Eight squatters die in New Orleans fire
They were burning debris to stay warm
NEW ORLEANS – The deadliest city blaze in decades killed eight homeless squatters who were burning debris in an abandoned warehouse to stay warm Tuesday, authorities said.
Firefighters said they could not tell the ages or genders of those who died because their bodies were so badly burned. A 23-year-old man who escaped told the American Red Cross he could not get back in to help his friends because of the smoke, agency volunteer Thomas Butler said.
All that was left of the warehouse, which sat amid graffiti-covered rail cars and ramshackle buildings, was the blackened foundation and a partial shell of singed corrugated metal.
The Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office said it was uncertain when the dead would be identified. However, a group of young people sitting on the steps of an abandoned house near the scene later Tuesday said the dead included three women and five men.
Rachel Park, 27, of California, estimated the ages ranged from 19 to 30.
She said the victims never thought of themselves as homeless and rejected the “gutter punk” label used by some locals to describe transient youths often seen begging for money or cigarettes on French Quarter streets.
“They were all accomplished musicians or artists – jolly, happy people,” Park said, adding that four dogs died along with the eight people.
Park knew the victims by first names only and said one or two were from the New Orleans area, while the others were from elsewhere in the U.S.
Temperatures were just below freezing early Tuesday, not unheard of but unusually cold for New Orleans. The warehouse is in a blighted city neighborhood left even more so by the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Agencies that work with the homeless said they believe some or all the victims were in their late teens or early 20s. Linda Gonzales, of the New Orleans Mission, said homeless young adults and teenagers often avoid shelters for several reasons.
“Some of them choose to stay out and you can’t make them come in,” she said.
The number of transient youths fluctuates, but there could be several hundred homeless young people in the city at any given time, said Mike Miller, an official with the homeless advocacy and aid group UNITY of Greater New Orleans.
The blaze was reported just before 2 a.m., and firetrucks arrived within five minutes to find the building engulfed in flames, fire department spokesman Greg Davis said. Some of the victims may have been rendered unconscious by carbon monoxide, a danger with indoor fires.
Nearby, inhabited wood-frame houses, some with Christmas decorations, are interspersed with boarded-up homes with holes in the roofs. The city has more than 55,000 such blighted properties, according to current estimates.
Homelessness is a problem that has worsened since Katrina. Gonzales estimated as many as 3,000 people with nowhere to go may be on the streets on any given night. Shelters only have about 800 beds available, she said, though the city works with them to provide more when temperatures hover near or below freezing.