Nutter apologizes for deaths, announces changes

Mayor Nutter apologized Friday for the deadly collapse of a building under demolition, and announced standards and enforcement actions designed to prevent similar tragedies.

Promising during an afternoon City Hall news conference to "find out what went wrong . . . and hold those responsible accountable," Nutter said the new rules would require better inspections of demolition sites and quicker action to shut down shoddy work.

Despite citizen complaints in the weeks before the building collapse at 22d and Market Streets on Wednesday that killed six people and injured 14, city building inspectors did not visit the site while the building was being demolished.

The changes Nutter announced were aimed at some of the city's shortcomings in Wednesday's tragedy: Allowing an apparently unqualified contractor with a criminal history and inadequate insurance to use unqualified workers and heavy equipment to tear down a building looming over a busy store without bracing walls or protecting passersby or nearby residents or customers.

"We know that something went horribly wrong," said Nutter, accompanied by Licenses and Inspections Commissioner Carlton Williams and other top members of his administration.

He did not specify how the city failed in its monitoring of the demolition, but said, "I want to personally apologize to the victims, their families, to the survivors and their families, for what happened in our great city on Wednesday.

"I commit to you that we will make every effort and spare no resource to find out what went wrong . . . and we will take every possible action that we can take to fix whatever systems, processes or procedures that need to be fixed to better insure our collective public safety," he said.

Nutter added, "While we lack the resources to have a police officer on every corner or an L&I inspector at every construction site every hour of the day, we can do much better, and we will."

City inspectors have been dispatched to every demolition site - there are 300 open demolition permits issued since 2009 - to check for safety violations, Nutter said. Those inspections will be completed next week, he said.

On Friday, L&I inspectors shut down a demolition job at 21st and Race Streets that was also the subject of complaints.

On Wednesday, just two hours after the Market Street collapse, Logan Square resident Stephen Field directed the city to the property through the 311 website. Field had made similar complaints about the property at 2136 Market St. a month before it collapsed this week.

"An opportunity was missed to prevent the sad events at 22d and Market," Field e-mailed the city, noting an unsupported front wall abutting the sidewalk, suggesting L&I inspectors go to the building at 21st and Race. "You have another opportunity."

New rules will require the same level of city monitoring and contractor expertise at private demolition sites that have been required during demolition at public sites.

That would, among other things, prohibit contractors from using heavy machinery to demolish buildings adjacent to occupied structures, such as occurred Wednesday.

Demolition contractors now will be required to have a safety plan and prove to inspectors that they are following it, and contractors will be required to detail their qualifications to tear down buildings safely and protect neighboring buildings and passersby, similar to federal safety standards that have not been adopted in Pennsylvania.

And city inspectors will now be required to visit demolition sites every 15 days after the issuance of a permit, and inspectors will be required to respond to all complaints within 48 hours and provide a detailed report of their findings, along with time-stamped photos of the site.

The administration will also recommend to City Council that the building codes be modified to require a separate license for demolition contractors, and impose background checks on contractors and require them to conduct random drug screening for heavy equipment operators at demolition sites.

Nutter said he instructed Inspector General Amy Kurland to begin an investigation of the collapse and government failings that contributed to it. That's in addition to investigations being conducted by the Department of Licenses and Inspections, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Philadelphia Police Department.

Nutter did not provide any cost estimates for his initiatives, either for L&I or for developers and others who will have to comply with the new rules.

An L&I spokeswoman, Maura Kennedy, said Nutter was seeking money in his pending budget request to hire about six new building inspectors, raising that force to 46.

Other city officials who have paid close attention to L&I are hoping for much bigger increases.

Councilwoman Maria Quiñones Sánchez, whose committee oversees the agency, said she was pushing for a $2 million increase to add more inspectors, provide cross-training to make the inspection force more versatile, and improve the department's software.

"We need to be strategic about where we make these investments," she said.

City Controller Alan Butkovitz, who has criticized for years the city's weak code-enforcement efforts, says L&I needs 50 or 60 more inspectors at an annual cost likely to exceed $3 million. "L&I is not a luxury, it's a necessity," he said. "If you want people to pay attention to the rules you set, you have to enforce them."

He said Nutter's proposals "sound good on paper, but the test of all these initiatives is how they work in practice. That involves a commitment of resources."

Nutter vowed Friday that his administration "will not accept the status quo in the face of this tragedy." He acknowledged that "in hindsight, we can all wish that matters were handled differently so that death and injury did not occur. But our task now is to answer the question . . . how can we prevent another 22d and Market Streets tragedy?"