Fire Chief: Harbortown Fire ‘Nothing Short Of Miracle’

(Reprinted from Amboy Beacon, Jan. 19, 2011)

PERTH AMBOY — “What we encountered and what we accomplished” at a

suspicious Dec. 19 fire which destroyed 32-unit Building 15 of the massive

Harbortown complex in the city’s northeastern corner was “nothing short of a

miracle,” Fire Chief David Volk declared at the City Council Caucus early last week.

The four-alarm blaze, which left 100 residents homeless, is still

under-investigation by city detectives and the Middlesex County Arson Unit to

determine what was its cause.

“There were eight injuries reported, including two police officers, and

there were no firefighters injured,” Volk said. “Quite-honestly, I thought we

were going to lose three of those buildings. It could have been

tremendously-worse.”

Witnesses said they believed that Building 15’s sprinkler-system was

inoperable, and that water-pressure was a problem for firefighters.

“To be quite-honest, I don’t know whether they (the sprinklers) went-off,”

Volk said. However, he insisted that “we had no (water-pressure) problems;

the water was there.”

Volk was joined by Code Enforcement Director Edward Scala, who has been

criticized by Harbortown residents for failing to take-action on theor

complaints about alleged deficiencies at the complex, and Deputy Police Chief

Benjamin Ruiz, who did not speak.

Absent from the meeting, without explanation, were the city’s Fire Subcode

Official and Fire Official — the people who would be most-intimately-aware

of any potential problems with Harbortown’s fire-safety standards.

However, Scala did make an important contribution to the ongoing

discussions regarding the units’ construction when he pointed-out that Harbortown is

not subject-to state Department of Community Affairs (DCA) multi-family

inspections because it was designed as “a grouping of single-family units within

a close construction-area.”

He said the walls between units are supposed-to have a “one-hour

fire-rating,” meaning that they would take an hour to burn-through.

However, residents have said that because of the way the attics are

constructed, the fire was channeled unimpeded throughout most of the structure.

Scala conceded that this might be a shortcoming, while noting that that

part of Harbortown was built “four (Uniform Construction) Codes ago,” under

less-stringent requirements than those now in-effect.

But he said “the state should certainly look-to a change in the Code to

have a sprinkler-system in the attic” in future construction, which he will

recommend.

Currently, “the roof area is not required to have a sprinkler-system,”

Scala said, adding that “the (new) Code has just been adopted, and the next

cycle is not for three or four years.”

He noted that “in-excess-of 800 units” have been constructed at

Harbortown, out of a 1,664-unit total approved by the Planning Board.