ST. LOUIS — Early Tuesday morning, St. Louis firefighters responded to a fire at a vacant building in north St. Louis. It happened on Union Boulevard near Lillian Avenue. The fire quickly spread to a building next door and then to a home.
The call came in just after 1 a.m. Tuesday as two single residences. Firefighters rescued two dogs from inside one of the homes.
Just over a year ago, St. Louis firefighters launched a new vacant building ranking database in an effort to keep firefighters safe. The department has been in the process of inspecting nearly 10,000 vacant buildings.
While the project had been in the works for a while, it was made more urgent after the death of firefighter Benjamin Polson, 33, who was killed in 2022 when a roof in a vacant building collapsed on him and other firefighters.
When 5 On Your Side initially reported about the vacant building ranking system, St. Louis Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson said firefighters would be inspecting all those vacant buildings and reviewing things like conditions around buildings and whether walls or roofs had collapsed.
The ranking system puts the buildings into one of three categories, which dictate how crews will respond:
- Do not enter under any circumstance.
- Only enter to save a life.
- The building is safe to enter.
“Are all the walls standing? Is there a missing wall? Is the roof in place? Are the floors missing in a multi-story building? Do we have lentils that are not in place? Are the walls bulging out? Are the chimneys leaning?" Jenkerson said. "There is all kinds of indicators that are going to cause us pause, if you will.”
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