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Three Gheens families have lost everything in a house fire that burned so hot that firefighters couldn’t extinguish it before it burned to the ground and destroyed both homes next-door.
During the early morning hours of July 4th, the main structure, located at 156 Hyland Drive, burned so hot and spread so fast that firefighters from the Vacherie – Gheens Volunteer Fire Company were outmatched by the blaze.
They were joined by firefighters from the Lockport Volunteer Fire Department, Lafourche District 1 Volunteers and Lafourche Fire Protection District No. 3 to fight what Vacherie-Gheens Fire Chief Spence Cressionie called an unusually hot fire.
The Thibodaux Volunteer Fire Department provided fire protection from Raceland for the responding districts’ areas each fire company left to help in Gheens.
“I don’t know what to do,” said Cammy Loupe, who lived in the home that burned to the ground with her 16-year-old daughter. “There’s nothing left.”
Loupe is currently staying with friends and her daughter is at her grandmother’s home. Neither one was home at the time of the fire.
Vacherie-Gheens Fire received the call to respond at 1:24 a.m. and the first unit, a firefighter in an SUV, arrived four minutes later to find Loupe’s home completely engulfed in flames. The firefighter swept the homes on either side to ensure no one was in them and by the time he was done, a Vacherie-Gheens fire engine and pumper truck had arrived to battle the fire.
There is a fire hydrant directly in front of one of the homes destroyed by the Independence Day fire, but it is no secret to local firefighters, Cressionie said, that the fire protection offered by the water infrastructure in Gheens is wholly inadequate.
Cressionie said the water mains in the town are a mere two inches in diameter. That coupled with dated fire hydrants makes for a low level of water immediately available to fight fires with.
Cressionie said firefighters need at least 250 gallons of water a minute to fight a house fire. To put that in perspective, a fire engine holds 1,000 gallons. Firefighters will go through that in four minutes, so it’s meant to buy them some time to hook up to another source of water.
“Usually that’s a hydrant that can produce 500 gallons a minute,” Cressionie said. “Minimum is 250. But we don’t have that ability down Hyland. On a normal structure fire you use 500 gallons a minute. You would like to have 500. Here you got three of them. So I fire a load for the water supply, I need at least 750 or 800 gallons of water per minute.”
Knowing that the infrastructure in their district creates chinks in their armor against fires, the Vacherie-Gheens Volunteer Fire Company is the only one in Louisiana that plans on being able to cover the whole area entirely with water from area ditches and bayous using pump trucks and six-inch hoses.
The Vacherie-Gheens firefighters were not equipped to produce enough water without the help of the three neighboring fire companies. Other pump trucks arrived and firefighters fought to save the foundation of the first home and keep the other two from becoming engulfed by flames throughout the night.
“I can’t complain about the fire department,” said Lisa Plaisance, who lives next door to the blaze. “They did an awesome job.” She and her husband Joey are now living in a camper that a friend loaned them as they struggle to rebuild their home.
The radiant heat from the blaze was so hot that each of the homes actually began burning from the inside out. One home even had flames flare up through the roof from the inside.
Firefighters fought to put out the fire until 9:30 a.m., Cressionie said.
April Macmurtrie lived next door to Loupe’s house and lost everything in her home except for a handful of items that could fit in the back of the family pickup truck.
“I’ve been building my life in this house for 22 years,” Macmurtrie said. “[I’ve lost] pictures of my children. Baby pictures.”
The cause of the fire has not been determined by the State Fire Marshal’s Office and the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office declined to release any information about the fire pending an ongoing investigation.
Cammy Loupe, in front of her home, which burned to the ground in the early morning hours of July 4th. Three homes were completely destroyed during the fire that firefighters fought for eight hours.
