Lou DeCiantis, owner of Lou’s Laundry in Warwick, didn’t realize he could ask the R.I. Fire Safety Code Board of Appeal and Review for relief from installing a new $15,000 fire alarm system in his business.
That point was brought to his attention at last week’s first hearing of the House Oversight Commission to Study the Ramifications of the Fire Safety Code, co-chaired by Rep. Peter T. Ginaitt, D-Warwick, and Rep. Joseph Trillo, R-Warwick.
The commission was set up to hear testimony from anyone affected by the requirements of the Comprehensive Fire Safety Act of 2003, which was passed after The Station nightclub fire killed 100 people four years ago.
“The time is certainly right to sit here today and listen to … how you see this has impacted your business,” Ginaitt told the more than 50 people who attended.
He said the commission would consider input from business owners, civic organizations, nonprofits and state and local fire officials to determine what changes, if any, need to be made to the fire code to make it more business friendly.
DeCiantis was one of several testifying business owners who were advised to seek help from the board of appeals. Ginaitt said one of the things the commission has found is that almost all businesses that have gone before the board “were given some remedy.”
“The board understands [state fire codes] maybe to a better degree … maybe a little bit more than the local jurisdictions,” Ginaitt said. “The problem is getting it out [to business owners] that they can get a hearing.”
But R.I. Fire Marshal George Farrell said business owners, when issued a violation from their local assistant deputy state fire marshal, should receive a letter that also says they have 30 days to appeal to the board.
“Once you apply for a hearing … everything stops,” Farrell said. “Therefore, even if you wait two or three months to get before the board, you don’t have to make any changes until the board tells you.”
DeCiantis said he had received such a letter, and upon closer inspection, he noticed the paragraph about the appeals process. But appealing is not something he would naturally think to do, he said, because he’s so used to dealing with his local fire department.
That wasn’t the only public-awareness issue that came up.
“We learned [at the hearing] that blanket variances that occur at the state level don’t get disseminated by local jurisdictions,” Ginaitt said.
Though there are links to the approved variances on the state fire marshal’s Web site, Farrell said, the trouble is making sure all the local fire departments are aware of them.
In addition, the fire marshal’s office and the board of appeals depend on trade associations to get the word out to business owners, and that leaves room for some to fall through the cracks.
“We want to fix these problems,” Ginaitt said. “It should not be up to the business community to cut through the bureaucratic tape.”
Another issue brought up was the inconsistency in enforcement of the code.
Though Narragansett Pellet Co. in East Providence hasn’t been affected by the new code, the company’s story of how and why it has yet to get approval to operate after five months of hearings before the board of appeals reflects the inconsistencies between what the board decides and what local officials require, said John Cardin, vice president of the company.
“The problem is that your decisions are not being followed,” Cardin told Tom Coffey, executive director of the board, at the hearing. “You make a decision and then nobody follows through with the decision.”
Cardin added: “We’ve spent $4 million to $5 million dollars on this operation, and we’re sitting in there every day, and we’re miserable. … We’ve lost $15 million in contracts … 34 employees have been trained that are now having to look for new jobs.”
Farrell said a lot of the problem stems from unclear messages going back and forth between Narragansett Pellet and the local fire authorities.
Ginaitt added that there is a heightened sense of urgency in this case because the company manufactures a highly combustible product in a residential area.
“We want to see Narragansett Pellet Co. up and running,” he said.
The commission also wanted to find out whether business owners support repealing the new code, as Trillo has proposed, or tweaking it, said Ginaitt, who opposes a repeal.
Next, the commission will hear testimony from the fire safety inspectors and assistant deputy state fire marshals regarding frustrations, if any, in implementing the codes, Ginaitt said.
“We could hear testimony well into May and then put a bill out,” he said. “We need not be hasty with this. We want to really look at this, analyze the situation.”
