By Dennis Persica
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Copyright 2006 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
A fire that damaged five homes in Gretna earlier this week has city leaders looking for a way to deal with a problem caused by one of its oldest inhabitants: the railroad.
Fire officials complained that a passing train blocked fire trucks from getting to a blaze at a home in the 200 block of Gov. Hall Street on Monday shortly after 1 p.m.
Had firefighters been able to get there sooner, only two houses would have been damaged, David Crockett Volunteer Fire Company Chief Bobby Black told a meeting of the Gretna City Council just hours after the fire.
At the time of the fire, the train stretched from Peters Road at the Harvey Canal to the train yard at the Gretna-Algiers border, he said.
“The entire city was cut in half,” he said.
While the city prides itself on an emergency-response time of about three minutes, it took about eight minutes for a truck to get to the blaze, officials said.
“With the wind, eight minutes is an eternity,” Councilman Wayne Rau said.
Black said he was returning from lunch when he saw the fire; the passing train was between him and the blaze.
“You feel so helpless,” he said. “I stayed approximately four minutes at the corner of Amelia and Fourth streets, seeing the fire and seeing flames, but unable to get to it, and just hoping there was no one in the fire that we had to rescue.
“Fortunately no one died,” he added.
About 12 residents were displaced and the Red Cross helped them find places to stay, Black said. There were no injuries.
The city has virtually no weapons at its disposal when dealing with railroads, City Attorney W.J. LeBlanc Jr. told the council.
“Local governments cannot regulate railroads,” he said.
At one time the city had a law that said a train cannot block an intersection for more than five minutes. But that law was repealed in 2004 because it was in conflict with state law, which allows 20 minutes.
The problem is not confined to the volunteer fire departments that serve the city, Police Chief Arthur Lawson Jr. said.
“It raises some concerns for EMS and our Police Department,” he said.
Lawson said having the street crossings blocked presents a hazard for police officers. The city is divided into geographic “beats,” which means at least one officer should be able to make it to a crime scene without being hindered by a passing train.
“But if one officer gets there and needs help, no one can get to him,” Lawson said.
Monday’s fire highlighted a problem the city has had since it decommissioned the old fire station on Lafayette Street near Second Street in a round of budget cuts years ago, Black said. That left no fire stations in Gretna between the railroad tracks and the river.
The old station, now the Louisiana Fire Museum, cannot be recommissioned because it is too small to house modern fire equipment, Black said.
Councilwoman Belinda Constant, whose district includes the city’s riverfront, said the population of downtown, which has rebounded in recent years, has probably tripled since that station was closed. And during that same period, the parish has built a new government complex housing thousands of workers downtown, she said.
Rau pointed out that the John Stone Oil Distributor site, which houses several large fuel-storage tanks, also is located in the area between the river and the railroad tracks.
Chief Administrative Officer Susan Percle said the city may be able to take forfeited property it seized for failure to pay taxes to use as a site for a new fire station to serve that part of Gretna.
Railroads once were the lifeblood of the city, with several lines traveling through Gretna to service the industries that lined the river.
In recent years, though, Gretna officials have been at odds with the New Orleans and Gulf Coast Railway, the only remaining line. The city has complained to the company about the condition of the streets at many crossings, as well as the condition of roads such as Fourth and Madison streets, where the train runs down the middle of the street. The situation had gotten so bad that the city posted signs telling drivers whose cars are damaged at rail crossings that they should call the railroad, not City Hall.
Recently, however, the city and the railroad agreed to a joint project to repair Madison, signaling better relations between the two.
It appears that the railroad did nothing wrong Monday since the train was moving the entire time. But the train was unusually long, however. Black said he’d heard that lots of grain is shipped this time of year and the trains are longer than usual as a result.
Percle said she will try to get the railroad to notify the city when especially long trains are passing through. Black and Lawson said that in that situation they can temporarily station personnel and equipment on the river side of the railroad tracks to make sure they can respond to emergencies if any occur while the train is passing.