** Inspector Hoff

Topics: Regulation
11 Nov 2005

From: heiland

I am now a certified post-earthquake damage inspector. I took a six
hour class, and now, if there is an earthquake, I get to decide whose
house is condemned and who gets to stay in their house. If I put a
green tag on your door, you can go about your life without
interruption. If I put a red tag on your door, you cannot enter your
own house under penalty of law. If you run in for five minutes to get
your glasses and your heart medication, I can have you thrown in jail.
I'm not kidding, that is the exact example the instructor used to
demonstrate what constitutes criminal trespass for a condemned
building.

I was interested in taking this class because I wanted to know how
inspectors can determine whether a house is safe to enter. I am a
licensed architect and a licensed general contractor, and I haven't a
clue. Prior to taking the class, I imagined that perhaps, by using a
micronometer, a boroscope, and advanced investigative techniques, an
inspector could determine whether a crack in the drywall meant that the
house was about to collapse, or whether it just needed a little spackle.
I was bitterly disappointed. What I learned was that whether or not a
house was safe to enter depends 100% on one thing: the opinion (read:
whim) of the inspector.

The class taught us that we have virtually no legal liability in our
assessment. We also have virtually no accountability for our decision.
The instructor strongly recommended that we put our certification
number, rather than our name, on the red tag, because otherwise people
might try to contact us to ask us what they are supposed to do now that
their house has been condemned. That would be very inconvenient and
annoying for us, and the inspector explained that, since there is no
way to find out who has a given certification number without going
through the state department of consumer and business services in
Salem, it makes us extremely difficult to track down.

We spent the vast majority of the six hour class learning about the
infrastructure and organization of post-earthquake inspection services,
legal rights and responsibilities, and how to handle angry homeowners
after we throw them out of their homes. We were encouraged to share
frequent group hugs, cry, and sing kumbiya to preserve our own mental
health. (Im not kidding!) We were instructed never to spend more
than fifteen minutes inspecting a house, because we could expect to
inspect more than four thousand houses apiece in the event of a major
quake. I kept wondering when we were going to get to the good part,
the part where we learn how to determine whether a building was safe or
unsafe to enter. When there was only an hour and a half left to the
class, the instructor set up a slide show, and we spent the final
minutes of the class evaluating slides of quake-damaged buildings. The
instructor would show a slide and ask the class, everyone who thinks
this building is safe, raise your hand. Now, everyone who thinks its
unsafe, raise your hand. We were given no criteria about how to
evaluate the slides, we were simply asked our opinions. There were no
right or wrong answers, but the hope was that, through peer pressure,
we would learn to align our decisions with the majority opinion,
thereby creating a standard of sorts. On almost every slide, three or
four people, including me, would vote to green tag the building, and
the rest of the class would vote to red tag it. The reasons the class
gave for red tagging were almost never based upon imminent danger, but
were instead based upon conservative what-if scenarios. What if there
were a powerful aftershock? That chimney could be shaken down, and that
could really hurt somebody. What if a large group of people walked
out on that deck? It looks like it has been structurally compromised.

I would contend that no building is safe, given the proper what-if
scenario. If there is a powerful aftershock, any building could come
down. If enough people walk out on a deck, any deck will collapse.
Why should our imaginary what-if situations keep an owner from running
into his own home to get his glasses and his heart medication?

What became painfully clear was that the demographics of the class were
far more conservative than the demographics of the county at large. To
be certified, you had to be either a licensed structural engineer, a
licensed architect, or a registered building inspector. In other
words, you either had to have six years of engineering training, eight
years of architectural training, or you had to be a high school
graduate who passed the building inspectors exam. Would you care to
guess how many engineers there were in the class? Thats right, zero.
How many architects? One: me. How many building inspectors?
Huh...every single building inspector in the county was there. How
odd. Perhaps that was because I had to cough up the $185 class fee out
of my own pocket, and every single other person had their tuition paid
by the state.

So what kind of a person becomes a building inspector? Remember that
bully that used to beat you up after school? Ever wonder what became
of him? Dog catchers are failed policemen, and building inspectors are
failed dog catchers. Building inspectors are poorly paid, but they are
powerful people. They get to push people around. They get to throw
people out of their own houses. They thrive on that. They arent
elected, so you cant throw them out of office. If they give their
certification number instead of their name, you cant even find out who
they are. They are frickn untouchable, man. Just ask em.

When I was a kid, we used to demo houses. My dad would buy a house, and
we would live in it while we tore it apart. At some point, the house
would start to get wobbly, and then we would move into a camp trailer.
But every house the earthquake class voted to red tag was more
structurally sound than the houses I lived in as a kid. Houses are
hard as hell to knock down. Even after we pulled out all the bearing
walls and tried to pull them down with chains and tractors, houses tend
to hang from clouds. Anybody who has done demo work will tell you,
houses stay up way longer than anybody can possibly explain. The issue
is risk aversion. Building officials are the most risk-averse little
sawed-off paper pushers that exist in the world. What right do they
have to force their view of the world on the rest of the world?

I found the entire certification procedure absolutely infuriating. If
there is an earthquake, I promise to sign my name to every building I
inspect. I promise to not red tag a building unless I think it is in
imminent danger of collapse. And I promise to subvert my fellow
inspectors at every opportunity. I will explain possible danger to the
occupants, and let them make their own decisions.

h

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