NFPA Journal - Fall 2022 - 37

can be a problem because the city departments often don't
talk to each other and have different ways of managing
their data and information.
Can you give us an example of a particularly
egregious instance where known violations were
either disregarded by the city or went unresolved?
CR One that comes to mind involves two little girls who
died in a fire. The family was trying to keep warm by
boiling a pot of water, but the pot melted and ignited
nearby items. The city had received complaints about a
lack of heat in the building at least five times. They also
received complaints from residents saying they didn't
have an adequate exit. All of those conditions were present
at the time of the fire. The complaints were made over
the course of four years, and one was made just a month
before the fire. Only one of those complaints actually led
to any enforcement action.
In your report, you said that building officials told
you that there are no systemic problems with the
code enforcement process and the city bears no
responsibility for the 61 deaths. What arguments
did city officials make to support that claim?
MH We found the city's response to this pretty shocking,
to be honest. And also, to be clear, good chunks of the city
government that deal with this process refused to speak
with us for this investigation.
We did speak with the building department about this,
and they're the ones who are saying there are no systematic
issues here. Their main pushback on that was to say
that their record system is outdated, so what we are seeing
in the records as reporters is not going to show every
step of the process. For example, after a building inspector
finds an issue and they kick it over to an enforcement
route, it's the city's Department of Law, which is the city
lawyers, that handle it from there. And they're saying that
their records wouldn't necessarily show that. Of course,
our pushback would be that if we can't see that it's fixed,
how do the building inspectors know it's fixed? So one
way or another, no one's verifying it.
What was it about the city's response that
shocked you?
MH In a number of cases, the building officials blame the
victims themselves. For example, in fires in vacant buildings
where homeless people had stayed, officials said it
was the people's own fault for going in there and in some
cases doing drugs. And in some cases, particularly where
small children died and their parents did not, they blamed
the parents for not going in and getting the children.
I would imagine a lot of people in the fire safety
industry understand how harsh and unfair that type of
statement is and how unrealistic it is in a lot of ways.
" "
They died in apartments the city knew
lacked smoke detectors, in abandoned
buildings the city was supposed to tear
down, in homes where tenants had sought
the city's help because there was no heat.
City inspectors closed hundreds of
complaints with little to no follow-up. City
lawyers and hearing officers often took
landlords at their word, never checking to
verify promised repairs were completed.
Tenants spent years living in unsafe
conditions while City Hall lawsuits against
their landlords stalled in court.
Together, these findings reveal a failed
system that endangers residents in a city
repeatedly scarred by historic fires. Tenants
cannot rely on the city to act promptly on
their complaints or effectively enforce safety
codes designed to protect them from fire.
Instead, the Tribune/BGA investigation found,
city officials routinely put the interests of
landlords above the safety of residents.
- From " The Failures Before the Fires, "
by Madison Hopkins and Cecilia Reyes
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