From the Publishers Desk
departments
Code Enforcement Saves Lives
In view of the horror stories on places of public assembly that we published in our last August issue—Cocoanut Grove fire, Triangle Shirtwaist fire and others—it was gratifying to see what happened, or rather what did not happen in San Jose (see page 14).
Here, vigilant action by the fire department’s fire prevention bureau was the major factor in the quick knockdown of a fire in a night club that occurred in June 1977. The vigilant action, however, had taken place in October 1976.
At that time, a fire inspector’s tour of the premises turned up half a dozen violations of San Jose’s fire prevention code.
It may seem hard to believe but the two double swinging exit doors, front and rear of the building, were equipped with extremely dangerous (to the occupants) bolts. In effect, they did not have panic bars.
The second most important violation was that the interior wall paneling throughout the building had too high a flamespread rate. The San Jose department could have required the building owner to rip it all out. But they allowed a reasonable time to provide adequate fire retardancy by coating the paneling.
When all deficiencies were remedied, a dance permit for the nightclub was issued. And when the fire occurred in June it was quickly controlled and no occupant was injured. According to Chief A1 Montez, “If our inspector hadn’t found these deficiencies and gotten them corrected, we would have had a disaster here.”
This fire and its happy conclusion underlies the importance of the inspection and code enforcement that our editorials regularly call for. And the San Jose fire prevention bureau seems to agree. Last year they made 7500 inspections and issued 30,000 violations. What is most important they made sure that the violations were corrected.
As the article states, inspections don’t win any popularity contests for the inspectors but they can save lives and minimize property loss.
