State Construction Office ignored safety warnings about dorms, Insurance Commissioner says

The fire safety problems that prompted the state Department of Insurance to bar students from moving in to five new residence halls at University of North Carolina Asheville last week would have been caught early if the buildings were private homes or a hotel, state fire officials said Monday.

But the state is exempt from local building inspections, leaving the State Construction Office to both manage and police construction, said Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey. In the case of The Woods residence halls at UNC Asheville, the construction office considered the buildings safe despite warnings from the Insurance Department and the Asheville Fire Department starting in late May.

“There’s just a whole list of violations that were pointed out,” Causey said at a press conference late Monday morning. “Unfortunately, those violations were ignored by the State Construction Office.”

The state Department of Administration, which oversees the construction office, issued a statement Monday afternoon saying building safety is a priority and that the construction office had worked with UNC-Asheville, the building’s designers and the contractor to “remedy any issues of concern that did not meet code.”

In a letter dated Aug. 14, the assistant director of the construction office, Victor Stephenson, told UNC Asheville officials not to worry about the Insurance Department’s concerns, because they had been corrected or were moot. Stephenson also wrote that the Insurance Department had no power to require changes to the buildings.

“Since August 26, 2009, it has been universally acknowledged that the State Construction Office is the sole code enforcement official ... for all vertical construction located on state property, and the Department of Administration is the only agency with authority to seek remedies to any condition within a state building,” Stephenson wrote. “While we cannot offer a legal opinion, Insurance has no statutory authority to deny occupancy of a building, and no statutory authority to prescribe, approve or inspect any so-called abatements.”

Causey acknowledges that by law his office did not have the authority to step in before the State Construction Office issued a certificate of occupancy. That happened last Wednesday, and late in the day Thursday, after 59 students had begun moving in, Causey told UNC Asheville Chancellor Nancy Cable that the buildings were unsafe and should not be used.

After a long day of negotiations Friday, the Insurance Department agreed students could move in as long as a City of Asheville fire truck and a crew to man it is on site 24 hours a day until the safety problems can be fixed. Altogether, 272 students are living in The Woods this semester, which began Monday.

Among the problems Causey’s office cited was the use of wood in steps in the stairwells and the location of a standpipe and valves in the stairwells that could force people fleeing the building in a fire to climb over fire hoses. Those problems did not appear in the building’s construction plans last fall, but apparently changes were made during construction, said Rob Roegner, the chief deputy state fire marshal for engineering services.

“Those kinds of things happen at construction sites when they’re not monitored,” Roegner said at the press conference.

Causey said the Asheville Fire Department noticed the problems in May and notified the State Fire Marshal’s Office, which is in the Insurance Department. Roegner said the State Construction Office’s response to the concerns was to say the buildings met state building codes.

“Regardless of whether those buildings are code compliant or not, they are a hazard,” Roegner said.

The Asheville Fire Department is paying off-duty firefighters to live in the dorms and eat on campus, at a cost of $2,500 a day, said Chief Scott Burnette. He said the department is planning on keeping a truck and crew there for eight weeks and that UNC Asheville will reimburse the city.

Even faced with that cost, the university decided it would be better to let students move in rather than put them in hotels, Cable said Monday. The university put some students up in hotels Thursday and Friday night.

This story was originally published August 20, 2018 at 1:08 PM with the headline "State Construction Office ignored safety warnings about dorms, Insurance Commissioner says."