WATCH: State Building Code Council debates amendment to fire code to widen entrances

(The Center Square) – The past president of the Washington State Association of Fire Marshals is asking the Washington State Building Code Council to adopt an emergency amendment to the fire code to widen required access to buildings.

“I call it an unintended circumstance of the housing crisis,” Dave Kokot told The Center Square on Monday.

Kokot also previously chaired the SBCC and proposed an emergency amendment to widen entrances, which was considered at Friday’s regular SBCC meeting.

“What is happening now is a lot of higher density on what used to be single-family lots,” he explained. “We started looking at some proposals that came in for the jurisdiction I worked for, and there were multiple houses with the doors on the side because it was a skinny lot. So, I started looking myself at the size of a standard gurney, and I know that firefighters are responding and need to be able to get on one side or the other to be able to perform medical compressions or something if somebody is coming out with a heart attack and then having to get to the hospital as quickly as possible.”

Kokot could not attend Friday’s SBCC meeting, where his proposed emergency amendment was discussed.

“My understanding is they did something similar in Vancouver, but they’re having difficulty implementing it,” SBCC member Rep. Suzanne Schmidt, R-Spokane Valley, observed. “Who is going to determine whether this is an emergency or not?”

SBCC member Dan Young spoke in support of the amendment.

“I think it is an emergency for fire departments, getting gurneys in and out between some of the buildings that are right up against each other, 3 feet away,” Young said.

In his proposed amendment, Kokot references the city of Vancouver’s amended code: “It requires a minimum of 5’ for the pathways, which they are calling emergency pedestrian access paths. We have done considerable research on gurney and first responder dimensions (yes, there is information about a typical firefighter!). It was determined that the 5-foot width is justified. In discussions with our Fire Marshal and other first responders, we feel that if the building has fire sprinklers, the width could be reduced to 4’ – as it would probably result in no hoses along the pathway.”

“Nobody could identify the emergency, as you could tell from the conversation,” Schmidt told The Center Square in an interview following Friday’s SBCC meeting. “And why wasn’t the petitioner there today if it was an emergency? I mean, if this was something that was really a lifesaving thing we had to have done, he definitely should have been there or had someone there in his place.”

Kokot was under the impression that SBCC would take no action on his petition last week, but he said he would make every effort to attend the next meeting. He believes a 3-foot-wide access is not enough in case of a fire.

“In general, it's 4 feet. But one of the things that is also occurring with this number of houses that are being built in the same lot is fire sprinklers aren't required. So now what we could have is a gurney being used in the same walkway that fire hoses are being brought into the building to put the fire out,” he said. “So, it becomes such a congested highway of people trying to get in, as well as trying to get people out.”

During Friday’s meeting, Schmidt said a planned tiny home village in the Spokane area has already been designed with a 3-foot-wide access plan.

“They have a plot of land, and they've planned to put them 3 feet apart, and if this would have passed, they would have had to go back to the drawing board and would only have been able to put half as many on that lot,” she said. “So, they actually reached out to me in hopes that I would push back and not let them move forward with this.”

Kokot said, “We’re not talking about existing, we're only talking about anything that's new … so anything already [in process] would not have to meet that requirement because it's from this point on, so there is no retroactive requirement that I put into the language.”

SBCC member Angela Haupt supported approving the request as an emergency and told Schmidt that constituents urging her to reject the proposal should attend the next SBCC meeting.

“I would ask you to encourage the people who reached out to you to attend the next meeting, so they themselves can present the data or examples that they have, so that in public testimony we can get a better idea of what their concerns are,” Haupt said.

After a lengthy discussion about the options for the council, SBCC voted unanimously to send the petition to the Building, Fire, Residential, and Wildland-Urban Interface Codes Standing Committee technical advisory group for further study and recommendations to SBCC.

That committee next meets on Aug. 8.

WA fire marshals want code amendment for wider access between homes