SANTA ANA : Overcrowding, Fire Toll Linked in Video

In overcrowded homes, fires burn faster and hotter, and are more likely to kill residents than in homes with fewer people.

City officials say getting that message across to state legislators is crucial because thousands of local homes are dangerously overcrowded, even though they meet state occupancy laws.

To persuade lawmakers to allow tighter restrictions on the number of occupants in a residence, city leaders and fire officials have created a video that explains the overcrowding danger in graphic images of charred homes, blackened baby cribs and raging fires.

Called “Fire in Our Homes: The Threat from Overcrowding,” the 14-minute video states that the more people live in a home, the more clothes, mattresses and other flammable material there are to feed a fire. As a result, fires often spread so quickly that occupants cannot escape.

State regulations permit up to 12 people to live in a two-bedroom home and as many as 19 people in a three-bedroom home. The video also states that under an ordinance proposed by the city, no more than six people could live in a two-bedroom dwelling and no more than 10 people could live in a three-bedroom residence.

Produced by the Santa Ana Fire Department, the video shows homes with cramped living quarters filled with cribs, dolls, clothes and beds, and notes that such overcrowded conditions are typical of more than 12,000 rental units in the city.

In another scene, firefighters conduct a test burn on a vacant house and record the fire’s temperature and rate of spread.

Building Safety Manager Jim Lindgren says on the videotape that overcrowding was directly responsible for the deaths of nine people, most of them children, within the last year.

Councilman Robert L. Richardson said the city began distributing the videos to state lawmakers and housing officials last week and has not yet received any response.

Richardson, who has long championed stricter housing occupancy standards, said the video offers persuasive evidence that stricter housing codes could save lives.

“During the fires in Laguna Beach over 300 homes burned and thousands escaped--nobody died. But we had three houses burn and nine people died” in Santa Ana, he said.

He added: “People need to realize that we have a problem.”