By MARGARET GIBBONS – The Phoenix

NORRISTOWN — The Montgomery County commissioners want tougher fire protection measures incorporated into municipal building and fire codes in the wake of last week’s catastrophic blaze that destroyed two of the four occupied apartment buildings in The Riverwalk at Millennium complex in Conshohocken.

County Commissioners’ Chairman James R. Matthews Thursday said he has learned that Conshohocken’s codes did call for fire protection measures such as sprinklers in attics of wooden construction, but that the developer, O’Neill Properties Group, received a variance from the borough eliminating that requirement.

Matthews said he also has learned that other municipalities do not even have those requirements in their codes.

Matthews emphasized that the county has no control over building and fire codes put out by the state and adopted, sometimes with revisions, by municipalities. But, he added, the commissioners can use their position to rally support on both the state and local levels for tougher codes.

Since last week’s blaze, Matthews said he finds it “really unnerving” to look up at the common roofs of assisted living facilities, nursing home facilities, apartment houses and even business centers in the county.

He said he cannot help but wonder what would have happened at one of these facilities if a comparable fire, which became a “blazing inferno spreading from one end of the roof to the other” within eight to 10 minutes, broke out in the early morning hours and “involving a bunch of people without agility.”

“To hear from specialists that these code variances are tolerated in Pennsylvania where you end up with these fire traps, basically,” said Matthews.

“We have tens of thousands of people living under roofs with no sprinklers, no fire walls,” he said.

“I would think that if you are going to tolerate these wooden trusses, which also are known as ‘firemen killers,’ you should certainly have hand-in-hand a requirement for sprinklers in these common areas,” said Matthews.

Developer Brian O’Neill earlier this week defended the construction of his buildings.

“Buildings are designed to get people out safely and that is what happened here,” said O’Neill, emphasizing no lives were lost in the eight-alarm rush-hour fire that drew on the efforts of some 300 firefighters from more than 100 fire companies to bring the blaze under control.

Borough Council President Sandra Caterbone also earlier this week said: “every code that needed to be followed was followed.”

The fire, which was ruled an accident, started when smoldering sparks or molten metal, generated by an acetylene torch, ignited the five-story wooden frame-out of an apartment building under construction. The radiant heat generated by that blaze caused the roofs on the two nearby occupied apartment buildings to catch fire, burning from the top down.

None of the commissioners disputed claims that O’Neill built the complex in accordance with the requirements placed on him by the borough.

Commissioner Joseph M. Hoeffel III echoed Matthews’s comments.

With the millions of federal, state and county dollars spent on public safety, the county has to take a leadership role in pointing out problems in that area, said Hoeffel.

Noting that there is a growing trend to use cheaper wood frames and wooden trusts in the construction of large residential facilities, Hoeffel said that last week’s fire should serve as a “wake-up call that government has got to be stronger in the steps we take to keep people safe in such buildings.”

“Fully sprinkled buildings with fire walls to the roof seem to be a minimum requirement, not something that is optional,” said Hoeffel, recommending that the county planning commission develop model fire protection codes that can be adopted by municipalities.

“As good as we are at organizing, as good as we are at response, as professional as our fire companies are, are we giving them an added burden, are we exposing our elderly, are we exposing our citizens to dire straits if we don’t look at something in terms of code improvement or spurring the debate,” Matthews asked county Public Safety Director Tom Sullivan.

“I have long been an advocate of fully sprinklering buildings,” Sullivan responded. “These buildings are constructed with lightweight wooden trusses and when one truss fails, they all usually fail and that occurs with some frequency across the country and firefighters do die in those buildings.”

“Fully sprinklered buildings are safe buildings,” said Sullivan.

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