Wappingers Falls fire: Demolition of destroyed building could begin this week
John W. Barry Poughkeepsie Journal Published 2:57 PM EST Mar 2, 2020Demolition of the Wappingers Falls building destroyed in a fire could begin this week, according to Mayor Matt Alexander.
And a firefighter who was taken to Vassar Brothers Medical Center after suffering from smoke inhalation remained hospitalized on Monday, said Wappingers Falls Fire Chief Adam Van Tassel. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
Nearly a week after the Feb. 25 blaze destroyed the building at 10 Market St., displacing 39 residents, the fallout continues to unfold.
Alexander in a press release issued Monday said Jeffrey Knipe, the owner of the building, and his contractor, expect to secure a demolition permit from the village on Tuesday and “demolition could begin this week.” Knipe and the contractor met Monday with Wappinger Falls Building Inspector Bryan Murphy to discuss the demolition and maintenance of the site.
Alexander also met with Knipe and his contractor.
“We discussed the desired outcome of the project and stressed that the property must be maintained until it is rebuilt,” Alexander said in the press release. “The owner does intend to rebuild. He will meet again with the village to discuss his plans for the future.”
The fire did not injure any residents of the building, which had 10 apartments and four retail spaces. Many of the displaced victims have remarked on the depth of support they’ve received in the wake of the tragedy.
Thousands of dollars have been raised and distributed to the victims. There have also been donations of clothing, toiletries, furniture and food, from individuals and businesses. Numerous fundraising raffles based in area restaurants are ongoing.
“There are too many efforts to acknowledge here, but they are all greatly appreciated by the victims of the fire and by village officials,” Alexander said in the release.
Van Tassel said on Monday that the cause of the fire remained under investigation.
Several residents had previously said they saw welding work being done on a fire escape around the time of the fire and have cast blame there. Town of Wappinger Supervisor Richard Thurston confirmed last week that this is one theory under investigation.
Van Tassel had said the fire originated outside the building and began on the second floor.
Dana Smith, commissioner of the Dutchess County Department of Emergency Response, said last week investigators have collected anything they would need before the building is demolished.
John W. Barry: jobarry@poughkeepsiejournal.com, 845-437-4822, Twitter: @JohnBarryPoJo
Published 2:57 PM EST Mar 2, 2020Man falls off Bronx fire escape, plunges to his death
By KERRY BURKE, GRAHAM RAYMAN and JOHN ANNESE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS | DEC 05, 2019 | 2:35 PM
A Bronx restaurant delivery worker fell to his death from the fire escape of his Bronx apartment building early Thursday, and his distraught family is demanding answers.
Police believe Gerardo Villano, 24, slipped on a patch of ice on the fire escape of his building on Grand Concourse near E. 178th St. in Mount Hope and plunged four stories to an interior courtyard at about 5:20 a.m. He was declared dead at the scene.
“We don’t know what’s going on. We don’t know who he was with or what happened,” said his brother, Carmello Villano, 32. “We want a full investigation.”
The fire escape, which appeared to have no ice on it Thursday afternoon, is on the opposite side of the building from where Villano lived, the victim’s brother said.
Eyewitness Anthony Medina said he looked out the window to see Villano face up, his mouth open, after he hit the ground.
“He was foaming from the both and bleeding from his nose. I was in shock,” Medina said.
“We don’t know how he ended up on the other side of the building. He doesn’t know anyone over there. He doesn’t know anyone in the building,” said the deceased man’s brother.
Villano, who delivered food for several restaurants, came to the U.S. from Guerrero, Mexico , about a month and a half ago, where several of his family members still live.
“He wanted to provide for his mom and dad,” said his sister-in-law, Estella Enrique, 27. “He came to this country for a better life. This is a terrible tragedy.”
Five Injured in Bensonhurst Apartment Fire
RACHEL LINDY BARONJANUARY 14, 2020 @4:51 PM
BENSONHURST — A column of thick, black smoke billowed from a Bensonhurst apartment building yesterday morning.
FDNY received the call of a fire at 2402 Benson Avenue, near 24th Avenue, at 9:06 a.m. Sixty firefighters and EMS personnel arrived at the scene by 9.09 a.m FDNY told Bklyner, and were able to place the fire under control by 9:52 in the morning. Five people were injured — one critical, one serious (non-life threatening), and three minor. They were brought to Coney Island Hospital.
By the time firefighters arrived, the fire had spread from the first floor of the building. In the video footage below, a desperate scene unravels: a dark-haired woman wearing a long skirt sat on the ledge of one of the uppermost apartments, clinging to the wall as smoke poured out from behind her. Some tenants congregated in front of the building, while others stood helplessly on their balconies. Sirens and incoherent shouts filled the air.
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One tenant, who did not give his name, was shown in the video telling News 12 reporters that he felt firefighters could have gotten there more quickly, as the fire department is right across the street.
“It was chaos,” the man said. When he first realized the building was on fire, he went downstairs – it “wasn’t as bad,” then. When they tried to go back up, however, “it was black.”
He and another tenant, whose wife and mother were still in their apartment, were forced to ascend via the fire escape in the back. He had also feared for the life of a 96-year-old woman living in the apartment under him, who, he said, had thankfully gone out earlier that morning. He told reporters that he had broken a window in order to get inside.
In yet another clip, residents stood in front of the building, wearing blankets. One man, clad in shorts and t-shirt, sat in the back of an ambulance, his face covered with ash. He wore oxygen tubes in his nose.
Another tenant, who gave his name as Bogdan, said that he was woken up that morning by the fire detectors going off. He ran out without grabbing his shoes, then immediately went to pull down the fire escape ladder and help some of the other tenants, some of them children, descend.
“What was going through your head?” The person filming the video asked.
“Nothing,” Bogdan said. “Everyone is alive – [that was] the main goal.”
The cause of the fire is currently under investigation.
Local TV News Anchor Makes Insurance Claim Against the Town of Union
Posted: Dec 18, 2019 9:31 PM ESTUpdated: Dec 19, 2019 9:43 AM ESTBy Paul BeamCONNECTBy Amy HoganCONNECT
FOX 40 WICZ TV – News, Sports, Weather, Contests & More
A local news anchor has officially made a claim against the town of union for injuries in a September accident.
The insurance claim was entered into record this evening at the town board meeting. According to the claim, WBNG 12 News anchor Paul Mueller sustained injuries after a steel fire escape became detached from his second-story apartment at 265 Main Street in Johnson City. The incident happened back on September 15th.
The claim states Mueller sustained several fractured bones and bruised tissue as a result of the fall.
The Town of Union is in charge of safety inspections and code enforcement for the village. When Fox 40 called code enforcement in the weeks after the incident, we were told the engineer’s report was not finished yet.
Mueller’s claim accuses the Town of Union of improperly inspecting the fire escape, or not inspecting it at all.
The claim also states Mueller’s injuries impaired his ability to work. The evening anchor was absent from television for a period of time, but is now back on air.
While this is not currently a lawsuit, he and a second man who was injured, John Rozzoni, both have a 1 year and 90-day window to follow up with a personal lawsuit. Rozzoni, the executive director of Tri-Cities Opera, also entered a claim that was put on record at Wednesday night’s meeting.
Below is the full Mueller claim.
News-Anchor-Fire-Escape-Collapse Claim:DownloadFDNY FIRE ESCAPE SAFETY TIPS![]()
If you live or work in a building that has a fire escape, follow these #FDNYSmart tips to ensure a safe exit during an emergency. See more tips at https://t.co/NpwdRdlElY pic.twitter.com/duRmYy7Con
— FDNY (@FDNY) December 18, 2019
UES Burglar Uses Fire Escapes For Break-Ins, Police Say
The burglar has broken into apartments in five buildings since Nov. 10.
UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A burglar is breaking into Upper East Side homes by using fire escapes to enter apartments through unlocked windows, police said.
The NYPD’s 19th Precinct, which patrols the entire Upper East Side, warned residents this week to keep their windows and roof doors locked following the recent spree of break ins. The burglaries are concentrated in the East 80s and 90s between Lexington and First avenues, police said.
Three of the break-ins occurred in the span of two blocks: East 83rd Street between First and Third avenues.
Police believe that the burglar is gaining access to buildings either by climbing up to fire escapes from the street or accessing them by rooftop. Once on the fire escape, the crook tests windows to see if they are unlocked, police said.
The five burglaries occurred between Nov. 10 and Monday, Dec. 2. The first break-in occurred early in the morning and proved unsuccessful when building residents notices the burglar, an NYPD spokeswoman said. The next four burglaries occurred during work hours when residents were not home, police said.
In each of the four successful burglaries the robber has stolen jewelry and electronics from victims’ homes, police said.
Source: Patch: UES Burglar Uses Fire Escapes For Break-Ins, Police Say By Brendan Krisel, Patch Staff Dec 4, 2019 1:05 pm ET | Updated Dec 4, 2019 2:54 pm ET
Investigation continues into deadly Brooklyn tenement fire
Todd Maisel
12 hours ago
3 min read
One man is dead and eight other residents were injured when an early morning fire swept through a Flatbush, Brooklyn tenement, fire officials said.
Fire officials say the dead man, not identified, succumbed to injuries he sustained after jumping from the third-floor window in a desperate attempt to escape the heavy smoke and flames. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
Two other victims suffered live-threatening injuries; one was listed in critical condition at Kings County Medical Center, fire officials said. Five others were treated for smoke inhalation and other minor injuries.
Fire Department officials said the blaze broke out at 3:55 a.m. Monday on the second floor of a three-story tenement at 1776 Nostrand Ave. The conflagration led to panic as residents tried to flee the quickly spreading smoke and flames in the rear of the building.
Residents on the top floor were met by heavy flames and smoke on the rear fire escape, fire officials said, forcing some to flee for the interior stairs.
More than 100 firefighters battled the blaze, and some firefighters rescued victims from a burning apartment on the third floor.
“I was sleeping and then I heard the noise and then people were screaming ‘help, help’ in Creole,” said Marjorie August; she said some of her neighbors were from Haiti. Her apartment was also heavily damaged as firefighters broke through the ceiling to battle the flames.
August woke her son, Steven, and his girlfriend in the adjoining bedroom. Her son said he looked out the back window in horror.
“My mom started yelling, and we all got up. We smelled the smoke and saw it out the window,” Steven August said as he stared at the opening in the ceiling where fire had spread. “My girlfriend started yelling and knocking on doors to get people out. People were trying to escape, and when we got outside, there was one guy was laying down – his head was wide open – pretty desperate.”
The fire building and the two adjoining buildings were slapped with vacate orders by the Department of Buildings because of the damage to the roof and walls where the fire had spread.
The Red Cross was expected to coordinate relocation for up to 40 people who occupied the three buildings.
“My house is messed up and my property is damaged, I just want to know what am I supposed to do – somebody has to pay for this,” August said.
Todd Maisel
VIEW ALL POSTSSchenectady building declared ‘dangerous’ for falling bricks
Deterioration has prompted closure of the sidewalk along Erie Boulevard
Pete DeMola | November 25, 2019
PHOTOGRAPHER: MARC SCHULTZ
SCHENECTADY — A prominent downtown building has been deemed dangerous by the city after bricks recently became dislodged and rained down onto the pavement below.
The deterioration has prompted closure of the sidewalk along Erie Boulevard and increased city scrutiny of the hulking structure.
“This is a building that is concerning to me,” said Chief Building Inspector Christopher Lunn. “We want to keep it on our radar to make sure things are being maintained to an acceptable level.”
Known informally as the Wedgeway Professional Building, 271-277 State St. is located at the corner of Erie Boulevard and State Street at the city’s busiest intersection.
While the building houses several businesses, including the Photo Lab and Downtown Convenience, there has been an exodus of tenants in recent years, including Sassy’s Satellite, the Grog Shoppe and Wedgeway Barber Shop, which relocated to a new site on Erie Boulevard earlier this year after 107 years.
MARC SCHULTZ/GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPHER
Another tenant, State Street Tattoo Co., plans to relocate at Lafayette Street, according to the city Planning Commission.
And the marquee from the former State Theater, once used as a space for announcements and advertisements, hasn’t been updated since September.
No businesses would comment for this story.
The sprawling complex of rowhouse-style buildings is owned by William Eichengrun under the limited-liability corporation 271-277 State LLC.
Eichengrun didn’t return a call seeking comment on Monday.
The complex also contains office space, and a five-story annex on the Erie Boulevard side of the building contains apartment units.
The city’s inspection of the property was conducted five days after The Daily Gazette filed a Freedom of Information Law request with the city on Nov. 15 for code violations and “orders to vacate” for 271-277 State St.
The city Codes Department issued three violations five days later, including for falling bricks and a damaged roof parapet.
Chunks of bricks remain visible on fire escapes along the Erie Boulevard side of the structure, which remains barricaded.
Workers at the building appeared to play down the violations on Monday, contending the bricks may have been tossed onto the fire escape by homeless people.
Looking out from a fourth-floor window, piles of bricks and debris are heaped at the edge of the roof, but a worker said they were left over from a repair job that was never completed and didn’t present a threat because the roofline leads to another roof below — not a public space.
Eichengrun must present a written remediation plan to the city by Wednesday.
“We’re looking for an engineering report on the stability of the brick face of the building,” Lunn said. “We want in writing what he’s going to do to fix the problem and ensure pedestrian safety is being maintained.”
If not, the city will begin issuing tickets.
“We will also look at if the city will take any action to proceed with a pedestrian-covered walkway if necessary,” Lunn said.
Schenectady Fire Department Chief Ray Senecal said his department has responded to the building twice this year, including for an alarm triggered by an unsecured door.
Eichengrun also lacks the necessary rental certificates required to house tenants, according to Lunn, which is a violation of a new law signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo earlier this month that prohibits landlords from collecting rent without a valid certificate of occupancy.
“That’s another thing we’re going after them for,” Lunn said. “It certifies all life-safety issues are non-imminent.”
Lunn said it’s unclear whether the apartment units are currently occupied. But residents were told they had 15 minutes to collect their belongings and get out when the city issued “order to vacate” notices on fourth-floor apartment units on Oct. 18 for “unsafe conditions,” and dogs could be heard barking inside on Monday.
The previous order was issued building-wide for electrical hazards, including faulty smoke detectors, and was lifted five days later after the units were fixed, Lunn said.
But without access to the apartments, Lunn said, the true condition of the building remains unknown.
“Could there be outstanding violations?” he said. “There may be.”
Eichengrun purchased the structure last year for $847,000 from longtime owner John A. Matarazzo, according to tax records.
City Council President Ed Kosiur said he was previously unaware of the building’s condition, but hoped for a quick remediation.
“It’s concerning to all of us and I hope it gets resolved as quickly as possible to provide safety and security to not only the tenants, but city residents walking by,” Kosiur said.
