Lawmakers ‘skeptical’ of reforms after deadly Kennedy Street fire
After hours of testimony, DC lawmakers seemed doubtful about city agencies’ reform efforts in the wake of a deadly fire in the Brightwood Park neighborhood.
Monday’s DC Council hearing was scheduled after Fox 5 and The Washington Post documented shortcomings in the DC government’s actions before the Aug. 18 fire and as the blaze engulfed the illegal boarding house at 708 Kennedy St. NW: The city’s 911 call center took four minutes to dispatch firefighters to the burning building. Furthermore, prior to the fire, five months passed during which housing officials and fire inspectors failed to act on information indicating the house posed a fire hazard because of its many, illegally subdivided rooms with makeshift doors and barred windows.
Ultimately, two tenants — 9-year-old Barnard Elementary School student Yafet Solomon and 40-year-old Fitsum Kebede — died in the August fire. Both victims, as well as the other tenants who survived the blaze, were members of DC’s Ethiopian immigrant community.
After yesterday’s hearing, DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson told The DC Line he has “healthy skepticism” when it comes to believing the long-troubled Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) is on the mend. He also said there was “no reason” the 911 call center needed to wait four minutes to send first responders to the scene.
“When you’re talking about a fire, or when you’re talking about once again hearing the complaints that we heard last year, that’s quite vexing,” Mendelson said of receiving testimony once again about lax housing enforcement and calls for carving up DCRA. “Something has got to be different.”
“Collectively, our government failed,” said Ward 6 Council member Charles Allen, who chairs the council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety.
‘The department is dropping the bucket’
At yesterday’s hearing, DCRA director Ernest Chrappah insisted that his department has “learned from this tragedy,” reopening 20 housing code violation cases that might have been closed improperly and tightening guidelines for how fast investigators are supposed to respond to complaints.
Chrappah also told council members that DCRA added an audit function to its digital record-keeping system following a damning audit commissioned by the city administrator’s office that, among other problems, found agency employees had not kept a case file on the Kennedy Street property. In March, a police officer emailed an urgent complaint about the building’s lack of “smoke detectors and clearly marked exits,” following up twice.
Now Chrappah says DCRA is teaming up with Georgetown University to design an algorithm to identify places most at risk of unsafe housing. “We think the effort will yield results, and we plan on making something available before spring of next year,” said Chrappah.
At the hearing, Mendelson thanked Chrappah for his efforts to improve the agency, but questioned whether investing in proactive investigations would be more effective.
The chairman held up a sheet of paper listing dozens of properties that could be illegally renting to residents.
Mendelson said his staff found the properties by doing a “basic computer search,” comparing residents’ reported addresses in the city’s master address database with the business license database, where all legal landlords should be found. Staffers told The DC Line that this search yielded about three dozen unlicensed homes people claim to live in.
One Euclid Street NW address appeared to indicate eight people were living in one house, though the owner lacked a rental license.
Chrappah said the department does use the master address database, but confirmed DCRA had not done that particular search. “So I’d love the opportunity to look into this specific list,” he said.
Witnesses who testified also expressed frustration that DCRA has too few housing inspectors to verify those kinds of lists. Kathey Zeisel, a supervising attorney at the Children’s Law Center, shared data indicating that DC only has about one housing inspector for every 12,500 properties — a revelation that drew ire from the dais.
“We need to be inspecting all these properties, and we don’t have the people to do it,” said Ward 1 Council member Brianne Nadeau. “The council has given DCRA money every year, and the department is dropping the bucket.”
At-large Council member Elissa Silverman also pressed Chrappah for an explanation of why the department failed to pursue the inspection and keep records about the complaint.
“There is no explanation to justify the loss of life in this situation,” Chrappah told the council, later adding that “the failure here is a failure of culture, not a failure of technology.”
DCRA is scheduled to return to the council chambers next month for a hearing on Mendelson’s bill that proposes splitting up the agency — a proposal championed by some reform advocates, although it has languished amid opposition from the Bowser administration.
“I know that the executive [branch] doesn’t want us to split up the agency, but I have yet to see a good reason why we shouldn’t,” Mendelson told The DC Line after the hearing.
‘It was not four minutes of nothing’
Also in the hot seat on Tuesday was the city’s Office of Unified Communications (OUC), the agency that handles 911 calls for both the Metropolitan Police Department and the DC Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department.
Karima Holmes, director of OUC, previously told WTOP that there was “no delay, no slow response” to the police officer who had radioed OUC about the fire. Part of the four minutes was spent asking the officer more questions, and part of it was addressing a different emergency call.
But on Tuesday, Holmes amended her statement, saying she did think “four minutes is a long time” but the dispatcher also needed to confirm that there was, in fact, a building on fire before sending help.
“It was not four minutes of nothing,” Holmes said.
Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Kevin Donahue, who oversees OUC as well as the police and fire departments, noted the dispatcher had trouble getting the police officer on the scene to answer her questions because it was a “chaotic scene” as the officer and bystanders attempted to break down the building’s barred door.
“It’s a very true struggle in 911 across the country to balance [verification], clarification, speed, accuracy, and call volume,” said Holmes. “I don’t think anyone really has a grasp on that.”
The 911 call center director said that the average time it takes OUC to dispatch first responders to the scene of an emergency is about 2 1/2 minutes. The national standard set by the National Fire Protection Association, however, calls for 90% of emergency calls to be dispatched in one minute or less.
A representative from the International Association of Fire Fghters Local 26, the union representing DC firefighters, testified that seconds matter given that fires can double in size every minute. “I’m not sure what more information they would need to get us there three minutes sooner to save lives,” said union vice president Joseph Papariello.
When pressed by Allen about what happened during those four minutes, Holmes said the dispatcher wasn’t used to receiving calls via police radio. But in response to a follow-up question, Holmes said it would have taken just as long if the officer had called 911.
Amid questioning during the hearing, Holmes also seemed confused about some fire department terminology. She used the term “rescue engine” to refer to a “rescue squad” vehicle and admitted she couldn’t provide an explanation for a “breach kit” — which breaks open doors — when asked about it by Allen.
DC Fire and EMS Chief Gregory Dean remained largely silent during the exchange, but did note that it was “time for another review” of dispatch protocols used by OUC.
After the hearing, Allen told The DC Line that while it was “clear” the 911 dispatcher was trying to confirm information before dispatching firefighters. However, he said the agency needed to be able to “hold the mirror up” as to why dispatch didn’t occur more quickly when a trained police officer reported a fire and children trapped behind a locked door.
‘The DC government may as well have set this fire itself’
On Monday, Winta Teferi of the Ethiopian Community Center told council members that the five survivors of the fire are living with “uncertainty” as they struggle to find new permanent homes through the city’s rapid rehousing program. They have still not been allowed to retrieve personal belongings that remain at the Kennedy Street dwelling, she added.
“Their hopes have been raised and shattered so many times,” said Teferi. “They are desperate and have no trust in the process.”
Stephanie Bastek, an organizer with the DC Tenants Union, said she worries the tenants will not be able to afford the rent in the apartments the city assigns them as they struggle with the same District bureaucracy that failed to help them before the fire.
“And then where will they be in a city that is so unaffordable that these tenants saw this boarding house as their only option?” asked Bastek. “DCRA may as well have set this fire itself.”
Just moments later, Bastek refined her original remark: “I’ll go even further and say the DC government may as well have set this fire.”
Comments are closed.