# Oakland Again



## conarb

This is the 4th recent fire destroying a building under construction, the cities want mixed use to make money off the sales taxes, One Bay Area wants new high-rise apartments to pack the population into the urban core within walking/biking distance of mass transit to "save the planet" by getting people out of cars and single family homes, but the activists are anti-capitalist and anti-gentrification and are burning the buildings down:



			
				East Bay Times said:
			
		

> “
> OAKLAND – The fourth suspicious fire at a large apartment or condominium complex in the Oakland and Emeryville area in the past 12 months ripped through a six-story building under construction early Friday, forcing 700 nearby residents to evacuate and escalating fears of arson.
> 
> The massive four-alarm fire broke out about 4:30 a.m. Friday, engulfing a mixed-use building at the corner of 23rd and Valdez streets, two blocks from Lake Merritt.
> 
> No one was injured but the fire left a construction crane teetering and unsteady, spurring the evacuation of several hundred residents for an unknown period until the crane can be dismantled.
> 
> Oakland has a housing crisis,” Mayor Libby Schaaf said at a news conference. “This is the type of development Oakland needs.” The mayor added that it was “miraculous” no one died.
> 
> And area residents, many of whom have expressed concerns about the increasing number of construction projects in their neighborhoods, echoed the same sentiment.
> 
> “I get that there are people upset about gentrification, and I am one of those, myself,” said Hollie Hardy, a local author and college instructor who lives near the burned building.
> 
> She’s watched as her artist and writer friends have been pushed out. After Wood Partners put her property up for sale, she said she and her neighbors have been worried that they, too, will be forced to leave their rent-controlled apartments. Hardy has been living in her building since 1997, she said.
> 
> Even with those fears, Hardy said burning these buildings down is not the answer.
> 
> “We need housing,” she said. “More apartments means cheaper rent, even if you can’t afford the luxury ones. Now, there is a pattern of arson of burning these buildings down, and it’s just really scary.”¹



Bottom like is the activists want the old broken-down non-code compliant buildings to remain to keep rents low and provide cheap places to live for our large minority populations. 



¹ http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/07/07/oakland-fire-four-alarm-blaze-at-downtown-construction-site/


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## cda

ELF or ALF??


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## steveray

You would think these idiots would hire security for the site....But maybe they make a lot of money on the insurance claims...


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## tmurray

You'd think the insurance company would start requiring it.


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## mark handler

*Many Financial institutions require "risk insurance" prior to start. But not all. Most times the Project Developers will pull out the policy, sometimes the builder.*


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## cda

Floatsam


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## mark handler

cda said:


> Floatsam


Me or my comment?


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## cda

No just saw a new word today and thought I would pass it on.

Might apply to Oakland


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## tmurray

cda said:


> No just saw a new word today and thought I would pass it on.
> 
> Might apply to Oakland


This might just be my favorite comment of all time here...


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## conarb

steveray said:


> You would think these idiots would hire security for the site....But maybe they make a lot of money on the insurance claims...


Yeah, like you'd think people would buy fire and life insurance so if they die in a fire everything would be covered, same goes for earthquake insurance, why spend all the money to earthquake-proof buildings when you could get a new building if the old one tumbles down?


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## linnrg

if the neighbors are the ones starting the fires I suspect the premiums to be sky high now in Oakland.


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## conarb

linnrg said:


> if the neighbors are the ones starting the fires I suspect the premiums to be sky high now in Oakland.


It's not really neighbors, Oakland has large criminal activist groups, from various anticapitalist groups to bicycle activist groups, and black activist groups.



