Fire and rescue personnel responded to two fires at homeless camps in Austin on Feb. 20 that left two people seriously injured, including a fire at the same site off U.S. 183 where a blaze broke out earlier this month.
The first fire started at about 3:30 a.m. in the morning in southeast Austin at Stassney Lane near I-35. The cause appeared to be “unintentional spread of either a cooking fire or warming fire,” according to Austin-Travis County EMS’s public information service.
The blaze turned into a grass fire limited to about ten to fifteen feet in diameter in a homeless camp in the woods, EMS reported. Medics transported two burn victims to Dell Seton Medical Center with “serious potentially life-threatening fire-related injuries.”
Later in the morning at about 7:50 a.m., firefighters got a call about smoke in the area of U.S. 183 southbound frontage road between I-35 and Cameron Road. That’s the same location where firefighters encountered ‘hundreds of needles’ battling a blaze earlier this month.
Austin Fire Division Chief Chris Swansen told a CBS news crew that was in the area, “(There was) pretty heavy fire down below, lots of smoke. We extinguished the fire, performed a search, no one was found. Cause right now is under investigation.”
Eight to nine fire crews responded and it took them 20-30 minutes for them to get to the fire because of traffic and the difficulty of getting below the roadway to access the fire.
Asked whether there was damage, Swansen said, “a lot of trash and other debris.”
The Austin Transportation Department advised motorists that all lanes were closed on the frontage road and that they should seek an alternate route. The closure lasted several hours.
On social media, Governor Greg Abbott commented on the news of the Stassney Lane fire, saying, “Austin’s camping policies endanger the homeless. They must end camping and provide shelter. The state is offering Austin 5 acres of shelter space for $1 per month.”
He was referring to the state-sanctioned Montopolis site where more than 100 people have moved since it opened last November. Abbott recently offered to rent the site to ATX Helps, a charity spearheaded by the Austin Chamber of Commerce.
ATX Helps is planning to build a type of semi-permanent housing called a Sprung shelter, and is raising money from the business community to do so.
Our Take
- Not everyone lives the ‘American Dream’ of having a home of their own. That’s just a reality and we can’t wish it away. Some of those living on the streets either can’t or won’t find space at a shelter, which means that they really do need someplace outdoors to lay their head. So criminalizing public camping everywhere is not humane.
- But public camping should happen within limits to protect public safety, infrastructure, and the environment. The housed and unhoused alike are subject to the rule of law.
- The camps at the underpasses are dangerous because many homeless have been struck by cars and killed. Fires at camps under roadways also could destabilize critical infrastructure. And several times fires have shut down important transit arteries.
- Ongoing cleanup efforts are still inadequate. Despite news coverage of the first fire at the 183 frontage road on Feb. 3, the state and city governments did not clean up the debris.
