By Raymond Reynolds and Ray O’Brocki
In St. Louis, firefighters responded the report of a house fire in the 5900 block of Cote Avenue in the Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood on January 13, 2022. Firefighters extinguished the flames on the first floor and were checking for occupants on the second floor when the heat and flames grew in intensity. They decided to pull out of the structure. Before all the firefighters could exit the building, the roof and the top floor collapsed and killed Benjamin Polson.
5971 Cote Avenue was built in 1895 and was listed in the city’s vacant building registry; it has been vacant since 2004, and the home was condemned by the city in 2019 because of six major violations. St. Louis reports that there are more than 10,000 vacant properties within the city. The owner is listed as living in Arkansas and never responded to the violation notices. There have been other fires at this location.
- Fatal Fires in St. Louis, Baltimore Expose Vacant Home Risks
- Baltimore’s Blighted Vacant Homes Take Toll on City, Firefighters
On January 24, 2022, just 11 days after the St. Louis fatal fire, Baltimore City firefighters responded to 205 South Stricker Street in the Mount Clare section of the city shortly before 6 a.m. There was a report of a vacant house fire. Engine 14 enters the building to fight the fire. The building partially collapsed, trapping them. It took crews up to an hour to free them from the dwelling. Three firefighters died: Lieutenant Paul Butrim, Lieutenant Kelsey Sadler, and EMT/Firefighter Kenny Lacayo. EMT/Firefighter John McMaster was sent to Maryland Shock Trauma.
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205 South Stricker was built in 1900. There was a serious fire in the structure in 2015 where three firefighters were injured. The property owners were issued a vacant building notice in 2010. The owners are reported to live in Pennsylvania. The city reports over 16,000 vacant properties in Baltimore. The last line-of-duty firefighter death was Lieutenant James Bethea, in 2014, and occurred in a vacant dwelling.
- It’s Just a Vacant
- Operational Considerations in Abandoned Building Fires
- Responding to Fires in Vacant Buildings: Proceed with Caution
- Abandoned Building Policy: Five Years Later
Vacant dwellings are a problem in cities, big and small, across the country. Absentee owners walk away from the property when they are no longer profitable. The owners usually live out of state or out of the jurisdiction and never check the property. They let the property fall into disrepair or worse. Fire departments are left to deal with these properties. They frequently are unsecured and have bad roofs and rotting floor assemblies because of intrusion of water through broken windows or leaking roofs. They are magnets for the homeless, for drug use, and various criminal activities.
The similarities between the St. Louis and Baltimore line-of-duty deaths are stark. Both fires involved collapses. Both involved an old dwelling, built over a century ago, that was vacant for many years, had previous fires in it, and had an absentee owner that lived out of state.
For years, the only answer cities have had is to board them up. But with Baltimore’s 16,000 vacant properties and St. Louis’s 10,000, how could they ever have enough resources to take on, and be successful, at such a Herculean task? It is time we as a profession hold the absentee owner accountable for these properties. The trend of vacant properties left in a condition of disrepair is increasing and plagues almost every town, city, and district in America. The next fire department tragedy from a vacant building could be right around the corner in almost any community.
Holding the owners responsible isn’t as easy as it sounds because of one legal principle: Notice. American jurisprudence is based on “due process.” Due process is a fancy way of saying, “Everyone is given notice of a violation and an opportunity to be heard.” However, serving these absentee owners with notices of violations is a challenge. It is not uncommon for vacant property owners to list property through an LLC with an out-of-state P.O. Box. We have seen owners list the address of the vacant property itself as their mailing address. Out-of-state owners simply ignore the notices because they don’t care if the property has a lien attached, is sold in a tax sale, or sits in disrepair. Some of the most dangerous vacant properties are located in areas of urban blight. These properties are of low or no value. We as a fire service industry should work to change laws related to serving notices to absent owners. Condensed periods of permissive vacant properties should be address in code and enforced at the local level. Cities should be allowed alternative means of service and criminal penalties for absentee owners. The process for the city to remove a hazard should not be as cumbersome to accomplish. Ask any firefighter assigned to a firehouse and they can easily point to abandoned buildings that never see renovations or development.
Criminal penalties for property owners who are negligent or bad actors have precedence in law. Landlords have been sentenced to jail time for lead paint, refusing to install smoke alarms, and public nuisance violations under egregious circumstances. Laws need changed and it starts with us, the fire service, to be the change agent on this issue.
Owners of vacant structures where a fire has occurred, while causing the death of a firefighter, should suffer criminal penalties. Prison time would be a viable deterrent for negligent fires where death occurs. Especially when those buildings have previous uncorrected building code, fire code, or health code violations and when they were previously rendered uninhabitable.
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- Developing Response Guidelines for Fires in Vacant Buildings
- Brennan: OPERATING ‘AT’ VACANT BUILDINGS
- Pressler: Vacant Buildings
Another possible consideration involves expediting the legal process for a city to assume ownership and repair or demolish the structure while also sending the bill the owner. If the owner doesn’t pay, which is very likely, the city should attach liens to their other properties, levy their bank accounts, or even garnish their wages. Abandoning property does not relieve the owner of their moral and legal obligations.
Another less likely option involves changing fireground tactics. Some ask, “Why send people into vacant properties?” But there are drawbacks to adopting this approach, especially in urban areas with higher transient populations. St. Louis Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson said city firefighters regularly respond to fires in buildings that other departments might not consider safe to enter, but the department searches the properties because people in St. Louis often stay in vacant and crumbling buildings to keep warm.[v] Baltimore Fire Chief Niles Ford, when asked why the firefighters went into the vacant dwelling, stated the adjacent home was still occupied.[vi] This is the challenge when a fire occurs in a vacant rowhouse. Rowhouse construction dominates cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Chicago, just to name a few.
The fire service must lead the charge on this issue. It’s our people who are dying and getting seriously injured in these “death traps.” The authors believe our communities will support fire departments in this effort. Elected officials and members of the public live with these properties that blight their community day in and day out. This conflagration issue is not likely to go away without swift and stern action. Be safe and go home after the shift is complete!
Ray Reynolds is the fire chief for the City of Nevada, Iowa. He oversees fire department operations and serves as a sworn peace officer, fire chief, and critical care paramedic within the Nevada Public Safety Department. He also continues to work as a line firefighter/paramedic part-time in Bondurant, Iowa and holds several IFSTA fire certifications. He has a bachelor degree in criminal justice administration, is a certified public manager, and has completed his capstone to receive his master’s degree in organizational leadership. Ray is a member of the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC), serving on the board of the Fire and Live Safety Section (FLSS). He also serves as a member of the International Code Council (ICC) appointed to the Fire Code Action Committee (FCAC). He is a 22-year veteran with the Iowa Army National Guard and served a one-year combat tour in Iraq in 2003.
Raymond O’Brocki, CBO, is the manager of fire service relations for the American Wood Council. He was the chief building official for Rockville, Maryland. O’Brocki was appointed the fire marshal for Baltimore in 2008 and served as the assistant chief with the Baltimore (MD) Fire Department until retiring in 2013. He served on the Maryland State Fire Code Update Committee, the steering committee for the Mid-Atlantic Life Safety Conference, and the National Fire Protection Association’s (NFPA’s) Urban Fire Safety Task Force and is on the NFPA 1, Fire Code, Technical Committee. He is the administrator of the Construction Fire Safety Coalition, a graduate of the University of Baltimore School of Law, and a licensed attorney.
This commentary reflects the views of the author and not necessarily the views of Fire Engineering.
