NFPA Journal - Fall 2022 - 36

Perspectives
Government Association, was published in April 2021 as
a multi-part series called " The Failures Before the Fires. "
Reyes and Hopkins were recently awarded the 2022 Pulitzer
Prize in Journalism in the local news story category for
their work on the series.
NFPA Journal spoke recently with Reyes and Hopkins to
discuss the details of their award-winning series, what it
reveals about building enforcement practices in cities, and
the lessons that may come from it to improve safety for
residents. Hopkins, formerly with the Better Government
Association, is now a reporter with the Kansas City Beacon.
Reyes, who has since left the Tribune, now works as an
investigative reporter for Insider, Inc.
What led you to investigate fire deaths in Chicago?
MADISON HOPKINS The idea came in August 2018.
There was a horrific house fire where 10 children-nine
from the same family-died in the Little Village neighborhood
of Chicago. It was big national news when it
happened, and in the aftermath, a lot came out in the
media about code violations at the building in the years
leading up to the fire. But after a few weeks, news from it
kind of faded and we never found out the results of those
promised investigations. I started noticing more fires in
the news that were similar, and it was always the same
story: somebody died, it was horrible, it seemed preventable,
and we knew there were early warning signs. But a
lot of times the media coverage would end before we really
understood what happened. So I told my editors that I
wanted to look into this.
According to data you collected, between 2014 and
2019, 42 fires occurred in Chicago buildings where
city officials, as you wrote, " knew of fire safety
problems, and yet failed to crack down on property
owners in time. " What parameters did you use to
determine that the city knew about the fire safety
problems in buildings before a fire occurred?
MH At a very high level, to be included in these 42 fires,
we had to know from public documents that the city was
aware of a fire safety issue before the fatal fire-either
through a resident complaint or a violation found by
an inspector or both. Then we had to have documented
evidence that the problem was not fixed or that there was
no documented evidence to show that it was fixed.
Additionally, we had to know that the issue existed at
the time of the fire and was a factor in causing the fire or
in hindering the victims' escape. For example, say a resident
called to report that there was no heat in their unit.
Even if the city went and found that there was no heat and
then never actually got it fixed, if that fire had nothing
to do with there being no heat, it would not be considered
one of these 42 fires. There had to be that level of
correlation.
36 | NFPA JOURNAL * FALL 2022
When a citizen in Chicago makes a report to the city
about a building problem-such as no heat or working
smoke alarms-what processes are city officials
supposed to follow to address the issue?
MH When a resident calls into 311 and says 'Hey, I'm
having X, Y, Z problem,' somebody from the city is
supposed to go and check that out and then triage the
complaints depending on how serious they are. If they
do find a violation, the inspector uses their judgment to
decide how to route that through three different enforcement
options. For minor things,
they're allowed to just issue a warning
letter telling the landlord to
fix it, and there's no additional
follow-up. There's a medium level,
which is a city administrative hearing,
similar to traffic court. In that
case, most of the penalties are
fines, but technically they are not
supposed to close the case until the
inspector has gone back to verify
that the actual violations have
nfpa.org/
perspectives
Read the Chicago
Tribune/Better
Government
Association series
" The Failures
Before the Fires. "
Listen to the NFPA
Podcast interview
with journalists
Madison Hopkins
and Cecilia Reyes.
been fixed. At the most extreme level for eminent safety
hazards, inspectors can recommend that the city sue the
landlord in circuit court. And that, too, is not supposed
to end until an inspector has gone out and verified that
the problem was fixed. Of course, we found lots of different
issues along that process, but in an ideal world, that is
how it would work.
According to your investigation, where in the
process did things tend to break down?
CECILIA REYES We found that there were breakdowns
at basically every point in the process that Madison just
laid out. That includes the city taking six months or more
to investigate an issue after somebody reports it, and even
examples of completely unanswered complaints.
Inspectors have leeway to basically decide what to do
with each given violation. We found that there were times
when a smoke detector was missing-which is something
that is life-threatening and is supposed to be handled
with the utmost care-but that would end with a warning
notice and no follow-up. We also found cases of city hearings
or even lawsuits that would get dismissed or would
essentially end without those repairs either being done
or being verified by inspectors. Sometimes if the city was
able to get a fine and compliance on some of the found
violations, they would call it good.
There were also administrative issues. For example,
in the violation routing process, we noticed that certain
violations would be in a city hearing when they were
supposed to be filed in a lawsuit. But during the process,
they somehow got dropped and didn't actually make it to
the right court. We found that these administrative issues
http://www.nfpa.org/perspectives
NFPA Journal - Fall 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - Fall 2022
