Tenants have come forward with questions about whether their landlord is to blame for a two-alarm fire at a residential building on 26th Street near South Van Ness Avenue last month, reports Mission Mission.
A fire department spokeswoman initially reported that the blaze had been contained in the attic and had not spread to other floors. But residents of the building say that the fire started in their unit, destroying their apartment and leaving them without a home.
In a letter to Mission Mission, they claim the fire was due to neglected maintenance. Here is an excerpt:
On Monday July 23rd at 6:30am there was a two alarm fire at 3316 26th Street. The fire was caused by faulty electrical wiring and was sparked by a broken bathroom ceiling fan that had gone long unfixed by the building’s owner. While the fire itself caused only a small panic for the rest of the tenants of the building, the damage to the unit it which the fire started has left it’s occupants displaced.
I, as you may have guessed, am one of the said dwellers. Though we contacted our landlord several times regarding various issues with the property, e.g. outlets that had sparked, broken bathroom ceiling fan, persistent shower clogging, non-operational smoke alarms, she never seemed care to address them. In our own fault, we were unsure of how to proceed outside of nagging and felt that paying $2,500/month for a four bedroom apartment was probably going to warrant some code breaking. However, this proved consequential…
Read on here.