High-rises without sprinklers put hundreds of elderly residents at greater risk

John Reynolds sat inside his dingy, fifth-floor efficiency apartment on a recent morning, blowing plumes of smoke from his Pall Mall out an open window.

With snowy hair and bright blue eyes, Reynolds, 72, has lived at the 10-story Aurora Apartments, built across from Crockett Park on Howard Street north of downtown San Antonio, for eight years.

From the outside, the 105-unit high-rise built in 1929 resembles an elegant, old building plucked from a ritzy part of Manhattan, but on the inside it lacks a sprinkler system, a life-saver in the event of a fire.

Reynolds is one of more than 700 elderly people, many of whom depend on wheelchairs and walkers to get around, living in older high-rises without sprinklers that cater to seniors in San Antonio.

Their vulnerability was evident when five residents died Dec. 28 in an early-morning fire at the Wedgwood, a senior apartment complex without sprinklers in Castle Hills. Dozens more had to helped or carried out, some down ladders. A sixth person died a few days later though the causes might not be fire related.

Plagued with spinal problems, Reynolds must use a cane to walk, and even then it’s slow going. He’s not sure what he’d do if his room caught fire — as it almost did recently when he accidentally ignited his chair’s upholstery with a cigarette.

“I poured water on it,” he said.

On the wall above Reynolds’ head was a temporarily disabled smoke detector. Blanca Olmeda, Reynolds’ personal caregiver, said she believed someone from the building removed the battery two months ago because the alarm kept going off whenever she cooked. It was just recently repaired.

Nine residential high-rises lack sprinklers in San Antonio, including five that cater to seniors, according to fire officials. In their alarming similarities, those buildings represent five potential Wedgwoods waiting to happen — aging high-rises filled with frail residents who would have trouble escaping a fire. The Wedgwood, shuttered for now, had 200-plus residents; the five have roughly three times that number.

Fire officials have said that, if the Wedgwood had sprinklers, there likely wouldn’t have been any — or as many — casualties.

Like the Wedgwood, the five high-rises have been “grandfathered” out of a requirement that such buildings have sprinkler systems, since they were built before 1982, the year the city of San Antonio began mandating such protection.

Two aren’t required to release their fire inspection reports, shielding any possible deficiencies from public view.

San Antonio City Council members, after the Wedgwood fire, voted to adopt the 2015 fire codes, leaving out an option that would have required owners to retrofit the older buildings with sprinklers, even though many cities and states have successfully done just that, usually as a result of fatal fires.

Fire department officials, shaken by the Wedgwood tragedy, are in the midst of a study that could lead to retrofitting. While some are already questioning the cost of forcing owners to add sprinklers, others say no price is too high to protect lives.

In the past decade in Texas, no one has died in a fire in a multifamily residential complex with sprinkler systems. In that same period, there were 114 fire deaths in multifamily complexes lacking that technology. Studies show the risk of dying in a home fire drops by 80 percent if sprinklers are present. They can, in some cases, control and even extinguish a fire in less time that it takes for firefighters to arrive. The International Association of Fire Chiefs recommended in 2010 that all existing high-rises be required to retrofit with sprinklers.

In four of the high-rises for seniors, residents are also low income, and so rely on public rent assistance and have few other options when it comes to where to live, given a dearth of public housing and a wait list of more than 15,000 people.

One, the Aurora, is privately owned but the federal government pays a portion of residents’ rents. Three of the five high-rises are owned outright by the San Antonio Housing Authority, which gets the bulk of its funding from the federal government — the same government that doesn’t allow its own employees to stay in motels or hotels without sprinklers, such is the danger.

A building is classified as a high-rise if it has levels above 75 feet — abour seven or eight floors — the height beyond which a fire department’s hoses typically cannot reach from ground level.

Unlike the Wedgwood, which was inspected by the Castle Hills Fire Department, the five high-rises aren’t subject to routine inspection by the San Antonio Fire Department. Instead, as in most cities across Texas, the task falls to a host of private, for-profit contractors, who are hired by owners to make sure fire prevention systems are installed and maintained properly.

At times, the state fire marshal has determined some contractors aren’t doing their jobs.

