In fact, when we talked to Lieutenant Sue Stangl about the fire department’s decision to not permit a planned Broadway haunted house, we learned what a Seattle fire person dresses up as on Halloween. She’s going to be a cloud — partly cloudy, to be exact. Stangl also gave us the details of why the Broadway haunted house is a no go.
“That poor inspector felt horrible about it,” Stangl said.
“DPD gave them a permit with conditions. They needed to satisfy those conditions. That usually takes months and months for a haunted house. You have to build it to scare people which is the opposite of what we usually are looking for. And it needs to be safe.”
Stengl said the main issue for the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce/Broadway Improvement Association and their event planners was a large, chain wire fence maze they had created for the venue inside the empty retail space at the Joule building at Broadway and Republican.
Not only did the maze require “break out” sections that could quickly be removed in the case of emergency, but planners had wrapped it in the worst material possible, the inspector told Stangl. A Visqueen wrap is impossible to fire retard, Stangl said. Stangl said the area of the building also had fire sprinklers but lacked the necessary alarm system. Stangl said it’s all “pretty technical stuff” that takes a long time to plan — one reason, she said, there aren’t more haunted house events in the city.
In the CHS comments, Chamber executive director Michael Wells said he agrees with the decision to not permit the event.
“The Broadway BIA and the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce completely agree that safety is the number one priority. It was our belief that we had followed all of the safety precautions set forth. We are disappointed that there won’t be a haunted house on Broadway and we’re sorry to disappoint the Capitol Hill community,” Wells wrote.
“It was a bummer thing,” Stangl said. “It is a really tricky thing to combine the scariness with the safety.”
…but you wouldnt want to burn to death trapped in a maze made of plastic sheets and wire fencing.
a treat!!
To anyone who thinks this was a bad decisions, I have two words: The Station.
Wait, no. Boo….
That’s one of the four bedrock American values, people! I’m glad there will be less terror and weeping on Broadway on Halloween.
Now I need to work on my PR campaign to get people to only dress in happy, cheerful costumes on Halloween… like sunflowers and bumblebees ‘n’ such.
I doubt they were planning indoor pyrotechnics.
I gotta say that the fire department sure did seem to hate haunted houses. The maze had an emergency exit in every single section of the house. And the fencing was wrapped in fence blinds, not visqueen. We even agreed to rip down all flammable material and replace it with theater curtain material and they still said no. Maybe DPD should’ve elaborated on their conditions before a day before we opened. Maybe the fire department could’ve agreed to a preliminary over view of our plans. (which they refused to do) Of course I agree that everyone needs to be safe, the last thing I want is for someone to get hurt but I also think Capitol Hill as a neighborhood deserves real answers on why they shut this down. I’ve lived on the hill for almost 7 years and I had never felt a sense of community so strong as when we were building this. And the disappointment at it getting shut down, let down a whole community. Thanks SFD.
You sould take a step back and really do your research on haunted houses before you put together a haunted house in your area ! it sounds to me that the group did not do there home work before they put presure on the fire dept to pass some thing that was very un safe!! These shows take months to plan in great detail and saftey is the most important factor. WE know we do the only 2 safe haunts in the state!!
I am the other designer (different from above) that worked on the house. I posted this same comment on the previous blog post on this subject, but also think it appropriate to post it here since this is a newer thread:
I was one of two designers for Blood Manor on Broadway that was supposed to happen. I’ll give you the whole story, but first let me say that nobody should be blaming anybody and nobody should be angry at the fire department.
There were two main issues the fire department had (and these were actual people who came into the space, not “some guy at a desk” as one poster presumed. And they weren’t in a fire truck!)
1. The walls of the actual haunted house were constructed from chain link fence draped with an outdoor mesh covering that you normally see at any construction site. Other, smaller portions of the design were covered with black plastic. Unbeknown to us and the producers of the project, was that we were not allowed to have any vertical structure that wasn’t completely fire proof. Since plastic and the mesh covering are not fire proof, those didn’t fly. This issue mostly likely could have been resolved by replacing the walls with a fire-proof materials. It would’ve been hard and taken a huge effort, but we were prepared to do it in the interest of making it happen. But, issue number two barred that from happening….
2. The building itself (the bottom floor of the apartment building) had certain features that any unused space has (exposed insulation, a junk pile from construction work, a lack of smoke detectors, etc). All of these things are also fire hazards and we would have had to completely finish the interior of the building with sheet rock, exit signs and the like to meet the requirements. In the 30 hours we had until the house was supposed to open, we simply did not have the time or resources to go through that sort of remodel of the space.
In terms of the safety of the house, this was me and my co-designer’s main focus throughout the project. We had numerous emergency exits, everything was lit properly, and everything was carefully planned to ensure things ran smoothly and safely once we opened. In fact, the fire department didn’t have any big problems with our design, it was all about the building and the materials used.
Hopefully this quells any rumors floating around about lack of foresight or the fire department being evil. Everyone did their job as best we could and in the end, things just didn’t work out the way anyone hoped. My hope is that this doesn’t scare the community away from supporting a haunted house next year. I’m convinced that if we learn from this year’s experience, we can get next year’s up without a hitch.
Why is the “other designer” saying thanks SFD if this is the case. Is he just looking to blame the SFD because he is angry?
I can’t really speak for the other designer. I can say that while the fire department did it’s job correctly on paper, it was just strange to us that they shut everything down so late in the process. I honestly can’t say how much they knew about the project (in terms of materials used, the building itself, etc) but as far as I heard we had gotten them that information in advance so they could have told us earlier that what we were doing was wrong. If I’m wrong about that, my bad.
Again, in my view (and it’s MY view and no one else’s) it all came down to bureaucracy, and I can’t really blame anyone for bureaucracy. I can only be angry at the situation itself.
You mean that there was a guarantee of no electrical short circuits/arcing, no illicit smoking, no idiot with a cigarette lighter torching something in a dark corner?