Home Part of States Newsroom
News
Overdue fire inspections: Waterbury fatal blazes highlight statewide problem

Share

Overdue fire inspections: Waterbury fatal blazes highlight statewide problem

Aug 28, 2022 | 10:32 am ET
By Dave Altimari, Andrew Brown, and Katy Golvala/CT Mirror
Share
A burnt house roof on Arch Street, Waterbury. Waterbury Fire Marshal Thomas Fitzgerald said the house met the fire codes when it was inspected in July and August of 2021, but acknowledged there was no inspection report filed indicating what they found there, if anything, and said "my guys needed to do a better job of documenting." YEHYUN KIM / CTMIRROR.ORG
Description

A burnt house roof on Arch Street, Waterbury. Waterbury Fire Marshal Thomas Fitzgerald said the house met the fire codes when it was inspected in July and August of 2021, but acknowledged there was no inspection report filed indicating what they found there, if anything, and said "my guys needed to do a better job of documenting." YEHYUN KIM / CTMIRROR.ORG

As she stood at the funeral home lectern last month, a photo of her 25-year-old daughter Alexia and her 17-month-old grandson Nasir propped up on an easel behind her, Margaret Armstrong sounded precisely like what she is — a stunned and grieving parent.

“I miss her dearly,” Armstrong said quietly through tears. “I wish I could hear her voice and see them again just one more time.”

Alexia Moreno, her partner Frederick Lawson and their son Nasir all died of smoke inhalation after a fast-moving, mid-morning blaze trapped them in their third floor apartment on Third Street in Waterbury on June 29. 

Firefighters tried desperately to reach the family, pulling Lawson and Moreno out of the burning home and performing CPR, to no avail. The child was transferred to Yale New Haven Hospital, where he died a few days later.

While the cause of the blaze is still being investigated, city fire marshal inspection records obtained by The Connecticut Mirror show that Waterbury fire officials hadn’t inspected the house for fire code violations, such as working smoke detectors and proper egress, since 2008, despite a state law that requires all three-family homes to be inspected annually.

The fatal fire on Third Street was the second in three months in triple-deckers in Waterbury, resulting in five deaths. In early May, a fire on Arch Street claimed the lives of two men who were living on the second floor. The cause of that blaze also is still under investigation.

The most recent inspection report for the Arch Street house is from October 3, 2012, although someone from the fire marshal’s office visited the house six times last summer, city records show. While Waterbury Fire Marshal Thomas Fitzgerald acknowledged there was no report filed by his inspectors from the 2021 visits, he said the house met fire codes at the time of the fatal blaze. He did not produce any records indicating this is the case.

The two fatal fires expose an issue that has been festering for years across Connecticut: Fire marshals, particularly those in major cities, say they are unable to meet the state requirement that any residence with three or more units — houses or apartment buildings — must be inspected annually.

The existence of tens of thousands of three-unit dwellings, many of which are three-story homes in cities, that require annual inspections in Connecticut — coupled with fire marshals' offices that are chronically understaffed — means some of the oldest and potentially most dangerous houses are not getting timely inspections.

The backlog of inspections for these homes is especially worrisome given the age and condition of much of this housing stock, officials say. Many of these multi-unit homes were built in the 1800s or early 1900s and lack modern safety features such as fire doors and updated electrical wiring.

Fitzgerald said it is impossible for cities like Waterbury to meet the state’s mandate to inspect every triple-decker in the city annually. His department currently has six inspectors, and there are more than 2,200 three-unit residences in the city.

“We could have 25 inspectors in our office, and we still wouldn’t get to all of them,” Fitzgerald said, adding they also must inspect more than 40 schools, two hospitals and every restaurant and bar in the city.

From 2017 to 2021, there were between 300 and 400 fires every year in three-unit or larger residences in Connecticut, according to state data.

During the same period, there were 19 fire deaths in multi-family homes across the state, according to media coverage collected by the National Fire Incident Reporting System. Waterbury had three deaths, the most of any town in the state, along with New Haven and New Britain, according to the data.

Fire suppression over fire prevention

In an effort to determine how many multi-family residences there are in Connecticut — and the extent of the burden on the fire marshals who have to inspect them — the CT Mirror asked tax assessors across the state for the number of these homes in their communities.

More than 80 assessors responded, from just under half the municipalities in the state. The data show nearly 13,000 three-unit residences just in those communities.

Fire marshals also are required to inspect apartment buildings, which often requires them to dedicate one inspector just for that task. There are more than 9,000 residential properties with three or more units in Hartford and New Haven alone, according to assessor records in those cities.

Inspecting all those apartments and three- and four-unit houses, in addition to their other duties, is a struggle for fire marshals across Connecticut.

“New England communities have a history of putting more money into fire suppression than fire prevention. That’s just the way it’s always been,” Meriden Fire Marshal John Yacovino said. “We’re talking about homes that were built during the Civil War in some cases, so they are old and certainly not up to fire and safety codes.”

Meriden has nearly 1,000 apartment buildings in the city, as well as about 800 three- and four-family units. Yacovino estimates that his office is able to inspect about half of them every year.