A blaze in a small, abandoned warehouse in New Orleans killed eight homeless people who were burning wood in a barrel to stay warm, the fire department said Tuesday.
New Orleans NBC station WDSU-TV said that victims were believed to be homeless people who had taken shelter in the warehouse due to bitterly cold weather.
A freeze warning was in effect for the region and homeless shelters struggled to accommodate additional demand for space, according to WDSU.
The building was fully ablaze when the first fire truck arrived, said New Orleans Fire Department spokesman Greg Davis. Firefighters could not tell the ages or genders of the bodies pulled from the rubble. The fire also killed two dogs.
Fire Chief Charles Parent told WWL-TV that survivors said the fire started when people burned wood in a barrel to stay warm. He said they got out through a window. The survivors were a man who escaped during the fire and a woman who had left the building before it was engulfed, Red Cross worker Tom Butler said. He said both were put up at a hotel.
Parent said that firefighters were unable to tell the age or gender of the bodies. He added that cadaver dogs would be brought in at daylight in case there were others in the building in New Orleans' 9th Ward.
The survivors told firefighters that at least some of the people inside were unconscious when the building went up in flames. Davis said they might have been knocked out by carbon monoxide.
"When you burn something in a closed area, you're going to build up carbon monoxide," he said.
The male survivor told Butler that he heard someone screaming and trying to escape. The survivor said he tried to run back into the building, but there was too much smoke. Butler said the man didn't want to be identified.
The wood and corrugated metal building burned to its foundation. It was among several ramshackle metal, brick and wooden buildings along railroad tracks where graffiti-scrawled freight cars stood.
Many of the houses nearby appeared abandoned, but at least a few were occupied.