Fire commissioner irked workers slow to alert
The city’s fire commissioner blasted workers for taking 90 minutes to report the June 28 fire that destroyed a six-story building in Dorchester and said city officials are working on new construction safety standards — particularly those with highly flammable wood frames.
“It’s a grave concern. It’s a total breakdown on the construction site itself. There should be no delay in the response. It’s a very concerning issue for me,” fire Commissioner Joseph Finn said yesterday of workers at 1971-1979 Dorchester Ave. who smelled smoke but waited an hour and a half to call the Fire Department.
Finn and Inspectional Services Commissioner Buddy Christopher described the delay at a press conference yesterday about the fire that tore through the six-story Treadmark building that was set for occupancy within weeks.
Finn said the fire began in the space between the sixth floor and the roof when hot exhaust piping from a generator that was being tested ignited combustible material.
That exhaust pipe was supposed to be 12 inches away from any combustible material but was likely only three inches away, Finn said. Christopher said ISD inspectors likely would have caught the problem had they completed an inspection scheduled for the day after the fire. He added he said he did not think developers in Boston’s housing boom were cutting corners.
“We have the absolute faith in our construction industry here in Boston,” Christopher said. “We do not think this is a systemic problem across the city.”
The building had a working sprinkler system at the time of the fire, but it was not turned on, Finn said — which is allowed under state building code that only requires sprinklers be on after a building gets its certificate of occupancy. Finn said that hampered fighting the fire, but the main concern was that workers had smelled smoke and saw haze at 1 p.m. and didn’t call BFD until 2:30 p.m.
“The No. 1 problem was the delay in notification,” Finn said. “We have thermal imaging cameras, we could’ve found this fire in a short amount of time.”
A spokeswoman for Cranshaw Construction, the building’s general contractor, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The building’s mostly wood structure is allowed under the International Building Code, but Christopher said ISD and BFD officials will review procedures for examining wood buildings that are under construction and most likely to catch fire.
“At this point we’re not planning to change the building code or anything like that, this is more about the process during construction, when the building is in its most unprotected state,” Christopher said.