By Michelle Hunter
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Copyright 2006 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
Two people were injured and an elderly woman was rescued from her balcony in a two-alarm fire at an Old Metairie condominium development early Tuesday morning, authorities said.
About 35 residents were displaced after the blaze, which started inside a condominium on the second floor of 801 Rue Burgundy, a three-story building in the DeLimon Place development, said George Rigamer, spokesman for the East Jefferson Consolidated Fire Department.
A firefighter was treated on the scene for heat exhaustion and a resident was treated for smoke inhalation, Rigamer said. No one else was injured.
The Fire Department received the first report of the fire just before 12:30 a.m., Rigamer said. That’s when Joshua Turnage, 20, noticed smoke as he stepped outside his home a few streets away to have a cigarette before bedtime. Turnage said he and a neighbor jogged over to the brick-walled property and saw sparks and flames shooting up near the roof of the building. Turnage then scrambled over the wall.
“The whole parking lot was already lit up (by the flames) by the time I got in there,” he said Tuesday afternoon.
After alerting a security guard, Turnage went through the building knocking on doors to warn residents, most of whom were elderly and sound asleep. By the time he got to the third floor, Turnage said the corridor was thick with smoke.
“This young man probably saved many lives by knocking on the doors,” Rigamer said.
East Jefferson firefighters joined the effort, calling a second alarm for power to fight the blaze and evacuate residents, Rigamer said. Firefighters escorted many of them down the stairwells, which had also begun to fill with smoke.
Virginia McLean, 81, was trapped on the balcony of her third-floor condominium. She had to be rescued with a ladder truck. Rigamer said she was not injured.
Firefighters brought the blaze under control about 4 a.m., Rigamer said. No cause was known Tuesday, but it’s believed the fire started in unit 213. Rigamer said two condominiums were directly damaged by fire while nine others had smoke and water damage.
The sprawling luxury development, which stretches from Metairie Road to Canal Street, had become home to a few displaced hurricane victims, residents said. But it was not known whether any of them were affected in the fire.
The damage to the building was evident Tuesday. The balconies of two condo units were blackened, the glass doorways blown out along with several windows.
A few doors down from the fire-damaged units, Robert and Mary Ann Lansden carted out a microwave and a few things belonging to her parents. Alice and John Galvin, ages 82 and 89, had escaped the blaze unharmed. But the couple’s third-floor condominium was uninhabitable because of the heavy smoke, Mary Ann Lansden said. She said it burned her eyes as she tried to gather some clothing for them.
The Lansdens picked up the couple Tuesday about 5 a.m. and drove them to the north shore. The Galvins will probably head back up north to Michigan, where they evacuated for Hurricane Katrina.
“We evacuated them this time last year and now we’re doing it again,” Mary Ann Lansden said.