Authorities on Monday found the remains of two people in the charred rubble of an apartment complex fire that occurred five days earlier, prompting questions from family members about the initial response to the emergency.
Relatives confirmed that the bodies of Temika Patterson, 35, and her husband, Derrick Patterson, 40, were found at the scene of the 3-alarm fire that gutted portions of a building at the Monticello on Cranbrook apartment homes in north Harris County Wednesday.
Family members said they still had questions about the deaths of their loved ones.
"There is some accountability that needs to be there," said Michael Bill, Temika Patterson's father. He said the apartment complex management and firefighters should be held responsible.
Houston police and neighbors knocked on doors, trying to warn all the residents about the fire spreading through the complex, officials said. The management company provided a list of tenants.
The Patterson couple was not listed, so the search ended once all the names on the leases were accounted for. The Pattersons were visiting another resident who told investigators he thought the two had escaped the fire, said Capt. James Bolton of the Harris County fire marshal's office.
Bill said neighbors tried to warn firefighters that there were others left in the building, a statement disputed by fire officials.
"It devastated us that after a week, we find out that they could have been saved," Michael Bill said. "It was very traumatic."
'No reason to continue'
Fire Marshal Mike Montgomery said his department responded properly. He said that the apartment complex could not be searched completely because second-floor units collapsed, indicating a loss of structural integrity that would make a full search too dangerous.
The person who leased the apartment where the bodies were found was interviewed and did not say anyone was there, Montgomery said.
"All people had been reported accounted for, and there was no reason to continue the search," Montgomery said. "I wished we had known that there was somebody in that building so we could have continued a search."
Officials with the apartment management company said they, too, were unaware there were visitors at the time of the blaze.
'Shocking'
Sean Richardson, Little York Volunteer Fire Department deputy chief, said the discovery of the bodies five days after the fire was "shocking."
"My heart goes out to the family," Richardson said. "I can't even imagine what he's going through right now. If it had been my daughter I would feel the same way."
The investigation by the fire marshal's office is ongoing.
Richardson said the outcome probably would not have been different even if authorities had known the couple was in the building because they were victims of a collapsed structure.
"Survivability is slim to none," Richardson said.
Temika Patterson's parents said they saw news accounts of the fire Wednesday but did not know their daughter was at the scene.
'Living a good life'
The fire appears to have started in the apartment of a woman who uses oxygen, said Lt. Chad Shaw, an investigator with the fire marshal's office. Shaw said the oxygen line landed on a burner of the stove, and the line melted and ignited the fire.
Bill said Temika Patterson, a home health care provider, had been taking care of the tenant in the apartment where she and her husband were found. Patterson called her parents often, so they began to worry when they did not hear from her for several days.
"For a week we were wondering what was going on, and that's when we started to get suspicious about the fire," said Bill, who owns a Houston funeral home.
On Sunday, a family member reported the pair missing.
Investigators went back to the site early Monday, excavated a large section of the burned-out complex and discovered the bodies.
Temika Patterson's two sisters, parents and several cousins gathered at her grandmother's home Monday afternoon. The family remembered the couple, who had been married for 10 years, as loving and said they had wanted to have children one day.
"Great girl, very funny," Bill said. "They were living a good life."
Reporters Mike Glenn and James Pinkerton and photographer Johnny Hanson contributed to this story.
Copyright 2012 - Houston Chronicle
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
