After apartment fires, renters confront broken hydrants, rent bills and liability waivers

Just after 1 a.m. on New Year’s Day in New Orleans, as fireworks still cracked across the Mississippi River, Jaqueen Harrington smelled smoke.

She opened her door at the West Park Court apartments in Algiers and saw orange light flickering against the building opposite. Neighbors were yelling. Harrington started pounding on doors, urging people to get out. By the time she and others reached the parking lot, flames were clawing through the roof.

“It was like a horror movie,” she later said. “We couldn’t do anything but sit there and watch.”

Fire trucks arrived within minutes, but crews quickly hit a problem: the closest fire hydrant did not work.

Firefighters had to stretch hose to a more distant hydrant to mount a full attack. By the time the three-alarm fire was controlled, 18 residents were displaced. No one was hurt, but several units were gutted and the roof of at least one building collapsed.

New Orleans Fire Department Capt. Quentin Brown acknowledged “an issue with the water supply” at the complex and said the hydrant used in “the initial attack” malfunctioned, forcing crews to switch. City records show the hydrant nearest the complex had last been inspected in January 2025 and was officially marked out of service only after the blaze.

What began as a neighborhood fire on a holiday morning left residents asking a blunt question: When your home burns, who is actually responsible for protecting you?

Across the country, in Southfield, Michigan, and Denver, tenants and would-be renters are asking versions of the same question after a string of major fires in late December and January exposed gaps in infrastructure, landlord practices and legal protections.

In Southfield, near Detroit, a Dec. 22 fire at the Sutton Place Apartments displaced eight families days before Christmas. In Denver, a five-alarm blaze on Jan. 2 destroyed a 283-unit apartment complex still under construction, erasing hundreds of future homes in a tight market.

Taken together, the three incidents show how quickly renters can fall through cracks in systems that are supposed to keep them safe — from basic firefighting equipment to online rent portals and liability forms.

A hydrant without water

At the Algiers complex, residents say the fire spread fast, fed by gusty winds and a cluster of attached two-story buildings. Brown said the first crews relied on the water in their trucks — typically about 500 gallons — while they worked to secure a second hydrant farther away.

The department has not announced a final cause but said fireworks likely played a role. New Year’s Eve and July Fourth are among the busiest nights of the year for fire departments nationwide, with backyard displays sometimes igniting roofs and balconies.

In Algiers, residents watched as firefighters dragged hose across driveways and through grass to find a working connection.

“We’re sitting there thinking, ‘Why is there no water?’” Harrington said. “By the time they got it going, it was too late for our homes.”

The failure immediately raised questions about the condition of New Orleans’ hydrant network and the pace of inspections. The Sewerage & Water Board maintains the system, while the fire department relies on it in emergencies. Public records show the hydrant closest to the complex had been inspected nearly a year earlier but had not been flagged publicly as out of service.

City officials have said they are reviewing the incident. Residents and neighborhood advocates want more: a transparent accounting of hydrant conditions and a plan to prioritize repairs in areas like Algiers, which has long complained of underinvestment compared with tourist-heavy parts of the city across the river.

In the days after the fire, United Way of Southeast Louisiana, the American Red Cross, volunteer groups such as the Cajun Navy and city agencies helped families find temporary housing and basic supplies. Local artist Reggie Ford joined efforts to salvage what they could, pulling charred but still legible photographs of second-line parades and Mardi Gras Indian suits from blackened apartments.

The rent bill that follows you

In suburban Detroit, the flames came earlier, on the Monday before Christmas.

Fire officials in Southfield say the blaze at Sutton Place began in a second-floor unit, spread to a neighboring apartment and sent smoke and water cascading into the two units below. One person was treated for minor smoke inhalation. Four of the eight units in that building were damaged badly enough that residents had to move out.

Some found themselves spending the holidays in hotel rooms.

Weeks later, several of those tenants told local television station WDIV that, even as they lived out of suitcases, the property’s online portal still showed January rent and late fees coming due.

One tenant, Tiyonna Greene, said she had paid December’s rent before the fire and expected charges to be suspended until her unit was habitable. Instead, when she logged in mid-January, she saw a balance of roughly $3,000 due Feb. 1.

“We’re not living there,” Greene said. “But I owe them $3,000 now for the rent.”

