Firefighters doused the blaze before it tore through the rest of the building, but the damage was done.
The Violet Street apartment fire late Tuesday drove 10 people — six of them children — out of house and home.
A few days later, another apartment erupted in flames.
This time, a few miles northward, just off Plank Road and south of Highway 190 in Baton Rouge, where firefighters again beat it back before it could spread and before it could hurt anyone.
Two fires in three days, both ruled arson.
The Baton Rouge Fire Department said it responded to 13 intentionally set blazes in all of July, damaging four lived-in homes, seven empty ones and two apartments. One proved fatal. Taking place in the dark morning hours, the July 23 fire licked up a house on Cable Street, hospitalizing the homeowner who succumbed to his burns a short time later.