NEW YORK CITY – A Bronx skyscraper fire that killed 17 people and injured dozens more raises questions about how toxic smoke was moving endlessly through the building and renews calls for Congress to pass safety legislation fire protection for older public housing and the elderly. -High buildings.
Residents of the 19-story building without fire escapes or sprinklers were trapped on the upper floors as smoke moved up the stairs and hallways, where the self-closing doors were supposed to block the spread of the fire.
A 2018 law was meant to prevent such a tragedy. After a fire in an apartment building in the Bronx killed 13 people in 2017, city leaders passed a law requiring self-closing doors that open to hallways or stairways for apartment buildings, hotels, homes of elderly and other multiple dwelling units. The owners were to install such doors starting in July 2021.
The Twin Parks North West complex was code compliant and had self-closing gates, owners say. Maintenance staff repaired the lock on the fire unit entrance door in early July in response to a work order request, and since then no other issues have been reported to property management, Kelly Magee, spokesperson for the building owner, Bronx Park Phase III Preservation LLC. he said Monday.
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But on Sunday, the door “did not work” when a family left their apartment to flee the fire, fire commissioner Daniel Nigro said Monday at a news conference. The fire “started in a malfunctioning electric heater” in a bedroom of a duplex apartment on the second and third floors of the building, he said.
“When they left, they opened the door and the door stayed open,” Nigro said.
Self-closing gate violations were issued to Twin Parks North West in 2017 and 2019, the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development said. The violations were corrected by 2020, and since then no self-closing gate violations have been issued at the complex, the department said.
Citywide, the department said it issued more than 22,000 self-closing door violations in fiscal year 2021, and more than 18,000 of those violations were corrected.
“Yesterday’s fire was a devastating tragedy, and our hearts go out to all families affected by the worst kind of loss,” the department said in a statement. “We urge residents to report malfunctioning doors to owners or call 311 if problems are not corrected and HPD will respond.”
Karen Dejesus, 54, a resident of the building for 18 years, told USA TODAY that its doors did not close automatically. She said she didn’t know if any of the doors did.
Dejesus said the fire alarms in the building were going off so regularly that it was like “second nature to us.” But when he started to see smoke and heard people yelling for help, he realized that the fire was real.
Other residents echoed Dejesus’s account. Many told various media outlets that the building had a faulty fire alarm system that often went off without warning, causing many to initially believe that Sunday’s alert was another false alarm.
Magee said there were no known problems with the smoke alarms and that residents who smoked on the stairs had previously set off the alarms.
It was not immediately clear if the building violates fire codes. Forensic engineers from the New York City Department of Buildings were on the scene investigating the incident and determining if the structure meets the requirements of the applicable code, said Andrew Rudansky, a spokesman for the department.
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The 120-unit skyscraper built in the early 1970s has had numerous violations– including complaints about a malfunctioning elevator, and all but two have been resolved, city records show. The heating in the building worked, but some units are drafty, Dejesus said.
At Monday’s press conference, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the building had “no outstanding violations” for complaints related to a lack of heat.
The building does not have fire escapes, which were phased out for new construction in the city’s 1968 Building Code.
In accordance with current building codes, the Bronx high-rise building’s compactor and laundry room have sprinklers, and the building is considered noncombustible, which means it has poured concrete ceilings and floors, as well as fire doors. with a 90-minute rating, in accordance with regulations, Magee said.
That’s not enough, said Shane Ray, president of the National Fire Sprinkler Association, a Maryland-based tax-exempt organization. Many older public housing and aging high-rise structures were typically built decades ago, before fire sprinklers were required, and installing sprinklers would help save lives, he said.
“The fire is fast, but the sprinklers are faster. They save lives,” Ray said Monday.
Even buildings made largely of concrete and other non-combustible materials still pose fire hazards to residents, visitors and firefighters, he said.
“What kills occupants and firefighters most of the time” is dangerous smoke from televisions, couches, beds and other elements of the building consumed by the fires, Ray said.
After the Bronx fire and a similar fire in Philadelphia last week That killed 12 people, Ray’s organization, along with the International Association of Firefighters, the National Foundation for Fallen Firefighters, the International Association of Fire Chiefs, and the National Association of State Fire Chiefs, issued a statement calling for Congress to take action against national fires. -Security legislation.
Congressional funding measures pending could help pay the cost, likely hundreds of millions of dollars or more, Ray said. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development alone estimated that about 570,000 of the agency’s public housing units were built before the sprinklers were required, he said.
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The Biden administration’s stalled Build Back Better legislation includes about $ 53 million for public housing safety features, including sprinkler upgrades, Ray said.
Additionally, legislation introduced in the House and Senate last month would provide tax incentives for owners of private buildings like the one in the Bronx to install sprinklers, he said.
When asked how many residential buildings over 100 feet have sprinklers, Rudansky, the spokesman for the New York City Department of Buildings, said the department does not have that information.
In a statement Monday, New York City Councilor Carlina Rivera, who is on the city’s Housing and Buildings Committee, called on local authorities to address the “root causes” of the disaster.
“The responsibility lies entirely with the failure of the building management to comply with legal requirements, from functional ventilation, sprinklers and alarm systems to self-closing doors and adequate and reliable heating,” Rivera said. “It is clear that there is a critical break in the chain of command when it comes to the oversight of our City’s residential buildings, and the tenants, our family, friends and neighbors, are the victims of this neglect.”
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism