SAN MARCOS, Texas – Using a crane high above the burned-out buildings Monday, investigators searched through the damage at the Iconic Village and the Vintage Pads apartments in San Marcos.
The fifth body has been recovered on Monday.
The remains were transported to the Travis County Medical Examiner's Office in Austin for autopsy and identification.
The medical examiner will work to see if the recovered remains match the names of any of the list of five people reported missing.
"Search operations, recovery operations will continue until we know that all potential victims have been recovered," San Marcos City Fire Marshal Kelly Kistner said.
One name on the list of the missing is David Ortiz. He graduated from Pasadena Memorial High School and is now a student at Texas State University. He was living at Iconic Village this summer. He had not yet been located.
Fire investigators say the buildings did not have fire sprinklers.
"We do not have an origin of the fire. We do not know where the fire started at this time. That is still part of the ongoing investigation. If we do not know the origin, we do not know what caused this fire," Kistner said.
Investigators said they will be inside the apartments through the end of the week. The fire marshal said the investigation could take weeks or even months.
"We have to make sure that everything goes or that everything has a hand placed on it. This is not something where we take in a big bucket and we just dump it on the ground and call it good. Every piece of evidence, everything that's in that building, will be touched by investigators' hands. So that is a slow process," Kistner said.