			
				East Bay Times said:
			
		

> OAKLAND — Is a single, determined arsonist behind four massive construction fires that have scorched the East Bay over the past year, including a four-alarm blaze in Oakland Friday morning?
> 
> Two developers who were victimized in the earlier fires said Monday they’re convinced there is a pattern of arson.
> 
> Federal officials added to the intrigue Monday by releasing a shocking video of a hooded figure putting on gloves and scaling an Emeryville construction project two months ago, then scurrying away just as it bursts into flames. They described the figure as a “person of interest” in their investigation.
> 
> “I definitely think this is arson,” developer Rick Holliday said Monday of the latest blaze. “I think it’s the same person or group. The means and methods of setting the fire fits the exact pattern of both of my fires.” Holliday is developer of an Emeryville project that has been torched twice.
> 
> “I strongly believe that there is a person(s) setting these fires for political reasons,” Holliday said, adding that details of the Emeryville fires and the latest Oakland blaze are quite similar.
> 
> The Emeryville fires both started in the same stairwell in the center of the development, Holliday said. While few details of Friday’s Oakland fire have been released publicly, the fire chief said the first arriving fire crews found flames coming from the center of the building construction.
> 
> So far, Singer said, that same hooded individual has not been spotted in video footage of Friday’s fire so far.
> 
> “To my knowledge, the bicyclist has not been spotted yet in the video footage,” Singer said. “There is a lot more footage to review and we do not have access to all the footage that the authorities are reviewing.”
> 
> Authorities have said the similarities between all these fires concern them, but they have not determined if Friday’s blaze is suspicious. All the projects had varying levels of security at the construction sites, including cameras.
> 
> A frustrated Holliday, who has vowed to rebuild, said he has received no updates on his latest fire.
> 
> “They are still in active phase of sorting out leads,” he said.
> 
> Magganas, who has just started rebuilding his development, said the city of Oakland has created a “bureaucratic situation” that is fueling the problem by not allowing construction to continue at night when the arsonist has struck.
> 
> “We know security doesn’t quite do it, because all of these places had security,” Magganas said. “It takes more live beings, organisms being around to deter people.”
> 
> He said he understands construction noise would have to be stopped overnight, but there would be ways to keep workers there to keep buildings safe.
> 
> The city did not immediately respond to inquiries, but Singer said there were no issues and the Alta Waverly project had even been allowed to work on Saturdays.¹



If you play the video in the link below you will see a black, hooded man climbing the scaffolding and riding away on a bicycle.  Security doesn't work and contractors are proposing being allowed to work around the clock so there are always men there to spot suspicious individuals. 

We should start prosecuting all of these activist groups under the *RICO laws*, these groups are far more dangerous than the Mafia was that the RICO laws were written to prosecute. 


¹ http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/07...-arsonist-responsible-for-construction-fires/


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## conarb

I wonder if with so many activist groups around here if contractors should try to get concealed carry permits, they are hard to get but with so much anti-contractor activity I wonder if it would make sense.  What about you guys in states that allow concealed carry, is it worthwhile?


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## steveray

Maybe the cops should do their jobs and arrest the criminals....?


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## linnrg

not that unusual for me to see a gun on the residential job sites.  Some State fire marshals up here carry (the ones set up for investigations).

Outside of work I see lots of open carry - if that is so then I assume there are just as many that are "concealed".


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## conarb

The cities have tied the hands of the cops, maybe it's time property owners arm themselves to protect their own property.


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## tmurray

Being from the land of lots of guns, but you can only have them in your vehicle for hunting or the range, this thread has got a little extreme for me...


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## conarb

tmurray said:


> Being from the land of lots of guns, but you can only have them in your vehicle for hunting or the range, this thread has got a little extreme for me...


What are builders supposed to do when their buildings are being burned down and the cities direct the cops to "stand-down" when activist groups are involved?  Look at Berkeley recently, the cops stood and watched as bused-in activists attacked people, finally using cellphone pictures autistic guys on 4Chan were able to pin the bike-lock attacker to a philosophy professor at a local junior college, he has been arrested and is going to be tried but he's one fo those public employees teaching our youth. 

BTW, I personally don't own or like guns, what I would do is hire a 24/7 armed guard service were I to even try to build in those areas, as a matter fo fact I built a few apartment buildings in the area of the last fire in the 60s with no problems, and of course those additional costs would ultimately be passed on the the renters, and Oakland's biggest problem is housing the poor.


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## tmurray

The police need to understand they are employed to do a job. Politicians cannot tell them when to do and when not to do their job. They can certainly provide some guidance on matters of policy, but cannot ask them to do something that is openly negligent or outright illegal.

