There are nearly 500 fire code violations in the D.C. school system, a formidable obstacle likely to take the rest of the school year and millions of dollars to overcome, officials told The Examiner Tuesday.
Tony Robinson, director of communications for school facilities chief Allen Lew, said the 492 existing violations are down from a high of 2,520 fire code failings a few months ago.
Roughly 2,000 violations were mostly taken care of during the so-called summer repairs blitz, when crews installed air conditioning units and other essential equipment in half of the district’s schools.
“We were able to make a big dent during that time,” Robinson said.
Still, to correct the rest of the deficiencies, work will likely continue throughout the school year so that “going into next year we have a clean slate,” he added.
Fire code violations can vary substantially from a blocked door to excessive piles in front of windows.
Maintenance workers and firefighters are in the midst of reviewing the outstanding code violations.
However, according to Robinson, 125 of the violations are related to fire extinguishers, and 55 are from “improper storage,” meaning that there are objects piled in front of classroom and school building doors.
Lew’s office’s current counts also show that the backlog of open work orders is 7,868, down from more than 20,000 during the summer.
Tackling both these work orders and the fire code violations will be paid for as part of the $120 million Lew has said he’ll spend to stabilize D.C. public schools facilities in the next 12 months.
Fire code violations have a long history in The District. Ten years ago the troubled system made national news when a judge declared that every single code violation had to be fixed before classes could resume, a ruling that caused the opening of schools to stall for three weeks. At some junctures in the 1990s D.C. schools had as many as 10,000 fire code violations.
Robinson said it’s unclear why there are hundreds of outstanding fire code violations but that it’s a problem Lew inherited when he took office three months ago.
