IN THE LAST WEEK
Fatal fires are not uncommon in Allegheny County — at least one person a month, on average, dies in a blaze. What’s rare, however, is a deadly fire in a Downtown high-rise, with all the complications such scenarios create for logistically challenged firefighters, scores of evacuated residents and a population of workday commuters.
A sixth-floor, middle-of-the-night fire at the 18-story Midtown Towers apartment building claimed the life of a 75-year-old woman Monday. It also renewed questions concerning the lack of sprinkler requirements for older buildings like the 110- year-old structure on Penn Avenue.
New buildings must have sprinklers, but cost concerns over retrofitting older buildings have prevented that mandate from being applied to them as well.
“Sprinklers have been around for about 100 years now — a little more. And in that 100-year time, there has never been a fatality as a result of fire in a building with a working sprinkler system,” said Pittsburgh fire Chief Darryl E. Jones, while noting he has no control over requiring such systems.
City officials have no count of how many similar high-rise buildings also lack sprinklers, and it was unclear if any new push would be made for local legislation requiring them.
It was primary election week, but people might be excused for not noticing.
Only 17 percent of Allegheny County residents made it to the polls in what turned out to be the second-lightest voter turnout of the past decade.
Few of the municipal, judicial or school board races on the ballot generated wide attention.
The one with the most interest locally was the re-election bid of Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, since he had two challengers.
No incumbent mayor of the city has lost an election since 1933, however, a track record Mr. Peduto extended by winning nearly 69 percent of the vote. No Republican ran to oppose him in the fall general election.
With this year’s election lacking in notable contests, many Western Pennsylvanians who care about politics are already looking ahead to 2018.
The state’s two most prominent Democrats, Gov. Tom Wolf and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, will be up for re-election next year.
Paul Mango, a conservative Republican businessman from Richland,
became the second announced candidate from his party hoping to succeed Mr. Wolf.
A better-known local Republican, state House Speaker Mike Turzai of Bradford Woods, has also expressed his intent to run, though not yet in official manner.
Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of Butler, first elected to Congress in 2010, has decided not to run for governor but left open the possibility that he will seek the GOP nomination to run for Senate against Mr. Casey.