List of violations goes uncorrected
By Danielle Shapiro
Herald News (Passaic County, NJ)
Copyright 2007 North Jersey Media Group Inc.,
All Rights Reserved
PATERSON, N.J. — Fire code violations, such as inadequate exit signs, inoperable emergency lighting units and fire-alarm and sprinkler-system test reports that were not filed, have remained uncorrected for months in 19 of the city’s schools.
There are 66 outstanding fire code violations among the schools that have not been corrected since annual Fire Department inspections were conducted between May and August 2006, said Deputy Chief Mike Muccio director of the Fire Prevention Bureau. Those 19 schools did not receive certificates of inspection for 2006 and the district was fined for not correcting them. Muccio said none of the violations should have required more than 30 days to correct.
On Tuesday, the school district contacted Muccio and school officials plan to meet with him today.
There were 282 fire code violations cited in city schools in 2006, but many issues have been rectified. On March 16, the department notified the school district of the continuing violations and fined them $13,200, Muccio said.
Robert Greuter, director of facilities and maintenance, has disputed the Fire Department’s numbers and said they are working to correct the problems that led to the remaining violations.
“I can’t make a general statement of why it took so long,” he said, explaining that among 19 school locations, there are different reasons repairs were delayed. He said some notices went to individual schools, district offices, a retired facilities employee, a maintenance supervisor and a construction project manager, which slowed the process of correcting the fire code violations.
Greuter said there are only 19 open violations being rectified, such as installing audible and visual alarms in some lavatories, replacing batteries in emergency lighting and cleaning the kitchen hood and exhaust systems at several schools. Greuter, who said he personally visited the schools Wednesday to confirm what violations remained, said all outstanding problems should be corrected by the April 30 deadline. Michael Glascoe, schools superintendent, was unavailable for comment.
The remaining 30 school district buildings have their 2006 certificates of inspection, Muccio said. The violations do not mean the district takes student safety lightly, Greuter said: “We are very concerned with the safety and welfare of the children.”
But Joseph Atallo, a board of education member, called the uncorrected problems “irresponsible.”
“Where’s the administrative accountability?” he said. “We need to protect the children of Paterson.”
State law requires that some fire code violations must be corrected within 15 days after a violation notice is received, while others are given 30 days. If a large project is required to correct the violation, such as installing a new sprinkler system, Muccio said, more time can be granted.
In 2003, under former Superintendent Edwin Duroy, hundreds of students attended city schools that had not been approved by city fire and building inspectors, according to Herald News reports. Some of the same schools have been cited again with these more recent violations.
The problems in the nearly 30,000-student district vary, though the most common violations were failures to submit reports on fire alarm and sprinkler tests as well as certifications that draperies and curtains have been treated with a flame-retardant coating, Muccio said. The top safety priorities were means of egress, fire alarms and sprinklers, he said, noting that some inspectors have returned to the schools as many as five times with violations uncorrected.
"(Those are) the top three because we’re talking about the ability to get out of the building and early warning,” Muccio said.
For the most part, the violations were supposed to have been corrected by September 2006. The district submitted the fire retardant coating certificates as well as the fire alarm and sprinkler test reports on March 27, Muccio said. He will not accept the fire alarm test reports because they don’t include required tests of the audible and visual alarms. Greuter did not know why those tests were not completed and said he did not know it was a problem.
However, Greuter said he sent test reports to the Fire Department several times and from now on he will send them by certified mail and will keep copies of inspections and test reports with each school’s chief custodian to be available to fire inspectors.
Muccio started as head of the Fire Prevention Bureau on March 12 and promptly began reviewing the city’s schools and day-care centers. “They are all fire safety concerns,” Muccio said of the violations. “Our top priority is the safety of the kids.”
Of the 64 day-care centers throughout Paterson that Muccio said his department reviewed, only five were not in compliance and did not have 2006 fire inspection certificates.