BALTIMORE — When a Baltimore fire lieutenant fell through the floor of an abandoned row house in 2014 and died of smoke inhalation, a federal occupational safety agency recommended the fire department physically mark vacant properties deemed dangerous to help prevent another tragedy.
The city previously had a program to tag unstable buildings with placards that displayed a large “X,” but it had quietly ended two years earlier. And it would take another decade and the death of three firefighters this January for officials to explore reinstating a similar method in a city that has twice the number of fires in vacant homes than other areas of the country.
The old program, called Code X-ray, placed red signs with white Xs on the outside of blighted properties. However, fire officials said, residents complained at the time that some blocks had an X on every house, creating a visual effect that could taint a neighborhood’s reputation.
