Syracuse, NY, to Address Vacant Building Fires with New Prevention Strategies

Syracuse, N.Y. — Almost one of every three structure fires in Syracuse happened in a vacant building last year, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars and endangering first responders, a new city auditor’s review found.

Auditor Alexander Marion is releasing a report today on vacant structure fires that includes a long list of recommendations on how city departments could try to flag and prevent them.

The auditor’s office reviewed 2024 data provided by the Syracuse Fire Department and the Division of Code Enforcement showing 29% of the 87 structure fires that year were in empty buildings.

Digging deeper into the characteristics of those structures revealed that four out of every five had open code violations, had water service shut off and faced legal action from the city’s Bureau of Administrative Adjudication. In addition, three of every five owed back taxes.

None of the buildings were listed on the city’s vacant buildings registry, a list that owners of empty buildings with exterior code violations are supposed to put themselves on. Officials noted in a response to the report that they’ll be examining that registry’s effectiveness this fiscal year.

At the top of a list of 21 recommendations, the auditor’s report calls for the creation of an early-warning monitoring system based on the common characteristics of vacant structure fires. If a structure meets three or more criteria, it should be flagged. The following criteria are suggested:

Within half-mile of vacant structure fire within past 18 months
Inactive water service
Inactive National Grid service
In arrears on taxes
In arrears on water
Open code violations/previous violations sent to BAA

Interventions would include additional code inspections, board-ups of windows and doors to keep people and animals out and prioritizing for seizure and sale to the Greater Syracuse Land Bank.

“We believe if you look at properties that had these characteristics in common, you could probably predict the next 50 to 100 vacant properties where there would be fires,” Marion said in an interview with syracuse.com. “Ideally we want this to be the predictive model of here’s where the problems are going to be and let’s stage early interventions.”

Preventing vacant structure fires reduces risks for firefighters, saves taxpayers money and preserves potential housing units, Marion said.

Four city firefighters were injured fighting vacant structure fires in 2024, including two who needed time off from work.

“This could be a matter of life and death for our first responders,” Marion said. “The fewer buildings they have to run into that are on fire, the safer they are going to be, the more they are going to go home to their families.”

Data on personnel and equipment dispatched to vacant fires showed the estimated cost to the fire department was $250,000. The city or the land bank spent a combined $290,000 on properties that required emergency demolitions after the fires. Total property damage value exceeded $1.1 million.

Another impact of structure fires is lost housing opportunities, Marion said. Many of the damaged buildings have or will be demolished, but sit on lots that are now too small for new residential construction under the city’s zoning.

“That’s a tragic irony of this whole thing,“ he said. ”We don’t have enough housing units for people because in part, we have low-quality housing stock and vacant properties that unhoused people are getting into and they’re burning down to never become housing units again."

In addition to an early-warning system, the report calls for the city to update its minimum standards for how house board-ups are done. Currently, the city requires plywood to be attached using screws over first-floor windows, with a gap at the top. Marion suggests the city adopt the Federal Emergency Management Agency standard which covers the full window and also uses 2x4 braces on the inside that are secured to the plywood using carriage bolts.

“This method makes removal significantly more difficult, decreasing the opportunity for a potential squatter,” the reports said.

In its response, the administration said such a method could be effective at reducing break-ins, but it’s also considerably more time-consuming and costly. In addition, the interior carpenter securing the bolts must exit through a second-story window and ladder, which adds a safety risk.

With code enforcement’s limited resources, the benefits must be weighed against these drawbacks, so the administration is not ready to commit to that technique, said Michael Collins, commissioner of neighborhood and business development.

Collins said many of the recommendations, particularly related to communication between the fire and police departments, are already practiced informally among experience staff. He agreed it would be a good idea to get those practices written into formal policies and procedures.

The fire department said it was working on several recommendations in the report. That includes a suggestion that the city begin using the state fire code placard system that places large red square signs with an X on the center onto the fronts of buildings that are too dangerous to enter.

“Past efforts to adopt more visible systems ... met resistance due to concerns about aesthetics,” administration’s response said. “This is an issue we are prepared to revisit.”