Welcome to the new blog portion of my website. I'm going to be discussing issues that arise in code enforcement and invite comments and ideas from you. In today's difficult economic environment, we're all struggling with how to perform our jobs with decreasing resources. We're being confronted with new challenges daily due to the foreclosure crisis (ever try to find a live person to speak with about pipes bursting in subzero weather in a foreclosed house with mold growing so bad the residence can't be salvaged?) In my practice as a municipal prosecutor, I deal with these questions daily. I'm also interested in how effective code enforcement can reduce crime in a community and I will be writing about that issue. While I can't give legal advice on this blog, I will be pointing out interesting cases that may be useful to you.Firefighters and Vacant Structures
I just returned from St. Louis and Kansas City, MO after teaching the Legal Aspects of Code Administration class. I came across an interesting article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about firefighters reconsidering going into vacant structures to fight fires given the risk to the firefighters. Here’s the link:
I’m a big advocate of vacant building registry so that the fire and police departments are aware when they go on a call that the building is not inhabited. We’re doing it in Hinsdale, IL and the response from those departments have been very favorable. In the town in which I was doing a consultation in Missouri, I was told that in one section of the municipality 12% of the homes were vacant. This makes is even more important to keep track of these structures. There’s no sense in someone getting hurt or killed for a building that has been abandoned and is worth little.
Category(ies): Fire Prevention, Foreclosure
Linda
The registry is a great tool as long as the information can be found for first arriving units through CAD resources or internal paper copies in the rig. It seems in Detroit they just simply have too many (reports of 80,000). Flint MI has a great program on the various vacant structures and how the respond.
This is so true, no one needs to get hurt or killed