It was not clear if the doors failed mechanically or if they had been manually disabled. Nigro said the apartment door was not obstructed. The heavy smoke blocked some residents from escaping and incapacitated others as they tried to flee, fire officials said. Firefighters carried out limp children and gave them oxygen and continued making rescues even after their air supplies ran out. Glenn Corbett, a fire science professor at John Jay College in New York City, said closed doors are vital to containing fire and smoke, especially in buildings that do not have automatic sprinkler systems.
Dozens of people were hospitalized, including several in critical condition. Adams lowered the death toll from an initial report Sunday, saying that two fewer people were killed than originally thought. An investigation was underway to determine exactly how the fire spread and whether anything could have been done to prevent or contain the blaze, Nigro said. What caused it to malfunction remains under investigation, spokesman Frank Dwyer said. Fire then spread quickly to nearby furniture and bedding, Dwyer said.
Nigro said the heat was on in the building before the fire started, and the space heater was being used to supplement it.
But Stefan Beauvogui, who lived with his wife in the building for about seven years, said cold was an ongoing problem in his fourth-floor apartment. Beauvogui said he had three space heaters for the winter — for the bedrooms and the sitting room. The building was equipped with self-closing doors and smoke alarms, but several residents said they initially ignored the alarms because they were so common in the unit building.
Bronx Park Phase III Preservation LLC, the group that owns the building, said it was cooperating fully with the fire department and the city and working to assist residents. No issues were reported with the door after that point, Magee said. New York City inspectors have issued violations for problems with self-closing doors on five apartments in the building and one opening to a stairwell stretching back a dozen years, according to a database maintained by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
The records state that all the violations were corrected. Residents smoking in the stairwells sometimes tripped the fire alarms, and property managers had been working with them to address the problem, Magee said. She said the alarms appeared to work properly on Sunday. The tower was required by building codes to have sprinklers only in its trash compactor and laundry room because it has concrete ceilings and floors, she said.
In , a city lawmaker proposed requiring automatic fire sprinklers in residential buildings 40 feet or taller by the end of , but that measure never passed, and the lawmaker recently left office. A sprinkler system set off by heat in the apartment might have saved lives, said Ronald Siarnicki, executive director of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.
The building is home to many families originally from Gambia in West Africa. Dejesus, who was in her two-floor apartment with her son and 3-year-old granddaughter, immediately called family members and ran to get towels to put under the door. But smoke began coming down her stairs before the year-old resident could get the towels, so the three ran to the back of the apartment.
Firefighters broke down her door and helped all three out the window and down a ladder to safety. Dejesus clung to her rescuer on the way down. The fire was New York City's deadliest since , when 87 people died in an arson at the Happy Land social club, also in the Bronx. Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Doctors are working to save the lives of multiple people gravely injured during a weekend fire that killed 19 in a New York City high-rise apartment building. Here's the latest. Log in Sign up Become a Member.
Continue reading your article with a digital subscription. Already a subscriber? Log in or Activate your account. No thanks, return to homepage. Edit Close. Log In Subscribe Now. My Account Logout. Just In. Safety doors failed in NYC high-rise fire that killed Share this. Lloyd Mitchell - freelancer, AP. Lloyd Mitchell - ugc, Lloyd Mitchell.
Resident Karen Dejesus said she was used to hearing the fire alarm go off. Waitrose has launched a co-branded recipe box partnership with Mindful Chef in what it said was a UK supermarket first. All Waitrose content from Retail-Week.
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