Inspection Records Show Lowell Building up to Code

9-unit wooden structure on Branch Street is owned by DK Ram LLC and Sanjay Patel; permit to run rental property good through March 2016

According to inspection records for the Lowell, Massachusetts, building that was destroyed in a 3-alarm fire Thursday, killing seven people, the building was up to code.

In documents from the division of development services, the building is owned by DK Ram LLC and Sanjay Patel, who also owns the liquor store on the first floor.

It was a 9-unit wooden structure and Patel took out the proper permit to run a rental property; the permit is good through March 2016.

According to the head of development services, Eric Slage, rental units have to be inspected every three years. The building on Branch Street was inspected in March 2013 and had no issues.

"This building was inspected in March of 2013 for sanitary code compliance. That includes making sure it's working and there's an appropriate number of smoke detectors and CO detectors," she said.

The documents NECN recieved show no notes, no check marks and had almost nothing written on them.

Slage spoke to NECN on the phone about the discrepency and said the inspector typically only writes on these forms if something is wrong and that there's an electronic record that the inspector signed off on the property. When asked for the electronic records, Slage told NECN he would work on it.

State Fire Marshall Stephen Coan has questions about the status of the fire alarm system, too.

"There are clearly other residents who have made statements that they heard no alarms, that they were getting out of that building under very heavy fire conditions with no alarms sounding. It's also fair to say that the initial interviews of the first two firefighters and police officers, which is always key evidence for us, there is no statements from them that indicate there were any alarms ringing - and I frankly was here when smoke was still coming out of the building and I didn't hear any alarms, so there's a lot of work that needs to be done. We don't draw any conclusion from any of those statements, but there's a lot of evidence that needs to be looked at," he said.

Another question many are asking is about why the building did not have a sprinkler system. It was not required to because it was grandfathered out of the requirement.

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