Detroit Tenant Burns Down 48 Units Trying to Kill Bedbugs

This story highlights both good work and a bad job being done by the landlord at Ramblewood Apartments, at least, as far as we have seen reported.

Source: MIHeadlines; previous fire, same building.

The tenant was being driven insane by bed bugs. Bed bugs are truly maddening to live through. It requires both the landlord and the tenant to take immediate action in support of extermination. Landlords need to hire a professional exterminator and tenants need to package up their fabrics and live out of plastic.

Somewhere a communication breakdown occurred. Instead of getting advice from the landlord, the tenant sought help from her neighbor, who advised her to turn on the oven to high heat. Bedbugs hate high temperatures, she said. The tenant did that and left the oven on overnight.

But that's not what caused the fire. Not immediately, anyway.

No, the communication breakdown worsened when the tenant decided to sleep in her car at night and then, the next morning, make her disastrous decision. She doused herself with isopropyl alcohol in an attempt to sterilize herself before re-entering what she hoped was a thoroughly cooked apartment.

When she walked in the front door, the intense alcohol vapors wafted into the burning oven and sparked a conflagration that ultimately took down the entire 48-unit complex and landed her in the hospital with serious burns.

We don't know whether it was the tenant's fault for not complying with instructions, or the landlord's fault for not helping this tenant, or both their faults for not working harder at communication. Suffice it to say this should not have happened.

But here's a silver lining. As of a previous fire in August, every tenant had renter's insurance. This only happens when the landlord forces it or purchases it on behalf of tenants. This is certainly a best practice, and very commendable, and so rare we can almost forgive them for the communication failure that left 48 families homeless.