ALEXANDRIA, Va. — As the search for survivors continues in Surfside, Florida following the deadly building collapse, some local leaders want to take steps to prevent a similar tragedy from happening in the DMV.
City of Alexandria Mayor, Justin Wilson, said their office has received many questions from local families concerned about the safety of their building.
"After Surfside, we’ve been getting a lot of inquiries from our residents who are very concerned about the safety of their buildings and where they live so that is certainly something that we have been fielding a lot of questions about, and really this is a uniquely Alexandria issue," said Mayor Wilson.
Alexandria currently has a large number of high-rise buildings older than 40 years old.
While the Virginia building code requires inspections of items like elevators or fire alarms, there is currently no requirement for inspecting the building structure.
"This is really an opportunity for the Commonwealth to step back, look at the laws that we have in place and try to figure out ways to provide reassurance to residents and property owners that these buildings are safe, as well as put systems in place so we don’t end up in a situation like we’ve seen in Surfside and other communities," said Mayor Wilson.
"I did send a letter to the governor and what we said was essentially that he should use the upcoming special session of the General Assembly to start by creating a workgroup of stakeholders from around the Commonwealth to come in and say what are the things that we can do and make some suggestions," said Mayor Wilson.
In a letter sent to Gov. Ralph Northam, Mayor Justin Wilson called for a review of building safety.
"The tragic collapse of the condo building in Florida is highly unusual. There are millions of commercial and residential high-rise buildings in the United States and catastrophic structural failures like the recent disaster are, thankfully, quite rare. However, this is an opportunity for us to consider and revisit the issue of building safety in our communities, and identify ways to review and potentially enhance building safety across the Commonwealth," Wilson stated in the letter.
Mayor Wilson said a good starting point would be more transparency and better reporting requirements of our local building.
"On the front end of new building construction, I think we do a pretty good job of having regular inspections and making sure we are meeting code requirements for every part of systems like electrical, plumbing and the basic structure. However, once a building is in place, we don’t really have a process of going back and doing regular inspections. It’s seen as that is an owner obligation and there’s not a lot of oversight from the state or the city to make sure that happens," said Mayor Wilson.