In the last five years alone, the state fire marshal ordered more than 200 disciplinary actions — usually financial penalties — against private contractors statewide, according to an online database. That figure is dwarfed by the number of violations that drew less punitive measures, such as warning letters — more than 500 cases over the same time period, according to a state fire marshal’s office spokeswoman.

These infractions come to the state fire marshal’s attention only when residents, the local fire marshal or a contractor’s competitors file a complaint, she said.

Moreover, these private contractors aren’t required to file their routine fire inspection reports with either city or state fire marshals’ offices, even for buildings where rents are partially funded by taxpayer dollars. They must provide the reports if state or local fire authorities request them, but generally that only happens if a problem comes to light, said officials.

Fire inspections look at such things as whether fire extinguishers, smoke detectors and fire alarms are operable and fire exits aren’t blocked — life-saving measures that become even more essential in the absence of sprinklers.

Property owners do receive a copy of fire inspection reports. The San Antonio Housing Authority, as an owner, receives the records and will release them under an open records request, a spokeswoman said.

But being private companies, contractors and some property owners aren’t required to give them to the media or residents.

Neither can the government be compelled: The state fire marshal recently declined to obtain and release fire inspection reports on the two privately owned high-rises — the Aurora and Northview Tower condos — at the request of the Express-News when it was unable to get them from owners.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has a rent-subsidy contract with the Aurora’s owner, doesn’t routinely receive the reports and thus couldn’t provide them, a spokeswoman said.

Starting three years ago, when a deadline kicked in requiring all apartments in San Antonio to have smoke detectors, the fire department began voluntarily inspecting rental residences for compliance, even though it’s not required by law.

But the program is constrained by the sheer number of complexes and a lack of manpower, officials said — even when inspections are done, inspectors only have to check a minimum of four units at a complex.

All these gaps in monitoring are evident in Reynolds’ apartment, for which he pays $240 a month out of his disability check for the $763 rent.

In addition to the temporarily disabled smoke detector, last summer, when a kitchen fire erupted on his floor, firefighters couldn’t enter through an interior stairwell door, the caretaker Olmeda said. She said she believed management had locked it and others to deal with a theft problem, she said.

Mitch Meyer, a director of Aurora LLC, the owner of the building, didn’t return repeated calls for comment. A HUD spokeswoman said a recent site visit of the property found no complaints about doors being locked.

But a SAFD spot inspection report from January reads: “There have been multiple occasions where firefighters (at the Aurora) have reported concern that interior stairway doors are only operable for the egress side,” in violation of fire codes.

A manager told an inspector that residents themselves locked the doors, according to the report. No citation was issued because a follow-up inspection found no locked doors, a SAFD official said.

Olmeda said she worries about her client and others in the building.

“A lot of them are bedridden,” she said. “What would they do in a fire? They’d be trapped. But these people worry if they complain too much, they’ll get evicted.”

A few other residents of the Aurora voiced the same fear — that if they speak publicly about their fears or complaints, they might find themselves on the street.

At-risk populations

Studies show certain populations, such as the elderly and disabled, are at increased risk in structure fires, especially those in high-rises — they often don’t hear or get awakened by smoke alarms and they struggle to evacuate, as Wedgwood demonstrated.

Firefighters also face greater challenges in high-rise fires, which pose more hazards, including an accelerated spread of smoke and flames.

Until the Wedgwood fire, the San Antonio Fire Department didn't maintain any comprehensive list or database that tracked the city’s high-rise apartments, including those that lacked sprinklers and housed mainly seniors. The only record has been an automated dispatch system that tells firefighters in route to a building such basic information as the location of fire hydrants.

That’s changing in the wake of Wedgwood. In recent weeks, firefighters have tromped through the 89 tall buildings in San Antonio built before 1982, including hotels, to determine which have sprinkler systems.

Since the Wedgwood fire, San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood has made two presentations to City Council members, explaining the optional part of the 2015 fire code that allows cities to require owners of older high-rises to retrofit with sprinklers.

On Wednesday, several council members voiced support in moving forward — and soon.

Councilmember Mike Gallagher fretted that “seniors are in danger as we sit here.”

As the first step toward a possible ordinance, the fire department started a feasibility study that will bring to the table various “stakeholders” — government agencies, industry professionals, architects and others — to discuss the pros and cons of a mandated high-rise retrofit. Hood estimates the study could take three to six months; he hopes to present recommendations to the City Council by summer.

