DERELICT DWELLINGS PROVIDE FIERY CLASSROOMS IN DURHAM

No better way to spend a nice, sunny day than sitting flat on the
ground, legs splayed, with a torrent of water aimed at a burning building.

Except to steer the water to a second building. Then a third. And
maybe a fourth, just for good measure.

Nearly two dozen Durham city firefighters combined training and
community service Friday morning as they torched three boarded-up
homes that had become drug houses on a gravel stretch of Gattis Street
in the West End neighborhood.

The coming months are expected to bring new and renovated homes to the
area along with a newly paved road. But for just a few hours, the
firefighters practiced their teamwork, starting and extinguishing
maybe 15 small fires before finally letting the houses burn to their
foundations, one at a time.

Residents up the street watched, most nodding appreciatively.

"I'm glad to see them go," said Joseph Johnson as he sat in his front
yard nearby. "We've got a real bad drug problem. As a property owner,
it's the best thing that could happen to me."

City housing officials plan to build six homes and renovate four
others in the blocklong stretch. Builders will replace the narrow
gravel drive with a wider paved road.

A study years ago pegged Gattis Street as the most blighted area in
the neighborhood, said Juanita McNeil, former board member of the West
End Community Center. Houses sat abandoned for years.

"A lot of the houses were boarded up," she said, "and people pulled
the boards off and lived in the houses and did drugs and did
prostitution or whatever."

"They're shooting galleries," said Capt. Dwight Pettiford, a police
spokesman.

City officials bought the houses and began working toward renewing the
street. The new houses will be offered to families making less than 80
percent of the area's median income, the city said.

Firefighters weren't the first city agency to take advantage of the
empty homes. Johnson said he woke one morning recently to explosions
as the police tactical team conducted explosive-entry training.

But Friday morning, flames were the name of the game.

Firefighters from five engine companies split into attack, back-up and
rescue teams, Battalion Chief W. A. Roberts said. As one group plowed
inside to put out a fire, another protected the exit while a third
stood by in case of emergency.

Roberts briefly flew into a rage when he saw the group hadn't
protected a house across the street.

"Why won't anybody listen to me? That ... house is melting!" he
screamed as the vinyl siding rippled in the searing heat. He put a
pair of hoses on the house to cool it and ordered up another pumper.
No one wanted a fourth house in flames.

Police Sgt. S.M. Mihaich said a woman lives there, though the city is
trying to evict her. There was an arrest at the home last week, with
someone accused of possessing crack cocaine and running a drug dwelling.

It followed another arrest on the block a few months ago, Mihaich
said. Years ago, the area was home to a few liquor houses.

The improvements on Gattis Street should reverberate through the
neighborhood, said Gloria Beamon, coordinator for the Community
Outreach Partnership Center.

"It's something that's warmly welcomed," she said. "That's one less
blighted area. Every little dot helps."