Kurt Latiolais, a former University senior, never imagined he was risking his life when he rented his second-story apartment in Genedi Apartments off Burbank Drive, but a fire that started in his unit proved otherwise.
Latiolais’ apartment was not equipped with smoke detectors or fire alarms that complied with current fire code standards. Because the complex was older, the laws did not require its managers to install sprinkler and ventilation systems, hard-wired smoke detectors or even fire extinguishers for each unit.
No smoke detectors went off in any unit in the building when the fire broke out in Latiolais’ apartment, and according to family members, no one even knew there was a fire until firefighters banged on doors to evacuate the building.
A check after the fire by family members found a single fire extinguisher outside on the balcony with an inspection sticker dating back nearly two decades.
Latiolais lost his life in the Oct. 19, 2003 fire from smoke inhalation.
Like him, University students who cannot afford newer condos or apartments often turn to older buildings with cheaper rents. Although they save money on rent, they risk safety and protection against fires because of spotty inspections and loopholes in safety codes.
MINOR DETAILS LED TO MAJOR CONSEQUENCES
Firefighters responded to a 911 call at 4:49 a.m. about a fire at Latiolais’ apartment. According to the Baton Rouge Fire Department, the source of the call is unknown.
The incident report said a structure fire ignited hardwood and plywood material. The smoke traveled outside from an opening in the building, created from the fire. Smoke and heat damage was confined to “structural member and framing of the building,” causing an estimated $9,000 in damage.
The report also said there were no code violations recorded for the building. A check with the Clerk of Court found no lawsuits against the apartment complex or its owners. BRFD arson investigator Daryl Sanders would not release investigation records because the cause of the fire is classified as undetermined.
Muriel Latiolais, Kurt’s older sister and a public administrations graduate student, said the conditions of Kurt’s apartment complex did not provide any safeguard against fires. After her uncle, a Louisiana State Trooper, did his own inspection of the building, the family found that no alarms went off in the building, and the fire extinguisher on the balcony was last inspected in 1986.
“There was only one [extinguisher], and it wasn’t in his apartment,” Muriel said. “The fire alarm system in there was from the 1970s when the apartments were built. It was more like a smoke detector rather than an alarm system.”
She said the small size of the apartment and the lack of an air conditioning ventilation system caused the smoke from the fire to stay within the unit.
“His apartment had a window unit, and the only reason one of his neighbors had a ventilation unit was because they installed their own vents,” she said. “The smoke had nowhere to go.”
Muriel said although the smoke detector passed previous inspections, it failed to sound when the fire broke out.
“It was so old,” she said. “The wires were fine, but it still didn’t go off. [Smoke detectors] can be tested by pushing that little button and it can go off, but that’s not going to tell you if it will go off when a fire actually happens.”
SAVING TIME WITH
THE HONOR SYSTEM
Latiolais was not the only University student living in poor safety conditions.
Students in off-campus apartments often find buildings where student tenants are the majority, lack quality housing conditions. One reason is that state and local fire inspections are not always done annually as required.
Managers can neglect to keep up with safety regulations because of an apparent honor code with the Baton Rouge Fire Department.
Kyle Morris, a BRFD fire prevention inspector, said managers and landlords are required to fax signed documents to the department stating that a thorough check of fire extinguishers and smoke detectors has been made. Although every building is required to have an annual inspection by a BRFD inspector, this does not always happen.
“It would be nice if I could get out there every year, but I’ll be straight up and honest with you — that usually doesn’t happen,” Morris said.
He said in some cases, inspectors take the managers’ word when they send the faxes.
“Getting them to fax it helps us as far as trying to negate us from going out there,” Morris said. “We have so many other inspections to do, too, like new construction inspections and we teach classes and stuff, so we stay busy.”
Fire departments in other cities, such as Austin, Texas, take different approaches to cover inspections each year.
Joe Limon, City of Austin Fire Department captain, said his department assigns each of the city’s 41 stations to at least 70 mandatory annual inspections. The city also employs a fire inspection staff to do additional inspections.
Baton Rouge relies on the BRFD and four other fire prevention districts in the area to conduct inspections, but individual station staffs do not inspect. Instead, there are designated districts within East Baton Rouge Parish with specific jurisdictions.
Limon said Austin’s inspection requirements are similar to Baton Rouge’s, but his department’s method tends to cover most areas for annual inspections. This is not always the case for Baton Rouge.
Honor code faxes may save the BRFD a trip to every apartment building, but some think the consequences of poor policy enforcement are far greater than the pros of saving time.
