Arson investigators were called to southwest Atlanta Wednesday morning after a vacant house caught fire twice within a four-hour period.
Todd Edwards, batallion chief with Atlanta Fire Department, said a call came in around 3:30 a.m. to a house on Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard at Ashby Grove. Edwards said firefighters found the front porch on fire and were able to completely extinguish it.
A little after 7 a.m., another call came in from the same location, Edward said. This time they found "heavy fire conditions on both floors" of the two-story house, he said.
Edwards said the house was vacant but there was evidence that somebody was using the structure, which is just south of the Atlanta University Center.
"It looks like the house has been vacant, but it's being lived in at the same time," he said. "We've accounted that no one is inside the house," Edwards said. No firefighters were injured in the effort, which was made more difficult because the house sat atop a steep hill, he said.
Just a few miles south in East Point, another vacant house burned early Wednesday morning.
The fire, which heavily damaged the house at 1240 Gus Thornhill Jr. Drive, was reported at 2:20 a.m. by a resident of a neighboring home, said Renita Shelton, a spokeswoman for East Point. Firefighters found heavy flames coming from the one-story, wood frame house.
Firefighters conducted two searches of the house and determined it was unoccupied, Shelton said. The house was 70 percent destroyed, she said. There were no injuries to fire personnel. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
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