It sounds to me like the police departments have weak leadership. Whether the groups are left or right leaning makes no difference. If they break the law they should be arrested. I'm young and generally pretty progressive and liberal in my ideology. I would never agree with action that damages someone else's property or harms another individual. No matter the circumstances. Those people should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And I would expect the same from people who have more conservative ideology. I think the issue becomes an "us versus them" idea to some people where the opposing political faction is labeled the enemy. "Everything they do is bad. Everything we do is good." People seem to forget that both sides are putting forward ideas that they think will better society and in that we all want the same thing. We can all denounce radicals attacking people or destroying property without loosing face for our viewpoints.


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## cda

Con???

Are you making billions off the railroad ??

Talk about city employee salaries 



http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-cost-overruns-20170106-story.html


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## conarb

T Murray:

Here in the "progressive" Bay Area police departments are being ordered to stand down and not go after the so-called anarchists, I mentioned once before our mass transit problems, this is particularly important here because building departments are the vehicle used to force development into the urban cores, and especially at mass transit stations.  As I reported before black thugs have been invading BART trains attacking and robbing people, BART has it's own police force and they are doing nothing about it, they are trying to coverup the fact that the criminals are black and there is a huge controversy now about the coverups,


			
				Hot Air said:
			
		

> Over the last few months, several attacks by large groups have targeted riders on San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) trains, resulting in robberies and injuries. The first of these took place in April and involved as many as sixty youth and seven victims, two of whom were beaten. The two most recent came at the end of June, including an armed robbery with a knife and another incident with a dozen perpetrators robbing a woman.
> 
> BART riders have begun to fear for their safety, and want video released to see who are committing these robberies. BART won’t release the video, however, and BART board member Deborah Allen tells CBS that it’s because they are afraid that the videos will “unfairly affect and characterize riders of color”:
> ¹



When these criminals invade the trains they jump over the turnstiles, BART came up with a plan to erect fences over the turnstiles but the bicycle activist groups went mad at meetings stating that they get their bikes onto the trains by holding them over their heads as they go through the turnstiles, in fact they are just putting into service new train cars and the handicap and bicycle activists have demanded most of the space so there are very few seats in the new cars reserving most space for wheelchairs and bicycles. Plan Bay Area is trying to mass everyone at urban cores in large multifamily developments  within walking or biking distance from mass transit to get people out of their cars and private homes, the fact is that they aren't safe and as the activists become more emboldened the authorities are letting them get away with whatever they want.

Remember how Mark Handler was always making comments about politically correct terminology when referring to handicapped people?   Apparently Canada has gone off the boards with political correctness, even making it law that you have to use pronouns describing people who don't know which sex they are, a Canadian psychology professor has refused to comply and has delivered the best opinion on the matter that I have ever read or heard, it's almost 3 hours but every minute of it is well worth the time, one thing he explains is social psychologists, I've read a lot of crap from them, and had to wonder what they were, I know of psychologists and sociologists but social psychologists is new to me, Professor *Jordan Peterson* of The University of Toronto explains that  they make it up as they go along.

See, there are still some good Canadians!

¹ http://hotair.com/archives/2017/07/11/bart-withholding-video-attacks-concern-stereotypes/


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## conarb

CDA:

Nobody but Moonbeam wants that stupid railroad, the reason he wants it is the United Nations wants people out of cars and airplanes by the end of this century to save the fu¢king planet.

An update on the Oakland situation:



			
				East Bay Times said:
			
		

> OAKLAND — In what an expert calls a “huge failure,” hundreds of residential and commercial buildings across Oakland were never inspected after firefighters flagged fire dangers and referred them for followup*,* including more than 200 apartment buildings housing thousands of residents, an investigation by the Bay Area News Group has found.
> 
> Records acquired from the city covering 2011 until early this year show that firefighters referred 879 properties for fire code issues to the Bureau of Fire Prevention, a number that includes the apartment buildings, plus commercial buildings and several schools.
> 
> But 615 (79 percent) of the properties flagged for referral were never inspected by the bureau, a cross-check of the data obtained through multiple public records requests show. Only 264 (21 percent) of the referred properties had subsequent inspections, and only a handful of them were conducted within the first month. It often took months or years before the visits occurred.
> 
> Grissom said safety wasn’t the bottom line. He sat in meetings where Oakland inspectors were told to give priority to higher-end buildings with modern or upgraded fire-prevention systems because property owners paid for those inspections.
> 
> Checking sprinklers and alarms are high-revenue generators for the department with strong likelihood of receiving payment, compared to rundown, older properties owned by people who cannot or will not pay, he said. California law allows departments to charge fees for routine inspections the state fire code requires they perform.¹




¹ http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/07...er-warnings-of-unsafe-buildings-go-unchecked/


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## cda

conarb said:


> CDA:
> 
> Nobody but Moonbeam wants that stupid railroad, the reason he wants it is the United Nations wants people out of cars and airplanes by the end of this century to save the fu¢king planet.
> 
> An update on the Oakland situation:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ¹ http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/07...er-warnings-of-unsafe-buildings-go-unchecked/






I wonder how many buildings/ businesses they are suppose to inspect???

What is that number ????


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## conarb

cda said:


> I wonder how many buildings/ businesses they are suppose to inspect???
> 
> What is tha number ????


It doesn't say, the interesting thing here is at least some of the rank and file firemen are doing their job, but once their complaints are filed they are kicked upstairs to the political appointees who could care less. It's also noteworthy that enforcement is diverted to money-making inspections and not real safety concerns.


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## tmurray

The problem I see often when it comes to those in the enforcement community is that they taint their decision making process in favor of their desired outcome. We asked this question at a conference recently: "There is extreme settlement of a garage. The permit was issued and all inspections were completed approximately 3 years ago. You receive a call from the owner about the settlement, what do you do?". People overwhelmingly said that since the building permit is closed, they would not stop by to do an inspection. When asked why, they stated they do not have the authority to enter the property. While this is true that they cannot simply walk onto the property without the owner's permission, in this case the owner was inviting them onto the property. This time they claimed that if they entered onto the property that they would be increasing their liability. 

You see they didn't want to deal with the property owner who might have a legitimate concern. They looked for any reason why they do not need to do what they don't want to. You can usually see this in the reasoning. When someone does not provide a good reason why they do something, they are not giving the true reason. In this case, even the liability reason is flawed. As long as they explained the limits of what they would be able to inspect, the inspection would actually mitigate rather than exacerbate liability. 

I feel this might be their approach as well. They get a concern forwarded to them by their staff and it doesn't quite fit the policy, so they ignore it. Fast forward a couple years and the problem kills someone, have fun explaining why you are not liable when a member of your own staff informed you there might be an issue. We investigate every complaint. Every. Single. One. Even the ones I know are going to be BS. Once in a while I am surprised when they turn into legitimate concerns.


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## conarb

What we are getting down to is that inspections are all about making money to pay the broke pension funds.



			
				East Bay Times said:
			
		

> OAKLAND — Officials in this fire-ravaged city reacted with alarm Monday over a report by this news organization that almost 80 percent of firefighter referrals to inspect dangerous conditions went ignored over the last six years.
> 
> “It is horrifying,” Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan said of the investigation’s findings. “In fact, one of the issues (the story) identified is how it gets decided who gets inspected.”
> 
> In early 2017, a few months after the Ghost Ship warehouse fire killed 36 people, Kaplan proposed reprioritizing which businesses get inspected. Kaplan said she had heard from residents who said their businesses received multiple inspections, while others were never inspected.
> 
> “I’ve been getting complaints from random small business owners that say they get fire inspections over and over again for no reason and charged a fee,” Kaplan said Monday.
> 
> Former Oakland city inspector Mark Grissom, who is now a wildlands firefighter for the federal government, told this news organization that the Fire Prevention Bureau would prioritize modern buildings with superior fire-prevention systems to inspect because the agency knew it would get paid for its inspection services. The city charges for fire inspections, and Grissom said that at older buildings in poorer neighborhoods, inspectors knew that if they conducted an inspection, the payment might not happen.¹





			
				East Bay Times said:
			
		

> There seems no end to Oakland’s government dysfunction.
> 
> Over a six-year period, fire inspectors failed to examine nearly 80 percent of buildings firefighters had referred to them for followup of dangerous conditions, according to a Bay Area News Group data analysis.
> 
> The acting fire chief’s response: A refusal to answer questions and a canned statement that the problems were due primarily to staffing shortages and computer database problems.
> 
> But if you want a sense of the community’s response, consider the comments of a man who lived next door to a building that burned down — one of those that was supposed to be inspected but never was.
> 
> “I guess this is Oakland,” he said. “You can’t really expect it.”
> Oakland firefighters checked a “referral” box in the department’s software in an attempt to flag inspectors to visit the halfway house on San Pablo Avenue, but the program had a flaw and nothing was inspected for two years. The building burned down March 27, killing four people. (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group Archives)
> An Oakland halfway house, where four people died in March, had been flagged 16 months earlier for an inspection that didn’t happen. (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group Archives)
> 
> That’s how low the bar has sunk in the Bay Area’s third largest city. Residents have stopped expecting basic municipal services: Fire inspections. Police showing up when you call. Decent roads. Responsible management of public money.
> 
> Instead, this is the city where 36 people died in the infamous Ghost Ship warehouse inferno after firefighters ignored the dangerous conditions — and some had even attended a party there.
> 
> This is the city where four died in a fire at a halfway house, where 16 months earlier a firefighter had requested an inspection that never happened, and a few months before the blaze a fire captain had urged that the building be shut down, only to be overruled. The city where hillside fire inspection reports were apparently faked.
> 
> Where the police department is in its 14th year of federal court oversight, yet cops cavorted with a sexually exploited teenager and their behavior was first swept under the rug by fellow officers who conducted an inept investigation.
> 
> Where basic road maintenance is abandoned, allowing streets to deteriorate so badly that it will take $443 million, paid mostly with a new property tax, to fix it.
> 
> Where City Council members and mayors — be they named Dellums, Quan or Schaaf — cannot contain spending to the available funds despite the city’s high tax rates, including a hidden levy for pensions.²



Interesting that the list of mayors neglects to include Jerry "Climate Change" Brown, in his first go-around at trying to destroy the state as governor he was Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown, we had major droughts during both of his administrations, in an effort to save water his motto was "If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down", you can imagine the fun we had with that one. 

What's really going on this is the pension funds are insolvent and the local AHJs are doing everything to divert monies to try to keep them solvent so they have something to retire on, after all that's why they work.


¹ http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/07/17/it-is-horrifying-oakland-officials-respond-to-fire-findings/

² http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/07/18/editorial-this-is-how-low-the-bar-has-sunk-in-oakland/


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## conarb

This in the paper today:



			
				East Bay Times said:
			
		

> OAKLAND — There was a ceremony here Wednesday to mark the groundbreaking for the Alexan Webster, a new 234-unit, mixed-use project, but it wasn’t the backdrop either the developers or city officials had anticipated for such a momentous day.
> 
> Looming overhead were the contorted charred remains of the Alta Waverly, a 196-unit market-rate apartment complex already under construction that was destroyed July 7 in a suspicious fire. Crews with an excavator working to clear parts of the mangled wreckage ceased their work at the request of program organizers so the noise wouldn’t drown out the day’s speeches celebrating the new project.
> 
> It’s too early to know what impact the fires will have on investor and developer confidence in Oakland. It takes years to pull together financing proposals, secure investors, find and buy property, draft plans for a development and then get them approved by the city’s Planning Commission, a lengthy and often contentious process. By the time developers are breaking ground on a new project, they’re already committed, usually contractually or financially, to the project, said Mark McClure, president of the Oakland Builders Alliance.
> 
> “By their nature, developers are optimists,” McClure said. “You have to be if you’re taking the risks they are.”
> 
> However, he said developers in the East Bay are paying close attention to how much companies are charging to insure projects.
> 
> Some said the impact from the fires is already being felt in rising costs. “We’re incurring more from a security standpoint, and we fully expect our insurance costs to increase,” said Bruce Dorfman, senior managing director for Trammell Crow Residential, the developer for the Alexan Webster. “It’s having a dramatic impact not just on our project but throughout the industry and the region.”
> 
> McConnell, who attended the meeting, said developers had requested more police protection at sites, particularly ones where the wood is still exposed and sprinkler systems haven’t yet been installed, making them easier to burn. In the case of all four fires, McConnell said the buildings were in that fragile state. He said Schaaf told developers there weren’t enough cops. Some developers also want to put barbed wire around their sites.
> 
> “We have five or six more going up in the Valdez corridor that are going to be just like those (at previous fires), and we’re going to have to be real vigilant,” he said.¹



We don't need building inspectors, we need cops, Oakland is full of Democrats, anti-capitalists, anarchists and other viscous groups. 



¹ http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/07...nstruction-project-damaged-in-suspcious-fire/


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## tmurray

“By their nature, developers are optimists,” 

Truer words have never been spoken.

Our new mid rise wood provisions require operational sprinkler systems on a floor before they can move to the next storey. Something similar might be in order here.


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## conarb

tmurray said:


> “By their nature, developers are optimists,”
> 
> Truer words have never been spoken.
> 
> Our new mid rise wood provisions require operational sprinkler systems on a floor before they can move to the next storey. Something similar might be in order here.


That's one Hell of an idea, given the political climate here that should be an emergency code requirement.


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## cda

tmurray said:


> “By their nature, developers are optimists,”
> 
> Truer words have never been spoken.
> 
> Our new mid rise wood provisions require operational sprinkler systems on a floor before they can move to the next storey. Something similar might be in order here.





Will you post the wording on that requirement.

And how are the sprinkler and gc's taking it and how are the installs going??


Thanks


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## tmurray

It just passed it's public review, so the final wording is not yet known, but the basics are that the progressive installation of automatic sprinklers require the sprinklers to be active on a storey before construction can commence on the storey above. It is understood that sprinklers may need to be deactivated during construction, however the time they are to be deactivated must be minimized. 

There are obvious concerns related to cold weather work and there is a lot of discretion involved. But realistically, these building go up fast and require a significant amount of scheduling. 

Basically, It is possible. It is hard to do. It keeps the people who shouldn't be doing this kind of work away from it.

We don't see a lot of arson here, our fires are mostly some idiot doing hot works who leaves and goes for a smoke break. Forgets he is not working in a concrete building and doesn't do the proper shut down procedure. From what I've read, most of the mid-west ones in the US are the same reason. Unfortunately, sprinklers don't cure stupid.


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## conarb

tmurray said:


> Basically, It is possible. It is hard to do. It keeps the people who shouldn't be doing this kind of work away from it.



California requires anyone touching a sprinklers system graduate from a state approved apprenticeship system, that means they are union sprinkler fitters since the unions run the apprenticeship program.


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## tmurray

That should be helpful. I don't have a lot of faith in apprenticeship programs. Our carpentry program here have had people graduate who don't know what a miter joint is. Typically, the carpenters union throws them on a low skill job and just says they completed all the necessary disciplines. Meanwhile, they've only done formwork for four years.


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## conarb

tmurray said:


> That should be helpful. I don't have a lot of faith in apprenticeship programs. Our carpentry program here have had people graduate who don't know what a miter joint is. Typically, the carpenters union throws them on a low skill job and just says they completed all the necessary disciplines. Meanwhile, they've only done formwork for four years.


Unfortunately the same thing has happened here, back when all legitimate contractors were union I tried to keep my mix at 50% residential and 50% a combination or industrial/commercial/government jobs to keep my apprenticeship mixes up to union rules so I wouldn't lose them after spending a lot of money training them, hopefully the sprinkler fitters' union will try doing something similar.


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## linnrg

a sprinkler guy told me this about the difference between a plumber or a pipe fitter:
Upon application the person is told to get up to the neck into a vat of  **** then they swing a iron pipe at the head,
those that dive into the **** are plumbers those who take the pipe to the head are pipe fitters!


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## conarb

Now the activists are burning down buildings in *Boston*


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