You’re right, but people won’t want to hear it. The people on the other side are right, too - it isn’t better to freeze to death than it is to die from smoke inhalation. But you just don’t violate fire code in public buildings, or people die. Anyone could list dozens of examples of this happening with tragic results after a basic web search.
The correct response to this situation would have been for the city government to assist the pastor in meeting the fire code, especially since he is providing a valuable public service by housing the people that nobody else wants to help.
Instead of a peaceful solution that probably would have been cheap to the taxpayer and could have been a PR bonus for the city, they chose to smack him with the letter of the law. Because people freezing to death in the streets isn’t their fault, but people burning to death after the city overlooked a fire code violation would be. All they care about is their liability.
The problem is that this fire code wasn’t written in blood, it was written in cash. The specific code they were violating was that commercial zones cannot house people on the first floor. That’s it. There’s no actual safety issue there.
You’re right, but people won’t want to hear it. The people on the other side are right, too - it isn’t better to freeze to death than it is to die from smoke inhalation. But you just don’t violate fire code in public buildings, or people die. Anyone could list dozens of examples of this happening with tragic results after a basic web search.
The correct response to this situation would have been for the city government to assist the pastor in meeting the fire code, especially since he is providing a valuable public service by housing the people that nobody else wants to help.
Instead of a peaceful solution that probably would have been cheap to the taxpayer and could have been a PR bonus for the city, they chose to smack him with the letter of the law. Because people freezing to death in the streets isn’t their fault, but people burning to death after the city overlooked a fire code violation would be. All they care about is their liability.
The problem is that this fire code wasn’t written in blood, it was written in cash. The specific code they were violating was that commercial zones cannot house people on the first floor. That’s it. There’s no actual safety issue there.
Just so we’re clear, that’s the ground floor?
Correct- in other words, the one that is fastest and easiest to get out of in the case of a fire.