A Fuming Mayor Nutter Backs Full Probe Into Blaze That Killed Firefighters
The mayor says he knows the owners of the building in which two firefighters died this month had received three violation notices and never responded.
Watch CBS News
The mayor says he knows the owners of the building in which two firefighters died this month had received three violation notices and never responded.
Hundreds of neighbors held a community vigil in Kensington on Sunday evening to honor the memory of two Philadelphia firefighters who were killed in a devastating warehouse fire on Monday.
Local 22 President Bill Gault says the funerals will be massive. "I expect about 2,000 to 3,000 firefighters from across the United States and Canada here and probably two hundred to three hundred pieces of apparatus."
The CBS 3 I-Team has learned the owners of the abandoned warehouse at the center of a fire that killed two Philadelphia firefighters own dozens of other properties across the city and owe the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in back real estate taxes.
The Thomas Buck building, where the fire that killed two firefighters on Monday started, is just one of about 25,000 vacant properties in Philadelphia that create safety hazards in neighborhoods.
The fire marshal is probing what started the fire, and aides to the mayor are looking at other properties in the city held by the warehouse owners.
Appearing on Eyewitness News on the CW-Philly, this morning, Nutter said the city will continue to pursue all possible legal action against the property owners, including "outstanding taxes, where the owners are, what they're doing -- their failure to respond to at least three violation notices that we sent. We know that they received them."
City Councilwoman Maria Quinones Sanchez, whose district includes the site of the fire, says New York Developers three years ago purchased the building with some grand plans.
A message on the firehouse's Facebook page reads, "Thank you to everyone for your loving support during this most difficult time."
