Fire inspections return as issue in mayors race

Written by Fred Musante
Friday, 30 October 2009 11:54

A report by the State Fire Marshal’s office completed last summer has concluded that the lack of inspection reports on file for city Fire Marshal inspections of Shelton High School did not violate state law.

It is not clear, however, if Shelton Fire Marshal James Tortora properly inspected the high school, or simply did not keep reports of the inspections on file.

“I knew we were in compliance with the state statute,” Tortora said Monday.

The State Fire Marshal report was released to the news media this week by Board of Aldermen President John Anglace, a Republican ally of Mayor Mark Lauretti. The report contradicts a complaint made in March by Democrat Chris Jones, who is running for mayor against Lauretti.

Although the report repudiates Jones’s claim that Tortora was not doing inspections of the high school, as required by state law, and that Lauretti also was to blame, it appears to confirm Jones’s complaint that Tortora was unable to produce fire inspection reports by his office.

If city fire marshals have inspected the high school, there is scant record of it.

“I’ve got them scared,” said Jones upon learning on Monday that Anglace had released the report a week before Election Day, apparently in an attempt to embarrass him.

Anglace released a copy of the report with date stamps from Oct. 16 and 20, but the State Fire Marshal investigators dated it Aug. 17, and Jones said he got a copy in August.

The report by State Fire Marshal officials documented that city records do not include fire code inspection reports for 2003 to 2006, and only two violation notice documents for 2007.

Tortora also did not produce any reports predating 2000, and the documents from 2000 and 2001 were only violation notices and memos. Only one inspection report, dated March 19, 2002, was on file.

In March this year, Jones initiated his complaint to the State Fire Marshal’s office that Tortora was not conducting inspections, as required by state law.

In that complaint, Jones said he asked to view all fire inspection reports for Shelton High School going back 15 years and was informed there were none.

Jones said Tortora should be “relieved of his duties immediately,” and noted that Mayor Mark Lauretti, Tortora’s supervisor, had not reprimanded him.

The controversy dates back to last fall, when Jones and other Democrats first charged that Tortora and Lauretti were negligent and that the high school was rife with fire code violations.

When WTNH-TV reporter Alan Cohn interviewed Lauretti about it, the mayor replied on camera that there was nothing in the high school that could burn except for “paper and people.” Democrats responded with howls of outrage.

But the statement returned to haunt Lauretti in December when a storeroom fire caused nearly $2 million in damage to Shelton High, mostly from smoke that coated every surface with smelly soot.

The investigation of the fire revealed a number of fire code violations at Shelton High School, even though the school is 35 years old and had just undergone $25 million in renovations.

Tortora said he showed Jones all of the reports in the files, and also provided them for Democratic Town Committee Chairman David Gioiello when Gioiello requested them under the state Freedom of Information Act.

“There may have been some missing. There may have been some that weren’t in the file,” Tortora admitted Monday.