5:09 PM: Big SFD response for “fire in building” call at 17th/Barton. Updates to come.
5:13 PM: We’re here checking into it. Already downsized.
5:25 PM: Firefighters tell us someone was doing roof work and material started smoldering. Out fast. Last engine just left.
This knucklehead has been doing the same thing for weeks now!!! Filling a wheelbarrow with tar, lighting it on fire while navigating on top of a collapsed roof. Someone is going to be seriously hurt. It’s a derelict building that has been a problem property for over 10 years. Complaints to SDCI are an arm long. Police and fire depts have wasted time, effort and tons of money! Building needs to be torn down, property cleaned up (garbage, needles and refuse spill into street and sidewalk) and some calm restored to block.
Yep, that’s our neighbor. Second fire call-out in about 3 weeks for the same activity. He gets on top of the roof with a wheelbarrow filled with tar, lights it on fire until there are flames and black smoke billowing out of it, and then pours the flaming tar onto the roof. Sometimes the roof catches fire in the process. Each time, the fire crew comes out, looks at it and talks to him for a bit, and then leaves while he’s still up there with the flaming wheelbarrow. He wears no protective gear and now all of our houses reek from the smell of it even in the winter with doors and windows closed.
that is very strange. there aren’t any laws broken? seems like a clear hazard, especially if done repeatedly…its really “anything goes” at this point, huh?
Look this building up on SDCI’s document library, there are dozens of code enforcement complaints dating back to 2016 showing no resolutions or permits. This building is a clear and present danger to the community, and should have been condemned years ago. On top of that it’s also a known drug den, and home to thieves that have dumped stolen cars on the block 3 or 4 times in just the last year.
The history on this house goes back much farther than 2016. It’s been 14 years. Numerous 911 calls by numerous neighbors, open cases with SDCI, involvement by the City Attorney, bringing the property to the attention of neighborhood organizations, meetings at the Southwest Precinct, calls to Animal Control, calls to CPS, open drug use and drug dealing, visible acts of prostitution, threats to neighbors, many people coming and going all day and night, unsuccessful attempts to engage the property owner in solutions, fires, piles of garbage on the property and in front of it piling onto the sidewalk and street, burning garbage outside the property and in the fireplace subjecting neighbors to toxic smoke, Illegal Dumping reports, stolen vehicles dumped on the street, domestic violence incidents, people being arrested on the property due to outstanding warrants….
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