In mememe news, we had a meeting last night about the Great Fire. Attended by a bunch of tenants (some with babies, two with dogs), the fire chief, the fire marshal, some reps from the local firehouse, our city councilman, our area neighborhood council rep, a concumer regulation department rep, and two people from the management company. The building's owner was "out of town". Turns out the alarm system - which is based on an 1852 design - is supposed to ring on all floors ... but didn't. They did tests for about an hour after the meeting ended and the fire marshal verified that, yup, not all the bells rang. This is after the company came in and reset the alarm and tested it for several hours on Monday.
The management company kept saying they were compliant with code ... the code that grandfathered in the antiquated system. That it would cost over $1 million to put in a modern system. That putting in a sprinkler system would be impractical. They were VERY sympathetic.
The guy who asked about maybe putting in a fire escape for those who had to pass by the burning apartment to get to one of the two fire stairs was ignored. The woman who asked about getting some help with making her smoky apartment returned to habitable - and had called the management company's office three times with no response - was shuffled off. The woman who brought up the question of the ventilation system that runs between apartments and corridors and vertically between apartments got the fire marshal's attention.
I'm thinking of moving ... if I can find someplace I can afford that isn't waaaay out of town and/or next to an open-air drug market (which gets me down to, um, not a lot). I need to do some serious apartment excavation, though ... the books and junk have piled up something awful.