Ward One residents, especially Mount Pleasant residents, know full well how
scary and life threatening fires can be. A recent 7-alarm fire in Mount Pleasant
t transformed the once bustling Deauville Apartments into a charred shell and
serves daily reminder to residents how fire can ravage a community. That devastating
fire is also a wake-up call to community and City leaders highlighting the priority
for expanding fire safety and emergency access along the Mount Pleasant Street
and 16th Street corridor.
The Deauville Apartments once stood a little more than one-hundred feet from
the back of the Mount Pleasant Library. Smoke from the burning buildings filled
the library, which required professional cleaning in the weeks that followed.
The smell of smoke still lingers in the minds of neighbors living in apartments
around the library.
DCPL's Mount Pleasant Library expansion plans call for extending the current
historic building all the way to the library property line. This will put a
very large, three story expansion as close as eighteen feet from surrounding
apartment buildings.
DOES IT MAKE ANY SENSE TO ALLOW DCPL TO BUILD AN UNNECESSARY EXPANSION ALL THE WAY TO THE PROPERTY LINE -- LESS THAN TWENTY FEET FROM SURROUNDING UNSPRINKLED APARTMENT BUILDINGS?
It is a fact that the wall of the expanded building and proposed accessibility
ramp will indeed block the Lamont Street entrance to the mews or corridor that
exists between buildings standing along 16th Street and Mount Pleasant Street.
DCPL's decision to block the Lamont entrance to this corridor further limits
already stifled fire safety and emergency access to residents living in these
buildings.
There have been recent City Council hearings about DCFD and DC-WASA with regards to
fire hydrants, water flow, and firefighting plans throughout the City. These hearings highlight how DCFD
is working with limited tools to do their job as effectively as possible.
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If the political will and creative thinkers of Ward One allow, there
is an opportunity to expand fire and emergency access behind the library and
to the hundreds of residents living in the many apartment buildings there. DCPL
can choose to incorporate into the planned renovation and expansion, a plan
to also grade the sloping library driveway up a few feet to level the ground with
the adjoining properties -- that's it! No eminent domain, no tearing down of major buildings, a very simple fix to this problem... a solution which will create more access for emergency services to the area behind the library.
Click the images below to see
ideas about grading the property and
a bird's eye rendering of a potential fire access lane behind the library |
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By widening access to the shared backyard, DCPL will help allow emergency equipment,
including a ladder truck, to decrease response time in terms of rescuing residents
who live in the rear apartments of the buildings neighboring the library along
the Mount Pleasant corridor. This design concept would not impede the library
from expanding and would assuage a legitimate concern of the neighbors living
around the library.
For example, if we were to lose DCPL's proposed long accessibility ramp on the side of the library and put in a fire plug at the end of a paved patio/roadway along the side of the library, a fire pumper
truck could drive in and access an fire water plug where hoses could be attached
and run down the back of this residential corridor to douse fires. This is seen
below:
Or better yet, we get the fire access lane that is required by International Fire
Code which would allow fire ladder truck and pump access to help save residents
in buildings taller than 30 feet and to douse fires using an aerial hose, as shown
below:
June 3, 2009 -- Verbalization of fire safety concern
and solution by ANC Commissioner Gregg Edwards.
Mount Pleasant neighbors are calling out for answers and want City agencies
and elected leaders to actively attempt to remedy the perplexingly perilous
situation of limited fire safety and emergency access for neighbors living adjacent
to the Mount Pleasant Library. Instead, we are seeing the opportunity to expand
safety access be squandered by the dismissive "matter of right" philosophy of
DC Public Library and the Board of Library Trustees.
Instead of viewing the renovation and expansion as an opportunity to improve
library services and simultaneously build kinship with surrounding neighbors,
Chief Librarian Ginnie Cooper and the Board of Library Trustees have turned
a deaf ear and put their blinders on to build their expansion at any cost --
including lives.
LIBRARY
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