State of the apartment

So... its been a little while since I have made a post to the blog, haven't been sailing in a while... have been trying to deal with a few other things lately.

About a month ago, I noticed that the apartment building took down some doors I believed were there for fire-protection, or smoke barriers. These doors sit at the bottom of the main fire-egress path for the entire 5 story apartment building. I have lived in this place since I have been in Dayton... otherwise known as "too long". I mentioned it to the landlord lady, a insert-bad-word-here woman named Carol. She argued with me about it, saying a fireman had told her it was ok to remove the door. Not to say that fireman don't know what they are doing, but its not their place to authorize the removal of fire-doors. Not that its my place either, but I was pretty sure the doors were at least smoke-barriers.

I came to work that day, a bit perturbed that the landlord of the building would be so frivolous with life-safety. I grabbed our code-book, and spent some time going through it to find the pertinent passages of code which would tell me that door was likely there for fire protection, or a smoke barrier. Yup... found them, basically, the fire stairs need a 2-hour enclosure all the way to the outside. Removing those doors would violate that. NFPA 80 states that fire-doors shall be marked with the ratings and things, and that tag should not be painted over... if the tags had not been painted over, then the fireman would have known that these doors are needed for life-safety.

I gave Carol copies of the codes, showing her the likelihood that these are protective doors. Her response, "this is incomplete." Anybody that knows anything about building code knows that it references its other parts everywhere. Carol in essence wanted me to give her an entire copy of the code, with all the research needed to prove these are fire-doors. I offered to do it, for a fee. The original architects already did this, and they got paid for it... I should be paid too.

I gave Carol's boss a call, to inform him that she had done this, and that she was being non-responsive to my pointing this out... and she was down-right rude, and condescending. He was not there, so I left him a voicemail.

Lets say that there's a fire while these doors aren't there. These doors protect the main path people would try to use to evacuate the building. Removing these doors may lead to a tragic situation, and at the very least much more property damage, and loss. If someone did die, there would surely be an investigation, which would lead to the discovery of the removal of these doors, and to the discovery that the landlord was made aware of the nature of these doors, and yet didn't do anything to restore the building to a safe condition. I am sure the insurance company for this place would have an interesting response, and all survivors would have a pretty simple case to sue the owners for their losses.

So, perhaps me pointing this out to the lofts helped avert a tragic situation, save them a huge hassle, and helped their parent company from facing a massive financial burden. You'd think they would be a little thankful that I helped avoid some of this for them. Instead of being thankful, they have decided to kick me out!

A few days after calling Carol's boss, she left me a nice little note on my door, giving me till the end of October to pack up and leave. I mean... why would they want me around, I am a trouble maker... who wants to live in a building that follows building code, thats just crazy.

Right now, I am in a search for a new place to live. There are alot of things to consider, so who knows where I will end up. When I find a suitable place to rest my head, this blog will know.