The Johnstown Fire Department has taken on the additional responsibility of code enforcement in the city, a task that began about four months ago.
Fire Chief Jim McCann said the new duty adds to the workload of the city’s firefighters, but they are managing to fulfill their obligations.
“As we go out, we’re looking for tall grass, we’re looking for physical damage to the building, garbage and so on and so forth collecting on the addresses,” said McCann.
He noted that Johnstown, like many municipalities, faces challenges with condemned properties. However, he believes the department’s efforts are making a positive impact.
“We’ve been finding different issues dealing with different properties. Yeah, Johnstown has a number of condemned properties in it. I don’t think we’re any different than other municipalities, our size being larger, we all face the same type of dilemmas within our municipalities. However, when we look at these and the corrective measures, we’re taking is making a difference,”
Community members are also responding to the initiative according to McCann who highlighted the success of a citywide cleanup effort.
“Our collections this spring when we had dumpsters located throughout the city, it was one of our biggest responses ever to that and talking to some of the people who were actually bringing their stuff they did verbalize that because of the start of property maintenance inspections they wanted to get ahead of it and start cleaning their properties up,” he said.
The code enforcement task is also providing an opportunity for the fire department to engage more with the community and check the city’s fire hydrants. Despite the added layer of responsibility, McCann assured residents that the department is committed to covering the entire city.
“As we complete an area then we’re moving into other areas of the city, so eventually the entire city will be done at which point we will start this process over again,” McCann said. “It’s not going away.”
There is no set timeline for when the entire city will be inspected because the department must coordinate with the codes department for follow-up inspections.