Smoker started a fire

[Dennis Tierney]

3 am Sunday a tenant smoking on the apartment porch carelessly discarded a cigarette and started a fire that destroyed the top 4 units in a 24 unit building. Fortunatley no one was hurt and the firemen saved the rest of the building (heros all). The insurance co. and management co were on the ball and we have loss of income provision on the insurance so will be out "only" the deductable. We of course won't be able to get any recourse from the tenant, but, at least his was one of the units completely destroyed so he lost also in his careless act. I was thinking of banning smoking for awhile ,but, now have resolved to ban all smoking in and around all my apartments. The manager said from her experience most smoker fires are from the porch/patio location and not inside the units so just banning interior smoking isn't enough protection. Sad how thoughtless people can be.

[Timothy W.]

I banned pets. Guess what I got. People with pets moved out and were replaced with people who don't have pets who didn't want to live in buildings with animals. No more pet messes.

What you're going to get is people who smoke move out and people who want to live in a nonsmoking building will move in and you'll never be painting over a smoking unit, or cleaning out smoke smell again. Is that a bad thing? Sure you'll lose some tenants in the short run but this isn't a short run game.

This really has me thinking. Everyone who's started trouble in my buildings has been a smoker. Correlation is not causation but I wonder if I'd get less trouble by making my buildings smoke free. Great thread.