Sunrise Foods International, the company building a grain loading facility at the river’s edge in the Lower 9th Ward, is moving ahead with an unsafe fire-suppression sprinkler system in its grain storage warehouse, according to public records reviewed by The Lens and two fire protection technicians with decades of experience in the field.
Grain dust can be highly combustible in contained areas. The warehouse sits next to a levee where people regularly launch fireworks, blamed for at least one structural fire in recent years.
But last month, the Office of the State Fire Marshal (OSFM) agreed to allow Sunrise to move forward despite its initial review, which found two significant problems with the sprinkler system in the storage warehouse. The plans do not include enough water supply pipes, the initial reviewer wrote, and the system will be built using a “gridded dry” design that is expressly forbidden by fire code.
The fire marshal allowed Sunrise to use the prohibited design in part because of the “unreasonable economic hardships” that Sunrise would endure if forced to build a sprinkler system that met standard fire code, an OFSM official told The Lens.
The decision to let Sunrise proceed anyway alarms neighbors around the warehouse, some of whom had already raised concerns that trains used by the facility could hamper emergency response times in the area.
To neighbors, fireworks are just one more hazard near a project that already makes them feel wary. “It sort of feels like everything’s about to explode all the time,” said Jonathan Brown, who owns a house a few blocks from the Sunrise project. “And on July 4th and January 1, there’s a f—ing really good chance it will.”
Planned grain terminal is popular fireworks spot
Sunrise Foods is leasing property on the Alabo Street Wharf owned by the Port of New Orleans to build a grain transloading facility. As part of the project, the company is renovating a 150,000 square-foot warehouse for storing wheat, sunflower meal, soybeans, and other grains. The building’s architectural plans classify the grain storage warehouse as a moderate hazard, falling into the same category as tires and lumber, meaning the materials inside burn intensely.
Five years ago, Brown and his wife bought their first home, a shotgun double that sits less than 1,000 feet from the warehouse. They chose this neighborhood in Holy Cross for the calm and quiet, and they’ve made use of it: out back, Brown’s garden blooms with native pawpaw trees and hibiscus. On a recent morning, his four-month-old cocker spaniel puppy, Opal, zipped frantically around the yard, then gnawed at a crawfish mound sticking out of the pine mulch. It’s a peaceful place. But now, they worry.
A blighted building used to stand on a lot between Brown’s home and the Sunrise warehouse. Brown pointed toward his back fence. “It burned down when a New Year’s Eve firework hit it,” he said. In the early hours of New Year’s Day 2022, the New Orleans Fire Department sent 41 firefighters to fight the two-alarm blaze, as flames burned through the structure’s second-story roof.
The likelihood of future fireworks here makes Brown especially concerned about Sunrise Foods’ plans to store grain nearby, beneath a sprinkler protection system that the fire marshal initially rejected.
Firefighting hampered by insufficient water pressure in Lower 9 area
Wesley Cognevich sees two alarming problems with the fire protection plans that Sunrise submitted to the OSFM. Cognevich is the former project manager and sprinkler system designer at Coastal Fire Protection, the company handling fire protection and sprinkler systems for the Sunrise project.
The first concern is about the hydrants. When he oversaw testing of the area’s fire hydrants alongside the Sewerage & Water Board in January, he found that the closest hydrant to the warehouse had insufficient water pressure and supply for firefighting, he said. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), the nonprofit that writes the standards widely used by governments and industries, recommends that hydrants maintain a pressure of 20 pounds per square inch (psi) for effective firefighting.
The initial reading from one of the hydrants on the property’s fenceline, near Alabo and N. Peters, was okay. But when Cognevich opened a second one, the pressure dropped to just 11 psi.
“That’s boil advisory level,” said Cognevich.
Additionally, two fire hoses on a hydrant will need 500 gallons of water per minute. The hydrant was only providing about 440 gallons per minute when Cognevich tested it in January. Flow tests of the other hydrants in the area were also worryingly low, he said.
After the hydrant pressure tests, Cognevich called the general contractor. “Based on the criteria you told me to use, including the fire pump to supplement the pressure in the system, the city water isn’t even sufficient to keep the fire pump from damaging itself,” he said in the call.
The same hydrant should have been measured for the newer figures. It’s unclear why the pressure and supply changed so much a couple months after Cognevich’s test. “I find it hard to believe the water supply improved drastically in two months,” he said.
Cognevich was let go by Coastal Fire Prevention in January, after the company was bought by a private equity firm. But he knows the project well. When Sunrise submitted its sprinkler system plans for review by the OSFM, the figures from a March test were far above any Cognevich had found when he tested them in January. The 11psi measurement had jumped up to 35 psi, while the flow from the fire hydrants jumped from under 500 gallons to almost 1,000 gallons per minute.
Overall, the submitted fire protection plans have more issues and shortcuts than he’s ever seen during his 20-year career in fire protection: “It’s beyond the pale.”
Coastal Fire Protection, now owned by Encore Fire Protection, did not respond to emailed questions.
