to spread throughout all the units," he said.

"There was a gentleman that kept looking out his balcony, and we kept signaling him. He didn't understand that he was in danger, that there was fire right close to him. The firemen finally put a ladder up, and they carried him down," Langston said.

The scene was a clash of elements: the below-freezing air turning some water to fight the fire into ice.

"Those started to freeze up. "Luckily, we carry absorbant, and we had sanding basically a material that was able to mitigate those effects," Assistant Fire Chief Andre de la Reza said.

He says frozen water was a slip hazard and wind was also a factor.

"Since the fire did go through the roofline, that wind will come up, and we already had an exit opening, so the fire would intensify but in a way that we could control things," de la Reza said. "It restricted that fire from going further in and starting to affect more heavily those other units."

"The firefighters got out here, and they got out here in large numbers, and they worked pretty diligently. They just had a lot of difficulty getting access with the water being that they could only approach the building from this side only. All the flames on the back side, they had to go in and then fight it up through the roof, but they did a nice job," Langston said.