If there’s one word to describe Mt. Lebanon Fire Department’s fire prevention platoon, it’s “busy.”

“There’s no one busier time of the year, it’s just consistently busy,” said Lt. Joe Gavita.

The fire prevention platoon conducts safety inspections in commercial buildings and multi-family housing units. The unit also reviews plans of fire and life safety features and issues operational permits. Gavita is responsible for inspecting all of the municipality’s commercial properties. “We inspect either annually or every three years, depending on the occupancy type and the potential hazards in those buildings.”

Schools, St. Clair Hospital, nursing homes and day care centers require an annual inspection, as do restaurants, bars, auto repair businesses and places that have permits to sell liquid propane gas, such as drug and hardware stores. Commercial buildings that don’t require an annual permit, like takeout places and doctor’s offices, are inspected every three years. Apartments and multi-family dwellings with three or more units receive an inspection every two years.

The department also does one-time permit inspections, for events such as Mt. Lebanon’s July 4 Community Day, or for construction that may pose a fire hazard, such as welding or hot work on a roof, and will do special inspections on request, in response to a complaint or as follow-up after a fire or other emergency incident. Also, every time a new exhaust hood is installed in a commercial kitchen, the fire department is on hand to make sure it’s working properly.

“We do an initial inspection, which we schedule; we don’t just surprise them. We can send the report electronically or we can mail it to them,” Gavita said. If the inspection finds any safety deficiencies, the inspectors give them a time frame to correct them.

“We go back every 30 days or so for a reinspection, and if it’s not corrected after a few attempts, we’ll look into other options,” said Gavita. “If it’s something that’s critical, like a life hazard, we want to get it corrected. We have the authority to say, hey, this needs to be corrected by tomorrow …But I can’t even tell you if I’ve ever done that. That’s for something significant, like if they’re grilling in the hallway.”

Last year, the department did 469 inspections of multi-family units, 398 annual commercial inspections, 275 general commercial inspections and 56 fire alarm and sprinkler system inspections. The inspections yielded 2,589 violations, but almost all were corrected, resulting in only 24 citations. Most of the facilities the inspectors visited — 64 percent of the annual inspections and 73 percent of the general inspections — were compliant on the initial inspection or remedied the deficiencies by the time of the first reinspection.

The Compliance Engine software program acts as a clearinghouse to keep track of every inspection, and lists all of the violations and discrepancies, which makes reinspections go much faster.

“I’m really big on the Compliance Engine system,” said Gavita.  “We go in every morning, log in and check to see what’s been uploaded. The two biggest things we track are past due systems and deficiencies. I’m only in some of these buildings three or four times a year. I need to know that those other days of the year those systems are working. The fire alarms are working, the sprinklers have at least been inspected and tested.

“We’ve noticed at least internally that we’re not going to a lot of the nuisance alarms anymore or faulty detectors, because we’re catching all these deficiencies where they may have had a problem with a smoke detector or something like that.

The crew consists of four career and five volunteer firefighters, and does about three initial inspections a week. The biggest job, St. Clair Hospital, takes two inspectors two or three days to complete the walkthrough.

“At the beginning of the year, we do the hospital and the hotel. We  have all the assisted living facilities that we spread out throughout the year. So we’re always busy and that’s just initial inspections. I could do six or seven reinspections a day.”

The inspectors are required to complete training. The Pennsylvania State Fire Academy has three levels of fire inspector certification. Gavita currently has Fire Inspector II certification and is working toward obtaining the top level. The academy also has a plans examiner class. The inspectors have training at the National Fire Academy in Maryland, and take continuing education classes through the International Code Council or the Pennsylvania Building Association.

Gavita says an initial inspection walkthrough may take about an hour or so, followed up by a written report that the inspector enters into the department’s database for inspections, fire reports and other records. Depending on when they’re ready for them, an inspection usually takes at least an hour when it’s all said and done.

The crew’s approach to fire prevention boils down to the three E’s — education, engineering and enforcement.

“We explain why we’re writing something up.  A lot of the biggest issues we find are electrical, like extension cords, surge protectors being improperly used, and we’ll explain why it’s a hazard and what could result.

“The engineering part, we work with the vendors to look at the plans for fire alarm systems, sprinklers, buildings. Say St. Clair Hospital is doing some remodeling, we require a certain amount of staff time to review the plans. If we miss anything, like if we review plans and we miss two sprinkler heads that are supposed to be somewhere, they go and install the system and we come back to inspect it and we say ‘wait a minute, there were supposed to be two sprinkler heads here.’ That’s a lot more expensive and painstaking to have to fix that on the back end. So we need to be really good up front on the engineering side and we’re constantly talking to vendors. We don’t want to miss something that could be expensive on the back and that also hurts our relationship with the building owners.”

Enforcement is a last resort.

“We would much rather build a relationship with the end user and work with them to get things corrected, because some of it’s out of their control,” said Gavita. “They may need to get a third party or a vendor in there to fix something, and you know there’s been a lot of challenges with COVID that we’re still seeing, where businesses are having trouble maybe getting an electrician or  someone to come in to fix something, so we try and work with them on that and we have an open line of communication.

So if our crews are out and they see something in a building, they’ll let us know and we’ll follow up with that.

Gavita believes a stint in fire prevention is a boost to a firefighter’s effectiveness.

“Being up here gives you a bird’s eye view of everything,” he said. “You learn more about the community. I’ve been in every commercial building in town, so now I know the ins and outs and the history of some of these buildings. You’ll go down the basements and you’ll learn, like, hey, this used to be a meat packing place back in the 1910s. You learn that stuff and you know, you learn the history of the community. And different things like that and in building familiarization, I can go into a building, and if I see something like, hey this building has two basements or you know this floor is all chopped up. I can come back and tell these guys, hey, if you’re here on a call, here’s something to keep in mind.

“It’s busy up here. Before I came on, I’d always hear, prevention is busy, prevention is busy, but it’s not until you get up here that you realize how much you’re involved. Every day I’m talking to somebody in the community, whether it’s a business, a vendor, we’re just trying to build a relationship to make things safer for everybody.”