THE CITY OF GREENCASTLE, INDIANA, HAS STOPPED TALKING and started acting where it comes to lightweight construction, a.k.a. wood chips and glue buildings. City Building Inspector Dave Varvel and Fire Chief Bill Newgent are acquainting the citizens with a new identifier for buildings constructed with these materials.
Last year Greencastle city council passed an ordinance requiring any new homes built with these firefighter-killer methods to display a sticker on the utility box that identifies it as a lightweight constructed building.
Now they are telling the citizens about it in the hopes that more homes that were already built this way will be added to the system.
The sticker is unobtrusive and is placed directly on a meter box, for example, and tells the FD if either the floor joists and/or the trusses are made of these materials. The fire officers are already checking the utility boxes on all fires as part of their initial size-up.
WISH-TV ran this video report last night that explains it all:
