Recent fires in vacant houses in Shreveport's Highland neighborhood have become a source of grave concern to those living in that area. The fire in a vacant house that spread to an adjoining home that was totally burned leaving two senior citizens homeless, causing damage to the other adjoining house and car has raised the heightened the attention of elected officials.
Shreveport Fire Chief Clarence Reese must deal with the reality of these fires and the impact they have on his department as well as the city as a whole. Reese listed his top priorities for vacant structure fires:
1.The safety of his firefighters when dealing with the fires, and especially fires in dilapidated structures such as the one on the corner of Highland and Jordan .The house on the corner of Highland and Jordan is the example of an unsafe structure, and one that his firefighters will not enter to fight the fire to ensure their personal safety. Unfortunately, Highland has a large number of these structurally unsound buildings which result in limited action by the fire department to extinguish the blaze in that structure and to prevent the spread to other property.
2. The safety of squatters in the structures that may not be able to escape the fire.
3. The safety of persons in adjoining structures as well as the needed efforts to preserve the structures/property of others from a spreading fire.
4. The wear and tear on the department's vehicles and equipment including the gear worn by firefighters battling blazes along with the impact on his department's budget.
5. The negative impact of burned down and partially burned residences on the surrounding homes and the neighborhood.
It's not Reese's job to stop squatters in vacant structures or to prevent fires that they may start and lose control of resulting in severe fire damage. And it certainly is not his responsibility to board up vacant properties in an effort to keep squatters out of them.
Reese has some suggestions that he thinks may reduce the number of these vacant house fires. The involvement of neighbors and neighborhood groups will be needed to help implement them:
A. Have security cameras in occupied structures to be tied into the Real Time Crime Center.
B. Have security cameras installed in more residences/structures and have them tied into the Real Time Crime Center
C. Encourage owners of vacant structures to have them posted with NO TRESPASSING SIGNS as authorized by the so-called Squatters Law that makes trespass into posted structures a crime. This law authorizes the Shreveport Police Department to arrest such offenders and/or to require them to vacate the premises. In many instances, this effort will require researching ownership in an effort to identify current ownership of tax sale properties as well as so-called "heir property".
D. Monitor activity in and around vacant structures and report any suspicious activity to the Shreveport Police Department and share information/pictures of squatters with Crimestoppers.
Chief Reese acknowledged that there are no easy answers. However, he says that recent fires have not occurred in extremely cold weather which has been the pattern in recent years. And he realizes that proving arson is almost an impossible task for his investigators who check on all these fires.
Caddo Commissioner John Paul Young, a resident of Highlands, has introduced an ordinance to fund $100,000 for nonprofit organizations to assist with property standards enforcement and fire mitigation of hazardous vacant properties. This measure has been referred to by a Commission committee for further review. A similar measure may be introduced by Shreveport Councilman Gary Brooks, whose district includes Highland, to the city council. It is obvious that additional resources are needed to deal with this growing problem.