By Lynne Jensen
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Copyright 2006 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
Floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina in August launched the gutting of the Sisters of St. Joseph Provincial House in Gentilly. On Sunday a three-alarm fire destroyed much of what was left of the empty complex at 1200 Mirabeau Ave.
No one was injured, authorities said.
“Thank God there was no one living in the building — no one to be rescued,” Sister Barbara Hughes said, wiping tears from behind eyeglasses framed in the same shade of gold as the cross hanging from her neck. A Sister of St. Joseph, Hughes said she moved into the provincial house when it opened in 1958 and lived there until 1983.
She was greeted with hugs from several nuns and former nuns who have called the place home. Those living there when Katrina hit relocated to various locations in and outside New Orleans.
“It was 30 years ago this month that I made my vows in that chapel,” former nun Saundra Kennedy said.
Lance von Uhde III said he called 911 about 12:50 p.m. after spotting smoke billowing from the eastern end of the building as he drove by with friends John Neal and John Gagliano Jr.
“This was lightning,” von Uhde said, referring to what he thinks caused the fire, which occurred during a rainstorm.
The blaze was reported at 12:56 p.m., New Orleans Fire Department spokesman Michael Williams said. The first firefighting unit arrived at 1:05 p.m., and a second alarm sounded two minutes later, followed by a third alarm at 1:16 p.m., Williams said. The fire was was brought under control at 2:56 p.m.
The cause was under investigation. “The gas was on, but there was no electricity,” Williams said.
About 70 firefighters responded to the blaze along with 27 units, including two Firehawk helicopters that crisscrossed one another for hours, dropping numerous buckets of water on the building’s roof, Williams said.
The helicopters flew back and forth so many times that “it looked like there were 15 helicopters flying around,” Williams said.
At times, smoke grew so thick that blinking lights on the fire engines resembled fireflies flashing in the night.
Like many of the nuns who had lived at the Sisters of St. Joseph complex over the decades, Kennedy returned when it closed after Katrina.
“I came back and said all my goodbyes and remembered all the things I had done here,” she said.
Sister Helen Prejean, death penalty opponent and author of “Dead Man Walking,’' said she came to the complex at age 18. She was in Wyoming writing another book when she learned Sunday night of the fire.
“First water. Then fire. It’s gone now,’' said Prejean, 67. “It’s so New Orleans.’'
Other buildings on the blockwide property date back to 1950 and 1983, said Hughes, who drove to the complex after receiving a phone call about the blaze. She had been on a road trip to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to see hurricane damage there for the first time.
There was no plan to reopen the complex, Hughes said. “We were clear that we were not returning,” she said. “But I never envisioned it being torn down.”
Von Uhde recalled trips to the provincial house to bring gladioluses for the annual St. Joseph’s altar from his father’s Calhoun Street flower shop.
As firefighters struggled to put out the blaze, passers-by Howard and Melanie Henson yelled, “Come on! Come on!”
The Baton Rouge couple, who were in town to see their daughter, thought they were heading into “fog” when they turned onto Mirabeau Avenue as the fire began, Melanie Henson said.
When firefighters arrived at the scene, “we saw them struggling with the hoses,” Henson said. “It took about 25 minutes to get water” pouring on the fire from the trucks, she said.
The two firefighting helicopters, supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, were invaluable in putting out the fire, Williams said.
“Every month they say they are going to cut the funding” for the helicopters, he said. “We’ll see at the end of the month how that goes, because we are already short of firefighters.”