The first thing the new Chief Fire Marshal did was to transfer three code enforcement lieutenants and three fire investigators to shift work. Establishing a code enforcement/ investigator team to each of the Operations Division work shifts would greatly reduce the wait to get a fire prevention representative on evenings, weekends and holidays. It used to take 2 to 4 hours to get one to respond from home.
A perk for the lieutenants was that we got the 3-year-old Chevy police package sedan assigned to the recently retired Chief Fire Marshal. It was in excellent shape, with 44K miles and the care that only a chief’s take-home vehicle enjoys. Beat the heck out of the faded 135K miles Grand Furys used by the daywork lieutenants.
A typical day for the shift work lieutenant was to relieve the off-going lieutenant at the fire station and take the prior day’s inspection and corrective action reports to the fire marshal office. Participate in the morning code enforcement meeting and pick-up the assigned inspections for that day.
Most of the work assigned to the shift lieutenants were annual inspections for occupancies requiring renewal of a Fire Prevention permit or follow-ups of corrective orders issued at the fire company level that were not corrected after two or three visits. Those company-level issues included locked/blocked exit doors, exit light/emergency lighting, portable fire extinguishers, or maintaining clearances. Was also required to do at least one Assembly inspection every evening.
C-shift was working Christmas and my investigator partner was on vacation. I would be the one waiting for the duty investigator to respond from home. There were no scheduled inspections today, but there were a couple of permitted special events that required a Christmas Day check-in, as well as a continuation of surveillance of flammable liquid waste dumping at a south county industrial park. B-shift left one follow-up activity.
What Fire Watch?
There was a catastrophic failure of a fire alarm system in a high-rise hotel Christmas Eve afternoon. None of the pull stations would alert and any evacuation notice had to be done manually at the console.
My B-shift counterpart’s investigation revealed a failure of the computer circuit board that handled the fire alarm system. The alarm company could not get to the hotel until the 26th. A corrective order was issued that required documentation of an hourly fire watch. A follow-up at 11 pm showed security maintaining the fire watch log.
When I arrived at the hotel on 9 am Christmas day, the manager-on-duty had no idea what I was talking about. Could not produce the fire watch log. Allegedly did not know that the fire alarm system was inoperable. I called my boss, the code enforcement battalion chief, to describe the situation and review the possible next steps.
The discussion got more serious when I notified the regional manager we would be requiring an evacuation of the building – were there enough vacant rooms in his system to accommodate the displaced customers? While waiting for the regional manager to arrive for a face-to-face meeting, I had the hotel make photocopies of the Christmas Eve corrective order and fire watch log that I brought with me.
My boss called his contact at the hotel chain. When the regional manager arrived at the hotel, a teleconference was set up with my boss, the hotel chain’s director of risk management, and the people at the hotel.
The hourly fire watches restarted. I would be back that evening to confirm compliance. After the group meeting, the chief strongly suggested I also make an after midnight check as well. The Christmas Day corrective order I wrote up included a requirement to conduct a complete recertification of the fire alarm system after repairs are done. That represents an expensive all-day event.
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This week’s Company Commander Facebook news feed included a June 1, 2018, feature article by the Bay Area News Group. Burned out: How overwhelmed fire inspectors fail to protect us.
Following the tragic Ghost Ship and San Pablo Avenue fires in Oakland that killed 40 people, the Bay Area News Group began an investigation into the enforcement of state fire safety laws
OVERWHELMED and often disorganized, fire departments across the Bay Area routinely fail to perform state-required safety inspections of buildings where hundreds of thousands of Californians live and go to school. And despite the potential for tragedy, there are no consequences — and nobody paying attention — to make sure fire inspectors are getting the job done.
An analysis of inspection records over eight years from 11 of the Bay Area’s largest fire agencies found nearly one-quarter of the 17,000 apartment buildings in the review weren’t inspected in 2017, and, astonishingly, more than 400 hadn’t been inspected since 2013.
How are your mandatory code enforcement efforts doing? If your local news did the same type of audit, what would they find?
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Featured picture of 2006 fire alarm panel from https://www.ecmweb.com/design/understanding-basic-fire-alarm-systems
Elements. identifiers and sequence of events may be altered in “war stories” to protect the innocent or work better as an example.