San Diego city fire marshal Sam Oates addressed San Diego Fire-Rescue Department procedures and a special grant called Operations Safe Clubs with members of the San Diego Tavern Guild in a meeting at Bourbon Street on Jan. 23.

All bars or restaurants in the city of San Diego must have an annual inspection completed by the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department, Oates said. Annual inspections performed yearly include public assemblies (places where 50 or more people gather), schools, day-care facilities, residential care facilities, multiple-unit residential buildings, nursing homes and other institutional facilities.

“It’s a maintenance-type inspection, where they’re going to come in and they’re going to look at exit signs, fire extinguishers, etc.,” Oates said.

A group of fire personnel perform inspections via the Night Detail Inspection Program at bars and restaurants throughout the city between the hours of 7:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. on weeknights and weekends. Businesses requiring a public assembly permit are monitored for overcrowding. Inspec-tions are also periodically performed unannounced.

“What they’re looking for are two things – blocked exits and overcrowding. The biggest of which is overcrowding,” Oates said.

Operation Safe Clubs, a program funded by a grant given to five agencies including the fire department and police department’s vice squad unit, has been inspecting bars regularly during evening and weekend hours for the last three years.

The Department of Alcohol and Beverage Control (ABC) received the grant through the state, Oates said.

“When we come out on Operation Safe Clubs, it’s more than likely undercover-type [work], where we’re going to be going into the clubs looking for basically the same things,” he said. “Of course, the ABC would look for the things they look for, and vice would look for what they look for.”

During some of the yearly inspections, Oates said they found bars and restaurants that have expanded without permits, and they have been working with the city’s Neighborhood Code Compliance and Development Services department to properly regulate these establishments.

“We will get the most updated records as far as the plans for the building, and we will meet with the owners or operators of the facility and say this is what we have on record that shows what the occupancy is,” Oates said. “If there’s deviation from those plans, then it is the owners’ or operators’ responsibility to one: put it back the way it was, or two: get plans to get those approved for what they have done.”

Oates said that some structural modifications may not be caught during inspections and would sometimes have to be approved after the fact.

“Just because we allowed it for 10 years and we discovered it today, we can’t say, ‘OK, we’ve done it for 10 years, let’s grandfather it in,’” he said.

Some bar owners at the meeting voiced their concerns over the fire and police departments specifically targeting their establishments in the Hillcrest/Uptown area.

Nick Moede, co-owner of Numbers and owner of Rich’s and The Flame, said vice and fire staff have frequently come through Rich’s in the past few months.

“My concern is how many times we’ve been inspected recently and never been overcrowded,” Moede said. “Rich’s has been inspected three times in the last five months. They’ve never found an overcrowded situation, yet they keep coming back.”

Oates said the Night Detail Inspection Program is concerned with any space where there is potential for overcapacity and limited fire exits. He said they will re-inspect places if they receive complaint calls.

“People die at bars and restaurants, and so, consequently, the fire code gives us the ability to inspect what we want to inspect as often as we want to inspect it...,” Oates said. “When you look at a bar or restaurant and you look at a church and you [ask], ‘What’s the one that is more hazardous?’ People are not drinking in churches. Exiting is very clean in churches, as opposed to bars and restaurants.”

Overcrowded bars and clubs have always been a concern with fire departments across the country, especially following a fast-consuming deadly fire that killed over 100 people at The Station concert club in West Warwick, R.I., in 2003. Fire marshals across the country have been paying close attention to occupancy levels and other issues affecting safety ever since.

“We get videos, probably one a month, where people have died. It doesn’t really click until you see these videos how quickly it can go bad,” assistant fire marshal Frankie Murphy said. “The people at the fire back in Rhode Island, they piled up on each other. They used one door. That’s why we target bars.”

Fire inspector Terry Biard said it’s easier to exit bars and restaurants that have fixed seating such as booths, but when the establishments have moveable tables and chairs, overcrowding problems persist and may lead to issues with effectively evacuating the establishment.

“That’s the things that we look at … the ability of your client to be able to safely get out of your building,” Biard said. “Because, I can guarantee you, the people that ran that night club back in Rhode Island, because of the code violations, because people died in there – they are in jail.”

Moede cited overcrowding situations at movies theaters and retail stores, specifically during the holiday shopping season.

Oates said most of the movie theaters and retail stores have adequate sprinklers systems, alarms and plenty of exits because they must comply with fire codes for establishments larger than 5,000 square feet. He said blocked exits and overcrowding remain a constant issue at bars and restaurants, and that’s why the fire and police departments continue to closely monitor them.

“It would be different if we – say, for instance – are going out to the night inspection and we are finding nothing. Everybody’s complying. It would be a waste of resources, but that’s not the case,” Oates said. “What we’re finding is bars and restaurants are overcrowding. Bars and restaurants are blocking their exits, so we come in and we are taking care of the situation.”

Oates said the fire department will investigate other locations in the same manner if the department receives complaints about overcrowding.