Tuesday night around 11, firefighters were called to a large blaze inside a home on Grant Street, at the corner of South Main across from the recreation department and Emmanuel Baptist Church.

The unpowered, unoccupied home on an overgrown wooded lot was a total loss by the time fire crews arrived, and tree-high flames threatened to spread to another house nearby. The occupant of THAT home had trouble getting out, but fortunately for her the second structure was spared by intervention from LFD and Walker State Prison firemen.

Neighbors feared fire spreading not just for the safety of the woman living next door but for the potential size of a fire tearing through three cluttered buildings. The house that burned, at least one of the adjacent homes, and several vehicles on three lots owned by the same family [see below] are piled full of material collected by one of the residents.

Fire inside a house packed with flammable material is more difficult to put out and much more dangerous for any responder going inside to rescue trapped residents. Likewise, a burning house on an overgrown junk-strewn lot is much harder to access in the first place and much more likely to get out of control.

LaFayette’s government has gotten complaints about the site before. One neighbor recently wrote a letter to the City Manager and Council, describing the compound as “a health or environmental hazard” and an “eyesore” due to “all the debris and trash [resident] hoards.”

The letter concluded by asking the city to hold this homeowner and resident(s) to the same stricter standards other LaFayette property owners are now being held to.

It’s unknown to LU if the city HAS put the Grant Street properties on its sizable list of troubled lots to get cleaned up. Based on the overgrown and cluttered appearance of these homes, their prime location inside a gateway to the city, and concerns of neighbors (not to mention the fire risk), it would only be a matter of time before they became a priority.

Some have been concerned about LaFayette’s recent push to clean up troubled properties – blighted, cluttered, or burnt out lots scattered all over town. While we don’t want the government dictating the length of our grass or the color of our shutters, it’s also hard to argue against enforcing minimal rules asking people to clean up abandoned houses and pick up trash or junk in their yards. There has to be middle ground, inside a city, between property rights and safety.

This fire, and the potential size it could have grown to due to unaddressed hoarding behavior, just reminds us again that cleaning up the city IS important. Not just for appearances and property values, but for reasons of health and public safety.

Because nobody wants more, bigger fires like this one.