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A mother, still grieving over her son’s death in a residential fire, urged the Housing Advisory Commission to require stiffer fire safety regulations for rental property. 

“You have a moral and ethical obligation to make sure students wake up in case there’s a fire,” said Scottia Evans.  

Evans lost her son Brad, 23, a UC Berkeley psychology student, in an Oakland house fire last January. 

Evans held a press conference before the regular meeting of the Housing Advisory Commission on Thursday. The commission was scheduled to discuss a proposed ordinance that would require landlords to certify annually that fire safety devices, such as smoke detectors, are in place and operational. 

The ordinance would also require landlords to have their gas appliances inspected every three years unless they install carbon monoxide detectors, in which case inspections would be required every five years. 

Landlords can either hire a private contractor to conduct the appliance and venting inspection at an average rate of $75 per hour or take advantage of free inspections offered currently by PG&E. 

The ordinance is estimated to cost the city $438,000 the first year, according to housing inspector Carlos Roma. Roma said the Housing Department will hire at least one new employee and would purchase necessary equipment such as an inspection truck. 

About 75 people attended the meeting, many of them friends of Brad Evans who came to support the recommendation and offer emotional support to his mother. The commission will vote on the recommendation at its May 3 meeting and the council will vote on it after that. 

Not including Brad Evans, who died in Oakland, eight people have died in Berkeley from residential fires and carbon monoxide poisoning since 1990.  

Three students died in a fire at the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity on Warring Street in 1990. In August 1999, another student Azalea Jusay, 21, and both her parents died in a fire on Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. Also in 1999, Devi Prattipati, 17, died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning in an apartment building on Bancroft Way. 

Evans, a resident of Newport Beach, told the commission that the deaths might have been prevented by the presence of working fire and carbon monoxide detectors. 

“This seemingly endless cycle must stop,” Evans said. “It’s not good for the city’s residents and it’s not good for Berkeley. With all due respect it makes you look ineffective by not addressing this problem.” 

The municipal code already requires smoke detectors in all residential property. The proposed ordinance is designed to insure maintenance of the devices.  

State law precludes the city from requiring landlords to install carbon monoxide detectors, but under the ordinance, landlords would only be required to have gas appliances and venting systems inspected every five years, rather than every three years, if they installed the gas detectors. 

Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless gas that is produced when any fuel is incompletely burned. There are about 200 carbon monoxide deaths each year in the United States from poisoning associated with home fuel-burning appliances, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. 

Landlords would also fill out and submit to the Housing Department a yearly Certification Safety Check List, which would verify detection devices were in place and operational.  

The Housing Department would randomly select properties for inspection to verify safety devices were in working order. During the first year of implementation, landlords would not pay the cost of random inspections. 

However, if a property is found to be in noncompliance, the landlord would be fined $200 and another $200 each time the property is re-inspected until the violation is corrected. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington told the commission the amendment was the most effective way to keep the cost to landlords low. 

“We have to have the intelligence to take precautions at the lowest possible cost,” he said. “This is not a ‘beat-up-landlords ordinance.” 

Berkeley Property Owners Association President Robert Cabrera, who worked closely on the amendment with the Housing Advisory Commission, said his organization supports the ordinance. 

“We were very pleased to be part of the solution to this problem,” he said. “We totally support this amendment.” 

Leslie Kline, a student and friend of Brad Evans, told the commission that she would like to more dialogue between landlords and tenants.  

Kline, and several roommates, rented an older home in Berkeley in August. She said that the landlord did not tell them about a living room furnace that had an exposed flame. 

“Students are often on their own for the first time and may not be familiar with all the housing safety issues they should be,” she said. “If landlords put together a simple check list of the things they know are potentially hazardous in their properties, it would help.” 

The commission is expected to vote on the recommendation next month. If approved, the council could adopt the ordinance as early as July. 

Evans said there have been enough student deaths by fire in Berkeley. “I hope you will honor my son and somehow give sense to his death by requiring the installation and inspection of these detectors,” she said.