By Courtney Hessler, The Herald-Dispatch
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — As West Virginia works to certify and improve recovery houses across the state, Huntington city officials took to the state Legislature last week to plead for more say in the process.
Huntington Mayor Steve Williams, director of the Mayor’s Council on Public Health and Drug Control Policy Jan Rader and Huntington Fire Marshal Mat Winters testified Tuesday before the Legislature’s Interim Joint Committee on Health, each saying some recovery houses in the community are a tragedy waiting to happen. The leaders are seeking a way to make homes safer for residents.
Rader, who in February retired as the city’s fire chief, said she lost a lot of sleep as a firefighter and later fire chief due to worrying that a fire would start in a recovery house and cause a large loss of life.
“Life moves faster than policy, and sober living homes were popping up because of a need, obsolete, but there were no regulations,” she said. “Now that we are trying to (fix) that and give them a path, a lot of them do not want to comply.” …
