It appears it’s not just postal workers who don’t let the bad weather stand in the way of fulfilling their duties…..but maybe that’s not such a good thing when it comes to code enforcement.
Mere hours after Hurricane Irma hit Florida, Miami-Dade County was ticketing residents for building code violations on their wrecked properties.
Celso Perez was helping his neighbors remove some fallen trees blocking their street when a county code enforcer rolled up and issued him a safety notice for having a downed fence. Perez told WSVN-TV that he thought the code enforcer was kidding. It was just six hours after the hurricane hit land.
But it wasn’t a joke. The official told Perez that the downed fence—which encloses a pool—was a safety hazard and that if it wasn’t fixed by the time he returned, Perez would be hit with a fine. The official then hung the safety citation on the portion of Perez’s fence that remained standing, leaving him and his neighbors to finish clearing the debris from their street.
According to WSVN, the county has handed out 680 safety notices for downed pool barriers, and another 177 electrical hazard safety notices.
From what can be gleaned from the WSVN story and from county code enforcement procedures, these safety notices appear to be just warnings, meaning no fines have been handed out as of yet.
Still, these warnings carry with them a duty to correct the violation within a specific window of time. That might not even be possible for some residents, given how many businesses are still out of operation.
As Perez said on the day he got his ticket, “All the stores were closed. It’s not like I can go to Home Depot and find some temporary barrier.”