The Roanoke Rapids Fire Department will begin placing no-go signs at abandoned commercial buildings to warn firefighters of unsafe structures, Fire Chief Richard Cook told the city council Tuesday.

“We’ve been having more issues with vacant buildings inside the city,” he said. “These buildings pose a threat to our firefighters and, in some cases, a threat to the public.”

The city has had cases where squatters have been living in the buildings.

On Monday, Cook was in two of the buildings with the Roanoke Rapids Police Department collecting evidence. “It was not safe for us to be in there. I know nobody here is actually crawling around in a smoke-filled room and trying to navigate through something like that in 70 pounds worth of gear.”

He said these buildings pose a great threat to firefighters. “And with there being more and more of them, they’re getting harder and harder to identify.”

The 2018 version of the International Fire Code, which is the version the state is using, states that fire marshals have the authority to inspect buildings, and if they deem them unsafe, they can be marked.

The signs help firefighters know it is a “no-go deal,” Cook said, “unless they absolutely have to or they see somebody in the window and, obviously, they want to save them. That’s what they’re trained to do, but they’re not going to enter the building if they don’t have to because it’s unsafe for them.”

In the past, he said there’s always been an understanding that there were no-go buildings in the city. “You just don’t enter them. The problem with that is there’s getting to be more and more and it’s hard to keep track of what’s what.”

There are several of these buildings in the 200 block of Roanoke Avenue, he said. “We’ve recently had an incident where power was being stolen from one building to the other, and I don’t know why it didn’t cause a fire.”

The fire department has gone as far as to secure those buildings, he explained. “As a matter of fact, we put a chain last week on the People’s Theater. I was called yesterday morning and the chain had been cut.”

He said the fire department is doing everything it can to keep people out “because we don’t want to risk the lives of these men back here, but we’re starting to get backed up against the wall.”

The fire department will continue to do everything it can to keep people out. “It’s not safe for them. When our people get there at three in the morning — because eventually one of these buildings is going to burn — and they see that big red X at the entrance,” they know the building is unsafe.

History has shown, he said, that when firefighters die or are injured, it’s in these types of buildings. “The people that are in those buildings don’t come running out and tell you they were in there like we teach people to do because they’re not supposed to be in the building to begin with.”

Usually, either directly or indirectly, the squatters have contributed to a fire, Cook said.