D.C. building inspectors yesterday shut down six rental properties near the rowhouse where a Georgetown University senior died in a weekend fire, saying conditions were too unsafe for 33 students to continue living there.
City officials said they sent 25 inspectors to the neighborhood near the university and cited various property owners for 150 housing code violations, ranging from insufficient smoke detectors to faulty ventilation and electrical problems.
Inspectors checked the house Georgie Thomas, left, Sean Gray and others share. With midterms coming, moving would be a problem, Thomas said.
(Photos Juana Arias -- The Washington Post)
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Inspectors tried to assess the conditions of 87 properties, but they were able to get permission to enter only 30 houses, officials said. In some cases, no one was home; in others, occupants turned inspectors away.
"Unfortunately, it took an incident like this for people to say, 'Come on in and inspect my housing conditions,' " said David A. Clark, director of the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. "There were a couple of places where the landlord was there this morning and was very cooperative."
Clark said the inspections had been planned but were accelerated after Sunday's death of Daniel Rigby, a 21-year-old business major. Rigby was living in the basement of a rowhouse at 3318 Prospect St. NW, where the fire started. Fire officials blamed faulty wiring leading to a furnace in the basement. They said the house met city codes and had working smoke alarms.
Five of the apartments city officials shut down yesterday were in the 3300 and 3400 blocks of Prospect Street.
An apartment at 3301 Prospect St. needed more smoke detectors and had too much debris in the basement, an inspector found. Six students lived there.
The ceiling in the basement apartment at 3314 Prospect did not meet the mandatory height requirement of 6 feet 9 inches, and there was only one exit, officials said. The basement window had a double set of security bars with an outside lock, visible to passersby. The student who lived in the basement unit moved to a hotel after inspectors noted the problems.
A basement unit at 3332 Prospect, shared by three students, needed safer exits, officials said. Another apartment, at 3401 Prospect, did not have enough smoke detectors. Thirteen students lived there.
A unit at 3405 Prospect, home to three students, was cited after fumes were detected. Fire officials were checking the carbon monoxide levels there, Clark said.
Inspectors found that electrical work had been improperly performed without city permits in an apartment at 1320 35th St. NW. Seven students were asked to leave that building, officials said.
Some students expressed surprise at the inspections' results.
Chris Burling, a 21-year-old senior who is a Chinese major, said that this is the second year he has shared a rowhouse at 3301 Prospect St. There are at least five smoke detectors in the three-story house, he said: two on the second floor, including one in a bedroom; two on the third floor; and one in the living room. Inspectors wanted more.
"They said we need one smoke alarm in every bedroom," said Burling, who is from outside Philadelphia. "It just sounded like, 'Hey, get a smoke alarm.' My mom was always worried about me living in this house."
