05:46 PM CST on Monday, February 13, 2006

By Reggie Aqui / 11 News

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Firefighters were putting out hot spots from a fire Monday morning in East Houston when they found a body inside.

They couldn't tell whether the victim was a man or woman.

One person who lived at the boarding house at Delmar and Harrisburg is still unaccounted for.

About two dozen people lived at the house and most made it out unharmed.

Some said the house was no more than a flophouse for recently incarcerated.

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More than 20 people lived in the boarding house.

"Either on probation, parole or recently come out of jail. Stuff like that," said a neighbor.

It's the second time in eight months a boarding house in the neighborhood has caught fire.

Both properties belong to the same owner. Neighbors say it was 10 years ago that Juan E. Hernandez bought the property and converted it into a boarding house with 26 rooms.

The neighbors were fed up with the occupants, but no one wanted a raging inferno in the middle of the night.

A check of city records shows that just last July, the building didn't have its certificate of occupancy. It was also cited for its fire extinguishers and what appear to be electrical hazards.

That came after a fire in another of Hernandez' houses on Avenue C, which also killed one man

11 News found 13 boarding houses, each listed with Hernandez as the trustee. We tracked six of them.

Since January 2005, HPD has logged seven pages of calls about the boarding houses.

All had been cited for their fire extinguishers and not one had a certificate of occupancy, which worries District Chief Capt. Jack Williams.

"Boarding houses have a very great potential for a large life loss," he said.

The fire, which started around 3:30 a.m., quickly destroyed almost the entire second floor.

Smoke alarms alerted the sleeping residents.

Some said they jumped out of their windows and waited on the roof for firefighters to rescue them.

One man said he saw smoke at the end of the second floor hallway and tried to put the fire out himself with a fire extinguisher.

"I took my fist and I busted it open and got it out, and I went down to the end and beat on the door and nobody answered," said Hermann Jenkins.

He said he then kicked the door in and began spraying the room.

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Firefighters had to pull out of the second floor because of heavy flames and smoke.

"Sprayed with a fire extinguisher a little bit and we thought he had put it out so I went back in the room to lay down," said another resident. "And he yelled 'Get low, get low.' And everybody got low and I put my pants on and crawled out the window."

Firefighters said their search was slowed by renovations that turned many normal-sized rooms into smaller rooms.

They tried to search the top floor, but it was too dangerous.

"Firefighters were up on the second floor, because of the amount of fire and some other things, they had to pull out," said Capt. Williams, HFD district chief.

Firefighters said there was an argument late Sunday night between a man and a woman; the two people they could not find. Investigators believe the body found Monday morning is one half of the couple.

As dangerous as the boarding houses may be, it's still a step up from the street.