Mar 24, 2021 - Politics

Minnesota senators eye federal push for high-rise sprinklers

Torey Van Oot

Minneapolis firefighters leave a building in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood where a fire broke out on the 14th floor of the building in 2019. Photo: David Joles/Star Tribune via Getty Images

Minnesota's U.S. senators are renewing a push for federal funding to prevent a repeat of the deadly Cedar Riverside high-rise fire, Axios has learned.

The state of play: Democrats Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith will announce Wednesday that they're reintroducing legislation to create a $25 million grant program for public housing authorities to retrofit towers with sprinkler systems.

The issue: Many older public housing buildings, including Cedar Riverside, went up before sprinkler mandates. Investigators have said a working system could have prevented the five deaths in the November 2019 blaze.

What they're saying: "This bill gets right to the root of what we need to do: incentivize public housing authorities that want to to install sprinkler systems," Smith said in a statement provided to Axios.

Of note: State proposals to require sprinkler retrofitting are also working its way through the state Legislature.

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Minnesota senators eye federal push for high-rise sprinklers

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