Tragic fire: Thirty years later

A catastrophe struck Ville Platte 30 years ago this week when a fire destroyed two landmark businesses in town. On September 27, 1990, just before noon, the fire started at Evangeline Furniture Store on Main Street, next door to the old library. The blaze was so large and intense, the heat spread across the street to G. Ardoin and Company retail store, blistering Main Street in the process.
Sammy LaFleur worked in the men’s department at G. Ardoin’s the day of the fire. His father, Dwight, was a co-owner of the nearly 80-year-old establishment, along with Burke Eastin. LaFleur usually went to lunch at noon, but that day Morein Motors was having a grand opening, so he left a little early at 11:30 to congratulate Carla and Randy Morein. “As soon as I got to Morein Motors across town, Carla said Evangeline Furniture was on fire,” said LaFleur. He jumped in his car and went back to G. Ardoin’s. “It was blowing and going across the street at the furniture store.” Not able to park at his store, he instead parked at Earl’s Tires and walk back to G. Ardoin’s.
LaFleur said his father had told all the employees to leave. “I went in the store and sat at the checkout counter just watching the fire, thinking they were going to put it out before too long,” he said. He then went to the office where the secretary, Helen, was gathering all the account receivable books and emptying the safe and putting everything in the trunk of his father’s car. “I’m thinking, man, they’re overreacting. We’re going to be back in business tomorrow. I was in complete denial back then.” As the fire progressed, LaFleur gathered all the fire extinguishers and put them at his checkout counter in case he needed them. “I figured that was the thing to do.”
As he watched Evangeline Furniture being consumed by the flames across the street, the phone rang. “Somebody had called and wanted to know if they should come pick up the tuxedos for a wedding for that particular weekend. I told them don’t worry about that, come tomorrow when all this settles down. I had about 10 or 12 tuxedos I was looking at right there. I said, look, it’s too wild right now. Let’s wait until tomorrow until everything settles down.”
LaFleur continued to watch the action across the street through the large plate-glass windows of the store front. “All of a sudden you could hear the glass cracking,” he said. “It cracked all the way across the front of the building. It stayed standing, and I could see the cracks just working their way down. All of a sudden, it dropped like a curtain. And then you could feel the heat, the radiated heat coming in from across the street. And then the smoke started coming in, and I’m really thinking, wow, look at the smoke damage we’re going to have on my inventory. That’s what’s going through my mind. Smoke rises and we had high ceilings in that building, so there’s about three or four feet of smoke that was stuck to that ceiling. I’m thinking it’s probably time to get out. And then I’m looking back at the front of the store, and the mannequins in the windows. The wigs on the mannequins were igniting.” LaFleur grabbed a fire extinguisher and ran to the front, but the heat was so bad he could get hardly close enough to put it out. “I sprayed a little bit and it’d go out. As soon as I’d back off, it would light up again.”
Fireman Stacy Howerton went into G. Ardoin’s and told LaFleur, “Sammy, it’s time to go.” LaFleur responded, “I agree,” and then walked out the side door of G. Ardoin’s. “In 45 minutes the roof had caved in, burned through and through,” said LaFleur.
Recalling the ferocity of the blaze, LaFleur said, “The flames came across the road. It’s radiated heat. You could stand across the street with a match and it would light.” The first fire trucks on scene had laid out the line, meaning they tied up one side of the hose to a hydrant and drive off, and the hose just unfolds and lays out on the road. “The hoses that were laid out on the road burnt. The fire department could not use them, so that was another delay,” he said, adding the blacktop road had blistered. “The fire was so big. I could see the fire department taking their resources and using them to stop the exposure. You had the library on one side. You had Lavergne’s furniture store on the other side. In the back you had the bakery and all the other stuff that was nearby. I’m guessing the fire department was thinking, well the building across the street would be the last building to catch fire.”
LaFleur’s wife was a teacher at the time of the fire. “Somebody went into the school and said, ‘G. Ardoin’s just blew up.’ So she just panicked, thinking she lost her husband and everyone else,” he said. “She ran to the principal’s office and they allowed her to leave. She came to the fire and she was in tears when she got there.”
Fighting fires runs in LaFleur’s family as his father-in-law, Dewey Thibodeaux, was a fireman with the Ville Platte Fire Department that day and was operating the ladder truck. LaFleur works in accounting now at Preferred Living, Inc., but he is also a volunteer fireman. His oldest son, Robby, became a volunteer fire fighter when he turned 18. He liked it so much, when he graduated high school, he became a professional fire fighter in Opelousas for almost 10 years. Now he is going back to school for accounting.
Evangeline Furniture Store was located in the Dardeau Building, a three-story structure with second and third level auditorium opera house space. Built in 1812, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Raymond Guillory, owner of Evangeline Furniture and 81 years old at the time of the fire, had suffered second degree burns on several areas of his body when his grandson, Jeffrey Scott Guillory, found him. According to a Gazette article from September 30, 1990, Jeffrey had discovered the fire when he went into the furniture store through the back entrance. He called the fire department from Evangeline Floor Covering, which was located in the back of the building. After calling for help, he started to run to the front of the furniture store to alert the employees. Before he got to the sliding doors which join the furniture and floor covering departments, “a tremendous flame shot through the side door into the floor covering department.” According to Jeffrey, right after the flame shot through, he said Raymond rushed through the same door and fell to the ground. He saw his grandfather was badly burned and helped him up and out of the store, along with the other two employees who were there. Jeffrey noted the flames and smoke were chasing them out the door. While in the hospital, Raymond had to have a breathing tube and was fed through an IV, but he later recovered. When Jeffrey returned from the hospital, he saw his grandfather’s three-story building consumed with flames shooting approximately 200 feet in the air.
In the meantime, firemen were on the scene within minutes of the call. They had just laid out the hoses and, wearing oxygen tanks, advanced toward the furniture store when a massive fireball exploded from the storefront. After some time battling the inferno, three firemen were transported to the hospital for heat exhaustion. Eight other firemen were also treated on the scene for heat exhaustion. Fire department substations were called in, and altogether the firefighters battled the blaze for five hours. After the battle ended, Fire Chief Ronnie Smith said of the catastrophe, “We just lost the heart of Ville Platte. It’s irreplaceable, and it makes you want to cry.” There were tears that day, as the community witnessed a watershed moment for the city.
Where Evangeline Furniture and G. Ardoin’s and Company once stood there are now parking lots, two landmark businesses having been reduced to ashes 30 years ago. When asked if there was ever any plan to rebuild G. Ardoin’s, LaFleur said he was planning on leaving the store at the time. He does not believe his father and his father’s partner wanted to rebuild the store. “When I walk into the Post Office and check my mail, every once in a while somebody tells me something about G. Ardoin’s, saying, ‘Man, I wish y’all would have reopened that store.’”