Sprinkler system design not permitted by fire codes
The second problem is with the sprinkler system’s design: it’s a type that is expressly forbidden by fire code.
It’s a little complicated, but basically: there are four types of possible sprinkler systems. They can either be shaped like a grid or shaped like a tree, with a main pipe that has smaller ones branching off.
Sprinkler systems are also either “wet” — meaning there’s always water in the pipes — or “dry,” meaning that they’re kept full of air. In a fire, a valve at one end allows a dry system to quickly fill with water.
Sprinklers with tree designs can be wet or dry. Either way, the water travels down the main pipe, then down the branches, and out the open sprinklers. Gridded and wet is also fine: the water is always there, so the pressure doesn’t change.
“What you can’t do,” Cognevich explains, “is have gridded and dry.” That’s because when water rushes into a gridded dry sprinkler system, air pockets form in the pipes that can break the fittings and delay the water from getting to the sprinkler heads.
That rule is as ironclad as fire safety system rules tend to get. “Gridded systems are not permitted for dry pipe systems,” writes the NFPA, “because excessive amounts of air can remain trapped in the system piping, which significantly delays water from reaching the operating sprinklers.” Louisiana code and the OSFM both require sprinkler systems in new buildings to comply with NFPA’s standards.
Michael Joanis, Chief Operating Officer of the National Fire Sprinkler Association, affirmed that such a design is strictly prohibited. “I’ve been doing this for 35 years and I’ve never seen a gridded dry system,” he told The Lens.
Yet Sunrise proposed using a dry gridded sprinkler system in the plans it submitted to the OSFM this spring.
Cognevich was shocked. Such a design flaw is “so egregious,” he said in a June interview, that there was “no possible way” the fire marshal would approve the plans.
Joanis pointed out another problem: the sprinkler systems, as planned, were meant to cover much too large an area, he said.
Fires grow exponentially, which means every second is crucial after one ignites. In a dry sprinkler system, there is always some delay while the water rushes into the pipes. To keep that delay under 60 seconds, Joanis said, dry sprinkler systems are typically smaller – usually no larger than 750 gallons. But Sunrise’s three proposed dry sprinkler systems are all several times that size: between 3,500 and 4,200 gallons each.
With such a design, Joanis said, delays in water delivery will be “well past 60 seconds,” and would allow fires to grow larger before the water works its way to the sprinkler heads.
New hazards in a vulnerable neighborhood
Hermanese Rogers, 70, who once cooked the gumbo at Liuzza’s, has lived about 40 years in her home on Flood Street, two blocks from the Mississippi River.
“This neighborhood here was always mostly quiet. Mostly a lot of kids,” she said. In August 2005, she was taking a Sunday roast out of the oven when her son came home telling her that they had to leave.
“He said, ‘Get the roast, and don’t forget that potato salad too! We’re going to Texas.’” They loaded dinner into the car and evacuated before the nearby Industrial Canal broke, pouring five feet of water into their house a few hours before Katrina made landfall.
It was a whole year before they were able to come back home. Neighbors here are still traumatized from that, she said. For years, her family poured time and money into the house to fix it up. They’re still working on it. Settling ground constantly tilts the house and strains the foundation.
Now, with Sunrise planning its grain facility a few blocks away, neighbors worry that traffic from cargo trucks and trains will further damage the house, says Rogers’ friend David Williams, who’s also lived in the area since 2009.
They worry about the project driving down property values, polluting the air with dust, and attracting rodents. Starchy grain dust could very well clog up the street drains in the area, Rogers pointed out.
Even without fireworks, grain storage is a unique explosion hazard. Fine particles of wheat and grain dust suspended in a confined space can ignite from a spark or even friction. Soy, which Sunrise has listed as a storage item, has a higher risk if it’s stored someplace with high moisture content, because soybeans can ferment and release flammable gases like methane. U.S. grain dust explosions caused four fatalities in 2025, according to Kinglsy Ambrose, a professor of agricultural and biological engineering at Purdue University.
“Because large quantities of grain are handled,” Ambrose said, “the risk remains significant in any grain processing or handling operation.”
A surprising allowance
The facilities at 300 Alabo St have been used only sporadically in recent years.
The Office of the State Fire Marshal has no records of fire inspections at the property, according to its response to a Lens public records request.
The NOFD also has no records of fire inspections at that address, but it only keeps fire inspection records for up to three years, its response to The Lens noted. Ongoing staffing shortages have limited the department’s ability to conduct annual inspections of occupied commercial properties, according to the response.
Discussions about Sunrise’s fire plans started in February, when William Rushing, the company’s Professional of Record (POR), the figure legally and professionally responsible for project plans and regulatory compliance, emailed two fire marshal officials about the sprinkler system.
At the time, Sunrise was apparently planning to make no changes to the sprinkler system.
