Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Fire Postmortem

 Gilreath Manor, main building, six units

Two violations jump out in this AFD report, one not so serious, one deadly serious.  Amherst has a zoning bylaw limiting unrelated tenants to four per household -- that's the not so serious violation.

State building codes requires two means of egress from a basement bedroom -- that's the deadly serious infraction.

As I pointed out in my original post, what if the fire had happened in the wee hours of the morning rather than 12:00 noon?  A fire across the main floor would have trapped anybody asleep in those basements.

Two bedrooms per unit times six units:  "Nobody gets out of here alive."

Hobart Lane Fire Redacted

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

How awful to be trapped in a fire!

Can unannounced inspections be done -- after students move in? Can you imagine having to tell the parents of a student that because the kid wanted to save money, they died?

(I'm not sure if the landlord has legal responsibility to check to be sure that the lease holders don't add extra people and plywood ...)