Family members of Melanie Diaz, the 25-year-old woman who died in a 2023 fire at the Arrive Silver Spring apartment complex, are urging Montgomery County elected officials to expand upon the tenant safety regulations already adopted in her name.
The Melanie Diaz Act of 2024, sponsored by Councilmember Kate Stewart (D-Dist. 4), required residential leases to include information related to renter’s insurance, automatic sprinkler systems and emergency evacuation and safety plans.
Bill 43-26, also sponsored by Stewart, would require owners of multifamily residential rental buildings five stories or taller to provide a certain number of smoke escape hoods for tenants to use in an emergency. The council’s public safety committee has yet to review the bill.
In a Thursday interview with Bethesda Today, Stewart said she had been out for a morning run the morning of Feb. 18, 2023, when she received a message about the fire at the Arrive complex in her district. “There were some people who lost everything,” she recalled.
The fire at Arrive inspired a wave of local and state legislation, including an unsuccessful effort to require older apartment buildings across Maryland to be retrofitted with sprinkler systems by 2033. Local fire officials have said that sprinklers would have made a difference in the Arrive fire and potentially saved Diaz’s life.
“While we still want to work towards having all of our buildings sprinklered, as we are working towards that goal we are looking for other equipment and tools that we can use to protect residents,” Stewart said. “We think this is moving in a good direction to increase safety during fires.”
Under Stewart’s new bill, the number of required smoke escape hoods would equal 5% of a building’s maximum permanent occupancy. The county’s Fire Chief could require a property owner to provide enough smoke escape hoods for up to 10% of occupants based on factors such as the building’s fire safety systems or configuration.
“There’s a saying that first responders are always minutes out when you only have seconds,” Melanie Diaz’s brother Cesar Alejandro-Diaz said during a Tuesday public hearing on the bill at the council office building in Rockville. “This is what happened in Melanie’s case.”
In an interview following Tuesday’s public hearing, Alejandro-Diaz told Bethesda Today his family learned about smoke escape hoods from Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service Assistant Chief Dominic Colletti.
Alejandro-Diaz said his family approached the agency last year about making a donation in his sister’s honor. Initially, he said, the family hoped to fund a drone to assist firefighters with search-and-rescue during high-rise emergencies. However, he said, the agency determined that smoke escape hoods would be a better investment.
According to Colletti, smoke escape hoods use a specialized chemical catalyst to provide the wearer with 15 minutes of filtered, breathable air. The donation from the Diaz family helped the agency equip every frontline engine, ladder truck and heavy rescue squad with a smoke escape hood starting in January.
“To my knowledge, this innovative program makes Montgomery County the first county protected by a fire department that has implemented smoke escape hood technology,” Colletti said during Tuesday’s hearing. “Equipping our fire apparatus was a critical first step, but equipping our residential rental buildings is a vital next step.”
During the public hearing Tuesday, multiple industry representatives argued that requiring smoke escape hoods in apartment buildings would drive up operating costs and make housing less affordable in a county where many already struggle to pay rent.
Charles Nulsen, the founder and president of the Bethesda-based Washington Property Company, called Stewart’s bill “an excessive reaction to a rare event that must be managed by Montgomery County Fire and Rescue.”
“The continued policy assault on the county’s housing providers will only serve to lessen housing affordability and availability for all of its citizens in the future,” Nulsen said.
According to a council staff report on Stewart’s bill, the cost for a smoke escape hood can range between $265 to $450 with most averaging around $335 per unit. Units can last up to 15 years with periodic filter changes.
Gabrielle Duvall, president of the McLean, Virginia-based Southern Management Companies, said Stewart’s bill was “arbitrary in nature.”
“There are multiple high-rise office buildings in the county, as well as over 25 hotels over five stories, yet none are included in this bill,” Duvall said. “More troubling, this bill discriminates between types of housing, applying only to rental [multifamily] housing, and ignoring high-rise condominiums in the county.”
Melanie Diaz’s father, Cesar Augusto-Diaz, became visibly emotional during Tuesday’s public hearing, at times turning to the housing industry representatives to admonish them directly.
“These hoods cost $350 — 15-year warranty. If you divide it up by year, it’s $23.33 a year. If you divide it up by months, it’s $1.90. And you decided to let people die for one dollar and 90 cents a month, like my daughter,” Augusto-Diaz said.
“This is not about money,” he added. “This is about life.”