It seems every generation is destined to have its own structure fire tragedy; ours being the Station Nightclub fire in West Warwick, Rhode Island in 2003. In less than 30 minutes, 100 people lost their lives that night (February 20, 2003). I had just started consulting and I can remember it well as almost all of my old bosses were calling me to do fire inspections at their facilities. Everyone saw a spike of inspections from our local code inspectors after this tragedy, but as with all tragedies, humans move on. Most of the safety professionals I had worked with before this fire had never seen a local inspector before. And it was not for trying, they sent letters, offered lunches, etc. in the hopes of having the local FD come to the plant for a visit. No one seemed to have the time before the Station Nightclub fire. But again, like most humans, after the fire the inspectors rightfully came and came often. Some even issued citations; citations that the city had never even seen before and could not tell the facility where to pay their fine! We may laugh a bit at that, but that was how bad the “local authority having jurisdiction” was at their jobs.
Then came the “great recession” of 2008-2010. States, Counties and Cities found themselves with reduced tax income and needing to lay off workers. And like most organizations do, in order to reduce the layoff’s they offered early retirement packages to their most senior employees. And for those who may not be familiar with how fire departments are organized, the most senior employees are usually the fire marshal and fire inspectors. These are the same people who had been very busy with inspections after the 2003 Station Nightclub fire. So by the end of the Great Recession, we had lost many of the very people who had the training and experience to conduct fire inspections. Forward to Year 2020 and we have already regressed back to the times before the 2003 tragedy.
We can look at the Hard Rock Cafe building collapse in October 2019 in New Orleans and the malfeasances of the City’s Department of Safety and Permits. Two inspectors with the City of New Orleans Department of Safety and Permits have been placed on emergency suspension, following a series of local news reports that revealed discrepancies between city inspection logs and GPS records of the department’s vehicles. A third employee “retired” last week and was also “suspended” from the investigation.