LAPLACE, La. — A utility pole was still smoldering Wednesday outside a LaPlace apartment building, where the night before flames ripped through four apartments on Cambridge Drive.
“My stomach got upset. I started crying,” said neighbor Tonia Marzilli. “I saw flames coming from back there behind the building.”
When Marzilli saw those flames, she joined other neighbors who had rushed to the scene.
“People were trying to help whoever they could help to get out and make sure everyone was to safety,” said Marzilli.
Marzilli says about a dozen people lived in the building, some of them kids. As flames burned through their apartments, she says kids were tossed out of a second-story window to safety and a man who is disabled was carried out on a mattress
“It was easier for them to take him out of the home with the mattress,” said Marzilli.
When fire crews got there, flames were already coming through the roof and windows of the building which was already damaged from Hurricane Ida. The fire chief tells Eyewitness News everyone got out safely and the fire was under control within 15 minutes. Firefighters believe one of the tenants left something on a stove, leaving families without a home.
“There’s the worry of who’s going to take these innocent people in or where can they get shelter,” said Marzilli.
This fire is just the most recent hardship in this neighborhood, leaving more people homeless. Nearby apartments and homes are still damaged or destroyed from Hurricane Ida. Debris still piles up and Marzilli worries about the people she’s known as neighbors for the last six years and whether they’ll be able to return home.
“It breaks my heart,” said Marzilli. “It’s rough. It’s rough but it’s going to be OK. God is going to take care of it.”
Care that can't come soon enough, for a community bruised by disasters but healing through faith.
Eyewitness News is told the Red Cross is working with those displaced families.