Fire guts building being constructed in Slidell

A stubborn fire in an office building under construction at 1301 Eastridge Drive in Slidell gave St. Tammany Fire Services District 1 personnel trouble for a couple of hours Thursday night.

Chief of Fire Prevention Neil Ricca said firefighters responded to a 911 call at 9:55 p.m. to find half of the two-story building in flames.

Ricca said it took four engines, a ladder truck and 29 firefighters to bring the blaze under control by 11:40 p.m. During that time, firefighters had to contend with intense heat that softened the steel beams in the building and an explosion caused by a back draft that blew out half of the north brick wall of the building, spewing bricks onto the roof of the Louisiana Dental Clinic right next to the fire.

“We were concerned about the safety of our mode and had to go into a defensive posture,” Ricca said. Despite the setbacks there were no injuries, and the building was empty at the time of the fire.

Sadly, the new building was to be the new home of the Louisiana Dental Clinic. Office manager Debbie Danner said the 13,500-square-foot building was just “weeks away from being finished.”

Dental assistants Valerie Blackman and Pat Stevenson sat on the curb looking at the damage Friday morning. Neither knew about the fire when they showed up to work, and they were in tears.

“I’m so heartbroken,” Blackman said. “It feels like it is my house that burned.”

The fire department had put yellow caution tape around both buildings and would not allow anyone into the smaller clinic, even though it suffered only minor damage from falling bricks.

Ricca said firefighters spent a long time making sure the fire did not spread to the smaller building, but the explosion made the north wall “structurally compromised.” The fire department closed off the smaller building because firefighters feared the brick wall might collapse.

Stevenson wondered what the clinic employees were going to do and was upset the new building was so badly damaged.

“We were all looking forward to moving into the new building,” Stevenson said. “The old office was becoming a real challenge.”

The Eastridge Drive office is one of seven offices owned by Louisiana Dental Clinics, according to Terry Ernst, spokesman for the clinics.

“Don’t worry, we will come back here. We are going to rebuild,” Ernst said.

The older, smaller office had been in operation for two years, said Ernst, and most of the employees had been there for that long.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, Ricca said. There were no witnesses to the blaze, and the 911 call came from a house on Lindbergh Drive, which runs behind the clinic. Investigators are asking anyone who might have information on the fire to call the District 1 office at 649-3665.

Stevenson said she was just glad there were no injuries.

“We were lucky we weren’t in there at the time,” Stevenson said.