Congress eyes stricter rules for smoke detectors after the deadly Fairmount fire

Six months after a fire in a rowhouse in Philadelphia’s Fairmount neighborhood killed three sisters and nine of their children, Pennsylvania members of Congress are proposing to prevent more deadly blazes by requiring hardwired or tamper-resistant smoke alarms in public housing.

Disconnected or inoperable smoke detectors pose one of the top issues in federally funded housing, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Philadelphia Housing Authority have said. Since the Fairmount fire, the PHA, which operated the home, has found thousands of smoke detectors in its housing units that had been removed or disabled by residents since their last inspection.

The agency has replaced more than 30,000 smoke alarms since January, and inspected all but 5% of its properties, according to PHA President Kelvin A. Jeremiah. The remaining inspections are expected to be completed within the next few weeks, he said Wednesday.

The PHA, which directly controls roughly 13,000 units of public housing, uses alarms that are hardwired or tamperproof and equipped with 10-year batteries.

The legislation introduced last week in Congress would require all operators of public housing nationwide to do the same.

“Public-supported housing must be kept safe,” said Rep. Madeleine Dean (D., Montgomery), who introduced the bill, calling the fire “an unthinkable tragedy.” Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) sponsored the legislation in the Senate.

» READ MORE: ‘Only babies’: After Fairmount fire, Philadelphia mourns an unthinkable loss

The six smoke alarms in the Fairmount unit were inoperable the morning of the Jan. 5 fire, either missing batteries or removed from the wall. The only alarm that went off was one in the basement, which the smoke reached last. It was unclear whether the victims would have had an opportunity to escape even with earlier alarms, and authorities said the root problem was a lack of access to safe, affordable housing.

The tragedy drew attention to the nation’s affordable housing shortage and funding crisis. Other safety issues also came into play: The Fairmount unit did not have a fire escape, sprinkler system, or fire extinguisher, none of which are required for homes of that size. And the PHA faced criticism for having been aware of overcrowding in the home but not having moved the residents.

The blaze, determined to have been started by a child playing with a lighter near a Christmas tree, was one of the deadliest fires in the country in years, and was followed days later by a fire in a Bronx affordable-housing building that killed 17 people.

» READ MORE: Philly fire commissioner after Fairmount blaze: ‘Root cause’ is lack of access to safe, affordable housing

The proposal in Congress would require all new or remodeled federally funded housing units to install hardwired smoke detectors and all existing units to have tamper-resistant sealed smoke alarms with 10-year batteries. The requirements would be enforced through routine inspections.

The bill allocates $2 million for an educational campaign about smoke alarms and other safety measures, but it doesn’t include funding for landlords to replace smoke detectors. In an interview, Casey said more discussions about funding would come after the legislation’s passage.

“This bill is simple, but it’s going to be a bill, I think, that upon passage will begin to save lives,” Casey said. “This is something that should’ve been done a long time ago.”

Dean said Wednesday she was optimistic about the bill’s chances of being approved by the House, citing its quick passage out of the financial services committee. Casey said he hoped to find a pathway to passage in the Senate this year.

The legislation was cosponsored in the House by Democratic Reps. Dwight Evans, Brendan Boyle, and Mary Gay Scanlon, and Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, all of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

Jeremiah said he would like Congress to go further by requiring and paying for sprinkler systems for public housing, as well as hardwired smoke alarms for older buildings. A federal sprinkler mandate for public housing has been previously sought but prevented by a lack of funding, U.S. Fire Administrator Lori Moore-Merrell said after the Fairmount fire.

“In Philadelphia alone, there is almost $2 billion in deferred capital needs, and that goes directly to the level of safety [and] the modernization and upgrade of our buildings’ infrastructure,” Jeremiah said. “We do not want more unfunded mandates on housing authorities that are already cash-strapped.”

The lawmakers acknowledged the deep strain on public housing, saying the system needs to be improved.

“The least that we can do for those who are low income… is make sure that there’s safety in the home, especially when we have a fairly basic solution,” Casey said. “...This is long overdue.”

In a 2015 report, the Department of Housing and Urban Development found that tampering with smoke detectors was among the biggest challenges in public housing.

People sometimes disconnect detectors in order to smoke, cook, or silence the beeping that indicates a dead battery; smoking is the biggest issue, Jeremiah said.

“It was quite frankly disheartening,” he said of the number of disconnected alarms found in PHA’s inspection.

But Osarugue Grace Osa-Edoh, a lawyer with Community Legal Services, said tampering hasn’t been an issue in her cases involving public housing tenants and faulty smoke detectors.

“It’s more so that PHA is slow to replace nonworking smoke detectors and although they’re supposed to regularly inspect the PHA homes, that can sometimes be inconsistent as well, which means it’s up to the tenant to report a nonworking smoke detector,” she said.

That puts the burden of reporting malfunctioning smoke detectors on tenants, a task that can fall to the wayside when people have other pressing issues, she said.

Since January, PHA has installed about 13,000 tamperproof and 17,700 hardwired alarms, the agency said.

In the four years from 2018 to 2021, PHA also replaced more than 28,000 smoke or combination carbon monoxide detectors, agency records obtained by The Inquirer show.

Dozens of inspection records show maintenance crews encountering units that were removed or otherwise missing. While most replacements occurred in the course of routine inspections — only 100 were marked as emergencies — hundreds of service orders were tied to tenant complaints about oversensitive smoke detectors or units that constantly beeped due to battery failure.

Jeremiah urged residents not to disconnect the detectors if they are triggered by something like cooking.

“We want folks to understand that when they remove these devices, they are actually jeopardizing themselves and their family’s safety,” he said.

Staff writers Ryan W. Briggs and Ximena Conde contributed to this article.