HUNTINGTON, W.Va.— After a fire broke out in an abandoned building overnight in Huntington, Mayor Patrick Farrell said in a tweet that something needs to be done about the homeless and drug problems plaguing the city.
Patrick Farrell
The fire broke out around 1:55 a.m. Tuesday morning, at the 2700 block of 5th Avenue, where crews had to battle the freezing temperatures, snow, and the ice in order to tame the fire.
Farrell says that right now they have little information on what actually happened, seeing as the investigation into the blaze is ongoing.
“What we know, is that there were people in living in the building or at least sleeping in the building overnight,” he said. “Our firefighters got a call, responded to it. The police had to come, the public works folks, our EMS folks came to make sure that we put out the fire and try to keep everyone safe that was inside that we know we’re in danger.”
He said that they don’t know exactly who the people sleeping in the building were or what exactly happened.
He did say however they know that there is a homeless population issue in the city, and he understands that they want to stay warm, but it puts all of the firefighters in danger, especially in the cold weather conditions.
“People want to stay warm, so you can assume that people broke into the building and were sleeping and then it caught fire,” Farrell said. “And while I understand that human conditions of wanting to stay warm and survive, when we have people that are trespassing, when we have arson, it puts people at risk, the people that were living in there and the people that responding.”
In his inaugural speech last week, he mentioned that he was launching a pilot program in order to get to the cause of veteran homelessness.
“We’re going to start that by identifying the people by name, not just treating them as numbers, and helping identify what’s causing this bout of homelessness for them and help them get back into stable housing. That’s what we’re going to start with and try to drive veteran homelessness to zero to see what we can learn and see what we can do more effectively as a community,” Farrell said.
He said that right now they have many people working on the homelessness issue at hand, the problem is that the different people or departments are not working together in order to solve it.
“What we’re not doing effectively working to share information in a way that we have a real coordinated entry system, a real way to make sure that the people that the people that are touching one part of the system and seeing another part,” Farrell said. “So, it’s about working together and sharing information in a way that more effectively combats the problem.”
One of the other things he mentions is that the toxic cycle between the homelessness problem and drug problems.
He says that the city needs to start working with the different departments in order to combat the drug issue.
“The supply side of the drug epidemic needs to stop. We need to do a better job of working with our federal and state partners, with our local law enforcement to combat that problem to keep the drug supply away,” Farrell said.
And while this fire was just one that Huntington firefighters have had to battle due to the heightened weather conditions, Farrell suspects that there might be more before the winter storm is over.
“There’s no question that the cold weather, first of all, is gonna drive more people, they’ll look for shelter and refuge,” he said. “There’s going to be more fires, I would expect that there could be more in the coming days since this winter storm is still upon us.”
In Huntington, there are some warming centers that people can go too, Harmony House being one of those and the city mission.
Farrell said that capacity in these places isn’t the problem, but getting the word out to the ones that need it is the issue.
“I think the challenge is getting the word out to everybody right, because the rules that the city mission has, people haven’t always felt welcome to go there and so we need to make sure that people here know that they can go there,” he said.
He hopes to have the program to combat veteran homelessness and any other programs to combat these issues out as soon as possible.
“We’re working on it every day. We’ve worked on it every day since I took office,” Farrell said.