In the aftermath of the apartment fire, my brother from Ohio, my brother-in-law, Kevin, and his stepson, Travis, have been working with me tearing up, cleaning up and otherwise doing the lugging, lifting and dumping that are all part of what it takes to begin restoration of the apartment.

Kind of like the attention a huge screw-up brings to a previously unnoticed recruit in boot camp, our apartment is now fixed on the radar of certain city employees such as fire inspectors and code enforcement officers. In anticipation of that expected attention, I am seeing the building with new eyes.

 While Kevin and Travis focused their efforts on removing several hundred pounds of old bedroom plaster and lath, Paul and I embraced the delectable task of stripping out old wiring in the attic. We cut off wire, loosened connectors, pried loose metal junction boxes and pulled out wiring. That included some of the old knob-and-tube strands which though no longer used could arouse suspicion that I didn’t want coming from persons with the power to cut power from a building. When it comes to inspectors, the less reason to provoke curiosity, the better.

 We also found splices that had not been housed in metal junction boxes or in any other kind of junction box. These, as you may know or well guess, are not safe, not approved and not liked by people whose business it is to identify Little Things That Kill People. When we probed areas of the attic that I’d never looked at before, we made discoveries even more perturbing.

 To squeeze through a narrow opening, I crawled over an old wire. Once through the passage, I kneeled on a pair of joists and pulled out my tester.

Finding out the wire was hot by use of a non-contact tester is a much less emphatic process than finding out by the Twist, Twitch and Spasm Method.

Finding out that this particular wire was hot become more memorable when I pulled on it and found it unconnected at one end. What made the discovery most vivid, though, was seeing that its exposed hot wire was covered with nothing more than a couple of turns of very old black tape. I imagine that an inspector discovering such a thing would lose no time in ordering power cut to the building and order a full regimental inspection that included everything inside or outside the building and everything within a twenty foot perimeter of the building. Lord willing, the end of this new day will find that wire in a trashcan and the attic in safer condition.

 There’s nothing like a fire in your life to generate all kinds of new scrutiny and examination, even of things unrelated to the fire itself. Just ask a few previous presidential candidates. Even when the opportunities do not come about in desired ways, we should never shy away from taking a fresh, tough look at our lives. A proper response to those discoveries could drastically lower our risk factors.

 H. Arnett

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