City Official Called Burning Philly School a Fire Hazard in 2008 Interview

A vacant North Philly school ignited into a four-alarm fire Wednesday, but city officials called it a fire hazard years ago

The former Edison High School in North Philadelphia – a three-acre building that has been abandoned for 13 years – was marked by officials as a fire hazard years ago.

“If they would have listened to me three years ago -- when I said to demolish this building -- the lives of firefighters and citizens would not have been placed in jeopardy like they were today,” Philadelphia City Controller Alan Butkovitz told NBC Philadelphia Wednesday.

This afternoon the school went up in flames.

“You’ve got a gigantic parcel of property that could turn into a fire,” Butkovitz told NBC 10 back in 2008. “It should be demolished by now.”

But it wasn’t. Instead it began to burn at about 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, turning into a four-alarm fire.

NBC 10 Investigators looked into reports in 2008 that the old high school, which also had a brief stint as the Julia De Burgos Middle School, was a playground for vandals, prostitutes and drug dealers.

“A smell of gas hangs in the air,” NBC 10’s Lu Ann Cahn reported on Sept. 16, 2008.

At the time, the Philadelphia School District said that no one was interested in developing or demolishing the building that was built in 1903. District officials told NBC 10 that they’d consider giving the property away if someone would spend the $5 million to demolish the building.

“It’s all excuses all the time over the last five or six years. They’ve borrowed billions of dollars,” Butkovitz told NBC 10.

While the vacant building was burning Wednesday afternoon, Philadelphia School District officials said that they sold the albatross on June 30 this year.

According to a school district spokesperson, the property at 7th and Lehigh belongs to W. Lehigh Partners LP.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

NBC 10 viewer Fred Wheelock took this video of the fire Wednesday:

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