DADE CITY, Fla. — Pasco County commissioners are reviewing apartment construction codes following a fire at the Cobalt Apartments in Wesley Chapel that displaced 167 residents in late August.
Nearly three weeks after the fire, no one is allowed back inside the building because it could collapse from the weight of water used to fight the fire.
WATCH: Pasco commissioners review codes after Wesley Chapel apartment fire
What we know about the fire and safety codes
At Wednesday's Pasco County Commission meeting, the Pasco County Fire Rescue leadership team held a presentation explaining that lightning sparked the fire and knocked out the fire alarms, giving the fire a 25-minute head start.
"The wiring was actually just severed, disconnected completely. So there would have been no known type of protection that we could have installed that would have kept that alarm system active," Pasco Fire Chief Ryan Guynn said.
There were also no sprinklers in the attic. Because of this, fire crews used about 2 million gallons of water to put out the fire.
Fire officials noted that for every building other than a hospital regulated by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, lightning protection is not required.
Despite the severity of the Cobalt fire, officials say modern multi-family structures have a fire death rate of one-sixth that of a single-family home.
Within Pasco County, 31% of the 364 residential structure fires recorded were in multi-family buildings. Of those, only 2 involved significant fire damage inside the structure. The rest were cooking fires or other smaller incidents, representing less than 12% of all residential fires in the county.
Fire officials also noted that the Florida Building Code and life safety code are both operated, managed and decided at a policy level by the Florida Building Commission.
Public concerns
Amanda Weaver, a volunteer who helped Cobalt residents, was among those who spoke during public comment at the commission meeting.
"The codes absolutely need to change," Weaver said.
During pubic comment she said that building safety cannot end when the fire hoses are put away.
While Weaver said she understands there is a process to make change, she said that should not be a reason to delay action.
"Everything is red tape. We have to start somewhere. This could be Hurricane Andrew code changes that happened throughout the state," Weaver said.
County leaders question whether buildings can be made safer
Even though the building met state code, county leaders want to know if the code is good enough to keep residents safe. They asked questions about how frequently lightning-strike fires occur in Pasco County and whether any other counties in the state currently hold higher standards than the federal building code.
County Commission Chairman Jack Mariano had previously discussed a possible moratorium on new apartment construction, but says that may not be an option because building codes are decided at the state level.
"What we found is we cannot change our code unless we can show some local difference between us and the rest of the state. So lightning would be the one argument we could try to do...," Mariano said. "Now, part of my optimism about this is because Miami was able to get different codes for hurricanes, maybe we could do the same thing with our lightning strikes."
Mariano said he wants local officials to do more research to learn about whether Pasco County could pursue a condition for new codes as it relates to lightning strikes.
"We want to have our local officials get with state officials, find out how Miami actually did get the hurricane exemption to get stricter codes. Find out if we can do the same thing here, and if we can, we can then go look to push that issue to go adopt it further. If we can't find the local situation, I still want to pursue it to find out what the state can do to make it safer for everybody anyway," Mariano said.
Pasco fire officials say lightning-strike fires are rare and that prevention systems are triple the cost of standard systems. But Mariano says they will review this before making any final decisions.
"I want to do whatever we can do to make it safer every step of the way for our citizens," Mariano said.
Mariano says the topic is not expected to appear on the agenda at the next county commission meeting while staff conducts additional research. Residents who want to make their voices heard can do so at any county commission meeting.
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