By Matt Dees
The News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina)
Copyright 2006 The News and Observer
DURHAM, N.C. — For the second time this year, fire broke out at a public housing complex without sprinklers in its apartments, and officials say they still have no plans to install water systems in the buildings where the fires occurred.
In Tuesday’s fire, some of the 172 elderly residents of J.J. Henderson Housing Center had to be carried down the stairs by firefighters after the blaze started in a fourth-floor apartment.
Jean Bolduc, a Durham Housing Authority spokeswoman, reiterated the authority’s position that sprinkler systems are too expensive.
Outfitting the two buildings that have caught fire this year with sprinklers would cost more than $2 million, officials estimate.
The housing authority studied the idea of adding them this spring after Bonnie Lee Parker, 77, was found dead March 9 in a fifth-floor room of Oldham Towers, another public housing complex for seniors that has no sprinklers.
Investigators think he fell asleep or had a heart attack while smoking, and Bolduc said it’s possible he died before the fire broke out.
In Tuesday’s fire, three people were taken to the hospital with ailments that weren’t thought to be serious. No other injuries were reported.
At least three other residents will be displaced and temporarily housed by the Red Cross. Bolduc said the housing authority doesn’t know yet how much damage the fire caused or how long repairs will take.
Firefighters aren’t sure what sparked the blaze about 12:20 p.m. in the 28-year-old building on Duke Street.
Battalion Chief Dan Curia of the Durham Fire Department said the fire could have been worse. Curia said he wasn’t sure how many residents had to be carried downstairs. Elevators can’t be used during a fire.
“When you factor in the fact that it was a high-rise building with fire above the second floor, with an elderly population, it’s a very serious fire,” Curia said.
The fire was contained to one apartment, but smoke damage affected the entire fourth floor, Curia said.
He said the blaze was isolated because the building is made of concrete and steel.
About 50 firefighters were on the scene. Many residents were allowed to stay in their rooms. Dozens who lived near the fire were evacuated immediately and waited outside for about two hours, many sitting in wheelchairs or clutching walkers, while firefighters worked.
Barbara Billings had recently had an ankle replaced and was in a wheelchair. She had to be helped down the stairs from her third-floor apartment.
“A lot of people were going a lot slower than me,” she said. The smoke and alarms and evacuation down a stairwell made her think about stories she had heard about the evacuation of the World Trade Center.
She was determined to make her way out, and an EMS official helped her make her way.
“If I had seen any smoke and nobody to help me, I would have tied bedsheets together and climbed out,” she said. “You betcha I would have gotten out somehow.”
Dee Dee Williams, 47, a nurse, was with an elderly client on the first floor when she heard the fire alarm.
She said she didn’t smell smoke at first, but she did when she took a step outside.
Williams went back in for her client, but “she was passing me with the walker, so I knew she was straight.”