Baltimore Fire crews extinguishing a fire in a vacant row home at 2021 McHenry Street in Carrollton Ridge on Sunday. Three dogs and one cat were rescued from an adjacent house. (Cassidy Jensen)

Ever since Brenda Scott and Gary Shackelford moved into a rental home on Ramsay Street, they feared a fire would start on their block.

Squatters often cycle through the four vacant rowhouses around their rental, Scott said. The couple’s nightmare became a reality Nov. 27 when flames consumed a gutted rowhouse next door, spread to their roof and engulfed the three other vacant rowhouses.

Baltimore City firefighters arrived at the roaring blaze in the New Southwest/Mount Clare neighborhood and started spraying water on the five rowhouses without entering any of them, a tactic called an exterior attack.

Three blocks away on South Stricker Street in January, firefighters mounted an interior attack on a fire in a vacant after an emergency dispatcher had reported that a person might be trapped inside. The rowhouse collapsed five minutes after firefighters entered, killing three of them and badly injuring another.

In a city with more than 14,000 vacant buildings, which are prone to catching fire, the Baltimore City Fire Department did not have a formal policy about how to approach burning buildings that are not legally occupied, but where people might be trapped. Following the Stricker Street fire, then Fire Chief Niles Ford assembled a “board of inquiry” with Baltimore and regional fire officers to develop a policy on vacant building fires and investigate what went wrong at the fire scene.

The damning report about what went wrong, published in November, was released the same day Ford announced his resignation.

The vacant fire policy, now eight months old, prohibits firefighters from going inside condemned, vacant properties unless there is a “credible” report of someone trapped, such as a witness at the scene who saw a person enter. Firefighters can be disciplined if they break protocol.

In many cases, the most effective way to stop fires from spreading between Baltimore’s connected rowhouses is to douse them from inside the initially burning structures, according to the board of inquiry.

For vacant properties that aren’t condemned, firefighters must wait for a report about the conditions at the back of a building, which could reveal dangers unseen from the front.

In the past, the fire officer who arrived first and ranked the highest would act as an incident commander and decide whether to fight the fire from within, one of the most important decisions on a call. Fire officers who arrive at a scene first still can decide the type of attack but are advised to “slow down” to make a thorough risk assessment.

Baltimore’s new vacant building policy is among the board’s numerous recommendations that the department has started to implement this year.

Several of the recommendations had been suggested before in departmental death and injury reports since 2006, such as assigning aides to battalion chiefs so they don’t get overwhelmed in emergencies.

An excavator pulls debris from the remains of a vacant row house on Stricker Street as ATF investigators search for the cause of a fire that resulted in the death of three Baltimore City firefighters Monday morning. (Jerry Jackson/Baltimore Sun)

Three fire officers are acting as interim chief after Ford’s departure: Assistant Chief Charles Svehla, Assistant Chief Chris Caisse and Assistant Chief Dante Stewart. A spokesperson said they declined to be interviewed about the board’s findings because of pending litigation.

The firefighter who was seriously injured in the Stricker Street collapse and the families of those who died plan to sue the city and state, a law firm said earlier this month.

Baltimore’s fire department has a reputation for aggressive interior firefighting at both vacant and occupied buildings. There is also a competitive culture within the department, according to the board of inquiry’s 300-page report about the Stricker Street fire.

In May, Ford told City Council members that he became aware of that culture shortly after becoming chief in 2014. Fire companies are known to race one another to scenes and are sometimes more focused on arriving first than making safe decisions, Ford told the council.

“In general, fire services have very aggressive cultures. Our culture is more aggressive than many,” Ford said at the council hearing.

He said he’s made efforts to encourage safety over speed.

[  Report details vacant house collapse that killed three Baltimore firefighters in January ]

That departmental culture was a focus the board’s report. Firefighters reported feeling distracted by the heightened sense of urgency when performing their tasks, according to the report.

Blair Adams, a fire department spokesperson, referred to the report when asked how the department is addressing its competitive culture. The report suggests that a new officer training program will improve firefighters’ continued use of aggressive tactics in a “smart and calculated manner.”

The Stricker Street fire also publicly revealed flaws in the department’s system for tracking dangerous, abandoned buildings.

The department started a pilot program to mark dangerous properties in some neighborhoods in 2010 but stopped it in 2013 because of a lack of money to buy more signs and complaints from residents that the signs stigmatized the area, according to the report and Ford.

In October, fire stations started placing red placards on condemned buildings in their district. The department has spent $1,000 on 800 revamped cardboard signs.

Adams did not respond to a question about how many buildings have been tagged or where they’re located.

On Dec. 17, the department’s updated approach to vacant buildings was put to use when a vacant rowhome caught fire in Southwest Baltimore’s Carrollton Ridge neighborhood. The house at 2021 McHenry St. had burned previously and was marked by new placards.

“As crews were arriving on the scene, we ordered exterior operations only,” Battalion Chief Sherman Braxton said. “That’s the whole purpose of the program, so we don’t have anyone risking life and limb inside a building that’s a vacant.”

Braxton said the department’s computer system alerted that the first and second floors of the house had collapsed before.

“That shows us that it’s working; the information’s getting to the people that need it, like us, so we don’t make a fateful decision to send people interior and endanger lives unnecessarily,” Braxton said.

Firefighters helped a man escape from an adjoining house and rescued a cat and three dogs from another.

Baltimore Fire crews extinguished a fire in a vacant rowhouse at 2021 McHenry St. in Carrollton Ridge on Sunday. They helped a man escape from an adjoining house and rescued three dogs and one cat from another. (Cassidy Jensen)

For city residents whose lives are at risk and property is burning, the department’s reputation for efficiency and aggressiveness can be welcome — and its absence criticized.

The brother of a man who died in an occupied warehouse fire this month questioned why Baltimore firefighters didn’t search the building’s second floor. Firefighters initially battled the blaze from inside but evacuated when the walls started to bow, a sign of structural damage. There were no reports or reason to believe a person was inside, Adams said. The man discovered his brother’s body the next day.

The Nov. 27 Ramsay Street fire displaced Scott and Shackelford. The intense, two-alarm blaze caused a collapse in one of the vacant rowhouses.

“They was going hard,” Scott said of the firefighters’ response. “The fire hydrant was blocked from cars. They had to lift the cars to get to the fire hydrant. They had a really hectic job that night. It was really horrible.”

[  Baltimore’s vacant homes burn at twice the national rate, but gaps in records, systems limit what firefighters know before going inside ]

The couple said a shifting wind and swift action by firefighters prevented the flames from destroying their rental house, but the water damage and debris caused it to be condemned anyway. As the holiday approaches, they’re grappling with the devastation the fire has brought their family.

Scott and Shackelford are sleeping on a wood pallet in a room above a friend’s garage. Scott slipped on debris outside her house two days after the fire and broke her arm. She hopes to find a mattress and another heater before temperatures drop over the weekend.

The couple tried to protect their salvageable possessions, worried someone would break in after the fire. Now, those are gone too. Clothes, TVs and Christmas gifts for their children were stolen.

“I see people wear my stuff every time I go pick my son up from school,” Scott said. “It’s just heartbreaking.”

Baltimore Sun reporter Cassidy Jensen contributed to this article.