By Meghan Hoyer
The Virginian-Pilot
PORTSMOUTH, Va. — An empty bungalow in Truxtun burned. So has an abandoned movie theater. A former middle school gymnasium in a now-unused building also was set ablaze.
City firefighters say in the past few years, vacant buildings — especially those left untended and unlocked — have provided too great a temptation for vagrants. And with foreclosures rising and businesses failing in a bad economy, the increasing number of vacant buildings has only heightened the problem.
On Tuesday, the Fire Department unveiled a new plan to better mark dangerous vacant buildings and crack down on property owners who leave their homes or business empty and open. The buildings pose a safety risk not only to nearby residents but to firefighters as well, fire officials said.
“We’re taking a hard stance,” Battalion Chief Michael Stockton, the city’s fire marshal, said. “It’s a neighborhood quality issue as well as a safety issue.”
Starting July 1, firefighters will mark vacant and unsecured buildings with color-coded placards warning everyone of dangerous properties. Less dangerous buildings will get a yellow and green placard. A red placard, reserved for the most dangerous buildings, means that no one should go inside because of structural problems, and threatens trespassers with criminal prosecution.
Owners of buildings placarded by the Fire Department will be notified of the structural violations. They will have 30 days to fix the problems and secure the property or face a misdemeanor criminal charge.
Firefighters pointed to statistics showing the danger of empty buildings to residents and public safety personnel as the reason for the crackdown, which comes in addition to measures already taken by the city’s code enforcement and building inspection departments.
A city block is twice as likely to be the scene of a fire if a vacant house is there, according to studies done in Austin, Texas, in the 1990s.
Vacant buildings also are the scene of 3 out of every 5 firefighter injuries, Portsmouth Fire Chief Don Horton said, citing a statistic from the National Fire Protection Association.
“That’s too many injuries to too many firefighters,” he said. He told the City Council Tuesday that the placards would chiefly serve to warn firefighters to not enter an unsafe building. “We’re not going to put them in harm’s way to save some structure that’s just going to get demolished,” Horton said.
Portsmouth isn’t the first city to crack down on empty buildings because they pose fire hazards. In November, Norfolk began immediately boarding up houses found to be unsecured rather than waiting to notify owners and giving them weeks to fix the problem. Norfolk officials, who estimate that they experience about 20 fires annually in vacant buildings, said last year that they worry vagrants looking for shelter in the winter would start blazes.
In Portsmouth, a review of properties about two years ago found roughly 1,000 vacant houses in the city. Stockton said with the rising number of foreclosures, that number now is likely about 1,500.
He said often foreclosed houses aren’t cared for or watched closely, making it easy for troublemakers to pull plywood off windows and doors and enter the buildings without notice.
“We’re seeing the buildings languish in foreclosure,” he said. “People aren’t watching them daily. It may go for a month or more until someone realizes an unauthorized person is living there.
“This is just us being pro active. It’s a way of addressing a problem and getting it into the system.”
Copyright 2009 Landmark Communications, Inc.
All Rights Reserved