Barbecue rules pulled for now

Apartment-dwellers in Washington state can look forward to at least one more barbecue season this year, but they shouldn’t count on having a natural Christmas tree this December.

Though the state Building Code Council, meeting in Spokane on Friday, voted to strike controversial restrictions from the 2003 International Fire Code, those rules could very well be back in place by November.

“You may want to consider how many criminals you’ll be making in this state,” Rep. Mike Armstrong, R-Wenatchee, told fellow council members, “because I don’t think people will comply with this.”

He was not alone on the panel in worrying about what the public reaction would be to new rules in the fire code, adopted by the last session of the Legislature. Real, cut Christmas trees would be banned in apartments, dormitories, schools, hotels, stores and restaurants. Open flame cooking devices would be prohibited on combustible balconies or within 10 feet of a combustible building. Also, gas burning grills with a capacity greater than 1 pound of LP gas would be banned from balconies or within 10 feet of a building.

But according to council member John Neff, calls and letters about the rules have been about even, half denouncing the rules as lifestyle intrusions and half begging the council to preserve the rules in the interest of safety.

“Public safety would not be served by repealing this code,” Neff said.

Firefighters who came from as far away as Vancouver, Wash., to attend Friday’s hearing tended to agree with Neff and others on the council who favor the provisions. But they don’t relish having to enforce the rules, either.

“We don’t have the resources to go find out what kind of tree you have,” said Dave Kokot, fire protection engineer for the Spokane Fire Department, who added that most Christmas tree fires in the city occur in single-family homes, not apartments.

The rules, which were to take effect on July 1, would have exempted one- and two-family dwellings or buildings and balconies and decks that are protected by automatic sprinkler systems.

“It’s a good idea,” Kokot said. “But we need more time to develop something more palatable.”

So that’s what members of the building code council decided to do. Though many of them thought the restrictions were a good idea, they voted to strike the rules until they could conduct public hearings and come up with a better way to protect the public.

The last thing they want, council member Steve Nutall said, is people going “underground” with their grills. Using them inside the home would be a far greater hazard because of the carbon monoxide they produce.

Dave Baker, who represents builders on the council, said most lawmakers didn’t read the new International Fire Code before adopting the rules for the first time since 1997, and there likely are more surprises to come out of the document, which is several inches thick.

“This is just the first salvo of what we are going to see for the next nine to 10 months,” he said.

In fact, one lawmaker on the Senate Land-Use Planning Committee said there was very little discussion on the panel of the details of the code.

“I think the legislators are feeling a little bit betrayed,” state Sen. Joyce Mulliken, R-Ephrata, said.