As Homeowners Move On, Fire Moves In

"We were putting out fires and they would come by the next week and simply condemn the buildings to be demolished," Graves said. "That's when we said we can no longer continue to do this."

But figuring out how to confront such fires is an uneasy challenge. In Detroit, it took a tragedy to prompt a reexamination.

Last Nov. 15, crews battled a blaze in an abandoned house on the city's East Side. Investigators later concluded it had been intentionally set.

Engines beat back the blaze before firefighters, including Walter Harris, charged in. They appeared to have the fire under control. Then the roof crashed in. Harris, 37, was killed.

"When Walter Harris died everybody was like, wait a minute, what the hell is going on here?" said Lt. Robert Shinske, who chairs the safety committee for the Detroit firefighters' union local.

Harris' death has pushed Detroit toward adopting changes like those other cities have embraced. The new approach urges firefighters to assess fires before rushing in. If the building cannot be saved and they are certain nobody is inside, they should fight the fire from outside to limit risk. In Flint, such a change has cut firefighter injuries in abandoned building blazes by a quarter, and reduced injury time by more than a third.