PRIME REAL ESTATE
The sprawling complex is among the few buildings left untouched by downtown’s rapid transformation, sitting dead-center of a swirling series of developments that are dramatically reshaping downtown, including the Mill Artisan District, Electric City Apartments and the rehabbed Schenectady Train Station on Erie Boulevard.
More changes are imminent.
The former Masonic Temple will be renovated and the adjoining two structures – the former Rudnick’s and Chamber of Commerce — will be incorporated into planned redevelopment as new retail-commercial-residential space.
And while a major chunk of funds from the $10 million awarded as part of the state Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI) are allocated for projects at Mohawk Harbor, some of the money will likely trickle down to lower State Street for façade improvements.
Schenectady Metroplex Development Authority runs a matching façade grant program and has said it will place a “special focus” on completing facades along the Erie Boulevard corridor to help the visual appeal and commercial viability of the route.
The goal is to complete 10 facades at a cost of $750,000 in matching funds, according to the DRI application.
Metroplex Chairman Ray Gillen said that while 271-277 State is in a desirous building in a central location, the authority will not pay for repairs.
“Metroplex has not had any discussions with the current owner of the building, nor would we provide assistance to make repairs mandated by the city building inspector,” Gillen said. “These repairs are the responsibility of the building owner.”
The building is listed on the market, he said, but the asking price is more than three times the recent purchase price.
“Potential buyers have been reluctant to move forward, especially given the fact that extensive repairs are needed,” he said. “If the purchase price was lower, it is likely that a buyer could be found to restore and protect this building. Until that happens, we hope the current owner makes needed repairs immediately.”
UNCLEAR PICTURE
Despite the recent spate of violations, questions remain about the actual condition of the complex after the city failed to provide complete records detailing the building’s history of code violations and remediation efforts.
The Gazette asked for “code violations and/or order to vacate for 277 State (or 271-277 State).”
But the city’s practice is to only release violations that remain open, said Mayor Gary McCarthy after the cache of documents was released.
“Those violations were remediated and not carried as open violations,” McCarthy said. “The order to vacate would have been resolved also when the underlying remediations are taken care of.”
But the city did issue 13 violations on Dec. 12, 2018, for numerous deficiencies, including damaged tiles; deteriorating walls and ceilings throughout the building; windows falling out of their frames; leaking basement pipes; and improper gas lines.
Inspectors also determined bricks on the building were missing mortar.
Eichengrun was given 30 days to make the repairs, but whether the work has been completed is unclear.
The city, however, re-inspected the structure on Jan. 24 and issued a stop-work order because Eichengrun allegedly didn’t obtain the proper permits, according to the violation provided by the city.
The Daily Gazette formally appealed the FOIL on Monday, citing the incompleteness of the records.
The state Committee on Open Government criticized the city on Monday for the policy.
“It should have been provided,” said Committee on Open Government Director Kristen O’Neill. “There’s no reason why the ‘order to vacate’ wouldn’t be disclosed — it’s a record subject to FOIL. I don’t think there’s any reason to withhold it.”
Lunn said on Monday his office will make all documents available.
Councilman Vince Riggi said he was alarmed at the developments.
“If the building seems to be unstable, a hazard, to a pedestrian or someone living there, it’s a concern,” he said. “We already went through this,” referring to the Jay Street Fire that killed four residents in 2015.
A grand jury report ultimately found that while the city Fire Department was aware of public safety complaints and referred them to the Codes Department, the reports were ultimately not acted upon.
Those included the lack of fire doors in stairwells; inoperable smoke alarms; and concerns about the building’s fire alarm box and residents’ efforts to silence it.
Since then, the Codes Department has attempted to reform its operations, including using new software to streamline the inspection process and boost communication between departments.
“Certainly we do not want any duplication of Jay Street,” Kosiur said.
Source: The Daily Gazzette Schenectady building declared ‘dangerous’ for falling bricks by Pete DeMola | November 25, 2019
FDNY Firefighters Injured in Bronx Building Blaze
Twelve FDNY units responded to the fire that broke out on the sixth floor of a seven-story Bronx building and also injured two residents, one seriously.
MICHAEL SHERIDAN NOVEMBER 4, 2019
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Four people, including two firefighters, were injured in a blaze in the Bronx early Monday.
A call came in just after 8 a.m. of a fire on the 6th floor of a seven-story building on W. 240th St.
Twelve units responded to the fire, and the flames were brought under control in an hour.
Two residents were injured, officials told the Daily News. Both were serious, but only one appeared to be life threatening.
Two firefighters were also injured, but they appeared to be minor, officials said.
The cause of the fire is not yet known.
———
©2019 New York Daily News
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Fights Break Out Between Tenants, NYPD Outside Apartment Fire
This post was updated at noon on Sept. 4, 2019.
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – There was chaos in the Bronx Tuesday night. As firefighters worked to stop a building from burning, fights broke out between frantic residents and police.
Nobody was seriously injured in the apartment fire, but two tenants are now under arrest.
Authorities tell CBS2 police were trying to keep people out of the firefighters’ way, but as residents watched their building burn, panic quickly turned into conflict.
The crowd in the Bronx watched in a fearful daze as black smoke poured from their six-story apartment building on the Grand Concourse.
“We heard screaming, my mom opened the door and all you see was smoke and she said get out,” one resident said.
Angel Nieves was in his top floor apartment when the fire broke out in his neighbor’s kitchen around 4:30 p.m.
“We had to climb down the fire escape all the way down then someone would catch us,” Nieves said.
His roommates lost their shoes climbing out the window.
“They slipped out when I was trying to get to the fire escape because there’s bars,” Midian Feuratdo told CBS2.
Five firefighters and two city sheriffs were taken to the hospital for minor injuries including smoke inhalation.
“It was a very advanced fire on the top floor it takes a long time for us to get all our equipment up there to fight the fire,” FDNY Deputy Chief Joe Donlevy said.
As the building burned above, fights broke out between tenants and police officers.
Danny Rodriguez was just getting home from work.
“I noticed the smell of smoke from the train station… my panic knowing my little sisters live here, my brother lives here, ran straight to the house they told me to leave the building. I couldn’t see inside of the building cause it was straight smoke,” Rodriguez said.
The NYPD said officers were trying to keep crowds back, but some residents refused to move.
“Me and my brother looking for my mom, panicked, we get to the middle of the street and I look back and see my brother and another neighbor getting pushed by the officers… ‘get to the sidewalk, get to the sidewalk’. As soon as my brother refused the officers started pushing my brother,” Rodriguez claimed.
Rodriguez’s 18-year-old brother was taken into custody. Police say their mother then ripped off an officer’s body camera and threw it on the ground. She was also arrested.
“While my mom was going crazy, she was panicking, she had passed out on the ground,” Rodriguez added.
Angelo Rodriguez and 39-year-old Raquel Dejesus have both been charged with disorderly conduct and criminal mischief among other charges.
The FDNY tells CBS2 the occupants of at least five apartments have been displaced, but most of the building’s tenants have now been allowed back in.
Pat Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association, released a statement Wednesday morning:
“It is becoming impossible for police officers to do our job, even in emergency situations. At a fire scene, our role is to clear the area so that firefighters can contain the fire and prevent loss of life. This crowd didn’t care: they wanted to fight the cops who were there to help. Thankfully everybody made it out this time, but our city leaders need to wake up: if they keep encouraging cop-hatred and interference with our duties, lives will be lost because we were prevented from doing our job,” he said.
How Safe Are Fire Escapes in NY
New Yorkers often treat these archaic means of egress as their own private balcony, but should they?
By Jeremiah Budin SHARE:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/61446479/150219_14_08_53__MG_0131.0.jpg)
New York City is full of peculiar phenomena—rickety fire escapes; 100-year-old subway tunnels; air conditionerspropped perilously into window frames—that can strike fear into the heart of even the toughest city denizen. But should they? Every month, we’ll be exploring—and debunking—these New York-specific fears, letting you know what you should actually worry about, and what anxieties you can simply let slip away.
Joseph Pell Lombardi has been an architect for over 50 years, and his business—converting commercial buildings to residential—often requires him to tour old, dilapidated warehouses and similar structures. And there’s one part of these buildings that Lombardi does not set foot in—or rather, on.
“I do everything I can to not stand out on a fire escape,” Lombardi says. “I will look out at it from the window. But you would really have to talk me into it, or figure out some way to get me out on a fire escape.”
Lombardi isn’t the only one with concerns. For decades, New Yorkers longing for a tiny balcony, a little extra storage space, or a miniature garden have slithered out onto their fire escapes and thought to themselves, Hey, I wonder if this thing is really structurally sound. And there may be good reason to worry. In February of this year, one person was killed and two others were injured when a piece of a fire escape broke off a Soho building and plummeted seven stories. Stories about people climbing out onto fire escapes and falling to their deaths—one such incident occurred earlier this month—also occur with some regularity.
Disconcertingly, it is impossible to tell based on the age of a building how safe its fire escape might be. Due to changes to the building code in 1968 that halted the construction of external fire escapes, all of the existing ones are at least half a century old. The oldest among them, which began to appear in the mid-late 19th century, are made of wrought iron, which, according to Lombardi, makes them very fragile. The newer ones are made of steel, which is sturdier. But, as Lombardi points out, many of the steel fire escapes are not original to their buildings—they were added later, after a revision to the Tenement House Act in 1901required buildings to have a second means of egress—and “sometimes they may have been added very well, structurally, and other times they weren’t added very well, because they were an afterthought.”
However, if the structural integrity of fire escapes is something that keeps you up at night, you can at least take comfort in the fact that incidents of fire escapes breaking are few and far between. “If you just want to look at the data, we have fewer than two incidents per year that end up in either injury or fatality,” says Jill Hrubecky, executive engineer for the NYC Department of Buildings Investigative Engineering Services. (That statistic only includes incidents where the DoB was called, not incidents where just the police were called, as may be the case when someone slips and falls.)
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The law requires landlords of buildings over six and a half stories (in other words, six stories plus a basement) to hire a licensed professional—either an architect or an engineer—to inspect the fire escapes every five years. For buildings that are six stories or smaller, no such specific requirements exist, beyond property owners being required by code to maintain their buildings in safe condition. “Essentially, every building should constantly be safe,” Hrubecky says. “That’s not always the case, obviously.”
Regardless of how frequently your building is inspected, however, no one should necessarily feel comfortable cavorting on their fire escape, smoking cigarettes and wooing the sister of their rival gang leader. “Fire escapes are there for a reason,” Hrubecky says. “I know it’s very romantic, especially in New York—West Side Story and all that stuff—people want to hang out and get their little ukulele and sing ‘Moon River,’ but that’s not what their purpose is. Their purpose is to be a second means of egress.”
At some point in New York City’s future, the question of whether fire escapes are safe or not may become moot. The 1968 changes to the building code made it essentially illegal for new buildings to be constructed with exterior fire escapes; fireproof interior stairwells, equipped with sprinklers, are now favored instead. And architects like Lombardi prefer to remove them entirely in situations where the law permits.
But not everyone is on board with their extinction. In 2015, Lombardi was forced to abandon his plans to remove the fire escapes from two buildings in the Soho Cast Iron District after the residents revolted —although, in that case, he speculates that the dissension may have come more from a general distrust of landlord-approved changes than from a sincere belief that external fire escapes are the only way to evacuate a building.
“It made no sense,” he says. “I was going to provide two oversized stairs in fireproof enclosures with sprinkler systems. I believe that was an unwise decision, if it was focused on safety.” He also pointed out that the fire escapes were not part of the original character of the buildings, as they were among the group that had been added after the 1901 law. (For some, fire escapes serve more than a practical function—in 2016, Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, told Curbed that “they hark back to a time when the barriers between your and your neighbor’s lives and physical space were much more tenuous than now.”)
For the time being, as long as the fire escapes manage to keep themselves attached to their buildings, a great many of them are here to stay. “If somebody sees a fire escape that they think might be questionable, and even if they’re not sure, call 311,” Hrubecky advises. “It’ll get directed to us, an inspector will go out, and if there’s something wrong, we’ll take action. And if there’s nothing wrong, then, oh well.”
5 Things to know about Fire Escape NY
One of the most memorable appearances of an NYC fire escape was in West Side Story.
The movie West Side Story is a riff on Romeo and Juliet set in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of New York’s Upper West Side in the 1950s, so it fits that the star-crossed lovers court each other not from a balcony, but a New York fire escape. How often these ubiquitous metal structures are climbed for a late-night rendezvous is anyone’s guess, but inventive New Yorkers have used them countless ways since the Tenement House Act first required them in 1867. For some perspective on how essential NYC fire escapes have become, a later 1887 amendment to the same law finally mandated indoor toilets!
In that distant time before air conditioning, fire escapes could be a welcome, if sometimes dangerous, place to sleep outside. In the winter, New Yorkers also kept iceboxes on their fire escapes. These days, fire escapes remain a popular place for residents without a backyard to barbecue on small grills or sit down with a good book and get a summer tan. Others transform them with colorful potted gardens filled with flowers and herbs. However, most alternative uses like barbecuing and gardening are actually illegal. With so many possible adaptations, it’s easy to take fire escapes for granted or forget their original purpose: a means to escape a fire!
Large fires are rare in this well-regulated city of millions, but if you’re a new tenant in a New York buildingwith an outdoor fire escape, there is some important basic information you’ll want to know.
1. The basic legal requirements of the City of New York
Wrought-iron fire escapes add a unique design touch to NYC’s dynamic architecture.
Requirements for exterior fire escapes ceased after the 1968 Building Code. New York law at the time of their requirement stated that there must be direct access to an outdoor fire escape from any apartment above the ground floor. Since this access is almost always through a window, you will want to make sure that the window opens quickly and easily. Insect screens are allowed, but only if they slide open vertically or horizontally. If the exit window is covered by metal bars or a security gate, the device must be approved by the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY), which requires bars to be releasable from the inside without a key.
Check out this vacation rental that features prominent child safety window guards.
If you live in a building with three or more units and a child ten years old or younger lives with you, your landlord is required to install child safety window guards to keep little ones from falling, even on the ground floor. You can see an example of window guards in one of our four-bedroom apartments in Harlem. Window guards are difficult to remove when installed correctly, therefore they can’t be placed in the fire escape window. It’s even against the law to put anything in front of a fire escape window, so it’s a sure bet that untold numbers of the city’s residents are guilty of at least one crime. If your escape window is in the kitchen, be sure not to put your refrigerator in front of it.
Relaxing on your fire escape isn’t illegal, but be sure to keep it free of furniture.
It’s not illegal to stand or sit on your fire escape, hence their popularity as a social space during summerparties. Do be advised that partying on your fire escape is highly discouraged by the FDNY and other authorities, as accidents can happen.
