PROVIDENCE -- The "grandfather" clause exempting older buildings from modern fire regulations would be eliminated, and fire marshals would be authorized to write tickets for fire-code violations under a package of recommendations from the Fire Safety Code Board of Appeal & Review.
The recommendations will be submitted in draft form to the special 17-member legislative commission studying fire safety. The review board will tweak and finalize its recommendation in the coming weeks.
The General Assembly created the 17-member panel in the days after The Station nightclub disaster on Feb. 20. Fireworks used to open a rock show are blamed for igniting packing foam used as soundproofing around the stage in the West Warwick club. The fire spread in seconds; it killed 99 people and injured about 190.
Tom Coffey, the Fire Safety Code Board's executive director and its representative on the panel, drafted the 11 pages of recommendation that the members reviewed Tuesday. Many are technical suggestions related to organizing the state's fire code to make it more "user-friendly," Coffey said.
Deleting the grandfather clause that exempts older buildings, such as The Station, from Rhode Island's updated fire codes may be the most dramatic suggestion.
The state modernized its codes in 1996, adopting the standards of the National Fire Protection Association. Under those standards, fire sprinklers are required for places of assembly that have a capacity of more than 300.
The Station's maximum capacity was 404 under certain conditions, according to West Warwick town documents. But the roughly 50-year-old building was exempt from the 1996 regulations, due to the grandfather clause, and operated under 1968 fire codes.
"What we want to do is to adopt the NFPA standards not just for new but for existing structures, and then also add the current Rhode Island state code we have for a lot of these buildings, which exceeds the standards," Coffey said.
He said that building owners probably would need a grace period to comply with the new codes if the fire laws are significantly revamped.
"There probably would have to be some kind of phasing, very similar to when we adopted the 1968 code," Coffey said. "Everyone was given five years to bring their buildings into compliance at that time. Whatever phasing lines there would be would be determined by the [General Assembly's] fire-safety commission."
That legislative commission is also expected to consider more stringent sprinkler requirements for places of assembly, perhaps extending the requirements to even smaller venues.
Authorizing marshals to write tickets for fire-code violations would improve enforcement, Coffey said.
"What we're trying to do with the tickets is [target] the maintenance, the blocked exits, the fire alarms and the sprinkler systems that weren't properly certified, the emergency lighting," Coffey said. The fines would rise in scale -- small for a first offense and "far more substantial" for a third offense, he said.
The recommendations also include doubling the state fire marshal's term in office, to 10 years, to provide insulation from politics; increasing pay scales in the fire marshal's office; restoring the pay of Fire Safety Code Board members; and numerous language changes to current codes.
