Home Depot to pay $1.3 million for fire code violations after arson destroyed San Jose store

[SouthBayDem]

Source: San Jose Mercury News

SAN JOSE — Home Depot will pay $1.3 million after an investigation found that a bevy of fire code violations, including non-functioning sprinklers, helped a 2022 arson fire completely destroy a South San Jose store and pollute the air for several days in surrounding neighborhoods, authorities said.

That dollar amount includes $850,000 in civil penalties and $150,000 that will go toward fire prevention education and outreach in the South Bay, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. It was the DA’s Bureau of Investigations that examined reported failures in fire-suppression systems at the home-improvement giant’s Blossom Hill Road location, which was leveled by fast-moving flames on April 9, 2022.

“Fire code violations are potential tragedies in waiting. Ignoring them isn’t just risky; it’s reckless,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement. “It risks far more than property. It risks lives.”

An investigation, which was headed by the San Jose Fire Department and grew to include the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, determined that the fire was deliberately set in the store’s lumber section. Dyllin Jaycruz Gogue, 29, has been charged with arson and is being held without bail in the Elmwood men’s jail in Milpitas, though his case has remained in an early plea-entering stage in the two years since.

Read more: https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/20/home-depot-to-pay-1-3-million-for-fire-code-violations-after-arson-destroyed-san-jose-store/?share=5aerlemsdeess5ne2efi

[jmowreader]

1. Here's the issue I have with this

Yeah, fine the living shit out of them for all their fire code violations.

On the other hand...

As some of you may remember, I worked for Home Depot for six years. The way my store was set up, we had two aisles of dimensional lumber. The next aisle to the "whitewood" dimensional lumber aisle was roofing, and the side of the aisle that backed up to the lumber aisle had all the roofing tar on it. The other side was asphalt-composition shingles. Our pressure treated aisle backed up to one aisle that sold moulding, and one that sold plywood. The plywood was kept on two full aisles, and past that there was an aisle of 1x lumber. Then there was an aisle that held fiberglass bathtubs...going down the store the whole building was just full of combustibles. And we're not even to the paint department yet, where we sold pallet after pallet of paint thinner, naphtha and so on. The garden department has all sorts of combustible merchandise. At the time we sold ammonium nitrate but I don't think that's available anymore; I can't say because I tend to stay out of the garden department, but it may still be sold. In the racking that sells flammables there is supposed to be a system of in-rack sprinklers, but there aren't any in the lumber department. The moral of this story is, if ANY home improvement store - I don't care if it's a Home Depot, a Lowe's, a Menard's or a private-label lumberyard - catches fire and some of that merchandise starts burning, no sprinkler on the face of the earth is going to put it out. So, when you go to one of those stores KNOW WHERE ALL THE EXITS CLOSE TO YOU ARE!!! If you even think you smell smoke put down your purchases and get the hell out of there!

(Funny and true story: They give you loss prevention tests while you're there because one of your biggest jobs is combatting shrink. One of the questions we were posed is, "The power in the store has just gone out. What measures will you take to prevent shrink?" I told the trainer, who came in from Corporate, that the store we were in has a 150kw standby generator behind the building that kicks on if the power goes out. If we lose city power and the generator at the same time, life safety for my customers and fellow associates is going to take a very much higher priority than all the insured merchandise we've got in the building...and she agreed with me.)