2. Look for blocked platforms
This air conditioner is placed so as not to block the fire escape.
Many people may not know that it’s illegal, by penalty of a misdemeanor charge, to store anything on a New York City fire escape. But since space is a hot commodity in many New York apartments, you might see people illegally storing bicycles on their fire escapes. It is also illegal to cover the platform outside your access window. For instance, you can’t surround it with wire mesh to give pet cats a safe place to sit. It’s safe to say that most New Yorkers will overlook a potted plant here and there or small decorations, but essentially, any large obstruction on a fire escape can put you and your loved ones at risk. Air conditioners can also illegally obstruct fire escapes, but not the one pictured above in our two-bedroom furnished rental on the Upper West Side. If you see anything on a fire escape that concerns you, it’s okay to politely ask your neighbor to remove it.
3. What color is your fire escape?
While black is the most common color, NYC fire escapes often add a pop of color to buildings’ exteriors.
Neighborhoods like SoHo, Greenwich Village, the East Village, and the Lower East Side were developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when fire escapes first became ubiquitous in New York. Walk through these neighborhoods and you will see fire escapes in every color of the rainbow.
This practice goes back to a 1929 law that required fire escapes made of rust-prone materials to be covered with “two or more coats of good paint in contrasting colors.” One coat was applied before installation, and the other once the fire escape was attached. The purpose of the contrasting colors was to make it easier for owners and inspectors to tell when it was time to get out the paintbrushes. Landlords still have to keep their fire escapes rust-free and painted with at least two good coats of paint, but the often-dazzling colors have become a sure sign of that legendary New York flair.
4. Check your drop ladder
This fire escape’s cream design adds a unique element to this red-brick building.
A sturdy and exquisitely painted fire escape isn’t very helpful if you’re trying to get down and the ladder doesn’t work. Sixteen feet, the maximum distance allowed from the lowest fire escape balcony to the ground, is a long way to jump. Your ladder might be fixed in place or swing down from a hinge, but it’s likely to be the kind that descends vertically through guides from the lowest platform to a safe landing spot. No drop ladder is required where the distance from the lowest platform to a safe landing is five feet or less, though that’s still without a doubt a daunting leap for some! Once you’ve found your furnished apartmentor vacation rental, it’s good practice to climb down the fire escape and make sure that the drop ladder is working and can be easily released and extended to the ground.
Drop ladders were designed to be retracted to prevent unwanted entry to the building by burglars. If the ladder is always extended to the ground, either through inattention or malfunction, notify your landlord. It’s not illegal for the ladder to remain extended, but discuss it with your landlord if it’s a security concern for you. If there is no ladder in sight, you should definitely notify the landlord.
5. Is your fire escape safe?
Fire escapes should be maintained to be useful at all times of the year and kept clear of snow and leaves.
New York Habitat conducts its own inspections and only lists apartments with legal and well-maintained fire escapes, but don’t hesitate to take a close look at the general condition of your fire escape. Many are impressively ornate objets d’art on landmarked buildings, such as the one on the Puck Building in SoHo. They also adorn scores of five and six-story buildings in some of the most picturesque parts of the city, such as the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, and Brooklyn Heights.
Although good maintenance and decent paint are mandatory, most fire escapes were built before World War II (pre-war), and more than a few were installed on much older buildings. If the structure seems rickety, or if there are weak and/or broken steps, it’s not in compliance with the law. The general rule is that nothing should touch a fire escape but your feet, so fire escapes should be kept clear even of natural debris. The open grating of fire escape platforms and stairs are intended to prevent the buildup of snow or ice in the winter and pileups of leaves in the fall. It’s also the law that snow and ice be removed to maintain a safe fire escape.
Our furnished Lower East Side apartment shows that fire escapes are essential to NYC architecture.
Fire escapes may be disappearing in the rapidly renovating parts of New York, but they will always remain an iconic symbol of the city’s urban scene. Where they continue to exist, like outside our one-bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side, you can count on them as your best bet for a swift exit. One last thing: Don’t forget to test your smoke alarm. It only takes a minute!
This post was sourced from https://www.nyhabitat.com/blog/2015/11/23/5-things-know-fire-escapes-renting-apartment-nyc/
Woman hurt in 4-story fall from Bed-Stuy fire escape
Current Time 0:00 / Duration 0:22 Loaded: 0% Progress: 0%Woman hurt in 4-story fall from Bed-Stuy fire escape
Woman sues over husband’s death from falling fire escape
March 19, 2019 | 5:35pm | Updated Enlarge Image
Richard MarchhartSupplied
A widow has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the owners of a Soho building where a metal fire escape step fell seven stories striking her husband in the head and killing him.
Andrea Marchhart, 57, filed the suit this week, just over a year after her husband, Richard Marchhart, died in the freak accident that happened while he walked along Broadway near Howard Street on the afternoon of Feb. 16, 2018.
Workers had been conducting a safety inspection of the fire escape at 434 Broadway when an inspector stepped onto the ladder and the person’s “body weight caused an individual stair tread to break off from the fire escape and fall approximately seven stories to the sidewalk below,” the Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit says.
The inspector was not identified by name in the papers.
The “heavy” 4-foot-by-2-foot step “fell to the ground at the same fateful moment that [Marchhart], traversed the portion of the sidewalk beneath the subject fire escape,” the court papers explain.
Marchhart, a lighting design engineer, had been in Soho for work at the time he was hit, the family’s lawyer, Andrew Maloney said. The 58-year-old father of three from Garden City died from the injuries the next day.
Marchhart’s wife is suing the building owner and manager, the company that carried out the inspection, a construction company and a maintenance company for unspecified damages.
Maloney said, “this accident really shined a spotlight on a problem in New York City. Most new buildings don’t have exterior fire escapes … because they are hard to maintain.”
Maloney said the fire escape in this case was rusted and and was covered up with a fresh coat of paint rather than being properly repaired.
A second woman was struck in the incident but she survived and filed her own lawsuit in Queens which is still pending, Maloney said.
A lawyer for the company that carried out the inspection, Cany Architecture and Engineering, said it was a “very unfortunate accident” but added that his company had conducted a proper inspection and repair previously.
“The prior job was a comprehensive review, evaluation and repair of the existing fire escape,” said Cany lawyer David Kosakoff.
A lawyer for the building management company declined to comment and lawyers for the other parties did not immediately return requests for comment.
Brooklyn Fire Spurs Tenant Pleas To Fix Faulty Heat
A fire at 82 Rockaway Parkway left three people wounded over the weekend and tenants say dangerous building conditions are to blame.
BROWNSVILLE, BROOKLYN — Three people were hurt when a fire erupted in a crumbling Brownsville apartment complex last weekend and now tenants are demanding the landlord fix building problems they say put their lives at stake.
“I have to turn on my space heater, stovetop, and oven to stay warm,” said 82 Rockaway Parkway resident K.B, 28. “Not only is that extremely expensive, it’s dangerous.”
K.B is one of several residents who gathered in the Rockaway Avenue lobby Friday morning, one week after an all-hands fire broke out and left two tenants and one firefighter injured, according to residents and the FDNY.
Tenants pleaded with building owner, whom city records show to be Joseph Popack, and even handed him a 150-signature petition on Jan. 27 asking him to address their concerns, residents said.
The four-story building has accumulated 65 hazardous violations for unsafe wiring, faulty fire escape, inadequate heating and missing smoke detectors in the past decade, Housing Preservation and Development department records show.
And the Department of Building issued a $500 fine for a problem with the fire escape in February 2017 that has yet to be resolved, city records show.
Popack, who RealDeal reports owned about 5,000 New York City apartments in 2010, did not respond to residents’ request for a meeting and Patch was unable to reach him for comment.
Housing advocates from the Upstate Downstate Housing Alliance and Housing Justice For All joined the rallying renters Friday to call on Popack to make vital repairs and on state legislatures to strengthen rent protection laws.
“There is a direct relationship between the weaknesses in the rent laws and the many code violations in buildings like 82 Rockaway Parkway,” said Cea Weaver of Upstate Downstate.
“If we succeed in closing loopholes like the vacancy bonus and vacancy decontrol, we will remove the incentive landlords have to harass out long-term tenants by neglecting needed repairs.”
December 10, 2018 07:07 PM Fire destroyed an apartment building at 440 Thurston Road on Monday, leaving the building a total loss that had to be demolished. Fire ripped through the old building that housed 28 apartments. Only nine apartments were rented. The fire started around 8:30 a.m. waking people out of their sleep and sending some jumping off of fire escapes. “Only thing I got is what I got on,” said Lonnie McDowell, who had lived there for seven years. “I was sleeping and I heard the fire alarms. I opened the door and the hallway was full of smoke. I closed the door and jumped out the fire escape.”
Flames and heavy smoke could be seen from a distance as the stubborn fire quickly became a five-alarm blaze.
“You get a certain amount of companies on a first alarm fire. Two more companies go up to a second alarm and so on and so forth. So the more companies the more alarms,” said Amon Hudson, spokesperson for the Rochester Fire Department.
Fire firefighters were still putting out hotspots late into the early evening.
“One of the challenges with this building was the structure of the building itself and the amount of apartments…28 apartments….Trying to search those the best we could,” Hudson said.
Firefighters couldn’t save the building, which was managed by CEM Properties. Twelve people have been assisted by the Red Cross.
“This building is slated for demolition. It’s unsafe for firefighters. It’s unsafe for civilians. It’s not even structurally sound at this point,” Hudson told reporters.
As devastating as this may be for McDowell and the rest of the tenants, he’s counting his blessings.
“It’s lucky that everybody who lived in there got out safely,” he said.
SOURCE: NY News10NBC Burned Thurston Road building a total loss
The Hidden Danger Growing In New York’s Fire Escapes
November 13, 2018 at 11:55 pm NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Fire escapes are literally part of the fabric of New York City. In some instances they even become an ad hoc extension of our limited living spaces. But CBS2 is demanding answers after a shocking tour revealed just how dangerous the city’s emergency escape routes have become. “You see the tread already dislodged?” Cisco Meneses asked CBS2’s Marcia Kramer. “How much rust is inside that?” Kramer said. “I wouldn’t go on this fire escape,” Meneses warned.
It was an eye-opening afternoon with the nationally recognized fire escape expert. As CBS2 walked the streets in downtown Manhattan, it was too easy to spot dangerous conditions. “Does this fire escape have violations?” Kramer asked about another building. “Yes… it has been kept painted, but it’s not structurally sound,” Meneses explained. Heavy rust was clearly visible and – something else CBS2 saw over and over again – air conditioners blocking the way. “That’s an obstruction… for the fireman to get in as well the people to get out.” FOR MORE ON FIRE ESCAPE INSPECTIONS AND SAFETY: Click here Any obstruction, from flower pots to art installations, can impede a safe escape in an emergency. Even more frightening, the structural integrity of fire escapes designed to save lives has started to become deadly.
Earlier this year in SoHo, a tread fell from a fire escape and killed one pedestrian and injured another. In May of 2011, an entire platform gave way from a building in Midtown. “You can see here the evidence of corrosion… that’s what caused the platform to fail,” attorney Herb Cabrera said. Cabrera says the victim fell 12 feet and needed multiple surgeries. The building eventually settled the lawsuit for millions. According the Department of Buildings, there are about 200,000 fire escapes in the city. They are all required to be maintained by building owners. In buildings six stories and above, fire escapes and building facades are inspected by the DOB every five years. Despite that mandate, the agency told CBS2 that they “have a limited number of inspectors in the city. We do the best that we can.” They were clearly concerned when Kramer showed some of what CBS2 found.
“That’s an unacceptable condition,” the DOB’s Timothy Hogan said. This year, there were more than 5,000 complaints to 311 and the DOB – as well as the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and FDNY – who also do regular inspections to make sure fire fighters are safe. “If we feel a fire escape is dangerous or unsafe, we don’t expect our members to go on it,” FDNY Deputy Chief Joseph Carlsen said. The FDNY says they will put up ladders or find another way in to building in those cases. The Department of Buildings says they rely on the public to call 311 about fire escapes with any areas of concern. They promise all calls remain confidential.
Three people were injured in lower Manhattan when a step on a fire escape came loose and fell seven stories to the ground on Friday, Feb. 16, 2018, police and fire officials said. (Credit: Rajvi Desai)
Falling debris kills 1, injures 2 in lower Manhattan, FDNY says
By Lauren Cook lauren.cook@amny.com
A man died Saturday after he was hit in the head the day before by the step of a fire escape that plummeted seven stories from a lower Manhattan building, police and fire officials said. Two other people were also injured in the accident. A private engineer hired by the owner of the building at 38 Howard St., near Broadway, was standing on the fire escape just before 1:40 p.m. Friday when the step came loose and fell to the street, hitting two pedestrians in the head, according to the Department of Buildings and FDNY Deputy Assistant Chief Michael Gala. The pedestrians, a 24-year-old woman and a 58-year-old man, were rushed to NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue in critical condition, authorities said. The woman was conscious and alert with a minor laceration to the head when paramedics arrived on the scene, according to the NYPD. The man — identified by police Saturday as Richard Marchhart of Garden City — was lying in the street unconscious with a possible skull fracture. Marchhart died of his injuries at Bellevue early Saturday morning, according to police. Robert Barila, 33, a vendor at nearby Snkrflea on Broadway, said he witnessed the step hit the deceased. “The man was bleeding. Both of them were on the sidewalk on the ground,” Barila said. “I’m out here in the city every day and stuff falling from the sky is scary.” Joe Diorio, 38, who owns the nearby Snkrflea store, was walking a customer to her car when he saw Marchhart lying on the ground. “There were cops everywhere. They responded in seconds,” he reported. The engineer, employed by CANY Architecture + Engineering DPC, was conducting a routine inspection on the facade of the nine-story building when she partially fell through the fire escape, according to the Department of Buildings. She was able to pull herself up to safety, Gala, the FDNY deputy assistant chief, said. She was evaluated by first responders at the scene and refused medical attention. There were no complaints on file related to the building’s facade or fire escape before Friday’s incident, according to the DOB. DOB was conducting an investigation into the incident, which included a thorough inspection of the facade. With Rajvi Desai and Nicole LevyNYPD: MAN DIES AFTER PIECE OF SOHO FIRE ESCAPE FELL ONTO HIS HEAD
By Angi Gonzalez | February 17, 2018 @3:46 PM
When Howard St. at Broadway finally re-opened Friday night, it was easy to see where a step fell from an escape and onto two people below.
Just hours earlier, the heavy piece of metal dropped seven stories — about 90 feet — onto a 24-year-old woman and Richard Marchhart, 58, who police said Saturday afternoon is now dead.
An employee at a nearby business didn’t want to show his face but told us what he saw.
