HOT SPRINGS - Hot Springs Fire Chief Ed Davis said that the Fire Department plans to make a proposal to the Hot Springs Board of Directors to establish a new fire code district in downtown Hot Springs.
Davis said the Thermal Basin Fire District would be a code enforcement area tailored to the needs of the community’s “legacy structures.”
In the city’s history, fire has on numerous occasions altered the economic structure in a catastrophic manner, Davis said.
“In downtown Hot Springs, there remains a collection of architectural treasures - survivors of past conflagrations that are a legacy from our historic past,” he said.
“The proposed Thermal Basin Fire District encompasses the icons of Hot Springs - its downtown, Bathhouse Row, 54 locations listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, Hot Springs National Park and its 46 thermal springs,” he said.
Davis said the vast majority of the commercial structures within the basin district are historically significant, making the adoption of a set of fire codes tailored to existing historic structures a necessary component of the district’s formation.
He said the vision of the fire district is to establish a special code enforcement district to protect life, property and commerce from the effects of fire within the architecturally significant structures adjacent to Hot Springs National Park.
“To accomplish these goals, we must adopt a building rehabilitation code applicable within the Thermal Basin District that will insure that all unsafe structures are brought back into a safe condition in an economically feasible manner,” Davis said in a news release.
He said the “Existing Building Code” is designed to regulate the modification and rehabilitation of existing and historic structures.
“Among its tenets are passages specifically allowing the rehabilitation of unsafe structures solely through the use of fire sprinkler systems and adequate means of egress. The EBC [Existing Building Code] allows existing structures to continue with their current uses without modification. In other words, the EBC would take the place of the building code within the Thermal Basin Fire District concerning changes to existing structures or the rehabilitation of unsafe structures,” Davis said.
Arkansas, Pages 16 on 12/10/2013