By George Chidi, Staff
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
NORCROSS, Ga. — Javier Figeroa grimaced as he thought about what he lost Saturday when his apartment burned.
He couldn’t grab his television, he said. Nor his computer, nor his stereo. He forgot his cellphone inside, too.
“We weren’t able to get anything,” he said.
Figeroa returned to Huntington Ridge in Norcross on Tuesday. He and 27 others displaced by the fire — including six children — made a spartan move into another apartment there.
There were no injuries, but the fire appears to have moved quickly. It started on an end apartment of a four-unit building and spread to the attic, fire officials said.
The flames burned hot enough to turn the roof to ash and melt the siding from the apartment next door. Firefighters started off trying to save the building and finished trying to save the buildings around it. Fire officials continue to look for a cause.
The Red Cross put displaced families in area hotels temporarily. Apartment management helped the families move into vacant units on Tuesday. Figeroa asked for a refund of some of his rent to start to replace his losses, but was denied. And because none of the residents carried renter’s insurance, they have little to move.
“With our residential profile ... I don’t think they’re educated about the need for renters insurance,” said Tice Vieira, regional manager for Huntington Management. Huntington Ridge residents are predominantly Latino immigrants. Figeroa, a 38-year-old laborer from Oaxaca, Mexico, shared his apartment with five men and one woman, all Latino immigrant laborers.
A charred guitar sat in one window of the burned building, three days after the fire. A waterlogged mattress rested against one of the remaining walls of the building. Most of what could be seen in the windows behind the temporary chain-link fence looked irretrievably consumed.
“But they want [their belongings] back,” Vieira said. “It’s a devastating situation.”
Management says there’s probably not enough left to repair. All that remains is a burned-out shell open to the sky.
“It’s pretty much just four walls,” Vieira said.
Copyright 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution