(Courtesy of D.C. Fire Fighters L36)

(Courtesy of D.C. Fire Fighters L36)

The management company of the Arthur Capper Senior Center will open an investigation into the fire that severely damaged the building earlier this month, it announced Thursday on Twitter.

The company, Edgewood Management, has been harshly criticized by city officials after a 74-year-old man was discovered trapped in his second-floor apartment five days after the fire. The man was transported to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Edgewood performed the initial count of all the residents the night the fire broke out, and told the city that everyone had been accounted for. It’s still unclear why they said they’d made contact with the man, when in fact he was still trapped in the fire-damaged building.

Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen announced Friday that he’s convening a joint hearing between the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety and the Committee on Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization that will also investigate the fire. That public hearing will happen October 25, and will look into reports that the fire alarms and sprinklers in the complex did not go off the day of the fire.

“The seniors displaced by the fire, as well as every District resident, deserve answers on what happened. What caused the fire? Why didn’t the fire alarms and sprinklers go off? What could the District, the building management, and the building owners have done differently to ensure everyone was properly accounted for? What should our emergency response protocol have entailed?” Allen said in a press release.

The fire displaced 161 D.C. households, all seniors. Arthur Capper was a public housing complex, which means all the seniors living there are eligible for public housing assistance. The city has been working with the management company and others to find the senior residents new long-term housing in the District, according to Mayor Muriel Bowser.

There are several ways for people to donate to the displaced seniors, including this Capitol Hill Community Foundation senior fund, and this organizing effort to collect grocery store gift cards.

D.C. Fire and EMS has been performing sweeps of the building since Monday, both for any person that might still be inside and to try to determine the cause of the fire, says Doug Buchanan, spokesperson for D.C. Fire.

“We are still looking and hopeful but not entirely optimistic that we’ll be able to determine a cause [for the fire], just because of the extent of the damage,” Buchanan says. He’s hopeful that the searches will end on Saturday, at which point D.C. Fire will turn the building back over to the management company and the structural engineers they’ve hired to do repairs.

The September 19 fire burned for two days and made the building completely uninhabitable. Parts of the attic and roof collapsed. Mayor Bowser told press this week that the building “may be a total loss.”

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