Firefighters responding to a fire on Prytania Street near Soniat. (Photo submitted by Kurt Fromherz)
The fire broke out around 10 p.m. on Prytania near Soniat. Witness Kurt Fromherz said there were no visible flames, but a “smell of smoke, like an electrical fire.”
The cause of the blaze has yet to be disclosed by authorities.
Why look at that photo! The ladder unit is making a rare appearance.
Is that Ladder 5 which the Arabella Station is losing???
Indeed! According to the recent UptownMessenger story, it only rarely makes appearances, but here it is. It came to our small house fire two years ago. I am a bit disappointed that Morris used verbiage that I’m certain came from the NOFD guy behind the plan to move Ladder 5 in a way that supported the NOFD argument, uncritically.
Look at the map – the image that accompanies the same story – the purple areas are purported to show where the ladder truck can get to in 8 minutes from its new, proposed location. Much of Uptown is out of that range, from Magazine to the river. It’s not a good thing! The state leg recently passed a property tax to be used for fire and police in NOLA; we need to demand that they furnish enough ladder trucks to serve all the districts, rather than stretching the boundaries of what one truck can serve.
Beth, sorry to be so long in replying to your original question about this. My recollection is that the assistant chief said about 3 percent of the ladder truck’s rolls are for actual fires, as opposed to medical calls or false alarms, etc. Not only that, he said, many of the fires aren’t calling for the ladder itself; it’s just being used to get the firefighters there. (Which seems to be the case in this photo, though I wasn’t there to say for sure.) They can’t even use the ladder when firefighters are inside the building, so it’s sort of a tool of last resort.
I don’t dispute that the loss of the Arabella ladder makes the residents between Magazine and the river from the park to Audubon less safe. You guys are going to be outside the recommended eight-minute driving distance from a ladder, and this news outlet has been alone in publishing that fact (twice now, using two different maps). But it is not a contradiction or an inaccuracy for you guys to be demonstrably less safe AND for fire calls that require the use of the ladder apparatus to be, thankfully, rare.