To The Editor:
Your article, “Working in the Danger Zone” (June 11, 2007), truly was a disservice to the Hartford Fire Department, to the thousands of occupants of the city’s high-rise office buildings, and to the hundreds of property management professionals who maintain these buildings.
The Hartford Fire Department may be understaffed and unable to perform every building inspection that is required. But every time a company builds or expands their offices in any one of these high-rise buildings, an exhaustive review of the architect’s plans is conducted by these fire officials. In addition, when the construction is complete, a thorough site inspection is conducted by the Fire Marshal’s Office and other code officials to verify total compliance with fire safety codes. Part of that final inspection is the activation of the building’s fire alarm systems to verify the entire building’s systems are in total working order.
Over the years, our firm has managed many of Hartford’s high rise office buildings. We, along with most of the other property managers and owners of these buildings, are members of professional organizations devoted to the safety and well being of our office tenants. Fire drills, training, improvements and upgrades to existing fire alarm devices and attention to the life safety codes are of paramount importance to our profession.
To suggest that the only tenants who are safe in these marvelous structures are those below the sixth floor is ludicrous. Can you imagine what our cities would look like if we could not build buildings taller than the highest fire truck ladder?
The Hartford Fire Department does a tremendous job with the limited resources it is allowed to expend.
David Fagone
President
Servus Management Corp.
Hartford
