Don’t expect Henderson’s new ordinance on fire-damaged buildings to have an immediate effect on the city’s landscape of abandoned houses.
Fire Chief Danny Wilkerson delivered that assessment of the summary abatement ordinance to the Clean Up Henderson Committee at its regular meeting Wednesday morning at the police station.
The City Council unanimously approved the ordinance last Monday night.
The purpose of the ordinance is to speed up the condemnation of structures that are so damaged by fire that they not only are beyond repair, but pose an threat to public safety. City Attorney John Zollicoffer said the ordinance should reduce the time required to condemn a structure from about six months to one month.
Zollicoffer crafted the ordinance at the behest of City Manager Eric Williams in response to a burned-out building on William Street.
But Wilkerson said the main use of the ordinance will be for future fires, not the city’s inventory of 15 to 20 fire-ravaged buildings.
There are two obstacles in the way of applying the ordinance to already-burned buildings.
The first is that the ordinance requires an imminent danger to the public health and safety to use the rapid condemnation approach.
“The city attorney said to be very, very careful,” Wilkerson told the cleanup committee. He said that if a house burned 10 years ago and is still standing, “it’s hard to argue that it’s an imminent danger.”
Mayor Clem Seifert said at last Monday night’s council meeting that he also doesn’t like the idea of the Fire Department being on call to inspect buildings. Williams assured him that wasn’t the point: The old burned buildings already are known, so there’s no reason for the public to call the Fire Department and request an inspection.
The second problem is that the ordinance refers to a building inspector in several instances. The fire chief said he and his fire inspectors are not qualified as building inspectors, so they can’t judge the likelihood of, say, a leaning wall to tumble.
The county has building inspectors, but getting them to work on dilapidated city structures has long been a thorny issue. A county building inspector has the power to condemn a structure for safety issues even without the new ordinance, but the county would charge the city for each inspection and for any required follow-up services to complete the process.
Williams told the City Council that one of the points of the new ordinance was to avoid that hassle and expense: “We are not relying on the county.”
But Wilkerson told the cleanup committee that the city fire inspectors and county building inspectors might need to work together on summary abatement.
The fire chief was planning to meet with Zollicoffer on Friday to work through the procedures for carrying out the ordinance.
Wilkerson noted that quick action on buildings destroyed by fire has always been possible. He cited the example of an arson on Rowland Street last year. The house was in such bad condition that after the insurance inspector looked the site over, he agreed to Wilkerson’s request to demolish the remains, and it was done within days.
Horace Bullock asked the chief about the definition of imminent danger and who makes that decision.
That’s the big issue, Wilkerson said. The fire inspector makes that call, but he wants to ensure that the building is in such bad shape that no one will question that decision.
“We’re going to do our best,” the chief said.
For most of the fire-damaged buildings in the city, however, the traditional abandoned-structure process will be needed, Wilkerson said.
And regardless of abatement procedure, nothing ultimately will happen to a building until the city has the money to tear it down.