Fire officials know it’s an uphill battle because of the costs involved. But those who provide services to the elderly in high-rises without sprinklers are astounded that such perilous conditions have been allowed to continue.

“Why even put seniors in these kinds of buildings?” asked Adelita Moran, a personal care provider at the Aurora. “It’s just crazy.”

Few retroactive codes

Building and fire codes get updated in three-year cycles, and over time, they tend to become “safer and stricter,” said Roderick Sanchez, director of development services for San Antonio.

For example, devices that stop electrical fires were at first only required in bedrooms, he said. Over time, codes evolved and it became mandatory to install them in other areas as well.

However, few codes are retroactive.

“It just doesn't happen,” said Sanchez. Most of the time, buildings are allowed to follow the codes that were in force when they were constructed.

Only two instances require an owner to adopt the new codes: A major renovation or a change of occupancy — say, from a doctor's office to a restaurant.

In Castle Hill, records show none of the renovations done at Wedgwood going back to 2008 constituted the kind of work that would have caused the newer codes to kick in.

Sanchez said the benefits of retrofittting must be weighed against the costs.

“What will the financial impact be?” he said. “Would most businesses even be able to afford it? Or would it close them down?"

Teri Bilby, executive director of the San Antonio Apartment Association — one of the stakeholders in the feasibility study — said her group is unsure of the financial cost or other burdens a retrofit ordinance might impose on local residential high-rise owners.

“However, we will work with the city to try to find a workable solution for everyone,” she said in an email.

The Aurora Apartments is currently valued at $4.5 million. In fiscal year 2014, HUD paid almost $720,000 in rent subsidies for Aurora residents to Meyer’s company, according to an agency spokeswoman.

In 2013 and 2014, SAFD incident reports show firefighters were called to the building more than 20 times, usually to rescue elderly residents trapped in one of two elevators.

One battle already won

Forcing owners who provide housing to vulnerable and disabled populations to install sprinklers is a battle the city has faced before — and won.

After a fire killed four residents in a boarding home in 2012, the city passed an ordinance that requires such residences to have sprinklers and a host of other safety and health measures. Boarding homes, typically small-scale operations, provide room, board and basic services to three or more elderly or physically/mentally disabled people.

During debate over the ordinance, officials faced resistance from some owners and advocates, who argued the rule would force hundreds of homes out of business.

But since the sprinkler requirement, more than 50 boarding home operators have stepped up to get the permit, said a city spokeswoman.

Sanchez said senior high-rises involve more residents than boarding homes, so a retrofit project could potential pose considerable disruption.

“There are a lot of things to consider,” he said.

The people who live in senior living complexes — like the Wedgwood and the Aurora — ostensibly require less care than those living in assisted living facilities or nursing homes, which are regulated by the state and must have sprinkler systems.

But many Wedgwood residents had hearing and vision troubles, age-related cognitive problems and required walkers and canes to get around — disabilities that complicated the evacuation of the building. Although the residents opted to live at the Wedgwood, some have asked whether the state needs to step in and monitor similar complexes that specifically market to seniors.

“If you’re in a nursing home, if you’re in an assisted-living facility, there are all kinds of federal and state regulations about fire safety,” said Michelle Maloney, an attorney who has sued Wedgwood managers and owners on behalf of a number of residents, claiming negligence. “The fact that this is a facility that houses people who fit that same demographic in a lot of respects yet are afforded none of the same safety precautions is a huge issue.”

Gaps in fire safety system

Christian Bove, a SAFD spokesman, argues that the for-profit contractors that oversee fire prevention systems in residential high-rises have a financial incentive to make owners fix deficiencies and keep things in good working order since they are paid for repairs and upkeep.

But the state fire marshal database shows that some contractors fall short. Some violations are minor, such as failing to attach the proper tag to a repair. Others are more serious — one contractor was fined $45,000 for multiple installation failures. Some violations are so egregious that contractors lose their licenses.

A city’s fire department must inspect a contractor’s initial installation of fire protection system, as well as any repairs requiring permits or any complaints that arise.

Since private contractors aren’t required to file their reports with officials or release them to the public, it’s hard to know how thorough or ethical a job companies do — who is routinely watching the watchers?

When asked about this, Rachel Moreno of the Texas Department of Insurance replied that “shady actions by owners can take place in any industry.”

