WASHINGTON -- Hilton Hotels Corp. is furious over the partial
repeal of a fire safety law, claiming it spent millions to upgrade
its properties in the face of losing government travel
business.
"I'm burning, and I'm going to find out who's behind it and
why," Thomas Daly, vice president of Loss Prevention for Hilton,
said in an interview with Travel Weekly.
The American Hotel & Motel Association claims the industry
spent more than $1 billion to comply with the Hotel and Motel Fire
Safety Act of 1990 in order to qualify for the government's lodging
business that tops $1.5 billion annually.
"The industry has stepped up to the plate and done what needs to
be done, and now it doesn't seem like it matters," Daly added.
According to Daly, Hilton spent $130 million to update its fire
safety systems.
Daly and other industry officials met last week to discuss ways
to put meat back into the law.
The fire safety act was passed by Congress in 1990 after a
series of hotel fires killed more than 400 people in the preceding
five years, including a 1986 fire at the Dupont Plaza Hotel in San
Juan, Puerto Rico.
It requires government employees to stay in hotels with
hard-wired smoke detectors and, at properties with three or more
stories, automatic sprinklers.
Retrofitting of hotels was on a "voluntary basis" under the
threat of losing government business.
Some 17,300 hotels and motels currently appear on the Federal
Emergency Management Agency's list of properties that meet the
standards.
By all respects, the measure was working.
But without debate or public comment last fall, a tiny rider was
buried in a massive Defense Department authorization bill.
The rider knocked out compliance requirements by federal
agencies and eliminated the General Accounting Office's enforcement
role.
The existence of the rider was discovered accidentally by the
U.S. Fire Administration (USFA), an arm of FEMA, during a review of
other matters, Don Bathurst, deputy administrator of the USFA, told
Travel Weekly.
"We were looking for one thing and this just kind of popped up,"
Bathurst said.
"We looked at it and said, what does this mean? What it
basically looks like is the teeth have been taken out of it," he
added.
Even the original sponsors of the Fire Safety Act were caught by
surprise.
David Goldston, legislative director for Rep. Sherwood Boehlert
(R.-N.Y.) one of the authors, said, "Someone meant to obliterate
the act, and they did."
He said it was unclear whether the weakening of the law only
applied to the Defense Department or was designed to impact all
federal agencies, as it has been interpreted.
It is possible that the Defense Department did not want to do
the necessary paperwork to show compliance, he said.
Goldston said Boehlert is interested in reinstating the deleted
sections of the act, and his office was trying to figure out
how.
"You can't just repeal the repeal," he said.
Also interested in putting the rules back in place is Duncan
Farrell, general manager of the Society of Travel Agents in
Government (STAG), who said the act assured federal travelers "a
safe travel experience."
He said weakening of the law causes concerns for STAG because it
opens liability questions for agents who book government
travel.
Farrell said the law produced satisfactory results in terms of
compliance.
He cited a 1995 survey by the GAO that found compliance was
higher than required by the law.
Seventy-six of 96 federal departments responded to the survey,
and an average of 83.3% showed compliance.
Farrell said that if accounting for compliance is an issue,
reporting by both hotels and government agencies can be
accomplished by using automated systems. But stopping the program
outright is not the answer.
"Our concern is that any lapse in the process may make it
difficult to play catch-up," Farrell said.
The change in the law does not appear to impact another aspect
of the Fire Safety Act that requires government agencies to hold
all meetings, conventions and training sessions at properties that
meet the fire safety requirements, officials said.
Nor, according to the USFA, does it impact a requirement that
state fire marshals report to the USFA on complying properties.
The agency still is required to keep a master list of the
information reported by states, Bathurst said.