Tenants provided messages from management dated Jan. 2 instructing residents to disregard January charges and saying they would be removed the following Monday. But as of mid-month, Greene and others said, the portal still listed rent, late fees or both.

The community’s manager told WDIV on camera that displaced residents “are not being charged rent” and “have in writing that they are not being charged,” but did not explain the discrepancies in the portal or say whether any formal nonpayment notices had gone out.

At the same time, tenants say they were told they needed to sign a broad liability waiver before being allowed back inside to retrieve belongings. The document, copies of which were shared with reporters, asked residents to release the owner and management from “any and all claims” related to accessing the damaged building, including “property damage, injuries, sicknesses, lost income, death or expenses.”

“By signing this, we are giving our rights away to be able to fight them legally or just in general,” Greene said.

Landlord-tenant attorneys in Michigan say state law generally requires landlords to maintain rental units in a habitable condition. If a fire or other event renders a unit uninhabitable through no fault of the tenant, renters may have arguments that they are not responsible for ongoing rent or can terminate a lease, depending on the contract and circumstances.

Constructive eviction — a legal concept that applies when a landlord’s failure to provide basic services effectively forces a tenant out — can also come into play. The enforceability of sweeping waivers signed by displaced tenants is less clear and would likely depend on how the document was presented, what risks were known and whether a court deemed the terms unconscionable.

“It’s very concerning when people are being asked to sign away broad rights at a moment of crisis, just to get access to their medications or their children’s school supplies,” said one Detroit-area housing attorney who was not involved in the Sutton Place case but reviewed a copy of the waiver. “Courts do scrutinize those types of agreements, but most tenants don’t have the resources to litigate.”

Public reviews of Sutton Place going back several years mention maintenance complaints and difficulty reaching management about repairs, an indication that tensions between some residents and the property’s owners predated the fire.

A building that never opened

In Denver, the early January fire did not displace any tenants; the building on Leetsdale Drive and South Forest Street was still under construction.

But the scale of the blaze — a rare five-alarm response that drew more than 100 firefighters — and the number of units involved underscored another risk in the country’s strained housing market: what happens when badly needed supply is wiped out before anyone moves in.

The 283-unit complex was framed largely in wood, a common choice for mid-rise apartment buildings because it is cheaper and faster to build than steel or concrete. Fire experts say such projects are especially vulnerable before sprinkler systems are active and fire walls are fully in place.

The fire sent plumes of smoke over southeast Denver, temporarily knocked out power to nearby homes and closed a main artery, Leetsdale Drive, in both directions. At least one firefighter was hospitalized with injuries.

“It’s major,” Denver Fire Division Chief Robert Murphy said at a news conference. “I can’t tell you the last time in Denver we had a three-alarm fire this big.” The fire was later classified as five alarms, the largest the department had handled in decades.

City housing officials have not released a detailed assessment of the project’s loss, but the building represented hundreds of apartments that would likely have come online within the next year or two. In a region where rents have climbed steadily and vacancy rates remain low, the destruction means prolonged pressure on other properties and on renters’ budgets.

A second disaster after the flames

The three fires differ in cause, scale and setting. One appears tied to holiday fireworks; another began inside a single apartment; the Denver fire remains under investigation.

What unites them is what happened after the flames were out.

In New Orleans, a malfunctioning hydrant likely gave the fire time to grow before crews could get full water pressure, and residents now want answers about basic infrastructure. In Southfield, tenants displaced by a fire they did not cause found themselves juggling hotel stays, a confusing rent ledger and a liability waiver they feared would strip away legal options. In Denver, hundreds of future renters lost a potential home as a massive wooden frame went up in smoke.

Housing advocates say these are not isolated flukes but part of a broader pattern in which renters — who are less likely than homeowners to carry insurance and have savings — face a second wave of risk after a disaster: opaque billing, complex paperwork and uneven enforcement of safety rules.

“They’re at their most vulnerable point, and that’s exactly when the power imbalance with landlords and systems shows up,” said a tenants’ rights organizer in Michigan.

As cities confront more intense weather, aging infrastructure and chronic housing shortages, the fires in Algiers, Southfield and Denver offer an early glimpse of the stakes. One bad night can push families out of their homes. How the systems around them respond — the hydrants, the portals, the papers on a clipboard — can determine whether they recover or fall further behind.