By Bob Ussery
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Copyright 2006 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
It took nearly a year to reopen the Greater Pleasant Green Baptist Church at South Claiborne Avenue and Delachaise Street after it was flooded by Hurricane Katrina.
The New Orleans church has now suffered a new setback: a six-alarm fire Saturday night that damaged it and four other buildings and displaced 10 people.
As firefighters battled the blaze, the church’s pastor, the Rev. Richard Bellizan, stood on the Claiborne neutral ground and reflected on the future.
“We may gather just to have a prayer, the ones who live close. In times like these we need to pray,” Bellizan said of a likely gathering outside the church Sunday.
“We had just put this back together,” he said, adding that the church had its first official service on the fourth Sunday in July. “By the power of religion, I believe we will come back. Before the day is out, we’ll probably gather on this front sidewalk and have some prayer.”
Bellizan has been pastor since 1968, when the church, which dates to about 1943, was still at 7506 Garfield St. It moved to the brick building on the corner of South Claiborne and Delachaise in 1998.
Pending an investigation, firefighters think the fire started in a two-story fourplex at 3421 S. Claiborne. No one was thought to be living there, because the building had a fence around it, Deputy Fire Chief Glenn Trainor said.
Wind apparently spread the fire to the church next door and to two houses behind the church, Trainor said.
The first house, an unoccupied one-story double at 3009-11 Delachaise, burned but was still standing. The second house, a two-story at 3013 Delachaise that housed three families, collapsed. The Southeast Louisiana Chapter of the American Red Cross planned to help the 10 occupants with lodging, food, clothing and other needs, said Bill Salmeron, director of emergency services.
Wind-driven embers set fire to a fifth building across the street at 3012-14 Delachaise, but firefighters quickly saved the one-story wooden double from all but minor damage.
Neighborhood resident Cecile Tebo heard sirens and could smell smoke a mile away. Seeing the church’s steeple silhouetted by flames was striking, she said, and black smoke was billowing from a large window above the front door of the church.
Firefighters were dispatched about 8:35 p.m. and fought the blaze for more than two hours. About 11 p.m., a pair of firefighters stood on the second-floor porch of 3421 S. Claiborne, which bore the name “The Clabon,” pulling down and dousing flaming planks from the ceiling as larger flames flared through the roof.
Tanker trucks loaded up on water at fire hydrants away from the blaze and carried the liquid to the scene, discharging it into what looked like a square above-ground swimming pool made of a framework lined with rubber. Firetrucks sucked up the water and pumped it onto the fire. The tankers are used when water pressure is low or nonexistent.
Tebo’s husband, Balad, said the scene was ominous. “This is scary that they have to bring in water tankers. That doesn’t seem right to me.”