A city “scarred and shaped by fire” is inviting more of the same by inspecting over a 12-month period just 17% of the buildings in its database for fire code violations and failing to maintain an accurate building inventory, Chicago’s inspector general said Thursday.
Deborah Witzburg’s latest audit turns up the heat on the Chicago Fire Department’s Fire Prevention Bureau, which her predecessor wanted to abolish for staff padding of mileage expenses.
The bureau is now being accused of failing to fulfill its responsibility under the fire code to conduct annual inspections of Chicago buildings — from hotels, theaters and stadiums to hospitals, residential and office buildings — to ensure that their mechanical, sprinkler and other fire safety systems are functioning properly.
Over a 12-month period, Witzburg found that only 17% of buildings in the bureau’s database received the required annual inspection. Half of those buildings “had not been inspected in five years or more.”
Just as troubling is the bureaucratic buck-passing that, Witzburg contends, caused city government to drop the ball.
The bureau “mistakenly believed” that the city’s Department of Buildings was charged with inspecting mid- and high-rise residential buildings for fire code violations when it was the fire department’s responsibility, Witzburg said.
“That risk of something falling between the cracks … [is] a real concern, particularly where it could have tremendous life and safety consequences,” Witzburg said.
Nearly 90% of the buildings that failed their annual inspections received the required recheck, but it happened more than five months late. The city collected only 13.2% of the reinspection fees those buildings were supposed to pay for those reinspections, depriving the city of $1.1 million in fees over a decade.
The audit also accused independent contractors of failing to fully deliver on their responsibility to conduct annual tests of water-based fire suppression systems.
They submitted test reports for 73.7% of sprinkler systems, 79.6% of fire pumps and 77.8% of buildings with standpipes, records show. The number of uninspected systems would have been higher, but the database of those systems that require annual tests is “inaccurate and incomplete,” the audit stated.
Witzburg said Thursday her findings should sound the alarm in a city “shaped by fire” tragedies.
That history includes: the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 that killed 300 people, destroyed 17,000 buildings and left 100,000 residents homeless; the 1903 fire at the Iroquois Theater sparked by a stage light that triggered a stampede and killed 602 patrons; and the 1958 fire at Our Lady of Angels Catholic school that killed 92 children and three nuns.
“Chicago well knows … what goes wrong [and] the risks that fire poses to a city. No city has learned that lesson harder than Chicago,” Witzburg told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Pat Cleary, president of the Chicago Fire Fireghters Union Local 2, was assigned to the Fire Prevention Bureau in the mid-1990s and said it was “terrible back then.”
“They don’t have enough inspectors,” Cleary said. “They don’t do their jobs. They don’t collect the fees. They don’t document buildings that should be inspected next. They just randomly pick inspection forms out of a file cabinet.
“It’s extremely dangerous,” Cleary continued. “People could be stacking stuff against their space heaters or furnace. Exit doors could be locked, chained, closed. Exit signs could be unlit. Fire panels could not be working. Sprinklers not working, fire pumps turned off.”
Witzburg’s audit recommended that the fire department get “its arms around the universe” of buildings that need to be inspected and follow it up with better procedures to ensure that it’s doing all of the inspections required by the fire code and tracking progress at buildings that failed those inspections.
In its response that was included in the audit, the fire department “largely disagreed” with the inspector general’s recommendations and argued that it was “not responsible for identifying, creating or maintaining an inventory” of buildings.
The department acknowledged having “suspended some inspections” during the pandemic and said it was “developing a training” for “in-service inspection requirements.”
Thursday afternoon, the department issued a statement saying, “CFD acknowledges certain issues identified in the Inspector General’s report. The Fire Prevention Bureau performs to the best of its abilities, in light of the limited manpower available. As noted by CFD, certain improvements and efficiencies can be achieved by working alongside partner departments and vendors to better achieve the important work of keeping Chicago safe.”
It’s not the first time the bureau has been the subject of an investigation by the inspector general. In 2011, Inspector General Joe Ferguson recommended that 54 firefighters — half the bureau’s staff — be fired for padding mileage expenses to the tune of $100,000 in 2009. Ferguson recommended that the bureau be disbanded and replaced by Building Department civilians.
Then-Fire Commissioner Robert Hoff fired four of the 54 firefighters and suspended 43 others. An independent arbitrator overturned the firings and suspensions.