More apartments evacuated

NEW HAVEN — Another apartment license inspection, two more buildings evacuated.

An apartment complex at 33-35 Howe St. and a second one around the corner at 455 George St., were evacuated Tuesday after fire escapes were found to be unsafe for tenants and firefighters to use.

The Howe Street property is owned by Adar Investments LLC, while the George Street multi-family house is owned by Saturn Properties LLC.

The two first-floor apartments at Howe Street have basements with no exit, but were being used as bedrooms by the tenants. In one case, a man and his grown son were sleeping in the basement rooms, while in the other, a family of two adults and two children had bedrooms in the basement.

“If there was a kitchen fire on the first floor or a furnace room fire in the basement, they wouldn’t have a chance,” Fire Marshal Robert Doyle said, as the only egress was on the first floor.

Doyle said Livable City Initiative inspectors and a fire inspector noticed the rusted-out fire escapes and the illegal sleeping quaters and called him to the scene.

“The fire escapes are in deplorable shape,” Doyle said.

The tenant on the second floor and the tenant on the third floor had to leave because of the problematic fire escape.

There were a total of eight adults and two children in four apartments at 33-35 Howe St. who were going to have to relocate to hotels. Two other apartments in the Howe Street complex were vacant.

Doyle said the owners will have to find them new housing, which will be inspected by the city. He said no tenant would be allowed back to either building until they are fully brought up to code and the fire escapes replaced.

At the George Street building, they were evacuating the second and third floors because of an unstable fire escape that could leave the tenants on the upper floors trapped in a fire with only one means of egress.

The situation is not as dire as 66 Norton St., where 37 families had to move out when severe structural problems were uncovered there as part of a routine apartment licensing inspection by LCI.

Doyle said the public should feel free to contact his office if they spot dangerous situations in their apartments. “We will jump on it,” he said.

“If you see something, say something. We are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. People shouldn’t be living in any basement. People shouldn’t be living in an attic,” Doyle said.

Doyle described the fire escape at 33-35 Howe St. as “swiss cheese. Honestlly it needs to be replaced. There is no way to fix it.”

The other one (at 455 George St.) “when you stand on it it feels like it is coming off the building,” Doyle said.

He had a message for any property owner with a questionable fire escape on their buildings.

“It would be in your best interest to take care of it now,” the fire marshal said.

The problem was discovered around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday.

“Now that we know about it, nobody can sleep here tonight,” Doyle said.

The inspectors and Doyle were still working to notify the people in the George Street apartment building, but they believed there were at least two adults living there.

Doyle said the inspectors can’t be everywhere all the time, but they do now have the full complement of 11 positions filled.

He said there are more than 20,000 buildings to inspect. “It’s impossible to get to every single one of them,” Doyle said, and the inspections are supposed to be conducted annually.

It takes nine months to train an inspector, plus they need time to get acclimated to the area and then up to speed on applying the building code properly.

Jose Carlos Rodriguez and his brother Alberto Rodriguez were two of the tenants in a first-floor apartment on Howe Street, which also had sleeping quarters in the basement where another brother and a nephew slept.

The inspection took them by surprise and they were waiting to find out where they would be staying on Tuesday night before having to get up to start work at 5 a.m.

“We just found out,” Carlos Rodriguez said.

In the basement there was a door at one end of the furnace room, but it was locked from the outside. Doyle said even if there was egress, a furnace room is too dangerous as an escape route.

The brothers said they were thinking of moving out of the $1,395 a month apartment as it is hard to get the new manager to do repairs. Two months ago their living room was flooded when a pipe burst upstairs. The ceiling light fixture is still not fixed after it was damaged by the water.

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly listed the owner of both buildings as Pike International LLC.

Source: New Haven Register, “More apartments evacuated” By Mary E. O’Leary Updated 10:54 pm, Wednesday, April 4, 2018 mary.oleary@hearstmediact.com call 203-641-2577