“I saw the older man on the floor in a pool of blood,” the employee said. “It definitely looked really bad, and then the woman — I saw her, she was on the floor, but she was moving, she was conscious.”
The victims were rushed to Bellevue Hospital. Officials said they were hit in the head with the step. One building employee estimated it weighed about 60 or 70 pounds.
Investigators claimed it was the weight of a private engineer that caused the step to tumble to the street. She was inspecting the outside of a building around 1:30 p.m. Friday when it happened.
“The step became dislodged. She actually fell partially through the fire escape,” FDNY Deputy Assistant Commissioner Michael Gala said to members of the media Friday. “Thankfully, she was able to pull herself up.”
A 2013 report issued to the buildings department found no unsafe conditions on the same fire escape. City law requires inspections of the facade at buildings six stories and taller every five years. The engineer site was in the process of conducting the latest review on the nine-story commercial property.
People in the neighborhood just off Canal St., didn’t quite know what to make of the scary scenario.
“I usually expect the fire escapes to be doing what they are doing: Just staying there not to fall on anyone,” one man said.
The buildings department has since issued one violation for the structure: Failure to safeguard the building. It has also required that the building’s owner hire “fire guards” who will guide occupants out of the building because the fire escape is not usable.
Man dies after piece of fire escape fell 7 stories in SoHo
By Tim Fleischer SOHO, Manhattan (WABC) — A man has died after a piece of a fire escape fell seven stories in Manhattan Friday afternoon. Two other people were injured in the accident, one seriously, officials said. 58-year-old Richard Marchhart of Garden City was struck by the piece that fell off a building in SoHo. Marchhart was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he died from his injuries Saturday. A 24-year-old female was also struck, but was alert and conscious afterward with a minor laceration to the head, officials said. The piece of the unusually large fire escape became dislodged when a private inspector, who was checking the building’s facade, put her foot on it, authorities said. “It appears that under her weight, that step became dislodged. She actually fell partially through the fire escape. Thankfully, she was able to pull herself up,” said FDNY Assistant Chief Michael Gala Jr.
(@CitizenDiorio / Twitter)
The fire escape on the building, located near the intersection of Howard Street and Broadway, is now the focus of an investigation.
The sidewalk below was cordoned off to make sure no other pedestrians were injured.
Area worker Imola Kobor came upon the chaotic scene.
“I asked her what was going on. She said she was walking, and these two people were walking in front of her, and all of a sudden something fell on their head,” Kobor said.
While fire officials said the fire escape appeared to be in good condition, buildings officials will investigate.
The private engineer was conducting a routine check of the building’s facade. Prior to this, the DOB said it has not received any complaints about the fire escape. A report in 2013 found that it had no unsafe conditions.
Man Dies After Being Hit By Piece Of SoHo Fire Escape That Plummeted 7 Stories
Filed Under:Dave Carlin, Local TV, Manhattan, sohoNY man killed by falling debris from apartment building
Byx Ray Downs | Feb. 19, 2018 at 12:14 AM
Members of the New York Fire Department stand outside the apartment building where a piece of a fire escape fell, killing one person and injuring another. Photo by New York Fire Department
Feb. 18 (UPI) — A 58-year-old New York man is dead after a piece of a fire escape from a Manhattan apartment building fell on top of him.
Richard Marchart was walking down a street in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood on Friday when the object weighing more than 100 pounds fell. A 24-year-old woman was also injured by the falling debris.
“The man was bleeding. Both of them were on the sidewalk on the ground,” said Robert Barila, a vendor who witnessed the incident, according to AM New York. “I’m out here in the city every day and stuff falling from the sky is scary.”
New York Fire Department Deputy Assistant Chief Michael Gala Jr. said a building inspector was standing on the fire escape when it came loose and fell seven stories into Marchart, CBS New York reported.
“She actually fell partially through the fire escape,” Gala said. “Thankfully she was able to pull herself up.”
A prior inspection of the building in 2013 found no safety violation. Friday’s inspection was part of a routine evaluation New York City apartment buildings are required to have every five years.
Marchart left behind a wife and three children.
Bill Farrington; Joe Diorio
Falling debris from Soho fire escape causes injuries
By Stephanie Pagones, Joe Marino and Ruth Weissmann
February 16, 2018 | 2:36pm | Updated
Two pedestrians strolling on a Soho street suffered “life-threatening injuries’’ Friday when they were struck by a metal fire-escape step that fell seven stories, authorities said. The victims — a 27-year-old woman and 56-year-old man — were on the sidewalk in front of 38 Howard St. near Broadway when they were suddenly hit in the head by the plummeting piece of metal around 1:35 p.m., according to officials. “I was about 10 feet away, sitting in my van, and I just saw a guy hit the ground. Blood starting pouring from his head,” said witness Matthew Kohere, 21. “At first I didn’t know what it was. Honestly, I thought someone had shot him in the head, that’s how bad it was. I mean, there’s a lot of blood. He was out.” Emergency responders rushed the pair to Bellevue Hospital with “serious, life-threatening injuries,” said FDNY Deputy Manhattan Borough Commander Michael Gala Jr. An engineer hired by the building’s owner had been conducting a routine inspection of the fire escape when the step gave way, officials said. “It was a normal inspection,” Gala said. “We had a woman up on the fire escape looking at the façade, and it appears that under her weight that step became dislodged.” Gala said the inspector “actually fell partially through the fire escape, [and] thankfully she was able to pull herself up.” The engineer refused medical aid at the scene. Sakinah Bashir, 23, who works nearby at the Opening Ceremony clothing store, said he was startled by people “yelling and screaming. “When I looked outside, there were [two people] on the ground — one was face up,” Bashir said. “One guy was clearly not moving. … We were all just trying to figure out what was going on.” Passers-by on the street were stunned, too. “I can’t believe it — that you could be just walking down the street and something falls from the sky,’’ said Hilary Stahlecker, 53. “It just goes to show you, it could happen to any of us.’’ The city issued a violation to the property owner after the incident for “failure to safeguard the building,” according to a Buildings Department rep. The city last conducted a facade inspection report in 2013 and found no violations, said officials. Additional reporting by Natalie MusumeciFire Escape Step Plunges 7 Stories in Lower Manhattan, Hits 2 People on Street: Officials
Published at 2:57 PM EST on Feb 16, 2018 | Updated at 1:04 AM EST on Feb 17, 2018
WHAT TO KNOW
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Two people were injured after a step from a fire escape fell seven stories in lower Manhattan Friday afternoon
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An inspector checking the fire escape somehow dislodged the step that plunged to the street below
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There are varying reports regarding the extent of the victims’ injuries
An inspector visiting a lower Manhattan fire escape as part of a regular check somehow dislodged one large white metallic-looking step, sending it plunging seven stories to the ground below, where it injured two people, authorities say.
The inspector, who does not work for the Department of Buildings, slipped a bit but was able to pull herself up. Two people on the ground — a 25-year-old woman and a man of unknown age — were hit by the step, which was later seen cordoned off by officers responding to the Howard Street scene.
The step hit the man and woman in the head. Both were taken to Bellevue and are in critical condition.
According to Michael Gala, deputy assistant chief for the FDNY, the step dislodged under the weight of the inspector.
“She actually fell through the fire escape. Thankfully she was able to pull herself up,” he said, adding that she was evaluated at the scene, but refused medical aid.
According to the New York City Department of Buildings, the inspector was a private engineer contracted by the building owner for a routine inspection of the façade of the 9-story commercial building.
Law mandatess that a building greater than six stories must submit façade inspection reports to the Department of Buildings every five years.
According to the Department of Buildings, the Façade Inspection Report for that building was last submitted in 2013 and the building’s exterior was deemed safe as long as periodic maintenance is performed.
The 2013 report found that the fire escape had no unsafe conditions, according to the Department of Buildings.
The building’s owners were issued permits to repair the exterior in 2014. Along with maintenance work on the building façade itself, the permits indicated that the fire escape had to be repainted and minor spot repairs were to be made if any defects were found underneath the paint. But, according to the Department of Building, these repairs are common for older buildings with fire escapes. This repair project was completed in December 2015.
The incident is under investigation.
Falling step from SoHo fire escape critically injures two people
A pair of unsuspecting SoHo pedestrians were critically injured Friday when a 150-pound metal fire escape step plunged seven stories onto their heads, officials said. “The girl wasn’t moving,” eyewitness Imola Kobar, 41, told the Daily News. “It was just horrible. Their heads were just smashed on the ground.” The two unlucky victims, both bleeding from horrific gashes to their heads, were rushed to Bellevue Hospital with life-threatening injuries. A 58-year-old male man suffered a possible fracture and a head laceration in the gruesome accident, while a 24-year-old woman was hospitalized with a gash to her head. Falling glass from luxury Midtown hotel hits woman, injures her
Several pieces fell to the sidewalk, hitting three people below, sources said.
(JEFFERSON SIEGEL/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)
A pool of blood on the street after a piece of fire escape fell seven stories down and struck two pedestrians.
(JEFFERSON SIEGEL/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)
The fire escape collapsed on the seventh floor of the building on Howard St.
(JEFFERSON SIEGEL/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)Man seriously burned, 7 others hurt in Long Island City apartment fire
LONG ISLAND CITY, Queens (WABC) — Eight people were injured, one seriously, during an apartment fire in Queens late Tuesday. The fire started in a first-floor apartment in the building on 46th Avenue in Long Island City around 10:40 p.m. Several people inside said they heard what sounded like an explosion and quickly realized something was seriously wrong. “It was like a wall of smoke right outside of our door,” resident Gina Baldwin said. “It’s a terrifying experience.” Anne Greb lives on the third floor and said the smoke was too much for her to get out of her front door. “At first, just went to open my door, and there was a lot of smoke in the hallway,” she said. “So I shut the door and then came down with my dog, came down the fire escape.” Fire crews said they immediately ran to a first-floor apartment after reports of a man trapped inside. “He was conscious, but he was severely burned, unable to move,” FDNY Deputy Chief Mark Ferran said. “And our members dragged him out of the apartment while simultaneously extinguishing the fire.” Ferran said his crews had to fight through clutter to get to the man, who was rushed to the hospital with severe burns. Seven other people suffered minor injuries, but many are saying they are thankful they got out alive. “When I got on the fire escape, you could see flames were just billowing up the side of the building,” Greb said. “So it was pretty scary.” Fire crews said they also encountered a dry fire hydrant when they first arrived. The cause of the fire is under investigation. Source: New York, NY ABC7 “Man seriously burned, 7 others hurt in Long Island City apartment fire” By Candace McCowan, ABC7 Eyewitness News Wednesday, April 25, 2018 01:09PM
Two killed in early-morning Bronx fire, officials say
Raging Brooklyn fire kills mom and disabled daughter, as 70 other residents escape
The blaze, sparked by an electrical heater, raced quickly through the four-story Belmont Ave. building around 1:30 a.m., with both victims pronounced dead at Brookdale University Hospital.
(Danny Iudici/for New York Daily News)
More than 70 other residents survived, many in dramatic fashion, as they shimmied down a crowded fire escape in the darkness or fought blindly through a smoke-choked staircase.
(Danny Iudici/for New York Daily News)
FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro noted the fire began in an unattended heater, with the situation complicated by the non-functioning alarms.
(Danny Iudici/for New York Daily News)Thousands of NYC fire escapes rust away without inspection
By Jim Hoffer NEW YORK CITY (WABC) — When a step fell seven stories from a SoHo building’s fire escape two weeks ago, it struck a man walking below in the head, killing him. The incident also exposed the city’s weak oversight of these aging steel structures. Cisco Meneses, inspector and founder of the National Fire Escape Association, told 7 On Your Side Investigates that the corroded step on the fire escape should have been flagged in its last inspection in 2013. Instead, the inspection found the fire escape was safe. “It wasn’t a proper inspection,” Meneses said. Our investigation revealed that in the days after the fatal accident, inspectors found three additional loose steps on the fire escape. We’ve also learned that fire escape self-inspections are only required of building owners every five years as part of the city’s mandatory facade inspection law, which applies to buildings six stories or higher. More surprising, perhaps, is that fire escapes below six stories — for which there are tens of thousands across the city — require no inspection. We went to take a look at these types of fire escapes with Meneses to see what kind of conditions we’d find. “Four of these steps are ready to drop right here,” said Meneses, who found safety problems with nearly every fire escape we looked at. “This bracket is supposed to be connected to that bolt,” he said. “It broke off. It’s supposed to be holding an entire staircase, so if overloaded, it’s going to collapse.” Out of five fire escapes randomly picked in Hell’s Kitchen, Meneses said all five would not pass due to lack of paint and excessive corrosion. We wanted to see if the city had any clue how widespread the problem is, so we checked the 311 database and found in just the last 12 months, New Yorkers called to complain about fire escape problems nearly 1,700 times. Former Department of Buildings Inspector and Supervisor Michelle DePew called that a big red flag. “That’s a lot,” DePew said. “The buildings department will hopefully get out and do some inspections. They need to send out a task force to look at these fire escapes.” ———- DO YOU NEED A STORY INVESTIGATED? Jim Hoffer, Danielle Leigh and the 7 On Your Side Investigates team at Eyewitness News want to hear from you! Call our confidential tip line 1-877-TIP-NEWS (847-6397) or fill out the form BELOW. You can also contact Jim and Danielle directly: Jim Hoffer: Email your questions, issues, or story ideas to 7OnYourSideJim@abc.com Facebook: facebook.com/jimhoffer.wabc Twitter: @NYCinvestigatesWood Plunges From NYC Construction Site, Hits Girl in Head
The 8-year-old girl, named Tatiana, needed staples to her head but is expected to be OK, according to her family
By Adam Kuperstein
Published at 2:44 PM EST on Feb 23, 2018 | Updated at 6:50 PM EST on Feb 23, 2018
What to Know
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A girl was leaving an apartment building with her family in Jackson Heights when a giant piece of wood fell from above
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The plywood hit the girl in the head, leaving her with a concussion and a large gash
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The girl’s father says he warned a construction worker to stop moments before the wood came crashing down
A falling piece of wood plummeted onto a young girl in Queens on Friday morning, leaving her with a large gash on her head and a concussion, authorities and witnesses said.
The 8-year-old girl, named Tatiana, needed three staples to her head but is expected to be OK, according to her family.
NY Times: What Happened at the Bronx Fire
At least 12 people were killed when a fire rushed through a five-story apartment building in the Bronx on Thursday night, New York City officials said. Four of the dead were children. 
The fire was caused by a 3-year-old boy playing with the knobs on a stove, city officials said. His mother ran out of the first-floor apartment with her two children, leaving the door open. The fire shot out of the kitchen and up the stairs, killing people on multiple floors. 
