A house that had reportedly been the site of drug use and a home vagrants was one of two Seventh Ward homes destroyed by fire early Sunday morning.
According to New Orleans Fire Department officials, the two-alarm fire started around 4:30 a.m. near the corner of North Johnson and St. Anthony Streets. Investigators say the fire started in an abandoned two-story house and spread to shed and rear of a house in which an 86-year-old woman lives. That woman, officials say, was not home because she is battling an illness in the hospital. Nobody was injured.
NOFD officials say the house in which the fire started had been abandoned since Hurricane Katrina. The 86-year-old woman’s daughter told firefighters that her mother has complained multiple times to city officials about vagrants living in the abandoned house and about drug users frequenting the structure.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
