City Had Been Warned About Rowhouse

Inspectors Comb Building After 1 Dies, 7 Hospitalized for Illness From Fumes

Fabricio Barrigatos, left, said he and Maricio Vasques, center, were among seven people who paid rent to live in the Columbia Heights house. (Photos By Lois Raimondo -- The Washington Post)

Top D.C. housing regulators acknowledged yesterday that they did not act on requests made months ago to inspect the interior of a Northwest Washington rowhouse where a man died and several others became ill Monday after suffering apparent carbon monoxide poisoning.

The Columbia Heights house was the subject of neighborhood complaints about trash and rats for months. In a June e-mail, a D.C. Council member's staff employee urged city regulators to inspect the building because it was "possibly an illegal rooming house."

City officials said the employee who received that e-mail did not forward that allegation to zoning inspectors. The employee left the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs in September.

Officials inspected the outside of the property three times between June and November but never tried to enter the building to see whether it was an unlicensed rooming house, authorities said.

"It is clear that it got dropped," said Linda Argo, a spokeswoman for the department. "It didn't get communicated to" the proper inspectors.

The owner of the house, Bladimir Cruz, would not comment.

Authorities said one man died and seven others were hospitalized, including a D.C. police detective, for suspected carbon monoxide poisoning connected to the house in the 1000 block of Spring Road NW.

Three of the people were rushed to hospitals Monday in serious condition and treated in special chambers for carbon monoxide poisoning. They were listed in stable condition yesterday, police said.

The victims were discovered by a friend about 8:30 a.m. Monday. Authorities believe the carbon monoxide was in exhaust gas from a furnace. The gas became trapped in a clogged chimney and spread throughout the house.

The dead man, identified as the 25-year-old boyfriend of a resident, was in an upstairs bedroom. Officials discovered a carbon monoxide detector and alarm on the wall outside the bedroom, but it had no batteries and was not working at the time of the incident, authorities said.

Police did not release the man's name yesterday because they were still trying to confirm his identity. Authorities said at least six people, including the owner, lived in the two-story rowhouse. They were construction laborers who worked for the owner of the house, authorities said.

One of them, Fabricio Barrigatos, 25, said yesterday in a brief interview outside the house that he had lived there for more than two years and paid about $350 a month in rent.