SPOKANE, Wash. — The time for fire code inspections are long overdue. For the past year and a half, the Spokane Fire Department (SFD) has been revamping their fire inspections to ensure apartments and commercial buildings are safe to live and work in.
"This really hit hard a couple of years ago, when we had a fatality and browns addition, actually to was, you know, we have to invest in community risk reduction," said fire chief Brian Schaeffer.
Schaeffer says before 2021, there wasn't enough staff to have normal inspections. But, in the past year and a half, the department's hired a new fire marshal and five new inspectors. Now, they're working their way through more than 100 multi-family apartment buildings and 8,000 commercial building spaces.
"Our people will be in all of the buildings, 100% of them every year," Schaeffer said. "And that has been the goal for a long time, we've just been able to achieve that with our staffing and getting those people trained within the last year and a half."
And their work is needed. Inspectors say about 80% of the buildings they've inspected so far have problems that need to be fixed.
For Anthony Kelley, who lives in an apartment, he knows the importance of fire safety.
"You never know what happens especially in an apartment. One little thing and it's like it can go up in flames faster than a house," said Kelley.
The SFD says before their new hires, their staff didn't have time to conduct normal inspections.
"We had lot of complaints that require deputy fire marshal to go on site and actually do an inspection based on complaints," said Schaeffer. "So all of that really took up all of our inspectors that we had at the time."
Schaeffer says most high occupancy apartments and commercial spaces should be inspected every three years. As for single family homes, they are not yet on the official inspection list.
Schaeffer says it's also up to the public to make sure where they live is up to fire code, which means checking fire alarms, checking fire exits, and making sure you have a plan if there's ever a fire.
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