CENTRAL CITY, La. (WGNO)- Twelve residents are displaced this morning due to a destructive fire in Central City. In less than two hours, the place that twelve people call home went up in flames.
While the building is severely damaged, the tenants are all alright and alive.
It was a four-unit building with two units upstairs and two below.
The fire started around 4:00 A.M. in the 2000 block of St. Andrews Street in Central City.
At around 4:30 A.M., the New Orleans Fire Department was dispatched after receiving a 911 call of a residential fire with possible persons trapped inside.
Luckily, one of the downstairs tenants woke up all of the residents and got them out before their home was engulfed.
Arriving on the scene within minutes of the call, firefighters got to work putting out the flames. An adult male living at 2000 St. Andrew Street, the probable apartment where the fire started, did suffer varying degrees of burns to a hand and arm.
He was taken to a hospital.
It took about 50 Fire Operations personnel to get this three alarm fire under control by 6:00 A.M.
“The firefighters had difficulty making it through the entrance to the unit where the fire first started because there was a fridge blocking door. So, we had to go through another unit to break through the wall, to put the fire out. They did a tremendous job. They kept it from doing too much damage to the houses next door and just tremendous job,” said Superintendent Roman Nelson, New Orleans Fire Department.
There were concerns that an elderly woman might have been inside but, NOFD received confirmation that she was not home at the time of the fire.
The good news is that everyone made it out of the home. The cause of the fire is under investigation.