City of Chicago scales back porch inspections despite continued safety issues
Antonio Olivo from the Chicago Tribune wrote an interesting expose this weekend on the status of porch inspections in the City of Chicago.
In May, a University Village couple fell 20 feet to the concrete—suffering neck and head injuries—after the guardrail of their apartment porch collapsed. According to the Tribune, the porch at the center of this accident is one of about 700 hazardous porches that have been phoned into the city's 311 system that haven’t been inspected by the City.
These statistics are troubling in light of the tragic Lincoln Park accident six years ago where 13 people were killed as a result of a porch collapse. That accident called the entire inspection process into question and resulted in one of the nation's strictest building codes for newly constructed porches and allowed the City to finally enforce codes on landlords who ignored porch hazards for years. But apparently, the standards implemented as a result of that catastrophe have become lax again. City officials say their hard work has reduced the potential threats, but a shortage of inspection manpower and an increase of new reports may mean that bad porches often are discovered only “haphazardly.”
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