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Apartment That Claimed Bridgeport Firefighters Illegally Renovated
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. - Public records show that Bridgeport officials never approved plans for an apartment where two city firefighters died while responding to a blaze last Saturday.
The Connecticut Post reports the three-story home on Elmwood Avenue was built as a two-family house in 1909 and no permits were ever issued to add an apartment on the third floor where 49-year-old Michel Baik and 40-year-old Steven Velasquez died.
It's unlikely officials ever inspected the third-floor to make sure it had proper fire exits, because there were no permits. The cause of Saturday's blaze remains under investigation.
The property's owner, Joan Burnett-McFarlane, who lived at the home, couldn't be reached for comment Tuesday. There's no phone listing for her, and the building was heavily damaged.
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Information from: Connecticut Post, http://www.connpost.com
Related
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The Connecticut Post reports the three-story home on Elmwood Avenue was built as a two-family house in 1909 and no permits were ever issued to add an apartment on the third floor where 49-year-old Michel Baik and 40-year-old Steven Velasquez died.
It's unlikely officials ever inspected the third-floor to make sure it had proper fire exits, because there were no permits. The cause of Saturday's blaze remains under investigation.
The property's owner, Joan Burnett-McFarlane, who lived at the home, couldn't be reached for comment Tuesday. There's no phone listing for her, and the building was heavily damaged.
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Information from: Connecticut Post, http://www.connpost.com
Related
- House in Fire Lacked Permits for Apartment Conversion
- Apartment Where Firefighters Died Wasn't Legal
- Two Firefighters Die in Connecticut House Fire
- Bridgeport Firefighter Died Of Smoke Inhalation
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Rossi Paloma on
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How can the City neglect this kind of construction? More so the building officials? This is the kind of crap that should not be taken lightly. Lives were lost, families suffer because of stupidity and negligence. How can anyone explain that to the families of the two dedicated firefighters who sacrificed their lives?
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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
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Hold on there Rossi, just because the city alledgely didn't inspect or sign off on this, doesn't mean the city was neglectful either.
From the article...
It's unlikely officials ever inspected the third-floor to make sure it had proper fire exits, because there were no permits.
It states there were no permits. That could mean the owner did renovations on their own, perhaps failing to obtain a building permit, or foregoing additional fees with the mindset of "it won't happen to me" type of thing. There could have been hired contractors who may of been required to obtain the permit, but didn't do so or failed to do so, or people off the side could have been hired and this was never a concern.
Basically there are many reasons as to why a permit wasn't obtained to place blame on the city. If Bridgeport is like any other U.S. city, chances are they are not flowing with tax dollars and don't have all sorts of building inspectors going around for every type of construction or renovation going on. Permits, at least here, the responsibility of obtaining them lie with the owner.
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Permalink Reply by Jack/dt on
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Keep in mind that nowhere did it say that any (suspected) renovations have occurred recently. Given that the house was built in 1909 that attic could have been converted in 1910 as easily as 2010, that the city didn't know about is meaningless. Most times they don't know what they aren't told and it is not unheard of for someone to renovate without permits, especially 50 years ago. Anyone's parents ever turn the basement into a rec room? Did they pull permits?
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Permalink Reply by 55 TRUCK on
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Also the additional apartment may of had nothing to do with what happend. We need to wait for the full investigation to be done. Most city firemen expect to be in chopped up houses. People do all kinds of things. Add rooms, kick holes through a stairway wall to make a door in a double so there family can come in and out from the other side. All kinds of stuff.
It's easy to inspect every structure if you live in a small town. Get in a city with hundreds of thousands of structures all built in diffrent decades or centuries..Add to that a over worked under paid building code enforement staff....Things get over looked.
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John, I will agree with you on this knowing that we don't know exactly when the renovation took place. The mentality and attitude of "it won't happen to me" cost lives. I work in an environment where safety, most of the time, is too much but then again one can never be sure. Shouldn't this be a lessons learned? How can we improve this mentality? How do we prepare our firefighters for this kind of incident? How should we educate them on this matter?
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Permalink Reply by Rusty Mancini on
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The final investigation of what really happened will give us the insight to such a tragic incident. Headlines from such stories may not have anything to do with what has took place.
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