The building had six open violations, including one for a broken smoke detector in a first-floor apartment, according to city records. But officials said those issues did not seem to be related to the fire. It was the deadliest fire in the city since an inferno at the Happy Land social club — less than a mile from Thursday’s blaze — killed 87 people in 1990. 
Additional imagery for viewing: 
Source: Google Imagery & New York Times, “What Happened at the Bronx Fire” By Sarah Almukhtar, Kenan Davis, and DEREK WATKINS Dec. 29, 2017
Chinatown Tenants Forced Into Shelter Fear Landlord Won’t Let Them Return
Residents of 85 Bowery worry a broken staircase could be used as a pretext to evict them
85 Bowery
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY THE VILLAGE VOICE[/caption]
More than 85 people were forced out of their embattled Chinatown building last Thursday when the city declared the building unsafe — and they fear the landlord, who has been trying to evict them for years, will now refuse to do the repairs and use it as a pretext to kick tenants out. The New York City Department of Buildings issued a full vacate order at 85 Bowery on January 18 after an inspector ruled that the building’s main staircase was structurally unstable and therefore a “significant life-safety hazard.” The city gave the landlord, Joseph Betesh, two weeks to replace the stairway. The Red Cross says it registered 29 households, including 71 adults and 15 children, after the eviction, and reports that as of yesterday it is providing emergency shelter for 27 of those families. The displaced families, including newborns and people up to 90 years old, were sent to a hotel in Brownsville that the city uses to house homeless people. Tenant association representative Jinming Cao says they were initially sleeping in one large room on mattresses with no blankets. Blankets were provided after a TV news crew showed up Sunday night, says Sarah Ahn of the Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association, a neighborhood activist organization working with the tenants. The displaced families were moved into separate rooms as of yesterday, Cao tells the Voice. While the Red Cross normally only provides emergency shelter for 24 to 48 hours, a spokesperson for the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development says it “will continue to extend their stay at their current hotel until space becomes available at one of our family centers.” Betesh has been trying to evict all the tenants of 85 Bowery and the building next door, 83 Bowery, for more than two years, claiming in court that the buildings were not rent-stabilized and that necessary repairs can’t be done while people are still living there. Last month, the Division of Housing and Community Renewal recommended that the State Supreme Court judge handling the case declare that the buildings are rent-stabilized. “The main thing is the landlord wants all the tenants out,” says Cao, whose cousin lives in one of the buildings and who has become a spokesperson for the tenant association because, unlike the Chinese-immigrant tenants, he speaks English. City emergency workers, he says, told the evicted tenants that if the landlord doesn’t cooperate, it would be a long time before they could come back. “We’re determined to make the owner fix these stairs quickly, get residents back in their homes, and meet his legal and moral responsibility to have a safe building for residents,” the Department of Buildings said in a statement. Tenants have been demanding repairs for more than two years. In February 2016, a Housing Court judge ordered Betesh to fix the staircase at 85 Bowery by the end of that April, in response to “HP actions,” lawsuits demanding repairs filed by both the tenants and HPD. Betesh never made the repairs. The engineer the building owners hired argued that the staircase could not be replaced while the tenants were there because of “badly cracked joists.” An engineer the tenants hired responded that the tenants could stay while the joists were being replaced if protective barriers were installed in the hallways. In September 2016, Betesh agreed to hold off temporarily on his eviction attempts in exchange for tenants agreeing to stay the HP action and extend the deadline for repairs. Later that month, however, he filed another motion demanding their immediate eviction. In a statement given to NY1 after it broadcast a story on Thursday’s eviction, a spokesperson for Betesh’s Bowery 8385 LLC said the owners were “taking immediate steps to repair building infrastructure and make the property safe for habitation.” The woman who answered the phone at Betesh’s Milestone Equities Monday told the Voice that “no one is in the office. Everyone is on vacation.”* *** While tenants have a guaranteed right to return to apartments after they’ve been repaired, says Adam Meyers, a staff attorney at Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A, “this right is somewhat empty when it can take years for the landlord to restore a building to habitable condition.” Meyers represents tenants at 94 Franklin Avenue, a seven-apartment rent-stabilized building in Bedford-Stuyvesant that the Department of Buildings ordered vacated in July 2015, he says, after its Hasidic landlords built a synagogue in the backyard without a permit, blocking the fire escape. Two and a half years later, some of the tenants are renting apartments for “significantly more” than they had been paying, according to Meyers, while others are still in a city shelter in East New York. The Department of Buildings and HPD “have done little to address the issue,” Meyers says. The buildings department “has not required the landlords to remove the illegal structure from the backyard,” he says, while HPD has refused to back tenant demands that the building be turned over to a court-appointed 7A administrator who could get repairs done more quickly.
COURTESY OF 83-85 BOWERY TENANTS ASSOCIATION
The city itself used unsafe building conditions as a pretext for a mass eviction in 1995, when the Giuliani administration ousted squatters from three abandoned buildings on East 13th Street on the Lower East Side that the city had seized from tax-delinquent landlords in the 1970s. The squatters had won a temporary restraining order in the fall of 1994 protecting them from eviction until a court ruled on their claim that they were entitled to keep the buildings under an obscure legal principle called “adverse possession” — that because they’d lived there for ten years and the city hadn’t previously tried to kick them out, the property was legally abandoned. The three buildings passed a safety inspection, but after heavy rains in April 1995, the Giuliani administration declared them “in imminent danger of collapse.” After a bit of litigation, it sent in a massive paramilitary force to kick the squatters out. *** In his statement to NY1, Betesh blamed the tenants for the delay. “Over the past two years, we repeatedly told city officials that it was necessary to vacate this property in order to safely perform much-needed repairs and ensure structural stability,” the statement said. “We repeatedly communicated all of this information to the building’s occupants and have spent the past two years working to find a positive resolution, but our proposals were rejected at every turn by their lawyers and other representatives.” The statement also accused the tenants of doing “illegal renovation work that further contributed to the building’s structural instability,” saying it had discovered that “11 of the building’s 16 apartments were illegally converted into nearly 40 single-room-occupancy (SRO) units,” and that those rooms were a fire hazard. “That’s a lie,” says Cao. “Those rooms have already been like that for 20 to 30 years.” He says tenants told him those rooms were constructed by the building’s previous landlord, who also installed fire-safety equipment. A buildings department spokesperson tells the Voice that if the landlord doesn’t get the repairs done on time, it could issue a violation, the State Supreme Court judge could step in, or HPD’s Emergency Repair Program could do the work. “We don’t see any indication as of now that any of that will be necessary,” the spokesperson says. HPD referred questions about what happens if the owner doesn’t comply to the buildings department. “The tenants have no trust in the landlord that he will adhere to the court’s timeline of two weeks, nor that he will not purposely do a shoddy job,” Sarah Ahn tells the Voice. She said the group would “continue to fight for a guarantee” that the tenants would get back to their homes. “I don’t know what is in the landlord’s head,” says Seth Miller, the lawyer representing the tenants. “We are afraid it will be used as a pretext” for permanent evictions. As of Monday, says Cao, 85 Bowery’s tenants were being allowed to return to their apartments for 15 minutes at a time, to retrieve medications and anything else they urgently needed. The Betesh statement said the owner is “already taking steps to clear out debris.” On Monday night, two dumpsters in front of the building were filled with garbage bags and thin sheets of wood with nails sticking out of their edges. The building’s first-floor commercial space had been stripped down to timbers. The staircase was still there, listing to the right. The 83-85 Bowery Tenants Association and the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side are planning a protest outside HPD’s Gold Street offices at 3:30 p.m. today, to demand that the agency do the repairs itself, before the two-week deadline. “If the city can force tenants out, why can’t it force landlords to make repairs?” Cao asks. “If he doesn’t repair, why not put him in jail?” *UPDATE: After publication of this piece, a spokesperson for Bowery 8385 LLC emailed the Voice to say that the landlord is working with the Department of Buildings and the Mayor’s Office on repairs. “Any reports claiming that we seek to demolish 83-85 Bowery or replace it with a hotel or condominiums are false,” said the spokesperson. “We all share the same goal — moving families back into their homes as quickly as possible. As we have been saying for years, and as we believe all parties would agree, those homes must be safe.” Source: Village Voice: “Chinatown Tenants Forced Into Shelter Fear Landlord Won’t Let Them Return” by STEVEN WISHNIA JANUARY 24, 2018
RED CROSS PROVIDES FIRE SAFETY TIPS AFTER DEADLY LOVEJOY BLAZE
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Anthony Conti, 7, died after a fire engulfed his Lovejoy home Monday. His death is raising awareness about emergency preparedness, fire safety and programs in the area. “We will come into your home if you need them. We will check any smoke alarms that you have, replace batteries, install up to three free smoke alarms,” said Jay Bonafede, American Red Cross of WNY. Smoke alarms should be at least on every floor of the home, if not in every room. “Having working smoke alarms in a home does cut the risk of dying in a house fire in half, so they’re a really important and really simple thing you can do,” said Bonafede. The Red Cross not only does free installations, but they will help families develop an emergency action plan. “We give them a little white board that actually has their home on it, so they can put it on their fridge, so that the kids know that the important thing is to escape,” said Alexis Willard, Red Cross disaster program specialist. Every room should have two escape routes. Fire escape ladders can help with windows on higher floors. “You want them for every window that you don’t really have an access to get out safely so you’re not breaking your legs,” said Willard. And developing the plan is just the first step. Experts say it is equally important to practice that plan, so you know how to put it into action. “And then you can actually practice this by actually going out of your fire escape ladder and seeing how long it actually takes you to get out of the building,” said Willard. Some general fire safety tips include keeping space heaters and candles three feet away from anything flammable, plug small appliances directly into the wall without using extension cords, and never smoke in bed. Source: Buffalo, NY Spectrum News: “Red Cross provides fire safety tips after deadly Lovejoy blaze” by Katie Gibas | January 31, 2018 @9:01 PM
At Least 32 People, Including Firefighters, Hurt in Roaring Brooklyn Fire: FDNY
Published at 5:35 AM EST on Jan 22, 2018 | Updated at 2:07 PM EST on Jan 22, 2018
Almost three dozen people were injured after a roaring fire that sent residents out their windows to escape broke out inside an apartment building in Brooklyn, firefighters say.
Thirty-two people were hurt after the fire broke out just before midnight Sunday night on Euclid Avenue in Cypress Hills. Twenty-seven civilians and two firefighters, suffered minor injuries, according to officials. The other three injured suffered serious injuries that are not considered life-threatening.
One woman said she had to go down the fire escape to get to safety.
“Someone said ‘there’s a fire,’ so I looked outside and opened my door and I saw smoke in the hallway,” the witness said at the scene.
The blaze started on the first floor of the four-story building. The fire was under control around 12:30 Monday morning. Sixty firefighters battled the flames.
It wasn’t clear what sparked the blaze.
Dozens injured as fire rips through Brooklyn apartment
By Joe Marino
January 22, 2018 | 2:45am | Updated
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At Least 23 Hurt In 7-Alarm Fire In The Bronx
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Nearly two dozen residents and one firefighter were hurt in an early morning seven-alarm fire in the Bronx. The fire is believed to have started around 5:30 a.m. Tuesday in a furniture store inside a four-story building on the corner of East Tremont Avenue and Commonwealth Avenue. It was brought under control just before 2 p.m. “They were immediately faced with heavy fire on the first floor,” FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said. “That fire was traveling upwards throughout the building.” The store is on the ground floor with apartments above.
Residents woke up to thick smoke and flames filling the building.“I literally slid down the fire escape with my baby,” resident Erica Ortiz told CBS2’s Reena Roy. “I just felt very scared, very scared. I didn’t know whether we was gonna slip when we came out the apartment. The fire department throwing water at the same time as we’re coming down.” “I opened the door and nothing but black smoke,” resident Allison Douglas said. “I told everybody in the building, ‘Run, run, run. Get out! It’s a fire.’” Douglas said she awoke to the smoke alarms going off. “I didn’t wanna die” she said. “I have a lot to live for.” Another resident escaped the burning building with his three young children. “The smoke was so heavy. Luckily we reached all the way to the bottom. We couldn’t see anything on the stairs,” the man told 1010 WINS Glenn Schuck. “I came downstairs barefoot, no shirt, nothing. Not even shoes, just my babies. Somebody just lent me his shoes and a sweatshirt.” Ortiz said a window guard blocked her from using the fire escape. “Couldn’t kick it off, anything. It was bolted in,” she said. More than 200 firefighters responders to the scene and first responders had to rescue several trapped residents. “After I got my mom out and most of the people out, I got trapped so they had to put me up on the roof and get a cherry picker to bring me out,” said resident Johnny Cabrera. The bitter cold also made fighting the fire difficult. Icicles could be seen forming on the power lines and fire escapes. The FDNY said 22 residents suffered non-life threatening injuries. One firefighter was also hurt. Meanwhile, residents who were forced out in the cold were staying warm on a city bus, WCBS 880’s Marla Diamond reported. Fire officials said the building sustained significant damage. “There’s a lot of water damage because we’ve been pumping a lot of water into this building for several hours,” said FDNY Assistant Chief Roger Sakowich. “We were a little concerned about possible collapse. We do see that some of the second floor did collapse down onto the first floor, so there’s quite a bit of damage.” The Red Cross said it is helping a dozen families that were displaced. “It’s horrible. It’s not a good way to start the year,” Ortiz said. “I have a 5-year-old asking me right now are we homeless.”
The fire broke out just days after a deadly blaze killed 12 people in the Bronx. Officials say it was sparked by a 3-year-old boy playing with a stove. His mother then ran out, leaving the apartment door open, which caused the flames to spread quickly. Tenants told Roy they used that as a learning lesson, making sure to shut their doors. “With all the fires going on in the Bronx later, we were all alert to it,” said Cabrera. The cause of Tuesday’s fire is under investigation.AT LEAST 22 CIVILIANS, FIREFIGHER HURT IN LARGE SCALE FIRE
WTVA, NY: A fire that ripped through a four-story mix-use building in the Bronx Tuesday morning has injured at least 22 people … A fire that ripped through a four-story mix-use building in the Bronx Tuesday morning has injured at least 22 people and a firefighter, as crews battled freezing temperatures in their fight against the flames, according to the FDNY. About 200 firefighters responded to the fire, which began about 5:30 a.m. on the first floor of 1547 Commonwealth Ave., near East Tremont Avenue, officials said. As of 11:30 a.m., firefighters continued to battle the blaze. The fire is believed to have started on the building’s first floor, which houses a furniture store. There are apartments located on the floors above.
