Crews work to stabilize burned office building

Fire officials worked through the weekend to stabilize a burned-out east Houston office building in hopes of being able to begin an investigation of the cause of the fire. If the six-story structure at 9343 North Loop East is deemed safe enough, investigators could go in as early as Tuesday, nearly a week since the fire that killed three people and injured six more.

Among the tasks in making the building safer this weekend was knocking broken glass out of upper story window frames so there wasn't a chance that it would fall on people walking below and installing adjustable metal poles to reinforce each of the building's six floors. Plans were also made to shore up the south side of the building, which was the most heavily damaged, by running a cable from the top of the building to the ground. "Safety is our primary concern at this point," Robert Elder, assistant special agent in charge of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Houston, said. A team of ATF arson investigators is expected to arrive in Houston today.

Also this weekend, the Chronicle reported that officials raised questions about the safety of midrise atrium-style buildings — like the one that burned last week — when dozens of the buildings were going up around the city in the 1970s. The concern was that the design of the buildings, which include rings of office suites opening onto hallways that overlook multi-story atriums, would allow fires to spread incredibly quickly. The buildings weren't covered by 1970s building codes, so new safety provisions were adopted that called for atrium-style buildings to have sprinklers in some lobby areas and in the interior hallways. In 1981, the city began requiring sprinklers in all rooms, but more than 40 atrium buildings (including the one that burned) had already been built under the more relaxed requirements. "The problem is, if the fire occurs in the area that's not sprinklered, when it gets over to the atrium area, it just keeps going and going. The sprinklers don't have a chance," HDF chief inspector Perry Schindewolf told the Chronicle. "If you have a large, roaring fire, and you've just got one row of sprinklers on a balcony, there's no way to stop it."