PROTECTING THE “FORGOTTEN”
EDITOR’S OPINION
Our history is marred by fire tragedies in singleroom-occupancy (SRO) residence buildings. Most recently, the fire in a Chicago SRO this past March, which killed 19 people, reminds us of our fire protection failures.
In many areas, SROs are as forgotten as the nameless thousands who pass through their doors. They stand, deteriorating, ready to burn or be torn down, with uncorrected code violations identified 50 years ago, with unprotected stairwells and corridors—vertical and horizontal chimneys—that in many cases are the only way out, short of flight.
Some city codes do require fairly stringent passive and active fire protection measures for SROs, but it is obvious that too many SROs in this country fall short of what we would typically ascribe to buildings of this size, type, and occupancy load. And you can’t enforce what isn’t required.
The SRO lobby warns that stricter codes, particularly codes that require sprinkler retrofit, will drive some SROs out of business and increase the homeless population. That fear is not unwarranted. It’s fair to say that SROs are not owned and run by the Donald Trumps of this world.
It’s also fair to say that, while the homeless represent for John Q. Public a moral dilemma, a societal failure, and a nuisance, modern life safety practices are not a trade-off for what is neither driven by, caused by, nor influenced by the same. There is no connection between fire protection/life safety and homelessness.
This puts the fire department in an uncomfortable position, for enforcing a beefed-up code and shutting down an SRO makes it the villain in the public eye. The public must be made aware that homelessness stems from the failings of government, business, and people— not safety codes.
All but the most hardened among us find some softness in our hearts for the down-and-out, but subsidizing SRO fire protection with tax dollars evokes less generous emotions. And unless voting power is brought to bear, elected officials will not consider stronger SRO codes a high priority. The disenfranchised have little voice in society at all. let alone at the polling booth. Clearly, the fire department needs to undertake some internal and external lobbying of its own.
Our society all too often curries favor with those who have and ignores those who have not. For all intents and purposes, SROs (though they’re in an “identity crisis” because code-making bodies can’t decide where they “belong” in a technical sense) are hotels and should be treated as such; they must not have less fixed protection than a hotel resort because their residents don’t order eggs Benedict for breakfast.
But SROs are not just hotels for the poor; they are shelters for the poor, sick, and disturbed. All the more shame: Is there a difference between the sick and disturbed in SROs and the sick and disturbed in hospitals? Only in the ability to pay for treatment.
It’s high time we sat down with the mayor, the building officials, the health and welfare officials, the SRO owners and operators, and other appropriate parties and come up with some solutions to the SRO fire protection problem. We should engage public support. Specifying a portion of welfare dollars for safe living accommodations may be one route to take. If sprinkler retrofit is unfeasible, for humanity’s sake let’s at the very least require passive fire barriers and smoke control for stairwells and pipe chases, confine the smoke and heat, and limit the magnitude of the tragedy when it occurs.
It’s encouraging that, at the time of this writing, a Chicago task force headed by that city’s fire and building commissioners is working to correct SRO code deficiencies while the tragedy is still fresh. Such tragedies are not limited to Chicago, and all municipalities should review their fire protection requirements for SROs.
The very least we should afford the forgotten, the people who’ve fallen through life’s cracks, is a place to lay their heads that’s as safe from fire as we can make it.
Please join me in welcoming Glenn P. Corbett to our editorial staff. Glenn will serve as technical editor of Fire Engineering and technical director of our new publication, Industrial Fire Safety. Many of you will recognize Glenn for his frequent articles in Fire Engineering over the past eight years. He brings considerable experience, knowledge, and talent to this position. Glenn has served as a volunteer firefighter in New Jersey; as a fire protection engineer in the Austin, Texas, Fire Department; and most recently as administrator of engineering services for the San Antonio, Texas, Fire Department. He has a master’s degree in fire protection engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Glenn will continue to be a great asset in our goal to bring the highest quality training and educational information to you, the reader.
