Ignorning Building Codes Can Spell T-R-A-G-E-D-Y
Fitzpatrick--In the wee hours of this morning in our fair metropolis, a house fire believed to be caused by faulty wiring critically injured one four-year-old girl and killed her eight-year-old sister.
The security bars on the windows did not have release mechanisms and the house had no smoke alarms; both current fire code violations. The newspaper article from which I received the information said it was not clear whether the security bars were installed before release levers became requirements of the building code, or if they were installed by an unlicensed contractor who, through ignorance or willful omission, did not include any.
The girls were in the house alone. The adult watching them for the evening was a close relative, who lives with her husband in the home’s converted garage. I’d bet my high-dollar carbon monoxide detector the faulty wiring came from the conversion of that garage by an unlicensed contractor with no building permit.
Who’s to blame here? Poverty? Ignorance? Laziness?
The home is in a poor neighborhood, where folks barely have enough to feed and clothe their families let alone pay for licensed contractors to perform a legal remodel to provide living quarters for an extended family, who might otherwise be sleeping in the cars they displaced from this garage, or on the street. Crime is high there, and while at some point someone scraped up money to install the window and door security bars to keep these angels safe, they either didn’t know, or didn’t have enough to make sure they functioned as protection and not imprisonment. The home had three bedrooms, so in our jurisdiction it should have had four smoke detectors: one in each bedroom and one in the kitchen. Four smoke detectors can be purchased for less than $50 plus batteries; a small price to pay for saving a life.
The poor in this country bear an unreasonable share of building related-fatalities, maimings and other disabling accidents, (such as lead poisoning from old paint), due to substandard housing, over much of which, since they often rent, they have no control. So when I observe folks with enough money to visit Europe and straighten their kids’ teeth trying to circumvent codes and evade the permitting process, I become a bit outraged.
Ignoring the life and safety codes in a remodel when you have enough money to be doing one is the height of irresponsibility.
The security bars on the windows did not have release mechanisms and the house had no smoke alarms; both current fire code violations. The newspaper article from which I received the information said it was not clear whether the security bars were installed before release levers became requirements of the building code, or if they were installed by an unlicensed contractor who, through ignorance or willful omission, did not include any.
The girls were in the house alone. The adult watching them for the evening was a close relative, who lives with her husband in the home’s converted garage. I’d bet my high-dollar carbon monoxide detector the faulty wiring came from the conversion of that garage by an unlicensed contractor with no building permit.
Who’s to blame here? Poverty? Ignorance? Laziness?
The home is in a poor neighborhood, where folks barely have enough to feed and clothe their families let alone pay for licensed contractors to perform a legal remodel to provide living quarters for an extended family, who might otherwise be sleeping in the cars they displaced from this garage, or on the street. Crime is high there, and while at some point someone scraped up money to install the window and door security bars to keep these angels safe, they either didn’t know, or didn’t have enough to make sure they functioned as protection and not imprisonment. The home had three bedrooms, so in our jurisdiction it should have had four smoke detectors: one in each bedroom and one in the kitchen. Four smoke detectors can be purchased for less than $50 plus batteries; a small price to pay for saving a life.
The poor in this country bear an unreasonable share of building related-fatalities, maimings and other disabling accidents, (such as lead poisoning from old paint), due to substandard housing, over much of which, since they often rent, they have no control. So when I observe folks with enough money to visit Europe and straighten their kids’ teeth trying to circumvent codes and evade the permitting process, I become a bit outraged.
Ignoring the life and safety codes in a remodel when you have enough money to be doing one is the height of irresponsibility.
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