Brianne Dopart
The Herald-Sun, Durham, N.C.
DURHAM, N.C. — When does a house become a fiery hazard? When it’s vacant and unsecured, posing a threat to the lives of Bull City firefighters and neighbors, according to the Durham Fire Department.
Vacant houses are known to attract vagrants, said Assistant Fire Marshal Eddie Reid, and every year city firefighters storm into blazes that are likely ignited accidentally by squatters.
During the period from Sept. 1, 2006, to Sept. 1, 2007, city firefighters have handled 29 fires at vacant houses, according to the Durham Fire Department. The figure represents about 40 percent of the 72 house fires squelched by firefighters over the same period.
Numbers for previous years were not available because the Fire Department does not keep records based on whether homes are occupied, but Reid told The Herald-Sun vacant house fires are always a problem with which the department must contend.
Fires at vacant houses on Merrick and Simmons streets and Hillside Avenue have occurred in pairs. Last December, houses at 1103 and 1105 Simmons St. burned together in an impressive blaze fire inspectors called “suspicious.”
Six days after 121 Hillside Ave. burned in December 2006, a house at 120 Hillside caught fire. On May 12, a house at 1100 Merrick St. became the second on its street to go up in flames. A house at 1003 Merrick burned two weeks earlier.
“Those houses are vacant and they’re a target for anyone to move into them. If one house gets burned down on one street, [the vagrants] will move down the street into another one,” Reid said.
The longer they stay vacant, the more likely houses are to catch fire and present extra dangers to firefighters.
"[They] are an ongoing battle we have all the time,” Reid said.
Some of those extra dangers include having to step over and around used hypodermic needles and broken glass, said Durham Fire Chief Bruce Pagan. Because vacant houses can be in varying states of disrepair, they can burn faster and more dangerously than well-tended structures.
Of 29 vacant house fires handled by the Durham Fire Department over the past year, 11 were “secured” or boarded up and locked while 16 were unsecured, according to the department. The three remaining houses were under construction at the time they caught fire.
Pagan said the Fire Department notifies Durham’s Neighborhood Improvement Services every time it comes across a vacant house that poses a safety risk to firefighters, but only after they’ve responded to a fire at the house.
As of Sept. 1, four vacant houses that burned over the past year have been demolished by the city, according to Neighborhood Improvement Services. Two more were demolished by their owners, the three that were being built remain “under construction,” while another has been added to the city’s list of houses “ready for demolition.”
The remaining 18 “fire” houses from last year were not on a city list, as of Sept. 1, of structures waiting to be torn down, nor are they among the 64 houses in the city in the process of being deemed unsafe.
There could be several reasons many of the aforementioned houses don’t appear on the city’s working list, said Gray Dawson, an official in the city’s Code Enforcement Division.
One is that some of them weren’t in total disrepair. They either just obtained permits and are in the process of being rehabbed or are being handled by insurance companies that are working with the city. Another reason is that the city’s list is constantly evolving. Some of the houses, Dawson said, may just not have made it onto the radar, yet.
Reid said the city’s housing and code enforcement folks “have all the teeth” when it comes to dealing with vacant buildings. But Dawson was quick to point out that the city’s power is limited when it comes to handling these properties.
Even when notified about a house that is vacant and unsecured that poses a significant threat to neighbors and firefighters, Code Enforcement Division officials can only send a letter giving the property owner 15 days to board up the windows. If the owner fails to do so, the city can do it, but there’s a process for that, too.
“Realistically,” Dawson said, “it could take up to a month to get it secured.”
“That’s what’s on the books, and what’s on the books is what we have to work with,” he added.
Asked whether he thought the city should be acting more quickly to minimize the threat to its firefighters, Reid said several city agencies would have to work together for an answer.
“It will be a battle between police, housing and the Fire Department working together to work on a solution,” Reid said.
“I don’t have any opinion on abandoned houses, but I do know they put us at risk,” he said. “Every time firefighters go out on a call they have to search the house to ensure no one is inside. Just because it’s abandoned doesn’t mean no one’s there. So it does put us in a precarious situation.”
Dawson and Reid said there’s only so much one can do to secure a house.
“There’s no amount of boards to keep people out, if they want to get in,” Dawson said.
Neighbors must be proactive and vigilant, he added.
“If a house goes vacant on their street even for a short time, they need to call us,” he said. “The safety of the community is our main concern.”
Copyright 2007 The Herald-Sun