Learning from fires, past and present

October 24, 2003|By John McCarron. John McCarron teaches, writes and consults on urban affairs.

We can learn from this fire. Or we can panic and overreact. Or vent our frustrations, Chicago-style, with mindless political recriminations.

Fire is one of the constants in our civic history, our most effective, if deadly, teacher. The Great Fire of 1871 taught us the perils of wood construction in dense urban places. Our deadliest fire--602 dead at the Iroquois Theater in 1903--taught the need for wider aisles at public gathering places and clearly marked, unobstructed exits. Our most heartbreaking fire within memory's reach--95 dead in the 1958 blaze at Our Lady of the Angels School--taught the necessity of closed stairwells, the kind that won't carry smoke, chimney-fashion, to upper floors.

Good lessons all, terribly learned. But what of the fire this time, the one last Friday, that killed six office workers at the 35-story Cook County Administration Building? All died of smoke inhalation while trying to escape from a locked stairwell turned death trap. What's the lesson here? And just as important, what mistakes might our politicians now make in their stampede to deflect blame and champion reform?

There's at least one no-brainer on my things-to-do list: All stairwell doors should be unlocked, immediately, period. And they should not depend on some remote electro-mechanical switch to unlock them. They should be unlocked, both directions, all the time. Where inter-floor security is an issue, put an alarm on each door that will ring, beep or buzz if someone ignores a boldly printed warning and enters the floor from the outside.

What about security? There have been more damned fool things done in the name of "security" over the past two years than in the name of sin. So-called security experts have lined our downtown plazas with ugly concrete vehicle barricades, roped off our lobbies, banned umbrellas--umbrellas!--from sports stadiums and made air travel so unpleasant that our major airlines have been driven into--or to the brink of--bankruptcy. Anybody feel more secure?

My late father was a volunteer fire chief in his hometown and in the Navy. He ate enough smoke to understand that, indoors, your security depends a lot more on the ability to get out than someone else's inability to get in.

Fatherly tip: When checking into a hotel, always locate your floor's fire exits, even if you need to pretend you're looking for the ice machine so people don't think you're a peeper. Works for me.

Other common sense "do's" in the wake of last week's fatal fire? Do require landlords of high-rise office buildings to promulgate emergency plans and conduct periodic fire drills. Do require tenant companies to designate floor wardens, and alternates, who know what to do. Require an intercom or telephone alert system so building security can relay instructions to wardens on all floors. Revise firefighting procedures so one crew searches for stranded stragglers while the other fights the fire.

Beyond that, there are trade-offs that the public and the politicians need to understand. Sprinkler systems? Absolutely . . . for new construction over 80 feet in height, but that's been on Chicago's books since the mid-70s. The tough question now is whether to require owners of older high-rise buildings--more than 800 of them, including the one that burned last week--to retrofit with sprinklers. Doing so would cost hundreds of thousands, and in many cases, millions of dollars. For marginally profitable buildings, including several treasured landmarks, the expense would be a death sentence.

Some argue that a single life saved would be worth that expense and that loss. I'm not one of them. There's a dire shortage of affordable housing in Chicago. There's also a shortage of office space affordable to small businesses and start-ups. Condemning hundreds of tall buildings would worsen those shortages and cause considerable human suffering, if not the kind that makes front-page fire news.

Still, there is considerable evidence, reflected in the 1999 report of the Chicago High-Rise Safety Commission, that sprinklers are the answer.

What to do? Mayor Richard Daley and Cook County Board President John Stroger should, indeed, require sprinkler retrofits. But also do this: Grant an ample (at least 10-year) phase-in period so owners can make it part of their next remodeling. Give owners even longer if they agree to immediately install other safety measures, such as air-pressured stairwells. And for cash-strapped landlords, especially owners of certified landmarks, provide property tax breaks, low-interest loans and free technical assistance.

The pressure is on to do something dramatic. But remember, gentlemen, it's never the right time to do more harm than good.