By
The Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas - A fire broke out yesterday at a high-rise luxury apartment building for University of Texas students, killing one student and critically injuring another.
The three-alarm blaze was reported about 6:20 a.m. at the privately operated University Towers. The fire was under control in a half-hour.
A 19-year-old student was found in his room and was pronounced dead at a hospital. His name was not released. Another student, Zawardy Ab Latiff, 21, was hospitalized with third-degree burns.
The cause of the blaze was under investigation. The fire was confined to a second-floor unit of the two-tower complex, which houses 600 students, Fire Department spokesman Gary Wilks said.
The 10-story building near the UT campus was built before a 1981 ordinance that required all high-rises to have sprinklers. The building had the required smoke detectors in each room and a 24-hour monitored alarm system.
The emergency lighting system and the fire alarm in the hall outside the room where the blaze broke out melted, but the alarm sounded, Wilks said.
Wilks would not speculate on whether sprinklers would have prevented the death. He said that the building had passed inspection twice in the past two months and that officials had planned to return yesterday.
Inspectors had found minor infractions, and "none of these items could have changed the outcome of these events," said Kevin Baum, assistant fire marshal.
Freshman Tom Bagby, 19, said he was studying in the mezzanine area when the fire broke out. As Bagby ran upstairs to get his girlfriend from a seventh-floor room, he saw his friends rushing downstairs.
"They couldn't believe I was going up the stairs," said Bagby, who used to live in the room in which the fire broke out. "They said smoke was pouring out of the room."
The building's Web site promotes the place as "Austin's most luxurious student accommodations." Rent reaches up to $17,400 per year for amenities such as a 24-hour computer lab and a swimming pool.
President Bush's daughter Jenna is a freshman at the university but does not live in the building.