At least 22 civilians and a firefighter were hurt. All of their injuries are non-life threatening, FDNY said. Fire officials advised residents near the fire to close their windows because of smoke and warned drivers to expect traffic delays in the area. Firefighters have been pulled from the building and are fighting the blaze from outside, FDNY said. Large icicles could be seen forming on the building’s fire escapes, as water used by the firefighters began to freeze amid a snap of brutally cold temperatures. A resident said she tried to flee via the fire escape, but a gate was blocking the window. Her son and daughter were able to get through, but it was not until firefighters broke the gate that she and her husband could escape. The cause of the fire is under investigation. This blaze comes days another Bronx fire killed 12 people in the one of the deadliest fires in the city in more than a quarter century. The Dec. 28 fire was started by a small child playing with a stove on the first floor, according to Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro. The child’s mother heard him screaming and escaped the unit, but, according to Nigro, she left the apartment door open. Source: ABC WTVA & FOX WLOV, New York. Posted: Jan. 3, 2018 1:42 PM Updated: Jan. 3, 2018 8:33 PM
Bronx fire escape was choked with people: ‘There was no room,’ says survivor
12 dead, 4 injured in fast-moving New York City apartment building fire
At least 12 people were killed and more were seriously injured on Dec. 28, 2017, in a fire at an apartment building on a frigid night in the Bronx in New York.Man fatally falls from fire escape after fight with girlfriend
A man who threatened his girlfriend with a knife early Sunday fell to his death after losing his footing on the fire escape as he tried to climb back into their Bronx apartment, police said. Pedro Polanco, 27, and his 36-year-old girlfriend had friends at their flat on 182nd St. near Mapes Ave. in Belmont when they began fighting around 3:30 a.m. He repeatedly pushed her and flashed an intimidating blade, according to cops. After she demanded he leave the fifth-floor apartment, where they live with their two young children, he climbed from the roof onto the fire escape — a familiar re-entry route he’d traveled before, according to officials. But this time he lost his footing and accidentally fell, police said. Medics discovered Polanco conscious and alert, but with severe trauma to his lower body, police said. They rushed him to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he died an hour later. Polanco’s girlfriend was not seriously hurt. Cops continued to investigate the incident on Sunday, but said they do not suspect foul play. Polanco’s mom, Francisca Garcia, said his girlfriend called her after an ambulance took him away. “She said, ‘Please forgive me,’ ” Garcia said as she sobbed and dried her eyes with a wash cloth. The dead man’s father, Pedro Polanco Jesus, said he’s still not sure if his son jumped or fell. “We don’t know,” he said. “The police are still investigating.” In addition to his kids in the Bronx, a boy, 4, and a girl, 2, Polanco has two children in his native Dominican Republic, neighbors said. Polanco’s parents live in a basement apartment in the same building. Neighbors described Polanco as quiet and friendly. “I saw him yesterday around 4 or 5 o’clock. He was standing right here,” said neighbor Jose Fernandez, 57. “He didn’t talk much, he was quiet. I said ‘What’s wrong with you, you don’t talk? Christmas is coming, you better be happy”. Source: NY Daily News – Man fatally falls from fire escape after fight with girlfriend
Blaze engulfs Bronx building, leaves nine injured
Nine people were injured when a fire erupted inside an apartment on University Ave. at Eames Place in Fordham Manor.
(JANIFEST/GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO) BY ROSS KEITHESHA RAY NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Saturday, December 9, 2017, 11:21 PM Nine people were injured Saturday when a fire ripped through a Bronx building, authorities said. The blaze sparked inside a second-floor apartment on University Ave. at Eames Place in Fordham Manor at 5:07 p.m., the FDNY said. Flames raged out of the flat’s windows as neighbors scrambled down the fire escape to safety. Tyrone Lee, 32, said he saw a pregnant woman with a child running out of the apartment where the fire started. “She was hysterical. They were in the lobby crying and screaming,” he said, adding that they didn’t appear to be hurt. Lee and several other neighbors tried to douse the flames but the smoke was too heavy. “We kicked the door open. We had a fire extinguisher. But black smoke poured out.” Firefighters extinguished the blaze by 5:50 p.m., authorities said. Neighbors told the Daily News that an infant boy turned blue from smoke inhalation was rushed to the hospital. Another person was also taken to the hospital for further treatment, authorities said. Five other people and two firefighters were treated at the scene for non-life threatening injuries, the FDNY said. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
‘Worst landlord’ admits demolishing building with family inside
A Harlem landlord has admitted putting a family’s life in danger when he started ripping out walls and fire escapes in an effort to get them to leave their rent stabilized apartment. Ephraim Vashovsky pleaded guilty in New York State Supreme Court today to Reckless Endangerment in the First Degree and Endangering the Welfare of a Child. Vashovsky forced a couple and their five children, aged from one-to-12 years, to leave their fifth floor apartment at 21 East 115th Street after he purposefully made conditions there hazardous.
According to court documents, shortly after he bought the building for $3 million in May 2014, Vashovsky and his associates began a campaign to drive the family out in order to convert the building to luxury apartments. The landlord shut off electricity, heat, hot water and running water in the building and had workers perform major demolitions in violation of DOB and HPD regulations. “Vashovsky knowingly created gravely dangerous living conditions, including the risk of an entire building collapse, by removing structural and load-bearing elements,” said court documents, which noted that workers removed critical fire retardant materials, fire escapes, and internal walls and floors – creating the risk of a fire ripping through the building or an inhabitant falling multiple stories. “This landmark conviction establishes for the first time that New York landlords can and will be held criminally responsible for forcing tenants to live in life-threatening conditions,” said District Attorney Cyrus Vance. “I hope today’s guilty plea puts landlords on notice: we will not tolerate intimidation and corner-cutting measures that endanger New Yorkers, and we will not hesitate to bring criminal charges when necessary” Public Advocate Letitia James called Vashovsky “a repeat offender on my Worst Landlords List. I want to thank District Attorney Vance for ensuring this landlord was brought to justice and for protecting New Yorker’s right to a safe and decent home,” said James. The case comes days after the City Council passed new legislation aimed at protecting tenants from harassment. The Certification of No Harassment (CONH) legislation will require covered building owners seeking to demolish or make significant alterations to their building to prove they have not engaged in harassment before they can get the permits they need from the NYC Department of Buildings (DOB). If a landlord is found to have harassed tenants, they would not be able to pull those permits for five years – unless they make a substantial portion of their building affordable to low-income families, with no public subsidy. Housing attorney Kara Rakowski, a partner at Belkin Burden Wenig & Goldman called the bill a “clear overreach by the City.” “Although this is a limited duration pilot program, and while we still have to wait for HPD to issue its Rule, this Bill is extremely disturbing,’ said Rakowski. “This legislation is a clear overreach by the City which could deprive owners of their property rights and due process. “There is no evidence that this type of legislation will either prevent or deter harassment. In fact, subsequent owners who wish to clean up and renovate or develop covered properties would be forced to designate 20-25 percent of their building to affordable housing in perpetuity or be prevented from doing the work. Moreover, the issue of harassment will be investigated in part by community groups designated by HPD.” The CONH program has been in place in Hell’s Kitchen since 1974, and a similar requirement applies to all Single-Room Occupancy buildings (SROs) citywide. Tenant advocates have been working to expand the program to neighborhoods with rising rents, where tenants are at particular risk of displacement. The new policy is the latest in a series of efforts under Mayor Bill de Blasio to protect tenants and increase affordable housing options. In October, landlord Steve Croman was jailed for tax evasion for refinancing loans by submitting applications with phony rent rolls that showed market rate rents for units held by rent-stabilized tenants. State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is also pursing a civil case against the man dubbed “The Bernie Madoff of Landlords,” for harassing tenants of his 140 buildings, trying to get rid of rent-regulated residents to replace them with higher paying market rate tenants. BY LINDA BARR O’FLANAGAN • REW-ONLINE DECEMBER 6, 2017
Hamilton Heights fire engulfs roof of apartment building, injures nine, officials say
A fire in Hamilton Heights reached at least five alarms on Friday, Nov. 17, 2017, the FDNY said. (Credit: @KevinClamato via Twitter)[/caption] A fire that heavily damaged a Hamilton Heights apartment building Friday, displacing residents and sending a massive plume of smoke into the sky, is finally under control Saturday morning. The six-alarm fire broke out at 565 W. 144th St., near Broadway, just before 3:15 p.m., according to fire officials. High winds caused the rapid spread of the flames through the top floor of the building. It was brought under control as of 9 a.m. Saturday, an FDNY spokeswoman said. Roughly 255 firefighters and paramedics responded to the scene, according to the FDNY. Seven firefighters suffered minor injuries, according to the agency. One civilian and one police officer also suffered from smoke inhalation. At least four people were taken to area hospitals. 
The American Red Cross of Greater New York is helping 20 families, including 44 adults and nine children, who were displaced by the fire. The organization set up a reception center Friday night at PS 153, located at 1750 Amsterdam Ave., where more than 40 people had access to hot meals, a spokesman said in an emailed statement. “Throughout the night Red Cross workers provided housing and support for essentials (food, clothing, personal care needs, medication, etc.),” the spokesman added. “We will continue to provide long term support as the families begin the recovery process.” One tenant remains unaccounted for and may have been inside the building when the fire broke out, FDNY Chief James Leonard said at a press conference held Saturday morning. “At this point, we are going to reenter the building under safe conditions … to search and see if that person is up in the building,” Leonard said. At the height of the fire, its billowing smoke plume could be seen from across the Hudson River, social media posts show. One woman tweeted a video showing the smoke rising into the sky from her office window on 137th Street. Syndee Winters, an actress who lists “Hamilton: The Musical” under her credits, tweeted a Periscope video from across the street that shows pieces of flaming debris falling to the ground as firefighters doused the building with water from the buckets of ladder trucks. The six-story building has 50 units and was built in 1920, according to the real estate listing firm StreetEasy. Official from the city’s Department of Buildings will visit the scene Saturday to determine whether the entire structure should come down, Leonard said at the press conference. The cause of the fire is still under investigation. By AM NEW YORK. Lauren Cook and Nicole Levy lauren.cook@amny.com, nicole.levy@amny.com November 18, 2017
Fire kills 2 in Dyker Heights, arson suspected
POSTED 9:04 PM, NOVEMBER 9, 2017, BY MYLES MILLER DYKER HEIGHTS, Brooklyn — Roaring flames burst from the windows of an apartment building in Dyker Heights where two people died in a fire that’s being investigated as arson, sources said. The fast moving fire was deliberately set by someone who dumped an accelerant in the lobby of the building around 7:30 a.m. Thursday, law enforcement sources said. “I heard the sirens, when I came out I realized that flames were shooting out of the back apartment alongside where we live,” said witness Heidi Pugni. More than 100 firefighters and paramedics responded to the fire. “It spread rapidly from the first floor up throughout the building. [There were] very heavy fire conditions in the hallway. Going through and to the top floor fire out the top floor window,” said James Leonard, chief of department for the Fire Department. When the smoke cleared, firefighters found the lifeless bodies of a 58-year-old man and 56-year-old woman. Their bodies were burned beyond recognition, sources said. Seven people were rushed to area hospitals including firefighters, Leonard said. “My sister heard fighting and yelling coming from the back of the building. Then she noticed that the door handle was hot,” said Karen Hernandez, who escaped the building clutching her cat. “My mother checked and told us there was smoke coming from the back of the building. We went down the fire escape.” Investigators from the city Fire Marshals, NYPD Arson and Explosives Squad and federal bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms inspected the rear of the building, where a fire escape was draped with charred clothing.FDNY EVACUATES MOM AND BABY FROM BROOKLYN FIRE ESCAPE
By NY1 News | November 7, 2017 @9:08 AM City fire crews on Monday worked to quickly evacuate a mom and her infant after a fire engulfed a building in Brooklyn. Flames broke out around 3 p.m. on the second floor of a four-story apartment building located at 519 Myrtle Avenue in Clinton Hill. Firefighters took a little less than a hour to get the blaze under control. Officials say crews were able to evacuate people who lived in the building where the fire started. In a building next door, firefighters helped a mother and her baby to safety. Their apartment was not affected by the flames, and they were evacuated by their fire escape. Officials say three people were hurt in the incident.
Quick work by Olean police, firefighters prevents tragedy at apartment fire
Tenants helped down ladders, awoken from bed by first responders
- By TOM DINKI, Olean Times Herald
OLEAN — Olean police officers and firefighters responded to 114 E. Oak St. during the early morning hours of Oct. 30 to find a scene that some of them called their worst-case scenario: a structure fire with people, including children, trapped inside.
But through some quick thinking and quick action by members of the Olean Police Department and Olean Fire Department, all occupants were safe and accounted for by the time the flames died out a few hours later.
First responders helped a total of five people, including two children, escape the apartment building via ladders, as flames blocked off a stairwell where the fire began; police found fire-starting materials in the stairwell and have ruled the blaze an arson, but have yet to announce an arrest. Another tenant was rescued after an officer made a forcible entry into a first-floor apartment and alerted him of the fire.
While the officers and firefighters involved in the rescues were willing to share their experiences, they all maintained their actions weren’t anything beyond what’s in their job descriptions.
“If you pick this profession and don’t put other people first, you’re in the wrong job,” said Olean patrolman Matt Schnell.
Schnell and fellow patrolmen William Beggs and Kyle Baldwin, as well as Olean Police Capt. Andrew Langdon, were already out on patrol throughout the city when the fire was called in at approximately 1:19 a.m. They were the first to arrive at the burning East Oak Street home, something that’s not unusual when it comes to fires.
“Firefighters do a great job, but you got to keep in mind they have to get gear on, they have to get the trucks running,” Beggs said. “You kind of have to be able to adapt to different scenarios when you’re a cop just because most of the time you’re going to be the first one out there.”
The officers were forced to adapt, as they arrived on scene to find a woman hanging half her body out of a second-floor window and calling for help, as well as two adults and two children having difficulty making their way down a wooden fire escape from a third-floor apartment.
Langdon credited Schnell for using “quick wits” to find about a half-dozen extension ladders lying around that a contractor believed to be doing work on the building had left outside.
A fire escape allowed Stephanie Searles and her two young children, as well as an adult male, to get down from a third-floor apartment to a second-story deck, but there were no steps to get down from the deck. Schnell and Beggs used the ladders to bring the four of them safely to the ground from there.
Schnell said Searles’ young son was frightened and initially didn’t want to come down from the third-floor apartment.
“The mom thought our presence kind of calmed him down to where he was willing to come down,” he continued. “The kids were stellar. They were crying, they were a little scared, but I think all the adults, myself included, were more nervous than them. They’re brave little kids.”
Meanwhile, Langdon grabbed one of the ladders to assist the woman down from her second-story window. However, firefighters then arrived and ultimately Olean firefighter Nate Veno used one of the fire department’s ladders to rescue the woman.
“Capt. Langdon was there to assist me in anything I needed,” Veno said. “He assisted me as I climbed up and got her out of the window.”
