NEW ORLEANS — The New Orleans Fire Department is on the scene of a four-alarm fire in the Berhman neighborhood of Algiers.
NOFD officials say fire crews responded to a call of a fire at about 1:04 Thursday morning in the 2200 block of Westbend Parkway.
“The first fire companies arrived on the scene at 1:10 am to the Oakmount Apartments finding a large vacant apartment complex with two sections of apartments fully engulfed in fire,” says an NOFD report. “As embers from the flames spread to additional sections, a Second Alarm was called at 1:13 am. Firefighters fought the dense smoke and flames as they rescued several vagrants still in the complex and unable to find their way through the smoke.”
Firefighters worked on extinguishing the first two sections of apartments as they collapsed, but not before spreading to four other apartments. A Third Alarm was called and shortly after that the fourth alarm.
No injuries were reported.
This is not the first time a fire erupted at the vacant sections of the Oakmont Apartments which have a storied history of residents complaining of unsanitary living conditions, bankruptcy, vagrancy, and repeated fires.
In March, a 3-alarm fire ripped through sections of the Oakmont Apartments.
The Oakmont Apartments is the largest of five New Orleans apartment complexes that landlord Joshua Bruno placed under bankruptcy protection in January to avert foreclosure.