Felicia Cooper, a State Fire Marshal administrator, said the State Fire Marshal’s office does not have jurisdiction over the BRFD, and each district is in charge of its own inspections. The State Fire Marshal’s Office handles state-owned and licensed buildings, such as universities, state department buildings, hospitals or daycare centers.
“If we get a complaint within their jurisdiction, we’ll check it out,” Cooper said. “The only authority we have is to know that they’re inspecting as regularly as we do.”
She said although there are many buildings and inspections to take care of each day, a shortage in manpower should not be a problem.
“If it were in our jurisdiction, we’d be responsible and we wouldn’t just take their word for it,” she said. “Every once in a while we may be spread thin, and would love to have more people on hand, but I don’t think it’s because there’s too many buildings.”
CONDITIONS AT NEARBY
APARTMENTS
A request to BRFD for faxed statements from six nearby apartments, including Genedi Apartments, Oakbrook, Tiger Plaza, Plantation Trace, University Commons, Sterling University Apartments and University House, produced documents only from Tiger Plaza in 1999 and Plantation Trace in 2003.
No letters were provided to BRFD for Oakbrook and Tiger Plaza, and University Commons and Sterling University are outside city limits and BRFD’s jurisdiction.
Both apartments, now under R.W. Day and Associates management, faxed letters to BRFD stating that all units in the complexes were equipped with fire extinguishers and smoke alarms.
A check at Mark Crawford’s, a pre-veterinary medicine sophomore, apartment in Tiger Plaza found that his unit did have a fire extinguisher, last inspected in 2003, fire alarms and a sprinkler system.
Crawford said he feels safe living in Tiger Plaza, and management is pro-active in making sure fire codes are up to standards.
“When we first moved in, we were told to have our fire extinguishers out by the front door to have them checked,” he said.
Some units at Highland Plantation, formerly Plantation Trace until changing management to R.W. Day and Associates, did not produce the same results.
Julian Cheramie, a political science sophomore, said his apartment did have a fire extinguisher under the sink and fire alarms in the unit, but one of his detectors was not mounted or hooked up. He said inspectors visited his place at least twice in the past nine months and he felt safe. But his neighbors did not feel as confident.
John Mclean, a music composition freshman, and Austin Young, a music education sophomore, said their smoke detectors were not in working order when they first moved in.
“We tried to test [the smoke detector] and the whole cover fell off,” Mclean said. “It was horrible.”
Young said he never even thought of whether his apartment was safe until he tried pressing the test button on the smoke detector to have the cover come off and the alarm produce no sound.
“That should have worked when we got here,” he said. “That’s [the manager’s] responsibility. But we generally feel safe.”
A manager from Highland Plantation did answer questions but refused to release her name. She said all apartments in that complex do have fire extinguishers and some have smoke detectors and fire alarms.
“We have annual inspections, and we also check them when people move in and out,” she said.
She said since changing management two months ago, the complex has become better equipped for fire safety. She would not say whether past management did a good or bad job with safety regulations, but promised new management would step up inspections.
But, even regular inspections would not prevent hazards that exist in older buildings. Morris and Cooper said buildings only are responsible for adhering to codes at the time of construction. Therefore, an apartment built in the 1970s such as Latiolais’ would pass an inspection that an apartment built today would fail.
LOOPHOLES IN CODES AND LAWS
Although frequent inspections may deter spotty fire checks, there is only so much inspectors can do within the limits of state laws.
Because renovations are costly, Cooper said it is almost impossible for a fire department to force an apartment manager to comply with current codes.
The State Fire Marshal’s office and BRFD refer to state Life Safety Codes when doing inspections. The codes, updated every three years, list fire prevention requirements for buildings.
Cooper said the State Fire Marshal’s Office has adopted the 2003 edition and will make it effective in July.
The codes are used for every inspection on buildings erected in any year, but exceptions always are made.
“For a building that has been owned since the 1970s, for someone to come in and say you need to do this and this, a manager may not be able to afford that,” Cooper said. “If we think it’s serious enough, we’ll highly recommend to the owner that they make changes, but the law doesn’t allow us to force it on a building unless there’s a major renovation, addition or change in use.”
She said if a building’s renovation costs are at least 50 percent of its original face value, then the State Fire Marshal can ask the management to add any renovations to comply with present-day codes.
But, Cooper said allowances are often made for older apartments because buildings are only responsible for those codes active at the time of their construction.
