Dedication to Fire Safety Brings Well-Earned Award
From the Publisher’s Desk
departments
When we learned that the latest recipient of the Ohio Distinguished Fire Service Medal was retired Chief John R. Richards of Prairie Township, his name rang a bell.
The story of an extraordinary accomplishment in fire protection and code enforcement by Richards was told in an article in the January 1978 issue of Fire Engineering.☺ In 1972, Richards issued an order to cease construction of a six-story, brick veneer and wood frame, balloon construction apartment complex, the $3 million Beacon Club Towers. He charged that the 132-apartment project was in violation of the Ohio building code.
That put the fat into the legal fire and a five-year battle got under way. An error in interpreting the state building code by the Ohio State Building Department had resulted in the issuing of a building permit on the assumption that the use of fire-retardant structural members was the equivalent of steel construction. In the course of construction, Richards found numerous building code violations.
After Baldwin Homes, Inc., of Columbus lost the decision at a hearing before the Ohio state fire marshal, the builder turned to the courts and fought all the way to the Supreme Court of Ohio, where Richards won the final decision.
“Toothpick Towers,” as Prairie Township fire fighters dubbed the project, was close to completion when the building corporation gave up the fight. Chief Richards and George C. Smith, the Franklin County prosecutor who handled the legal battle for the chief, knew that their work was finally completed when the entire apartment complex was demolished under a county contract. Only bare ground was left as a reminder of what one day might have become a fire tragedy.
It is interesting to note that this chief who fought so fiercely for fire safety did not have the resources of a large fire department to aid him. The fire department—of which he was chief for 30 years before retiring—consisted of six paid men and 40 volunteers.
