The Montgomery County apartment building where a weekend fire killed one resident and injured three firefighters had not been inspected for fire code violations in years.
County fire inspectors are plowing through a new plan to evaluate all Montgomery apartment buildings, but senior fire officials say the massive number of buildings to be inspected far surpasses the number of inspectors on staff. Assistant Fire Marshal Mike Hamilton said one year into the project, fire inspectors have reviewed only 20 to 30 percent of the county’s complexes.
“We’re marching across the county at a very slow pace because there are many more buildings than we thought and many more problems than we thought,” Hamilton said. “Some building protection systems are complete failures, and we’ve got to visit, test, fine and revisit until things are safe because otherwise, we’d be liable for it.”
According to Hamilton, nearly every building inspected has had some form of violation. Montgomery employs 28 inspectors, all of whom are firefighters, while Fairfax has 42 inspectors, but only four are uniformed firefighters and 15 work only part of the year.
Hamilton said inspectors began the code enforcement crackdown by first checking high-rise apartment buildings lacking sprinklers, then high-rise buildings with sprinkler systems, which they were disturbed to learn were often not working. They are just now evaluating garden-style apartments like the Rockville complex that burned over the weekend.
“The building’s alarm system worked, but the fire started in an apartment, and we don’t inspect dwelling units,” Hamilton said. “We could have gone there the day before and probably not have prevented what happened.”
Firefighter Mark Mechlin, 23, was released from the burn unit at Washington Hospital Center on Monday while Capt. R. Dwayne Dutrow, 38, and firefighter James Heikka, 31, remained in the hospital’s burn unit. Building resident Timothy Moran, 50, died in the fire at the three-story Halpine View Apartments.
