The Lima Fire Department is looking at how to better tackle downtown fires when they occur, such as the one a week ago on Town Square.
File Photo | The Lima News
LIMA — As the new year begins, the Lima Fire Department is ready to face whatever 2023 has in store.
On Wednesday morning at the Mayor’s Press Conference, Chief Andy Heffner addressed how the department plans to face the challenges that come with the job. One of those challenges was faced quite recently.
“We ran into a problem when we had a fire at the square at Woof Boom Radio,” said Heffner. “When you go to a strip mall or a place that has multiple businesses you go to the structure you don’t know what that business is. When you look at the Ohio fire code, which we have adopted, it says addresses need to be on the rear of your structure also. That is good for you and for us.”
Heffner said adding the address on both ends of the building helps the fire department correctly choose which way to go.
“First of all we can identify the building and secondly you don’t want to damage a door to an entrance to a business or a structure that is the wrong one,” added Heffner. “When we do our inspections now we are going to make sure we are going to check the rear of the building also to make sure that that is in compliance to have the address that is also what is going to be on the front.”
The Lima Fire Department will remind businesses during normal inspections throughout the year. Heffner said the Lima Fire Department will not implement hard enforcement but they plan to remind businesses that it is for the department’s benefit and for the business.
Heffner also addressed a mistake written on the fire department’s Facebook profile.
“On our website, the Facebook page said we had 40 percent more housefires than we had in previous years,” he said. “That is right but it is also wrong. We went to a new data collection. When we run a report it says you have 113 housefires. We did but what we used to calculate prior was actual structure fires that would be room and content all the way up to the entire building.”
Heffner added that not much has changed in regard to the frequency of house fires in the city.
“We actually have almost exactly the same amount of structure fires as what we have had in the past,” added Heffner. “It was just our data collection was wrong. We do not have rampant housefires now going on. We still average 1.5 housefires per week. Just wanted to clear that up.”
Reach Precious Grundy at 567-242-0351.
