Oh no... :’(

JakeCK

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/31-people-seriously-injured-in-bronx-apartment-building-fire-fdny/3486866/

This is why I hate electric space heaters with a passion.

Ironman

Tragic.

SlamDunk

It is a tragedy.

Now we get to watch how a group of investment groups that owned the building respond to the investigation. I'm always leery when a group of investment groups own anything in a poor neighborhood (the neighborhood I grew up in). I'm skeptical that this will be anything but property loss and the insurance companies will resist paying out due to a lack of something the owners failed to safeguard against but no one will know who the owners are---and there will be no rush to restore.

Meanwhile, there is the human loss and new homelessness in a very tight rental market.

DanHolohan

More to the point: Why does the building need space heaters?

EBEBRATT-Ed

Sad. No reason to have this happen in the USA. This is something that would happen in a third world country.

The report say the heating system was working. I doubt that

SlamDunk

Older people need more warmth. Maybe the type of space heater was bad. Maybe an oil filled radiator would have been safer. I trust the heating system was working but I think landlords have to maintain a temperature of 68F. I could be mistaken, but for some older folks, that is down right chilly.

The bigger question is why were there so many false fire alarms that the tenants became complacent and how did smoke travel to all floors? That is unusual.

MaxMercy

SlamDunk said:

Older people need more warmth. Maybe the type of space heater was bad. Maybe an oil filled radiator would have been safer.

The old style resistive wire heaters and quart tube heaters were firestarters in a box. Newer ceramic types or the oil filled types are safe (all things being equal). I wonder how many of those old style heaters are still floating around?

EDIT: If you can believe it, they still sell these things!!

JakeCK

The one thing that stood out was that the apartment door did not close on it's own. If it had, there might very well have been no loss of life. 

Jamie Hall

When I was a kid we had a few heaters which had a resistive heating element wound around a cone in the centre, placed in the focus of a highly polished copper bowl. They really cranked out the heat if you were in the path --right in front. No thermostat. No safety devices. Ungrounded cord. I think there was a switch on the cord. Why we didn't all burn down I'll never know.

Many of the modern ones are remarkably safe. I have a few "milk room" heaters around -- very reliable. But... you still have to take a whole lot of precautions with them.

SlamDunk

In that part of the city, you wont buy a Honeywell. You would buy a knockoff of a knock off of a knockoff of a honeywell.

mattmia2

It isn't like those sorts of products with Honeywell's name on them are actually made by Honeywell anyhow.

JakeCK

No matter how safe the actual devices are you can't escape the human element. Extension cords, over loaded circuits and outlets, placed near flammable objects, being left unattended, cords ran under carpets, being used with frayed cords, etc. And yes you have the slumlords who provide a building that isn't suitable for the rats but you also have the idiot renters who just don't give a flying F. I think its safe to say we have all seen both extremes. The slumload who hardly keeps the heat working, and the idiot tenants who run a space heater so they can keep it at 80f with the windows open. While they're at work, if they even have a job.

The fact they left the door open speaks to how aware they were. Yes it should have closed on it's own but they could have closed it themselves, but instead bolted.

The Steam Whisperer

My big question is how to the smoke spread to the other floors? In Chicago, fire doors have been required on every stairway for 50 years to prevent smoke and fire from spreading through a building. I suspect New York City is the same. Were the closers on the fire doors working properly? or did someone have them propped open?

Jamie Hall

There probably are fire doors in that building, but they were also probably either malfunctioning or blocked open. Until you have wandered around in one of those projects, you have no idea how bad the conditions are.

SlamDunk

Exactly @Jamie Hall . They talk about the one door but the escape stairwells became chimneys preventing use. This building is not the projects. It is privately owned.

pecmsg

Even private buildings fire doors are constantly blocked OPEN!

DanHolohan

Two doors, one low and one high, didn’t close automatically, as designed. 

archibald tuttle

JakeCK said:

No matter how safe the actual devices are you can't escape the human element. Extension cords, over loaded circuits and outlets, placed near flammable objects, being left unattended, cords ran under carpets, being used with frayed cords, etc. And yes you have the slumlords who provide a building that isn't suitable for the rats but you also have the idiot renters who just don't give a flying F. I think its safe to say we have all seen both extremes. The slumload who hardly keeps the heat working, and the idiot tenants who run a space heater so they can keep it at 80f with the windows open. While they're at work, if they even have a job.

The fact they left the door open speaks to how aware they were. Yes it should have closed on it's own but they could have closed it themselves, but instead bolted.

this is a realistic assessement whether the issue proves to have been more diretly related to a heater. We had a much smaller building in Providence, RI where far more life per square ft. was lost a few years back. It was owned by someone essentially as poor as the tenants who was living there with the tenants. The gas was turned off and they had run a rabbit warren's worth of extension cords with heaters, a recipe for failure.

If attention had been paid to the most dangeous practices, lives could have been saved, but we spend a far greater amount of time obsessing over lesser 'violations', like having that many people seek respite under one roof to begin with. So it is little wonder that people are uninterested in interacting with authorities who don't limit their focus to the most egregious safety issues to cooperate in sheltering people.

Sounds like maybe the closers on stair doors weren't working although we have problems with folks bracing them open when the closers are working.

The Steam Whisperer

DanHolohan said:

Two doors, one low and one high, didn’t close automatically, as designed. 

They would certainly explain it.