DAYTON — Dayton leaders have agreed to spend $1 million to try to clean up “fire piles,” the rubble left after fires, in the city.
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The money will go toward tackling 35 fire piles. While that may not seem like a lot for $1 million, and city leaders wish it was more, the price tag to clean up each individual lot with a fire pile is $30,000.
The work will bring the city’s number of fire piles from 85 to 50.
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A lot of people who live close to these eyesores say watching them go away will be priceless.
“I think it’s about time,” Jonathon Quallen-Cooper said
Quallen-Cooper and his parents live next to several fire piles on E. Fourth Street. As shown on News Center 7 at 5:00, video of four lots showed burned-out debris and danger. It’s a collection of eyesores and neighborhood trouble spots.
“People go over there every now and then, and explore and that’s when I’m like, ‘Don’t fall. There’s a deep hole in there,’” he said.
Dayton City Manager Shelley Dickstein said fire inspectors call for emergency demolitions when a home is structurally unsafe, usually after a fire. That’s what leads to fire piles, but the piles are eyesores and become dangerous because of curious kids or invasions of bugs and rodents.
City leaders are just as frustrated as people forced to live next door to them.
“We’d like to get this stuff off the landscape so we can attract new investment into the community,” Dickstein said.
The slowdown for clean-up has been cash. Safety regulations force the city to treat each fire pile like it contains asbestos, even if they know it doesn’t. The materials go to special landfills, making the price tag on each clean-up $30,000. That’s twice as expensive as a normal demolition.
People next to fire piles say they are non-stop trouble.
“Sometimes the stuff blows into the road and they have to go and pick it up or you risk popping your tires,” Quallen-Cooper said. “And it’s frustrating.”
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