The Complex
The Salvation Army Residential Center was home to adult men enrolled in a
substance abuse treatment program. It is located between Miami Court and Northwest
1st Avenue near the downtown area. The Salvation Army complex contained the
Residential Center, a Donation Center and a maintenance building.
The Donation Center is a warehouse facility where donations to the Salvation Army
are received and processed. The building has several workshops for refurbishing donations
and has complete automatic sprinkler coverage. A store is located on the first floor.
The adjacent maintenance building contained storage and supplies. The maintenance
and warehouse buildings were not damaged as a result of the fire.
Fire Building Construction and Layout
The Residential Rehabilitation Center is located at 2236 North Miami Court. The
building, which is three stories in height, was built in 1949 and is constructed with concrete
block exterior walls, a steel and concrete structural frame and interior partitions.
The second floor ceiling was constructed of drop-in ceiling panels on runners attached
to twin-T concrete beams; on the third floor, the drop-in ceiling panels were attached to
the bottom cord of the steel bar joists.
The building’s main entrance opened directly onto the sidewalk on Miami Court.
All other building exits opened within the confines of the fenced complex. Access to the
rear of the building was through a chain link gate opening into a rear parking lot.
The first floor of the Center contained offices, a cafeteria and kitchen, a chapel
and meeting rooms. The second floor contained additional offices, meeting rooms, storerooms,
sleeping rooms and several dormitory suites, which consisted of bedrooms
arranged around a common living room.
An open air patio was located off the west side of the building at the second
floor level. There was no outside exit to the ground floor from this patio. This was the
only area in the building where smoking was permitted.
The third floor contained additional sleeping rooms and some dormitory suite
arrangements. The floor was arranged with corridors surrounding a central core of rooms,
including a communal bathroom which had open doors to corridors on both sides.
Most of the sleeping rooms held four beds; the number of occupants in each
room varied. A few sleeping rooms were assigned to staff members or permanent residents,
and had only a single occupant.. There were some self-contained apartments with
kitchen facilities on the third floor, and it also contained a TV. room, a library, a barbershop
and laundry facilities.
Emergency Exiting
The building had three enclosed stairways. The doors on the northeast (NE) and
the southeast (SE) stairways, which were routinely used, had been propped open by the
residents. The northwest (NW) stairway was seldom used, and the closed doors in this
stairway provided a smoke free escape for many residents in that part of the building.
Stairway doors were marked with illuminated exit signs.
Although equipped with self-closers, many of the sleeping room doors would not
shut completely; many residents had tied strips of cloth across the lockplates to prevent
the doors from latching when shut. The bulk of the cloth, which prevented the doors
from closing completely, allowed smoke to seep around the door edges.
There were no smoke control separations constructed in the corridors. On the
third floor, the corridor with the open central lavatory and the lounges were all effectively
part of one large open space.
Each of the windows in the building was equipped with a permanent hurricane
shutter. Installed on the outside of the operable glass windows, the shutters consisted of
several interlocking metal louvers mounted on two vertical tracks. They could be
opened and closed from the inside with a crank and lever mechanism, similar to awning
windows. The shutters effectively precluded egress from the windows without their
forcible removal.
Furnishings and Interior Finish
Most of the furnishings in the building had been obtained over time from donations
to the Salvation Army. There were a variety of furnishings in the public areas,
mostly wooden and upholstered chairs, sofas, tables, magazine racks and bookcases, all
of different age, manufacture and material.
Most of the sleeping rooms were sparsely furnished with single beds, wooden
chairs and metal lockers. However, some of the single rooms, which were occupied by
permanent residents, had been comfortably furnished by the occupants; some of these
rooms contained bookcases, stereo cabinets, upholstered furniture and window draperies.
The office waiting area on the second floor where the fire originated was furnished
with upholstered chairs, end tables and racks of magazines and promotional literature.
Chair cushions were shown to be highly flammable in tests conducted by the fire
department after the fire and shown to produce large quantities of thick black smoke.
Wallcoverings in the Center varied from plywood paneling and painted gypsum
wallboard to vinyl wallcoverings. Investigators observed that the vinyl wallcovering in
the area of origin, and leading down the second floor hallway from the area of origin,
was completely burned away.
Fire Protection Systems
The building was equipped with a fire alarm system, consisting of audible
devices and pull stations installed throughout. The system control panel was located in
the watchroom on the first floor; there was no battery backup to the system.
Hardwired smoke detectors were installed sporadically throughout the corridors
and other public areas. There were also smoke detectors installed in many of the sleeping
rooms and dormitories. These detectors were not connected to the fire alarm control panel.
Pull stations were located near the stairway doors on each floor. However, the
staff did not know if the pull stations were functional. No one reported attempting to
activate the fire alarm system with a pull station during the fire. Investigators subsequently
determined that none of the pull stations had been activated.
The fire alarm system control panel was mounted on a wall in a storage cabinet
in the first floor watch room. The control panel was completely out of sight, hidden
behind closed cabinet doors with cleaning supplies stacked in front of it. The Center
staff, when questioned, was unaware of its existence. A switch of the type normally
used as a wall switch had been installed in the control panel, providing an on/off switch
for the system. When located after the fire, the switch was found in the “off” position.
There were no records or staff recollection to indicate when the fire alarm system
had last been tested or inspected. The system was not connected to a central station
or alarm monitoring service. There was no public announcement system in the building.
There were fire hose cabinets installed in the building corridors, and fire extinguishers
were located on each floor near stairway doors. A partial sprinkler system supplied
from the domestic water supply had been installed in the front lobby area; however,
this area was not involved in the fire.
Next » The Residents
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