Fire in Granite Falls- Shuford Mills Building

We have the same issues here in Wilmington. A lot of the downtown buildings don't have sprinklers due to being "grandfathered" in. Most of those are the high occupancy buildings where you would want protection, i.e. night clubs. Our Fire & Life Safety division does stay on top of the buildings that do have sprinklers, though. If it was originally built with it, you have to keep it maintained. If you're changing the use of the building, you have to bring it up to code. It would appear the inspector in GF did his job and caught the errors, fate just caught up with the building.
 
maulcruiser said:
We have the same issues here in Wilmington. A lot of the downtown buildings don't have sprinklers due to being "grandfathered" in. Most of those are the high occupancy buildings where you would want protection, i.e. night clubs. Our Fire & Life Safety division does stay on top of the buildings that do have sprinklers, though. If it was originally built with it, you have to keep it maintained. If you're changing the use of the building, you have to bring it up to code. It would appear the inspector in GF did his job and caught the errors, fate just caught up with the building.
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Second to last sentence.......
Ok off my soap box. I gotta get my butt off NC and do paper work.
Seriously glad nobody lost a life. Could have been majorly worse than it was.
 
All the buildings in that complex had sprinkler in them but had been disconnected because they needed work. The owner was not keeping up with the matnance and care of the buildings. When he got the buildings they had already been run down and in need of lots of matnance. I heard he was trying to fix the buildings up. But It was taking time.
 
GotWood said:
Due to the age of the building they may not have required sprinklers. We don't have sprinklers in our FD :eek: because of the age of the building. Also no exhaust collection in the bay which backs up to the living quarters.


A couple years ago my friends cabinet shop burnt down. The original building was built in the 50's and when the fire Marshall arrived they really got shitty with him until they discovered he had no insurance. The lack of sprinklers was a combination of age and the fact that the building hadn't been inspected since the 80's. It has just slipped off of the desk somewhere and never seen again.

Lots of these old Mills and factories around here are owned by an individual that inherited it down the line and is just holding it for the property. If they can make enough to pay the taxes they have won. Now he can sell the property to Dollar General and move on. As long as no one was hurt the tenants probably don't have the funds to mount a proper lawsuit.
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Building had sprinklers installed. The Fire Marshal wrote him up for not having them maintained/serviced. Not sure of the exact code requirements but generally sprinkler systems are inspected semi-annually but annually at the longest period. The fire extinguishers are required an annual maintenance/inspection and from the write up it seems like it wasnt getting done either and there was minimal coverage. FM can require him to do a fire watch which would seem wasn't getting done because I'm not sure how that size fire could be missed on an hourly walk thru. End of the day it was excellent that no one and no fireman got hurt battling the fire. No reasonable FM will let you have a building around here that has sprinklers and not keep them maintained (Weather you have insurance or not)
 
from the book of faces, friend of a friend page:

Lena Wilson Was y'all at work when it happened?
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· July 21 at 7:50pmManage

Cindy Trent We were inside
The ceiling was on fire above us but we had no clue. Couldn't see it
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· Reply · July 22 at 12:34amManage

Lena Wilson So thankful you all got out safe.
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· July 22 at 12:36amManage

Cindy Trent If boss hadn't called I don't think we would have gotten out
 
:eek: All I got.
 
paradisePWoffrd said:
I think it's interesting that the FM inspected it 2 days before it caught fire. Coincidence I'm sure.
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Reputable fire sprinkler service or alarm companies will send out letters to the local jurisdiction if services are to be terminated for any reason (usually non-payment). I'm curious as to if that happened in this case.
 
Macdaddy4738 said:
Reputable fire sprinkler service or alarm companies will send out letters to the local jurisdiction if services are to be terminated for any reason (usually non-payment). I'm curious as to if that happened in this case.
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Speaking from within the industry, this doesn't happen as often as you would think. Most AHJ don't ask for / want you to tell them every single account you lost. Reason being is their are some companies that will charge a high price and get mad when the customer refuses service. This happened to me last week: One of my customers has several locations, bought a new building, existing fire contractor comes in and wants to do work, customer says "No thanks, I already have a contractor I work with" guy gets mad and calls fire marshal up saying that they refused service (Service wasn't even due till following month anyway) and system was past due, fire marshal comes out on unscheduled visit for nothing wrong.

From the inspection report I doubt this is what happened in this case. The guy probably bought the building and either didn't know or found out how much it cost to have the system brought back up to code and didn't have the funds.
 
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