While his fellow officers tended to those who were visibly trapped, Baldwin entered an unlocked door to the building to make sure no one else was stuck inside. He found a locked apartment door, and after knocking several times and hearing no response, used his shoulder to open the door.
Inside the apartment, Baldwin woke a sleeping Mark Wilson, who was unaware of the fire.
“It’s definitely a rush, for sure, because you know you have to act fast, you know you have to make that split-second decision,” Baldwin said. “You don’t want to say it’s the right one or the wrong one because it happens so fast, but you better make sure it’s the right one.”
Baldwin said no one instructed him to enter the building — just as no one instructed the other officers to grab ladders and start the rescue process. Police did what their “gut” told them, he said.
“The team that just happened to be there that day, we work real well together,” Beggs said. “We didn’t even have to speak — everybody just split up and accomplished everything that needed to be accomplished.”
When arriving first at a fire, Langdon said police simply have to assess and the deal with the situation they’re presented.
That Flowerpot on the Fire Escape Could Be a Killer
Oct. 24, 2017 — Ignore house rules and city and state laws at your peril. Ah, the perils and pitfalls of cooperative living. A shareholder in a co-op in Morningside Heights possesses a green thumb, evidenced by the flourishing potted plants on his window ledges and fire escape. When he waters his plants, alas, the runoff streams down the wall, across windows, and into the apartment of his downstairs neighbor. This aggrieved neighbor spoke to the man with the green thumb, and he wrote letters to the managing agent and co-op board, but the water keeps coming. Is this right, or fair? “No one should be using a fire escape for the storage or placement of any items, including plantings,” attorney Mark Hakim of Chaves & Perlowitz tells the Ask Real Estate column in the New York Times. “It is a matter of health and safety.” It’s also against the co-op’s house rules, and it violates city and state laws governing fire safety, which state that all means of egress, such as stairwells and fire escapes, must be kept free of obstructions. As for the flowerpots on the window ledge, if one of them should fall, it could injure or kill a passerby, which is why the co-op’s house rules forbid flowerpots on window ledges. So what’s the aggrieved shareholder to do? Write another letter to the board and to the managing agent, advises Hakim, demanding that the board “take this matter seriously.” The shareholder might also call 311 to report the blocked fire escape. If a city inspector finds a fire hazard, the building would likely be issued a violation. In such situations, shareholders should press the board to act before the building gets fined, which will cost all shareholders. However, a ticket would certainly get management’s attention. Then again, so would a dead body on the sidewalk in front of the building, sprawled next to a shattered flowerpot and a lovely but deadly geranium. Source: The Habitat – Building Operations
Can a Neighbor Keep Flowerpots on a Fire Escape?
By RONDA KAYSEN
Q. I live in a co-op in Morningside Heights. My upstairs neighbors keep plants on their window ledges and fire escape. When they water them, the runoff streams down my windows and into my apartment if the windows are open. I politely asked them to water the plants inside, telling them that the co-op’s house rules prohibit personal items on window ledges or fire escapes. I also wrote a letter to the building’s managing agent and the board. But the problem continues. My neighbors are clearly in violation of building rules, but what about city rules?
A. City life offers few opportunities to flex your green thumb. A fire escape or a window ledge can make for an alluring solution — who wouldn’t want a little box of nature perched outside the window? But if that pretty flowerpot falls off the ledge onto the street below, it could prove deadly for a passer-by, which may explain why your co-op prohibits placing objects on the ledge. A fire escape, meanwhile, is neither a terrace nor a balcony, but an escape route, as its name aptly suggests.
“No one should be using a fire escape for the storage or placement of any items, including plantings,” said Mark A. Hakim, the director of the cooperative and condominium department at the New York City law firm Chaves & Perlowitz. “It is a matter of health and safety.”
Your neighbors shouldn’t knowingly let water leak into your apartment — it’s rude. Manners aside, they are also violating cityand state laws about fire safety that call for keeping means of egress free of obstructions. Keep sounding the alarm — and consider your complaints a public service. Yes, the water could damage your apartment, but a falling object could harm someone, and a blocked fire escape could endanger the lives of your neighbors.
Write another letter to the board and to the managing agent. Demand that the board “take this matter seriously,” Mr. Hakim said. You could also report the blocked fire escape to 311. If an inspector finds a fire hazard, the building would likely be issued a violation. Since you are a shareholder in the corporation, press the board to act before you help inflict fines against your own building. However, a ticket would certainly get management’s attention.
14 injured as fire burns through Brooklyn apartment building
Eyewitness News BOROUGH PARK, Brooklyn (WABC) — Fourteen people were injured, one seriously, in an early morning fire at a Brooklyn apartment building. The three-alarm blaze broke out just before 5 a.m. Monday in a kitchen on the second floor of the four-story building on 49th Street in Borough Park. It quickly rose up the cockloft to the top floors. When the fire started burning, fire crews believe it had time to spread before the families inside knew about it, making for frantic moments as they tried to escape. “Some neighbors got us out, some people called us,” resident Martici Weinberg said. “And they rang the bell, ‘fire.’ We grabbed the kids. We got out.” The smoke was so intense that nine people took the fire escape, climbing to the roof to avoid the flames. In the second-floor apartment where investigators believe the fire began, a woman trapped by the bars on her windows. “There was no way she could get out,” FDNY Deputy Chief Peter Leicht said. “We had a firefighter on the roof. He heard her call. The firefighter on the roof called our inside team. The inside team was dispatched to go into the rear bedroom.”
The fire crews walked through flames to get to her, but by the time they reached her, the woman was unconscious. She was rushed to the hospital with serious injuries. Nine others who lived in the building were treated for minor injuries. More than 130 firefighters responded to the fire. Four of them suffered minor injuries. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
Bronx Teen Takes Fatal Plunge After Going Out On Fifth-Story Fire Escape To Smoke
A 15-year-old Bronx boy fell five stories to his death Thursday morning after sneaking from his bedroom onto a fire escape, while still in his pajamas, to smoke, police said. Leonardo (Lenny) Marmolejos fell from the fire escape that runs down the back wall of his apartment building on Briggs Ave. near E. 199th St. in Fordham Manor at about 6:15 a.m., cops said. He landed in an alley, where a neighbor found him face-down and in his pajamas and called 911. Medics rushed the teen, in traumatic arrest, to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he died. 
Lenny’s heartbroken father raced to the building Thursday morning cradling a cell phone picture of his dead son. “He just made 15,” Leonardo Marmolejos Sr. said between heart-rending sobs outside his ex-wife’s building. “I say to him, ‘Papi, you so handsome.’ “Lenny is a Xerox copy of me,” said the 62-year-old Army veteran, who served in the Vietnam War. “If you saw me when I was 15, you couldn’t tell us apart. (He) was a beautiful kid, obedient, respectful, never got no complaint from him in school. He was such a good kid”. The International School for the Liberal Arts sophomore with dreams of playing in the NBA lived on the building’s fifth floor with his mother and grandmother, Lilian Ferrer-Casilla, police sources said. When Ferrer-Casilla went to bed at 10 p.m. Wednesday, Lenny was in his room playing video games. His mother, whom the grandmother and neighbors declined to name, was on the sofa. Everything appeared normal until Thursday morning, she said. “The police came and knocked on the door,” Ferrer-Casilla remembered. When Lenny’s mom answered, they immediately asked about her son. “(She) was asking why,” she recalled. “She went and checked the room and he wasn’t there. She thought the whole night he was in the bed.” Lenny’s mom immediately began suffering chest pains and was taken to the same hospital as her son. “We are destroyed,” Ferrer-Casilla said. The teen’s mom, who is recovering in the hospital, told police she last saw her child in his bedroom about 1:20 a.m., sources said. Cops found a lighter and a pipe on the fire escape. It was not immediately disclosed if any drugs were found. Investigators believe Lenny propped open the window and climbed outside to smoke — news that left his father with more questions. 
“What happened?” Marmolejos asked. “I always told him, ‘Lenny, do something because you want to do it. Don’t do it because of peer pressure.’ “I told him it’s a tough environment, but you have to mind your business,” he said. “I said stay away from those bad kids and you’re going to make it.” 
SOURCE: NEW YORK DAILY NEWS BY CHELSIA ROSE MARCIUS THOMAS TRACY UPDATED: THURSDAY, August 31, 2017, 8:57 PM
Deadly apartment fire in Brooklyn caused by careless smoking, FDNY says
Eyewitness News CROWN HEIGHTS, Brooklyn (WABC) — Authorities say a deadly apartment fire in Brooklyn Thursday night was accidental, caused by careless smoking. 56-year-old Rupert Smith was killed in the blaze that broke out just after 10 p.m. in a six-story apartment building on Kingston Avenue in Crown Heights. Investigators say the fire broke out in Smith’s second-floor apartment and spread. When firefighters arrived, the fire was out the second-floor window. Once inside, firefighters found Smith in an apartment. He was unconscious and had burns all over his body.
FollowSmith has a history of setting fires and that is part of the investigation, the FDNY said. Residents had to quickly rush out to escape. “I told the kids to go out. By the time I went back in to grab my robe, the kids were coming back up because they were overtaken by the smoke,” said tenant Shatoya Killings. “So we had to make our way through the fire escape. But we couldn’t get down because the ladder wasn’t down so we had to stay at the bottom of the fire escape.” Four residents in the building were treated for smoke inhalation.Candace McCowan @CandaceMcCowan7
A look inside the apartment where a 56 year old man was killed in a fire last night. The fire was contained to one apartment . @ABC7NY
Malone fire victims feel ‘lucky’ to have escaped
- By DENISE A. RAYMO Press-Republican
DENISE RAYMO/STAFF PHOTO
MALONE — Chris Coates thought he smelled smoke about 1:30 a.m. Saturday, but he went back to sleep, thinking his roommates were probably cooking something.
A few minutes later, his girlfriend, Lakeisha Mitchell, woke up and told him she could smell smoke.
About the same time, someone started pounding on their door, yelling there was smoke in the hallway of their four-story apartment house at 384 West Main St.
“We got out onto the fire escape, and the flames started shooting up,” Coates said.
“I had to carry her down the fire escape,” he said, gesturing to Lakeisha, who is five weeks pregnant with their first child.
“I carried her down, then I brought four little kids down and went in again,” Coates said.
“There were so many kids, I kept going in to help.”
Everyone that he and first responders assisted got to safety as firefighters from 17 Franklin County departments, five fire departments from St. Lawrence County and one from Clinton County poured into the village from all directions to help.
‘FULL OF SMOKE’
The couple sat on the stoop of the former Kriff’s Furniture Store building across the street from the fire site as volunteer firefighters continued to peel off strips of metal roofing more than nine hours after the blaze was first reported to Franklin County Fire Control.
“This whole place was full of smoke,” he said, raising his arms to indicate the two-lane passage of Main Street/Route 11, which is lined with tall, old buildings on each side.
Thirty people were sent to the Emergency Department at University of Vermont Health Network, Alice Hyde Medical Center to be checked out as a safety precaution.
LOST EVERYTHING
Coates and Mitchell were medically cleared and left to come back downtown to see how badly the building was damaged.
“Luckily, nothing was wrong with us,” Coates said. “But all of our stuff is gone. Even my wallet’s up there.”
He had not been able to contact the American Red Cross for help because he had no minutes left on his pre-paid phone.
But across town where the Red Cross has established an emergency shelter at the Malone Adult Center, the aroma of goulash cooking and a cheery chalkboard sign encouraging people to grab a fresh cup of coffee greeted the nine victims being helped there.
All had just enough time to leave with the clothing or pajamas on their backs after being evacuated by firefighters and police.
PEOPLE RUNNING
Angela Dolan and her boyfriend, Richard Rhinehart, were being helped at the shelter. They lived on different floors of the adjoining apartment house to the immediate right of where the fatal fire occurred, so they aren’t sure how much smoke and water damage their belongings might have endured.
“We went outside and saw the flames, and people were running all over the place, trying to get out,” he said.
“It was a nightmare. I’m deathly afraid of fire. But my girlfriend’s front door goes right out to Main Street, so we got right out.”
“I’m just thankful everybody’s OK,” Rhinehart said. “I knew a lot of the people who lived there.”
He said a neighbor, Faye Fleury, was very upset at the scene because she had not been able to find her cat, but Dolan said the pet turned up safe a little later.
COMMOTION
“It seems like we were lucky,” Dolan said. “Oh, it could have been such a disaster if anyone else had been hurt. I felt awful; I still feel awful about the whole thing,” she said.
“He just decided to stay with me. He wasn’t going to, but for some reason, we decide to stay together,” Dolan said.
“I was awake at 1:30 and heard a commotion in the back yard and didn’t know what it was. Then I saw somebody going down the fire escape, so I looked out the front window and saw the fire trucks.
“Seems like we were lucky,” she said. “But this is a sad time.”
COMMUNITY RESPONSE
The Red Cross will have the shelter open until at least Monday unless the fire victims can all be placed in other safe lodging before then, said Bridget Nelson, an AmeriCorps and Red Cross disaster-services volunteer.
Community members were already offering furniture and bringing bags of clothing to the Adult Center.
Director Paulette Dear said the agency was using the food planned for Monday’s Meals of Wheels and congregate-meal program to feed the fire victims and that an alternate menu will be created for those clients when the new week begins.
If the center is still needed as a shelter on Monday, when meals are typically served at the Route 30 site, the fire victims will be fed with the elderly patrons but the scheduled bridge card game will be postponed.
STARTING OVER
Sandro Colon, who lived on the third floor of the apartment house for about a year, was one of the people being helped at the shelter until he can figure out what he is going to do next.
“We don’t know what’s going on,” he said of the fire’s destruction.
“We may have lost all of our belongings. We may have to start all over again.”
Email Denise A. Raymo:
draymo@pressrepublican.com
Twitter: @DeniseRaymo
Exclusive Video: Bronx Apartment Fire Leaves 10 Injured, Fire Escape Saves Lives
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Nearly a dozen people are recovering from injuries and several families are without a home after a Bronx apartment building went up in flame on Monday. The fire started just before noon on 163rd Street in the Melrose section. Exclusive video obtained by CBS2 shows people scrambling down a fire escape and leaping to the ground. 
More than 100 firefighters responded. Two of them suffered minor injuries, along with one police officer, who cut his hand on broken glass trying to rescue children. Seven civilians were also injured, one seriously. Many of the residents say their smoke alarms never went off, and if it weren’t for heroes in the neighborhood, this could have been much worse, CBS2’s Ali Bauman reported. Cellphone video captured people climbing down ladders to escape the giant flames from the second floor of the building on 163rd Street. “A lot of people were jumping off the fire escape also when they got to the second-floor landing,” said witness Peter Ortega. “It was really scary. It was really intense.” 
