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Fire, building staff describe hoarding as public‑safety, health risk and outline humane, multiagency response
Summary
Fire Chief Chris Mails and Fire Marshal Ryan DeGiulio told the commission that hoarding creates extreme fire and access hazards, described a collaborative approach with building, planning and county agencies, and said civil receivership is a last‑resort enforcement tool when occupants refuse help.
Chris Mails, the city fire chief, and Battalion Chief Ryan DeGiulio, the fire marshal, told the Fire and Police Commission that the department’s response to substandard housing and hoarding is a prolonged, multiagency process focused first on life safety and then on restoring livable conditions.
"Hoarding disorder is a mental health condition characterized by an inability to discard certain belongings to the point of unhealthy accumulation," DeGiulio said, attributing the definition he used to Harvard. He described a clutter‑to‑hoarding scale used to assess conditions and said the fire department becomes involved when accumulation reaches levels that block utilities, create fire loads or prevent safe access inside a structure.
Mails and DeGiulio emphasized that…
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