“Ogden Fire, with Ogden PD, homeless services advocates and medical teams, inspected a property this afternoon under cooperative circumstances from the property owner due serious life safety concerns and unfit living conditions resulting in an issue to vacate the property,” the Ogden City Fire Department announced in a Facebook post late Tuesday afternoon.

Ogden Fire Marshall Kevin Brown told the Standard-Examiner that the incident started with a 911 call for a separate issue.

“Our fire crews responded to a 911 call for service at that address and had some concerns with the living conditions and the fire safety conditions which prompted me to make an inspection,” he said. “It was determined that the building was not being used legally and it wasn’t safe for people to sleep there.

Brown said the building is located on Harrison Boulevard in Ogden but declined to detail its location further.

The Facebook post notes a number of concerns officials had, including:

• “Overloaded and fire prone electrical wiring and circuits;
• “Exits inadequate for escape, thus creating a trapping hazard;
• “Dangerous and unpermitted construction hazards;
• “Living quarters without kitchens and bathrooms, creating insanitary and unsafe living conditions.”

Brown said between 12-15 people were displaced and resources were deployed to help them.

“They weren’t all there at the time, but from counting rooms and based on what the property owner told us,” he said. “The homeless coordinators for the Ogden Police Department helped a few people find a place to go and then the owner was going to find a place for the rest of them to go. We’re currently trying to work with the owner to bring the building into a legal use.”

He said that displacing so many people due to poor living conditions has been a rarity in Ogden.

“I can think of only one other time in my career we’ve had to actually vacate residents out and that we weren’t able to make concessions and make it safe for people to sleep there,” he said. “But in this situation, it was a building that was never designed to be a residential structure — it had that going against it as well — so there was no way to make it safe with a quick fix, like adding a smoke detector.”

Brown said the owner of the property has been cooperative and will be meeting with fire officials in the coming days to discuss improvements that could be made to the structure.