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Three families displaced after townhouse fire in Lafayette Parish

Posted at 6:36 PM, Nov 14, 2018
and last updated 2018-11-15 14:37:58-05

Tonight, three families are displaced after a fire at a townhouse complex in Lafayette Parish.

It happened on Southfield Parkway.

No one was injured, and the people who lived in the townhouse are getting help from their neighbors.

“We’re just sitting on the couch, relaxing and watching TV, and all of a sudden, we hear this, like, ‘pow, pow, pow!’ And, we thought it was fireworks, so we wait a minute and hear it again, and we go outside to our patio, and we look to our right, and two doors down, there’s a big fire,” said next-door neighbor Tiffany Munoze.

Christopher Guidry lives with his mother in the townhouse where the fire happened.

He left moments before it started, and his mom called him back to their house.

”It was just engulfed in flames from the back. I think it’s probably electrical. You can kind of see where their brick begins, and that would be the back of my shed where the electrical wiring ran down.”

The property owner of the townhouse was stunned when she got the call from Mrs. Guidry.

“She said she was reading a book or watching TV with her two dogs, and she said all of a sudden, it got real quiet, and she thought: this is weird. So, there’s glass in the back door, and she looked out there, and she could see light. So, she went out there, and the shed was right on the right. She opened the door, and the whole wall was on fire.”

The fire spread to at least three other townhouses, causing mostly exterior damage to the adjacent homes.

Meanwhile, the home Guidry and his mother lived in sustained major damage.

The fire spread from the back-exterior into the ceiling insulation.

Guidry says he and his mother will have a place to stay because a local hotel is accommodating them.

“I want to thank the community for being so supportive,” said Christopher Guidry.

A donation Facebook page has been set up for one of the victims displaced by the fire.