“Just confirming our conversation today regarding the existing fire system at the Alabo Shed,” wrote Rushing to Jennifer Moreau and Brad Everett. Moreau is chief supervisor, and Everett is an architect senior specialist, both in the OSFM’s plan review office. “The existing system has been in place for several decades. The present system is a gridded system and the only modification we are doing is to provide a new fire pump for water supply issues. In discussion, you agreed that this system is grandfathered in by code and also by state statute. We understand you would not even be interested in seeing drawings of the system in this scenario.”
Everett replied a couple weeks later: “As discussed, only new work would be reviewed,” Everett wrote. “The existing, unchanged system is permitted to remain.”
Existing structures don’t necessarily have to retrofit to meet modern fire codes. A Louisiana statute exempts those buildings if they “were lawfully constructed and maintained.”
But Sunrise ended up submitting the sprinkler system plans for review after all, because they wound up proposing new work: changing the sprinkler system from wet to dry, ostensibly to protect the grain. A dry system would also allow them to avoid the cost of heating – necessary to keep a wet system from freezing.
So Sunrise proposed the gridded dry sprinkler system — the kind strictly prohibited by the NFPA. That new work also should have voided any earlier promises about the sprinkler system getting “grandfathered in.”
Fire marshal demands corrections, then acquiesces to Sunrise
The OSFM sent back Sunrise’s fire protection plans in July, with the reviewer noting multiple corrections that were needed, as Cognevich had predicted.
The notes listed three needed fixes. Chief among them was the sprinkler’s design, with the reviewer quoting the NFPA: “gridded dry pipe systems shall not be installed.”
But Rushing pushed back. A month later, on August 10, he wrote the OSFM again to request what’s known as an “equivalency” – an alternative design that could provide equivalent or better safety than a system brought up to standard code. He referred back to his February phone call with Moreau and Everett, when “it was stated that the existing system would be grandfathered in.”
In his letter arguing for an equivalency, Rushing listed six points for the fire marshal’s consideration. None of them addressed safety.
The sprinkler system has to be dry because Sunrise’s commodities are water sensitive, he wrote. But Rushing omitted the fact that Sunrise now planned to modify the existing sprinkler. Instead he wrote, “the replacement of the system,” such as replacing it with an up-to-code dry tree system, for example, ” is cost prohibitive.”
“Our intent for the fire suppression system is to only add a booster pump … we were not touching any other part of the system,” he wrote (emphasis added).
Roughly two weeks later, on August 25, Chief Fire Marshal Chad Sonnier, an appointee of Gov. Jeff Landry who took office on August 3, signed the form granting Sunrise’s request for an equivalency.
Rushing and the firm that employs him, Waldemar S. Nelson & Co., declined to comment and directed queries to Sunrise.
Sunrise replied to detailed questions with a statement: “The fire protection system at the Alabo Street Wharf facility has been reviewed through the Louisiana Office of State Fire Marshal’s regulatory process,” and the office had “cleared the project to proceed. Sunrise Foods has worked with its engineering and fire protection professionals throughout this process and will continue to ensure that the facility meets applicable fire safety and regulatory requirements.”
In an email, OSFM told The Lens that Sunrise had provided its office with a fire protection system assessment prepared by an independent fire protection engineer, who concluded that the existing sprinkler system is adequate. “This report recommended the installation of a pump to increase the water pressure to the existing sprinkler system and stated all existing sprinkler pipes and heads could remain as is.”
The OSFM added that they’d only review new work.
The Lens followed up to point out that Sunrise was doing new work on the sprinkler system, rather than using the existing one, and asked again why the office had granted Sunrise the equivalency.
In its second reply, Dina Hammork, lieutenant for the OSFM, quoted the Louisiana statute that authorizes them to grant equivalencies: “The state fire marshal shall have the authority to take into consideration practical difficulties and unreasonable economic hardships before applying the strict requirements of this Section. In cases of practical difficulty or unreasonable economic hardship, the state fire marshal may upon appeal allow alternative arrangements provided a minimum acceptable level of life safety is achieved to the satisfaction of the state fire marshal” (emphasis added by OSFM).
The OSFM added that the building will be mostly unoccupied, “hence the sprinkler system is primarily in place to protect the building contents (grains) which are water sensitive.”
Losing hope, repeating history
For the Browns, the Sunrise project, with its list of possible dangers, has encroached on their hopes for what their home can become. A few years ago, Brown began planting fruit trees on an empty lot he owns on Alabo, just a few blocks from the warehouse: fig trees, orange, persimmon. He wanted to create a community fruit forest that anyone could harvest from. But his view of that future changed with Sunrise’s announced plans.
“When the grain [project] started, I kind of stopped planting fruit trees,” he said. “Because I was like, ‘Okay, well, if it’s going to become a wasteland, f— it.”
To Rogers and Williams, it feels like history repeating itself. Their families helped to build up this neighborhood, then to rebuild what was left of it after Katrina, when they had to constantly fight for the information that impacted their homes as government officials made plans without them.
Now, they are fighting another entity that they say doesn’t keep them informed, and which they fear isn’t taking the necessary precautions in a place they’ve worked hard to preserve and protect.
“This is a historic area,” Williams said. “Once it goes, it’s gone.”
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