jar546
Forum Coordinator
On a rainy night late in March, a police officer pulled up to a whitewashed brick rowhouse in Northwest Washington’s Brightwood Park neighborhood. Entering the building, Officer Ernie Davis recognized that something had to be done. People were in danger.
The next day, Davis alerted fire-safety and housing inspectors at two District agencies that the building — crammed between the offices of a trash hauling company and a tax service, and illegally partitioned into a warren of low-rent bedrooms — lacked working smoke detectors or clearly marked exits.
“There are too many make shift doors with locks which would make it difficult to exit in an emergency,” Davis wrote in a report.
That warning could have been the beginning of a prompt response to life-threatening housing conditions. Instead, it set in motion a cascade of bureaucratic bungling, miscommunication and missed chances that culminated last month with two deaths when a fire tore through the house at 708 Kennedy Street NW.
Click on the link below to read the rest of the article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...536312-d4bd-11e9-86ac-0f250cc91758_story.html
The next day, Davis alerted fire-safety and housing inspectors at two District agencies that the building — crammed between the offices of a trash hauling company and a tax service, and illegally partitioned into a warren of low-rent bedrooms — lacked working smoke detectors or clearly marked exits.
“There are too many make shift doors with locks which would make it difficult to exit in an emergency,” Davis wrote in a report.
That warning could have been the beginning of a prompt response to life-threatening housing conditions. Instead, it set in motion a cascade of bureaucratic bungling, miscommunication and missed chances that culminated last month with two deaths when a fire tore through the house at 708 Kennedy Street NW.
Click on the link below to read the rest of the article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...536312-d4bd-11e9-86ac-0f250cc91758_story.html
