By Dan McCue
Staff Writer

But as things slowly inched back toward a measure of normality, the search for the cause of the fire, and for ways to prevent a similar tragedy from happening again, shadowed city officials’ every move.

“In spite of everything associated with a tragedy of this magnitude, people still expect, and should expect, the city to continue functioning to meet their needs,” said Laura Cabiness, the city’s director of public services.

“People still want their building permits and their inspections scheduled and it’s been incredibly busy since the fire occurred. Fortunately, we have a lot of other people in the department, so we can effectively allocate our resources between what we do in the normal routine of the department and what has to be done in terms of the investigation.”

That investigation, a joint effort between city, state and federal agencies, has yet to turn up an exact cause for the blaze, but Cabiness said her focus has largely been on the history of the former Piggly Wiggly store, and when and under what circumstances alterations to the structure were made by its current owner, Herb Goldstein.

“There were actually three additions to the Piggly Wiggly structure that we permitted, the first two being additions to either side of the existing building, and the last being the warehouse structure,” Cabiness said.

The last of those permits was issued in 1991, under a less stringent fire code than is in place today, she said. None of the work triggered a requirement for the installation of sprinklers because under the old rules, the commercial use of the property did not change.

Prior to the mid-1990s, there was no black line standard for when sprinklers must be installed in a business. Generally, the threshold was that buildings larger than 15,000 square feet needed to have them, but there were also mitigating factors, such as what building materials were used, that went into the determination.

A wood structure would have to have sprinklers, for instance, while one constructed of masonry might not.

Cabiness said according to her records, the Super Sofa Store building on Savannah Highway was last inspected by the city in 1998. Back then, such inspections were a routine activity of her department.

After the state adopted the International Building Code in 2000, routine inspections ended and were replaced by inspections based on “events” transpiring in regard to the business or property, she said.

Such events would include a major renovation or a change in ownership.

With that change in code, the city of Charleston permitting department currently completes roughly 23,000 inspections a year.

Like other businesses, the Sofa Super Store was also subject to inspection by the city’s fire department. The last fire inspection conducted at the furniture store was in April 2006, and it passed, Cabiness said.

The International Building Code is promulgated and updated on a bi-annual basis by the International Code Council, a membership association dedicated to building safety and fire prevention. Since Hurricane Andrew struck Miami in the early 1990s and in the wake of other natural disasters that have occurred since, most U.S. cities, counties and states opt to use the IBC.

Previously, many Southern states used the Southern Standard Building Code.

By state law, local municipalities can adopt standards that are tougher than the state standard, but they can’t pass weaker requirements, Cabiness said.

“That prevents municipalities from piece-mealing the code,” she said.

Currently the city enforces the provisions of the 2003 version of the IBC, a rule that requires all commercial buildings larger than 12,000 square feet have a fire-dampening sprinkler system. The Sofa Super Store destroyed by the fire was 31,300 square feet.

But it wasn’t sprinklers that Cabiness and others were focusing on in the wake of the fire. Instead it was the loading dock that linked the store to the warehouse and the roof above that received and continues to receive the most attention.

Investigators believe the fire started in the area. Cabiness said the city has no record of issuing a permit for the roof.

According to anecdotal accounts gathered by the city, the roof was built sometime in the past seven years to shield workers from the heat as they unloaded furniture trucks. The loading dock preceded it by about five years, officials said.

Officials believe the catastrophic fire may have started in a trash bin in that area.

Investigators are now examining aerial photographs of the site to determine as much as possible when the structure went up, Cabiness said.

“From what I’ve looked at so far, it looks as if there was a progression in construction,” she said. “In any event, the owner should have come in and gotten a permit for the work.”

While it’s possible the timing of the construction would have triggered compliance with the enhanced building codes then in effect, Cabiness said it was still unclear whether the building owner would have been required to install sprinklers.

“There are a lot of factors that go into an addition on a commercial property,” she said. “We don’t have enough information on it at this point to make that determination.”

Jobs lost

The owner of the Sofa Super Store reopened his Mount Pleasant and North Charleston businesses on June 20. However, due to the loss of a considerable amount of inventory in the fire, not to mention the chain’s largest showroom, up to 20 employees were expected to be laid off.

Sofa Super Store owner Herb Goldstein said in a statement issued through Touchpoint Communications, a Mount Pleasant public relations firm, that while the losses incurred by his stores pale in comparison to those of the families of the firefighters, his “abiding responsibility” to his company’s nearly 100 employees is to keep the enterprise going.

Goldstein said he’s contracted with Trident One-Stop Career Center to provide placement services for the displaced employees, and he’s received an offer of assistance from the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce.

One thing that won’t be happening is any reconstruction at the site of the Savannah Highway store.

On June 27, Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. announced that the city intends to purchase the 2.5 acre site of the fire and turn it into a memorial park in honor of the fallen firefighters.

Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.

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