NIAGARA FALLS — Day by day, the shadow loomed larger on Jasmaine West’s bedroom window.

    The vacant house next down, at 2114 13th St., was crumbling and the roof was sliding off ever closer to West’s home.

“Every day it slid a little further and further,” West said. “It was nothing pretty. It was just falling down.”

The dilapidated home was such a threat to the safety of West and her 1-year-old child, Jayden, that on Wednesday afternoon city building inspectors condemned the property and ordered its immediate demolition. By Wednesday night, all that remained was a large pile of brick and rubble.

“They told us one more day and that roof might have come down on us,” West said. “There shouldn’t be houses like that.”

Despite the concerns of West and her neighbors, the reality is housing stock in the Falls is deteriorating at an alarming rate and is stretching the city’s resources to deal with the problem to the limits.

West, who has lived on Ontario Avenue for 18 years, said the 13th Street home that could have collapsed on her’s had been vacant for a decade. It had become a haven for vagrants, crackheads and an attraction for curious kids in the neighborhood.

“I was very concerned (about the vacant home),” West said. “I didn’t want anything to happen to my baby or the other kids in the neighborhood.”

West said some neighbors even wondered if the house was haunted because “the building smelled so bad.”

City inspectors said efforts by local preservationist groups kept the wrecker’s ball away from the home for too long.

“That could have killed people,” said Dennis Virtuoso, the city’s Code Enforcement Director. “It was a hazard to public safety.”

In 22 years as a city building inspector Virtuoso has learned about the hazards presented by the Falls’ deteriorating housing. On one occasion as Virtuoso entered a dilapidated home, he fell through the floor boards up to his chest.

“A vacant home brings all sorts of problems,” Virtuoso said. “Kids play in them, people break in and steal the copper, crackheads go into them and they light up little campfires for heat and light.”

And when those campfires flame out of control, Falls firefighters get called into action. Greg Colangelo, chief of the department’s Fire Prevention Bureau says the dangers of fighting a blaze in a vacant home or building can’t be overstated.

“In most vacant structures, the utilities have been turned off so that fire probably didn’t start itself,’ Colangelo said. “So when we arrive we have to worry about whether somebody might still be inside. Then, these places are vacant for a reason, so many times there are big holes in the floors, walls and roof. If the structural integrity isn’t good, that’s a serious problem for us.”

Nationally, 13 percent of all on-duty injuries suffered by firefighters occur while battling blazes in vacant structures. In the most recent statistics available, from 1998 to 2007, 15 firefighters died while fighting fires in vacant buildings.

“The guys take a far greater risk when they respond to a vacant building fire,” Colangelo said. “And the chance that fire can spread to an adjacent house is also a concern.”

That’s not just a concern for firefighters. Virtuoso said when you live next door to a vacant house, you may not be able to insure your home.

“Those people can’t get fire insurance,” Virtuoso said. “That’s why a lot of people call us and say, ‘Why can’t you get that building next door torn down.”

Roughly two-thirds of all vacant building fires across the country occur in unoccupied homes. Colangelo says 20 percent of structure fires here are in vacant buildings.

Concern for the Falls’ crumbling communities appears to be reaching a tipping point.

“My concerns are I can see the neighborhoods deteriorating,” Virtuoso said. “It’s cancer.”

However, the cure for city’s risky housing stock comes with a steep price tag. For a city with dwindling financial resources, a fix may be hard to find.

“In my time here we’ve gone from 10 inspectors to four,” Virtuoso said. “We used to have a housing unit with six inspectors, but with cutbacks and reorganizations, we’ve shrunk. I think (cut in the number of inspectors) was the start of the deterioration of the housing stock.”

While the Falls now has a special Housing Court to deal with problem properties, taking cases there is time-consuming and labor intensive.

“It’s a lot of paperwork,” Virtuoso said. “When guys are doing that, they’re not out on the streets.”

The mayor and City Council have tried to help by funding more overtime for the available inspectors and through the creation of the Zoom Team. The Zoom Team is made up of members from the city’s Code Enforcement, Public Works, police and fire departments.

“It’s very proactive and they’re going home by home, neighborhood by neighborhood looking to deal with the problem,” Virtuoso said. “That has been helpful.”

The city police and fire departments also have adopted a policy to bring in building inspectors whenever they’re in a home that appears to have code violations.

“If I get my foot in the door, I can keep my foot in the door and I can get Dennis in there,” Colangelo said. “Otherwise, if we just send a report to (building inspectors) and they go to investigate, the homeowners or occupants don’t have to let them in.”

Virtuoso is also working with some the city’s largest property owners to address the problem of crumbling homes.

“We’re working very closely with Niagara Falls Redevelopment to keep their properties clean until they take them down,” Virtuoso said. “They’ve done an awful lot to make their property cleaner and more secure.”

In addition to overtime for inspectors, Virtuoso said the mayor and City Council also have dramatically increased funding for emergency demolitions like the one at 13th Street and Ontario Avenue. The code enforcement chief believes the city will go from an average of 10 to 15 demolitions a year to 60 to 70.

“The mayor and council have been very proactive,” Virtuoso said. “If it keeps up like this for the next few years, we’ll get this under control.”

Contact reporter Rick Pfeiffer

at  282-2311, ext. 2252.