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Clearwater duplex suffers extensive fire damage

By ROBIN STEIN
Published February 1, 2007

CLEARWATER - All of a sudden, there was a thick plume of smoke shooting through the doorway of the little yellow duplex at 1150 LaSalle St. Wednesday afternoon.

Larry Smith, 35, snapped around to see big flames coming out of the air conditioner in his bedroom window at the back of the house.

"I panicked and then got to a phone," Smith said later, standing in a paisley robe and slippers.

The first of seven fire engines pulled up six minutes later, and within a few minutes the fire was out, said Assistant Chief Martin Pettingill of Clearwater Fire Rescue.

But it was too late for Smith's home.

"It got pretty intense pretty quickly," Pettingill said.

The cause of the fire was under investigation Wednesday night.

Smith's aunt, Verna White, who lives in the adjoining unit, was already out on the front lawn, safe. She said her 72-year-old disabled mother was gone, thankfully, having been taken to a hospital the night before.

White said she had run back inside with a neighbor to get her oxygen tanks out of the fire's path.

People were still clustered up and down the block, shaking their heads, looking at the canary-colored house with the blown-out windows. Firefighters were going in and out past the pink dirt bike and the wheelchair still leaning on the porch.

Inside Smith's apartment, everything was charred, a flat black coating over the table lamps and a wicker bookshelf.

On his hip was a plastic laundry basket piled with a set of cloths that someone had brought from the Martin Luther King Center at the end of the street.

White's apartment was better, but it still had a gray wash of smoke. She said firefighters were still not letting her take a closer look, and she was itching to check up on her three pit bull puppies - also reportedly safe - hiding out somewhere in the back yard.

Around back, pieces of roof were dripping over the edge down Smith's bedroom window.

And lying amid the shards of glass was the air conditioner, planted face-down in the mud.

Robin Stein can be reached at rstein@sptimes.com or 727 445-4157.

[Last modified February 1, 2007, 00:16:12]