Electrical issues caused the six-alarm fire that displaced more than 800 residents at The Cooper apartments in Fort Worth Monday afternoon, officials said.
A report on the investigation released Friday by the Fort Worth Fire Department gives more details about the “historic” blaze and reveals the cause and origin.
A maintenance contractor told investigators he was working on one of the HVAC units at the 1001 W. Rosedale St. apartment complex about 11:30 a.m. Monday. The breaker connected with the unit had tripped, so the contractor reset it. The breaker immediately tripped again, leading the contractor to believe the breaker was bad.
According to the contractor’s account, he disconnected the wiring to the HVAC unit, removed the breaker and left the complex for a time to get another one, the report states. The new breaker auto-tripped after he installed it, suggesting a wiring issue between the HVAC unit and breaker.
The contractor said he disconnected the new breaker and went back to the roof to disconnect the wiring to the HVAC unit. He smelled smoke, according to the report, and saw fire near the air-conditioning unit. The contractor called 911 and then took a video on his cellphone of the fire.
‘Electrical anomaly’ sparked fire
Investigators concluded the fire was accidental and “caused by an electrical anomaly with arcing,” the report states. Fire officials said the blaze originated in the “electrically-energized wiring within void spaces along and under roofing material.”
Investigators don’t believe weather was a factor, according to the report.
The fire-damaged portion of The Cooper apartments in Near Southside Fort Worth on Tuesday, June 24.
Firefighters responded to the apartment complex in the Near Southside neighborhood about 1:30 p.m. Light smoke was showing from the roof of Building 1, the report states. Crews climbed up to the roof and found fire near the HVAC unit.
Other crews entered the fifth floor of Building 1 and began evacuating residents. Building 2 also had to be evacuated. Eventually six alarms were called for the blaze, and it wasn’t considered under control until nearly 10:20 p.m.
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Fire Department spokesperson Craig Trojacek told reporters Tuesday that the building’s roof design hindered firefighters’ efforts to quickly extinguish the blaze. A rubber coating on the roof melted from the heat and gummed up their chainsaws as they tried to cut through to access the fire.
Firefighters also had to pull back every time a section of the building collapsed, Trojacek said. A section inside Building 1 “pancaked” downward, collapsing from the fifth floor through to the second floor, according to the report.
Void spaces in the building helped the blaze spread, as winds coming from the south pushed the flames into empty areas of the structure. The report states that firefighters saw the fire traveling through “difficult to access void areas.”
Hundreds of residents displaced from homes
All of The Cooper’s nearly 850 residents have been displaced. The Fire Department has turned control of the complex back over to the apartment managers.
The department is waiting to see if it will receive a copy of the final report from the structural engineers hired by the apartments’ management, Trojacek told the Star-Telegram on Friday.
The report will give information on which units are safe to be inhabited, which ones residents can safely enter to collect things but aren’t habitable, and which ones are unsafe to be entered under any circumstances.
The Fort Worth Fire Department responds to a six-alarm fire at The Cooper apartment complex in the 1000 block of West Rosedale on Monday, June 23.
Management of The Cooper has declined to comment in response to questions about the fire.
The United Way, Red Cross, TCU and other organizations are collecting donations to help the residents.
Previous fires at The Cooper
The Cooper opened in 2020. Residents told the Star-Telegram that they were aware of previous, smaller fires at the six-story apartment complex.
Eight firefighters were dispatched to the location on June 19, 2024, after a small stove-top fire activated the sprinkler system. No one was injured, according to the incident report, and the fire was already out by the time firefighters arrived. They shut down the sprinkler system and managed to get most of the water out of the apartment.
Firefighters were called to another kitchen fire at The Cooper on Oct. 4, 2024. The tenant left some boxes on top of the stove, which caught fire after a burner got turned on. The sprinkler system extinguished the fire, according to the report.
Fire personnel aired out the apartment and cleaned up the water from the sprinklers. No injuries were reported, and the fire damage was contained to the boxes and the microwave above the stove.