By Walt Philbin
Times-Picayune
Copyright 2007 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
NEW ORLEANS — Search teams from the metropolitan area Thursday were helping New Orleans firefighters scour the charred rooms of the Economy Lodge Motel for the possible remains of squatters who inhabited the building, closed since Hurricane Katrina, after a four-alarm fire Wednesday night heavily damaged the building.
Firefighters were unable to completely extinguish the blaze, which began shortly after 8:30 p.m., at the three-story building at Tulane and South Claiborne avenues until early Thursday morning.
“Whenever vacant buildings are not properly boarded-up, there are frequently people who stay in them illegally, and when it gets cold or they want to cook something, they start a fire, and sometimes their bodies are found afterward,” said Deputy Chief Joseph Matthews, who was coordinating the search teams that include members of the Louisiana Search and Rescue Dog Team, the Urban Search and Rescue Team from the St. Tammany Fire Protection District No. 1 and the Southeast Louisiana Taskforce 1 that responds to incidents in Orleans, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. Also combing the building were members of the New Orleans Fire Department, the Police Department and city Emergency Medical Services, he said.
Matthews said the Fire Department had not determined the cause of Wednesday’s fire. There have been at least three previous fires at the hotel since Katrina. The cause of those fires is also undetermined.
The fire was reported shortly after 8:30 p.m. and rose to four alarms before firefighters were able to bring it under control by 11:45 p.m., Fire Department spokeswoman Carlene Barthe said.
Fire officials complained about repeated calls to the vacant hotel. Because firefighters knew vagrants often stayed there, they went into the burning building to ensure survivors got out safely.
At least one squatter, possibly two, was rescued by firefighters who launched an interior attack on the blaze, fire officials said.
“The city has agreed to cooperate to begin what it takes to demolish the building,” Matthews said.
A man, who said he has lived in a construction camper just outside the motel since summer, said his company was hired to demolish the building but the work was delayed. He said he regularly threw out squatters at the hotel when he began living there, but there were so many he grew tired of doing so. A squatter rescued by firefighters Wednesday night had estimated that as many as “30 or 40" squatters were living there, but the man said that was probably an underestimate.
Matthews said one of the men living in the building was especially lucky.
The man emerged Thursday about 5:15 a.m. from the second floor, where he had apparently been sleeping.
“He asked us what we were doing here when he saw the fire trucks,” Matthews said. “How he slept through sirens, heat, smoke, flashing lights, everything, I’ll never know. But the fire didn’t get to him, and he never even knew it was going on. He’s a mighty lucky man.”