Bove said the fire department’s inspectors who check for smoke detector compliance also look for other “red flags” when they’re in a building. But with almost 1,400 apartment complexes in the city, “there's no guarantee every single apartment is inspected every single year,” he said.

Records show the fire department visited all five senior high-rises without sprinklers in recent years, either because of reported problems, such as backed-up trash chutes, as part of the smoke alarm compliance program or to ensure a private contractor has tagged its work correctly and the inspection is up to date.

Hood said another layer of protection exists for the elderly residents of high-rises without sprinklers: When EMS and other fire department personnel respond to health emergencies — frequent occurrences at those buildings — it brings another set of fire-safety-trained eyes to catch problems.

But those visits don’t amount to comprehensive inspections, Bove acknowledges.

“That would take many more resources and cooperation with the renters, who have privacy rights,” he said. “We can't just barge in without permission, nor can the owner.”

Smoke detectors are proven effective in saving lives. But landlords are only responsible for making sure they’re installed correctly; it’s up to renters to make sure they continue to work and to complain to management when they don’t.

Sprinklers step in when these human-dependent systems fail, experts said.

“They put the fire out, that's why they're the gold standard in terms of safety,” said Michael Shannon with the city’s developmental services office. “I don't think anyone's going to argue that. The question is, 'What is enough?’”

For Sharon Holgate, whose brother lives on the fourth floor of the Villa Tranchese Apartments, an 11-story, 201-unit high-rise built in 1967 and owned and operated by the San Antonio Housing Authority, the answer is simple.

“There should be sprinklers,” said Holgate, who lives in Castle Hills and saw the Wedgwood fire play out on TV. “It should be a requirement.”

Richard Holgate, a frail man with failing kidneys who had trouble answering basic questions on a recent afternoon, can barely walk and uses a wheelchair. Recently, he fell in the bathroom and couldn’t reach a “panic button” mounted on the wall. Sharon and her husband found him on the floor, covered in blood.

“He’s completely deaf,” she said. “The alarms are always going off in his building by mistake, and that really worries me. Sprinklers would save lives.”

Jose Pequeno, 63, sat before the elevator in his wheelchair in the breezeway near Holgate’s unit. A retired plumber who is hobbled by diabetic neuropathy, Pequeno said he’s not sure what he’d do in a fire.

He glances down the long breezeway at the fire escape some 200 feet away. It might as well be five football fields away, he joked.

“Thank God a fire hasn’t happened here,” he said. “But it could.”

The cost of protection

Vickie Pritchett, a spokeswoman with the National Fire Sprinkler Association, said she finds it troubling that the four high-rises in San Antonio without sprinklers rent to low-income seniors and get government subsidies.

“Local governments can exempt out of (sprinkler) requirements, but when they do they're accepting a lot of liability, in my opinion,” she said. “All it will take is one big lawsuit to get their attention.”

The two agencies involved in the subsidy programs are HUD and, locally, SAHA. Typically, residents pay 30 percent of their income — often from disability benefits — to the high-rise owner. The government pays the rest.

HUD, in general, often fields calls from residents complaining about sub-standard living conditions, such as mold or bed bugs, said one HUD official.

“We get a lot of them,” said Patricia Campbell, a public liaison in Fort Worth, who added that the recent Aurora site visit found no such problems.

Further, the Austin company that fields 1-800 complaints from Aurora residents has received only seven calls since 2012, none of which involved life-threatening or quality-of-life issues, she added.

“Sometimes residents are hesitant to complain, but they need to do so to the property manager, and they need to document it in writing,” Campbell said. “If they’re not satisfied, they need to complain to HUD.”

She said she couldn’t comment on HUD’s position regarding high-rise sprinkler retrofits, and that its policies don’t supersede local codes.

For SAHA’s part, adding sprinklers to its three senior high-rises would be financially untenable, because of a chronic shortfall of funds, said spokeswoman Melanie Villalobos.

A recent analysis by a third party found SAHA required $300 million to attend to building improvement needs at its 70 public housing properties. Out of its $187 million annual budget, most of which comes from HUD, SAHA has $7 million it can use in any year for building improvements.

