NEW ORLEANS – A woman is dead after a massive fire on South Johnson Street in Central City Wednesday afternoon.
A WGNO source, a fire fighter claims the city’s furloughs may have slowed the fire department’s response time.
Interim Superintendent Roman Nelson maintains furloughs the department is facing did not impact the response time to this blaze.
Viewer submitted video shows black smoke billowing against the crisp blue sky. The fire quickly growing to a three alarm call.
“The call was dispatched at 1:06 PM, the first company got on the scene at 1:12 PM a six minute response time. The second alarm was struck at 1:14, the third alarm was struck at 1:27 and the fire was placed under control at 2:11,” Nelson said.
A woman and a man were inside the home that initially caught fire. The woman was brought to an area hospital where she later died. The man made it out, but is unaccounted for.
“There was no power or water to the residence and we received reports that the building previously had a fire,” Nelson said. “We’re looking into that.”
In October, the City of New Orleans announced COVID-19 furloughs impacting police, EMS and fire.
The fire department furloughs about 13 fire fighters each day and to make sure there are enough people responding, the department is simply sending more trucks than normal.
One fire fighter tells WGNO news that four pieces of equipment were out of service Wednesday afternoon because there were not enough people to operate them. The fire fighter also says all four would have responded to the three alarm fire. One of the units is a fire engine at the station on Martin Luther King Boulevard, just over one mile away from the scene.
Interim Superintendent Roman Nelson says furloughs did not affect response times in this case.
“The first company was on scene in six minutes which is in our normal response time of three to seven minutes. We had subsequent companies on scene pretty rapidly. So, response time was not an issue with this fire.”
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.