In recession, vacant homes—and fires—increase

FLINT, Mich. -- If a fire destroys a home that doesn't really belong to anyone and is worth next to nothing, does it matter? The nation's housing and mortgage crisis is proving there are no simple answers to that question, just unexpected consequences and difficult choices.

Human activity -- whether it's cooking or smoking in bed -- sets off most house fires. That explains why the vast majority happen in homes that are occupied. But foreclosures, on top of depopulation in struggling Rust Belt cities, have left millions of homes vacant.

Fire has begun creeping into the void. Fires in vacant homes rose 11 percent to 21,000 in 2006 -- the latest year for which figures are available -- while all home fires rose just 4 percent, the National Fire Protection Association reported in April. More than four of every 10 vacant building fires were intentionally set.

Some of that is arson for financial reasons. But in neighborhoods of sagging homes worth little, fires are often set by vandals, the homeless or people seeking revenge.

The threat grows as empty homes multiply, said John Hall, the NFPA's division director for fire analysis and research. Vacant homes nationwide topped 19 million this year, up from 15.7 million in 2005, according to the Census Bureau.

"The best way to prevent vacant building fires is to prevent vacant buildings," the NFPA concluded.

That is easier said then done. What was once Buick City is largely a cement prairie now, and General Motors, which once employed more than 80,000 in the city of its founding, has cut its Flint work force to about 6,000. Flint's population, which peaked at 197,000, dwindled to 115,000 in 2007 and is falling. The number of abandoned homes skyrocketed.

Fire complicates the calculus for officials in cities trying to stabilize neighborhoods pocked with abandoned homes.

Firefighters, pledged to a gung-ho culture that demands attacking fires head-on, increasingly confront dangerous blazes where the property is not worth saving and often the only lives endangered are their own. Abandoned homes offer shelter to drug users and gangs, which can make them magnets for fire.

When two of Flint's abandoned houses caught fire in early 2007, it got Andy Graves thinking.

A firefighter was injured in the first. Soon after the second burned, the city tore down what was left. Nobody was in either. Were these places worth the risks firefighters were taking?

Graves, a primary captain for the Flint Fire Department, started tracking fires in vacant buildings, and the scope of the problem became clear. Blazes in vacant structures accounted for 40 percent of all Flint's fires and more than 60 percent of firefighter injuries.

Since then, vacant buildings fires have jumped nearly a third. In the 18 months ending in February, Flint saw 406 vacant-building fires.

"We were putting out fires and they would come by the next week and simply condemn the buildings to be demolished," Graves said. "That's when we said we can no longer continue to do this." Flint is hardly alone. But figuring out how to confront such fires is an uneasy challenge. In Detroit, it took a tragedy to prompt a re-examination.

On Nov. 15, crews battled a blaze in an abandoned house on the city's East Side. Investigators later concluded it had been intentionally set.

Engines beat back the blaze before firefighters charged in, and Walter Harris was the second man up the stairs. Then the roof crashed in. Harris, 37, was killed.

Up to then, "there really hadn't been a lot of thinking about this, and we approached every fire the exact same way whether it was abandoned, whether it was vacant or whether it was occupied," said Lt. Robert Shinske, who heads the safety committee for the Detroit firefighters union local.

But "when Walter Harris died, everybody was like, wait a minute, what the hell is going on here?" Shinske said.

Harris' death has pushed Detroit toward adopting changes much like those other cities have already embraced. The new approach urges firefighters to assess fires before rushing in. If the building cannot be saved and they are certain nobody is inside, they should fight the fire from the exterior to limit their own risk.

In Flint, such a change has cut the number of firefighter injuries in abandoned-building blazes by a quarter and reduced injury time by more than a third. Ceding ground to fires, though, does not sit easy with firefighters. In San Antonio, the fire chief and the firefighters union battled this spring over a new policy. Firefighters have argued that it is their job to go head to head with flames and that the only way to be certain if a place is occupied is to go in.

In the overwhelming majority of abandoned home fires, while it is often evident that people have been inside, they are gone by the time firefighters arrive.

Nationwide, fires in vacant buildings killed an average of 50 civilians yearly between 2003 and 2006, according to the NFPA. In Flint, where crews have battled nearly 1,000 abandoned-building fires since 2004, just five people have been trapped inside. Two were rescued, one jumped from a window, and two died.

But as the economy leaves more people homeless, they are increasingly taking shelter in homes left untended by owners and lenders, said Eduardo M. Penalver, a Cornell University law professor who studies the causes and possible remedies of squatting.

"Squatting is dangerous for the squatters," he said. "The illegality of it sort of causes people to cut corners. So a lot of fires are caused by people making fires to heat or cook, or setting up some sort of jerry-rigged mechanism for stealing electricity."

Gordon Yoesting, a vagabond looking for a place to sleep, had taken up residence at 1430 Jane Ave. in Flint last spring. He was a fixture in the neighborhood and was well-liked.

On the night of Oct. 7, he lit candles to make the most of his remaining eyesight. He had been drinking, and as the hour passed midnight, he tinkered with his lawnmower in the living room.

The next morning, Ron Morgan was pouring coffee when neighbor Dallas Freeman began beating on his door. Smoke! At Gordy's place!

The men jumped the steps of 1430, then stepped back to kick the door in.

That's when the place blew. Yoesting died inside.