“Money is our biggest challenge,” she said, adding that SAHA has in recent years installed sprinklers at two of its six-floor buildings, as part of major renovations that together cost $13.8 million. The agency installed sprinklers at a 15-story senior high-rise in 2002 in a renovation that cost $6.6 million.

Cameron French, a Washington spokesman for HUD, now headed by former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro, said the secretary doesn’t comment on local jurisdictional matters, such as whether HUD-subsidized high-rises for seniors in any particular city should have sprinklers.

The going price in Texas for installing sprinkler retrofits is about $3 to $4 per square feet, Pritchett said.

“The cost of installation is the first thing you hear,” whenever cities broach the idea of retrofitting existing buildings with sprinklers, she said. “But you can’t put a price tag on a human life.”

A 'race against time’

When cities do opt to mandate a retrofit, it’s usually in response to some disaster or horrific fire fatality.

That was the case in Houston, which passed an ordinance requiring all high-rises to install sprinklers by 2017. The law was triggered by the 2001 death of Houston Fire Dept. Captain Jay H. Jahnke, a 20-year veteran who was fighting a high-rise apartment blaze.

Houston has more than 500 high-rise buildings — far more than San Antonio — but most owners have complied with the requirement, which is being done in stages and at a cost of multiple millions.

“The only push-back we got was from owners, but they ultimately got on board,” said Houston Fire Marshal Richard Galvan.

Neither Austin nor Dallas requires high-rises to sprinkler retrofit, although the former tried to pass such an ordinance in the early 1990s. It was shot down over costs, said an Austin Fire Department spokesman.

Across the nation, at least 35 states or cities have adopted high-rise sprinkler retrofit rules, although the extent and type varies widely. Some require all high-rises to have sprinklers, some just offices or other types of buildings.

Few states are as strict as Connecticut, where a 1995 law requires all residential buildings housing the elderly with four or more stories to have sprinklers.

In Texas, the only high-rises that must retrofit are college dormitories — a law that came into effect after a series of fatal fires.

By code, cities that adopt a retrofit ordinance typically give owners 12 years to complete the full installation.

At least one local senior high-rise complex built before 1982 made the move to retrofit without an ordinance. Blue Skies of Texas — a high-rise and mid-rise formerly called Air Force Village — took the step in 1996, when a former civil engineer in the Air Force with a background in fire safety joined the board.

“He found out our two buildings weren't sprinkled and pretty readily convinced the rest of the board this was something we needed to do,” said Kathie Estrada, head of corporate compliance. The cost was $860,000, she said.

The upscale Blue Skies — formerly open only to military officers but now expanded to the general population— attracts a more affluent clientele than those housed in government-subsidized senior high-rises.

In a sense, the Wedgwood fire was a catastrophe waiting to happen: Fires in senior living complexes and apartments occur across the nation with depressing regularity.

A perusal of newspaper stories count almost 50 fires in the last five years alone, blazes that claimed the lives of at least 15 elderly people — exclusively in buildings that lacked sprinklers.

Automatic sprinklers were invented in the late 1800s, said Robert C. Andrews of Protection Development Inc., a local fire protection engineering company.

“That’s the thing that always frustrates guys like us,” he said. “This isn't cancer, it isn't AIDS. This isn’t a problem where we're waiting for the technology to be invented. This is a question of economics and political will.”

Hood and others from the department recently met with Pritchett to discuss a possible sprinkler retrofit ordinance, he said.

In addition to visiting the high-rises to create a new database, the fire department also plans to hold meetings in buildings catering to seniors to educate residents and staff on fire safety and evacuation procedures.

“We have to have the discussion” about sprinklers, said Hood, who speaks of the personal impact of seeing elderly people waiting for rescue from balconies and windows at Wedgwood. “I think it’s something that we work toward.”

Hood talks about the “chicken little effect” — how residents get inured to the sound of false fire alarms and even firefighters grow complacent after multiple calls to the same building turn out to be nothing.

He also talks about “opportunity management” — using the Wedgwood tragedy to wake people up in San Antonio, to galvanize them “so that hopefully it doesn’t happen here.”

“Sprinklers and better training of folks at the Wedgwood would have saved more lives than 100 firefighters,” Hood said. “Fires represent a race against time, and sprinklers buy everybody time. Including us.”

mstoeltje@express-news.net

Twitter: @mstoeltje

Staff Writer Drew Joseph contributed to this story.