Those allowances are spelled out in each edition of the Life Safety code. Separate chapters or columns divide safety requirements for apartments into two sections: new and existing apartment buildings.
Cooper said when a building has life-threatening problems, an inspector can use current codes as guidelines, but most of the time inspectors do not have to resort to this.
The 1981 Life Safety Code required that new apartments have approved single-station smoke detectors powered by the unit’s electrical system installed in every living unit, or at least one detector in each apartment. Along with smoke detectors, each new apartment was required to have a “sprinkler system or other detection system installed in the building.” There was also a requirement that each unit have and maintain hand-portable fire extinguishers.
For existing apartments under inspection in 1981, there also was a requirement for single-station smoke detectors and hand-portable fire extinguishers. The code made an exception, however, to sprinkler systems “if the door to the living unit has 20 minutes or greater fire resistance and is self-closing.”
Changes since 1981 for Life Safety Codes in 1991 and 2000 are the installation of smoke detectors in every sleeping room rather one for each apartment, with an exception for those units that have sprinkler systems.
The 1991 code made the installation of sprinkler systems in new buildings mandatory and also required smoke detectors in every apartment “regardless of the number of floors.” It also stated that exemptions no longer were acceptable for single-station alarms in every apartment when a building alarm existed.
“With such a system, when one detector is activated, an alarm is sounded throughout the building,” the code states in chapter 18, section 3.4.4.1. “Experience with complete systems in apartment buildings has shown that numerous false alarms are likely to occur. Where there is a problem with false alarms, occupants tend to ignore the alarm, or the system is either disconnected or otherwise rendered inoperative.”
Codes for 2000, in effect until July, do not allow for omission of smoke detectors when a complete automatic smoke alarm is in place. This is because tenants tend to ignore the automatic systems in apartments where false alarms happen frequently.
However, existing buildings could pass inspection with this exception, and smoke alarms without standby power sources, such as back-up batteries, are permissible.
TRAGEDY DICTATES CHANGE
With every new Life Safety Code edition, older apartments receive more exceptions to the rules. No laws exist that require existing apartments to make renovations every few years, and there is no system that helps owners pay for the costs of making life-saving changes.
Coopers said if enough people wanted to make such a requirement into law, a lobbying effort would get the idea started. She did not seem confident that such a goal would ever be accomplished, however.
“You have to remember that for as many people lobbying for it, you’ll have that many lobbying against it,” she said. “It just depends on who’s the loudest.”
Morris said exceptions written in the codes make it difficult to crack down on ill-prepared apartments, but there is not much anyone can do to change it legally. He said changes to an apartment or management usually occur only when something tragic happens.
In the case of Genedi Apartments, Latiolais’ death finally pushed the owners to do a complete renovation.
Morris inspected the newly restored building April 28 and found that its owner nearly demolished the old structure to make the apartments safer.
“[The owner] put up fire wall protective sheet rock, and put hard-wire smoke alarms and fire extinguishers in every unit,” Morris said. “It’s very, very expensive to do all that, and he did that mostly out of his own pocket. He didn’t have to do that. He could have just done it to that one unit, but he did all of them.
“He told me he doesn’t ever want to go through that again. Some people are willing to do that, and some just want to get their rent and that’s it.”
For those managers who only visit their tenants to collect rent money, and even at apartments where safety is taken seriously, Morris, Cooper and tenants agree that students should take a pro-active role in their own well-being.
On an April 28 routine inspection in a model apartment at Oakbrook Apartments on Nicholson Drive, Morris checked to see that smoke detectors were working. He suggested tenants also push the test button on a smoke detector to hear a short beep, although this same check has proven unreliable as stated by Muriel Latiolais and Highland Plantation tenant Austin Young.
Morris said students also can check their fire extinguishers to make sure all parts are intact and that the extinguisher can easily be accessible. He warns against burning candles in high-risk areas, such as under drapes or near flammable materials. And late-night pranks of pulling fire alarms only make for slow responses and annoyed neighbors, he said.
“Fire safety is very much common sense,” he said. “Test smoke detectors, change your batteries, make sure your fire extinguisher is up-to-date and everything’s intact. If it’s broken, go talk to your landlord. They usually have a couple extra on hand they could give you.”
He said tenants should expect their landlords to keep safety measures up-to-date because they pay for that service in their rent.
Communicating with landlords and taking some responsibility for safety could prevent more tragedies in a system that makes exceptions for almost every apartment, and sometimes doesn’t catches the mishaps until it’s too late.