“I saw a fireman come out with a lady in his arms,” said Hellen Matos. “I think she got burnt really bad.” There were also heroes in the crowd. Alex Piniero, a security guard across the street, smelled smoke and ran in to save whoever he could. “I seen a kid in the third floor screaming for his mom, but I run upstairs and I grabbed him, put him in my arms, I ran outside,” he said. “And then I saw a lady — she just fainted right in my arms in the first floor, and I carried her out.” People had to knock on neighbors’ doors just to get everyone out because the fire alarms were not working, residents said. “Somebody said ‘fire, fire!’ so I run. I start knocking doors,” one resident said. “There was no fire alarms that rang, so no one on the fifth floor would have known if no one went knocking,” Matos said. The landlord told CBS2 the fire alarms and sprinklers were working fine. “There are fire extinguishers in every apartment,” he said. The cause of fire is under investigation. Source: CBS 2 New York
10 injured in Hunts Point Bronx
Residents gathered outside the walk-up building as the FDNY battled the blaze. “When they arrived, they had a heavy smoke and fire condition coming from the third-floor windows, which drew their attention to the third floor. We believe the fire actually started on the first floor, and an interior shaft, windows, and toward the back of the building,” said FDNY Chief Roger Sakowich. Flames and black smoke billowed out of the windows and took over the five floor apartment building. “I see everyone yelling ‘fire, fire,’ running down the stairs,” Anthony Faison said. A little girl hiding in her room was rescued by good Samaritans who happened to be walking down the street. “We heard the lady screaming, ‘oh, my daughter’s in there,’ so me and my brother went inside,” one man said. The two men plus another neighbor teamed up and fought heavy smoke and flames to get her out. “There was a lot of smoke up in the air and it was clear in the bottom, so we went under, but it was too hot, and too much smoke, so we couldn’t get through,” he said. They said they knocked the door down and eventually used the fire escape — pushing out an AC unit to pull her to safety. “Tito passed her to me through the fire escape, so she was crying, she just looked so scared it kind of broke my heart,” Faison said. Sakowich told CBS2’s Reena Roy at the scene that 10 people injured — four civilians and six firefighters. None of the victims suffered life-threatening injuries, and most were caused by smoke inhalation, the FDNY said. The fire had spread quickly to the back of the building, then up the shaft to other floors. The conditions were so dangerous that firefighters had to shelter two people inside as 150 FDNY members brought it under control. “We decided it was too risky to bring them down at that point and we sheltered them in place and actually got oxygen to them until it was safe to bring them down,” Sakowich said. The American Red Cross Greater New York was on the scene offering assistance. Officials said everyone made it out and will recover. They are still trying to figure out what caused the fire.
A fire fighter climbs up the fire escape ladder outside Famous Familiga Pizza to join others battling the blaze
A fire tore through a luxury Greenwich Village apartment building on Wednesday after an ‘explosion’ on the sixth floor. Plumes of smoke billowed from The Hamilton at 60 East 9th street after the blast at around 5.45pm. Forty-four FDNY vehicles raced to the scene and hoisted fire fighters on to the roof to tackle the blaze from above. Nearly 200 fire fighters and EMTs responded to the situation. It is not yet clear how exactly the fire was started or if anyone has been hurt. Stretchers were seen being brought in to the building but has not emerged. 
An FDNY spokesman could not give further details on Wednesday evening. ‘It’s a developing situation, so far there are no injuries reported but it is developing,’ they said. The entire building was being evacuated on Wednesday night. A source inside earlier told DailyMail.com the explosion happened on the sixth floor and said fire crews were trying the flames. It is understood to have occupied the entirety of the top floor – which is spread over two wings – and the building’s attic. Fire fighters were seen punching through windows on the top floors of the building to allow some of the heat to escape. Crowds cheered and gasped as glass from the upper windows shattered. The smell of burning materials wafted in to office buildings surrounding the area. 
Fire fighters on the ground extended the safety perimeter numerous times as they continued to work at the scene on Wednesday afternoon. The 8th street subway station which services the N, Q, R, and W lines, was closed shortly after the incident as was Astor Place which services the 6 train. Apartments in the building range from $525,000 studios to two-bedroom units costing $1.25million. Initial reports indicated that the blaze may have started in Famous Famiglia Pizza next door. 
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4648824/Explosion-Greenwich-Village-apartment-building.html#ixzz4lLf7TjPS Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
DA looking into ‘potentially catastrophic’ conditions at apartment building
Updated: The Allegheny County district attorney’s office is looking into conditions inside of a Wilmerding apartment building. Vincent Coury, a tenant of Faller Apartments, said he has a crack in the gas line to his stove, a hole in his ceiling and cockroaches. “Throw us out,” Coury said. “That’s what they want to do because the building is not safe.” Outside the building, a fire escape has steps missing and there are dozens of other code violations. In a statement, District Attorney Stephen Zappala said he “is very concerned about the safety of the residents living in that building, and right now we’re considering our options with respect to holding the landlord responsible for conditions that are potentially catastrophic.” Coury, who has lived in the building for about six months, said he may be forced to move soon.Firefighter’s Practiced Maneuver, Five Stories Up, Ends in Fatal Fall
By ANDY NEWMAN
It was a routine operation at a routine apartment-building fire using a piece of equipment that was tailor made for this vertical city.
And yet somehow, a veteran New York City firefighter fell to his death.
The equipment is called a tower ladder. It is a familiar sight, a telescoping ladder mounted atop a fire truck with a walled platform or “bucket” that hoists firefighters up onto roofs and other high places so that they do not have to climb up and down.
On Thursday in Ridgewood, Queens, Firefighter William Tolley, 42, was lifted to the roof of a five-story building in a tower ladder to ventilate the roof and allow smoke and hot gases to escape. One moment, witnesses said, he was in the bucket, suspended near the roof parapet. The next moment, he was plummeting to the street.
The Fire Department and federal officials are investigating the cause of the accident, a process that could take months. But experienced fire officials and equipment experts said the accident underscored the dangers inherent in working high above the street.
“For a painter, for a roofer, for a firefighter, leaving a roof and getting to a ladder, whatever type — there’s always the danger of falling,” said Glenn Corbett, an associate professor of fire science at John Jay College.
Still, deaths in falls from ladders remain rare. In 2007, a firefighter in Brooklyn was climbing down a ladder while holding tools in both hands when the heavy saw slung across his back shifted and knocked him off balance, federal investigators found.
A former deputy chief, Charles R. Blaich, said that the most recent firefighter death in New York City that he knew of involving a tower ladder was 40 years ago, in 1977: A firefighter tried to jump from a fifth-floor fire escape of a burning Manhattan building to the bucket of a tower ladder and missed.
The tower ladder had been developed only about 10 years earlier, at the request of John T. O’Hagan, a department chief who eventually became fire commissioner.
Professor Corbett said that Chief O’Hagan was inspired by similar devices used by utilities to raise their workers to poles and wires. The Chicago Fire Department was already using a ladder device known as a snorkel that extended like an elbow unbending. Chief O’Hagan wanted a device like the tower ladder instead, because it extended by telescoping, allowing it to work in narrower spaces, Professor Corbett said. Today, 60 of the 143 Fire Department ladder trucks use tower ladders.
In the case of Firefighter Tolley, witnesses have offered differing accounts. Mayer Weber, a former volunteer firefighter in Fallsburg, N.Y., who was working on a construction site near the Queens fire on Thursday, said that he saw Mr. Tolley in the bucket signaling something to the firefighter below on the truck who was controlling the ladder. The door of the bucket was open and the bucket moved.
“It looked like he was trying to get out onto the roof,” Mr. Weber said on Friday. “It’s possible that what might have happened is that the bucket hit the parapet roof, and since he was halfway out of the bucket on his way out, it bounced him right out.”
Also on Friday, fire officials announced the cause of the blaze: religious incense that residents left burning in their second-floor apartment when they left the building.
“Compounding the tragic loss of Firefighter Tolley’s life is that the fire he responded to and fought bravely could have been prevented,” Fire Commissioner Daniel A. Nigro said in a statement. “You should not leave objects such as incense or candles burning while unattended.”
Former NYU student who fell from fire escape wins $29M suit
By Julia Marsh
March 8, 2017 | 5:24pm
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17 Families Evacuated in Early Morning Apartment Fire in New Rochelle, 3 Injured
There were some anxious moments at first when the woman in the apartment told responding police officers and firefighters that her husband was still in the apartment, Benz said. A search revealed that he had climbed out a window onto the fire escape and made his way to the roof, where firefighters reached him with a ladder and took him to safety.NRPD called NRFD to expedite a response. Members of the NRFD responded quickly and worked hard. “It was a great stop,” said Reed. “Fire had gotten up into the cockloft, it was beginning to extend across the roof. We were able to knock it down and save the building.” A cockloft, or “inverted roof”, is the space between the roof and the flat beams to provide a pitch to drain rain and a vented air space to reduce top-floor temperature. There was extensive damage to the original fire apartment, it was completely destroyed. The floor below received water damage. Con Edison and Red Cross were called to the scene. Utilities remain on and 15 of the families were allowed back in the building shortly after 6:00 a.m. The two families in the damaged apartments were being relocated by Red Cross. UPDATE: Red Cross spokeswoman Carolyn Sherwin said four families were displaced (6 adults, 1 child). They were given emergency assist, referrals & TLC. The cause of the fire was not yet determined. UPDATE: Sources tell Talk of the Sound a candle fellow over. Journal News reporting it was a religious candle. No firefighters were injured. EDITOR’S NOTE: Talk of the Sound received two separate reports that a total of three persons were taken to the hospital. Some photos provided by James O’Toole. RELATED: News12: Early morning fire destroys New Rochelle apartments Journal News: Man escapes New Rochelle fire by climbing to roof of apartment building
BROOKLYN MAN STABLE AFTER FIRE ESCAPE COLLAPSE SENDS HIM PLUMMETING 4 STORIES
Show Us Your Fire Escape (Please)
THIS ARTICLE IS DANGEROUS for although it looks really cool, putting obstructions on your fire escape endangers the occupants and the firefighters who may use them as well. Usually it’s the ONLY means of egress out of a burning building. Yes, newer buildings require a fire staircase inside, older buildings DO NOT have this. Actually, obstructing a fire escape is totally illegal – nationwide! What if a firefighter had to come up the fire escape with equipment to SAVE YOUR LIFE?Show Us Your Fire Escape (Please)
BY JEN CARLSON IN ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT ON JUL 22, 2016 1:50 PM
(Photo by Sai Mokhtari) I have never really delved into the world of Pinterest, which seems to me to be a place where people collect images of things they want but will never have, and call it “inspiration.” Sad! But while searching for a photo of a fire escape recently, I came upon a fire escape Pinterest board, and hoo boy… do you even know what people do with their fire escapes? They turn them into lush verandas, resting spots, miniature porches, little oases of their own. This goes beyond the romance of simply dangling one’s feet off a fire escape on a hot summer day in the city—it’s a full transformation, an extension of one’s apartment, and it can be a real gamechanger here in the land of 400-sq-ft living spaces. F*ckin’ Pinterest, man. It’s not at all legal to do these wonderful things to your fire escape, as they are meant to be kept clear in the event of, you know, a fire. FDNY spokesman Frank Dwyer told us, “In short, no, plants and other items are not to permitted on fire escapes.” However, fire escapes are basically only decoration now anyway—last year, one FDNY rep declared: “Those fire escapes are going the way of the dinosaur,” noting that fireproof interior stairwells are now the preferred addition for newer buildings. These little metal ledges are something only New Yorkers could romanticize so much, and they have a long history here in the city (some people even used them as open-air bedrooms back in the day). So we want to celebrate them—have you done something magical with your fire escape? We’d like to see it. You can submit a photo to us at tips@gothamist.com (just let us know if you would like to remain anonymous).
Heat Takes Toll on Long Island Firefighters
JUL 23, 2016 SOURCE: NEWSDAY
Five people had minor injuries — and a cat was killed — during a five-alarm fire at a Hempstead apartment building Saturday afternoon, authorities said.
The blaze heavily damaged two or three apartments in the six-story, 36-unit building at 36 Cathedral Ave., said Michael Uttaro, Nassau County assistant chief fire marshal. Several other units appeared to have also been affected.
About 60 residents of the co-op were displaced by the fire, officials said.
It took 20 fire departments about two and a half hours to knock down the fire that was reported at 2:42 p.m., Uttaro said.
Four of those treated for injuries were firefighters, who battled the inferno while temperatures outside reached into the 90s. All had heat exhaustion or hyperthermia, officials said.
A male resident of the building was taken to a hospital and treated for similar injuries. He was able to rescue his two cats from the scorched building, authorities said.
But Georgia Laudani, 35, who lives in the apartment where the fire began, said her own cat Trixie — a 5-year-old feline with three legs — didn’t survive.
“They’re going to try and get her body out for me,” said a tearful Laudani, who was out celebrating her fifth wedding anniversary when the fire broke out in her second-floor unit. Firefighters say the cause is under investigation, but that it’s not considered suspicious.
“It’s my wedding anniversary,” Laudani said. “My whole apartment’s in ashes.”
It was unclear late Saturday whether any other animals were hurt in the blaze.
Red Cross volunteers at the scene said they were helping dozens of displaced residents find places to stay.
The building’s occupants described a chaotic scene in the moments after the fire broke out, as people fled via fire escapes and stairwells. A postal service worker on the property could be heard yelling for people to “Get out, get out!” witnesses said, as tenants grabbed what valuables they could and ran.
“The flames were jumping out of the windows, bright orange like, like it was a movie,” said Sarah Kramer, who was staying in her sister’s apartment and smelled smoke as she watched the news. She used a fire escape to rush downstairs, where she watched the fire roar.
“The heat was so intense, the firefighters looked like they could barely breathe,” Kramer said. “They looked like they were ready to collapse, but they did the job.”
Laudani said she was glad to have escaped safely, but mourned the loss of her cat and all her valuables, including the ashes of family members.
“It’s overwhelming,” she said.
———
©2016 Newsday
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Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Brooklyn Pastor Held On Bail In Charges In Deadly Flatbush Fire
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — A Brooklyn pastor was behind bars late Thursday, charged with manslaughter in a fire that left a man dead. As CBS2’s Hazel Sanchez reported, the fire happened two years ago. But police just caught up with the Rev. Luckner Lorient in Florida Tuesday night, and he was in Brooklyn Criminal Court in New York Thursday afternoon for his arraignment. Prosecutors alleged that Lorient illegally subdivided apartments in his building, putting tenants at risk. It was a fall from grace for the highly-regarded Brooklyn pastor. The 78-year-old landlord held his head high in court on Thursday, pleading not guilty to the charges stemming from the devastating electrical fire that killed one man and injured 14 others in November 2014. The city had previously issued dozens of violations to the building’s owner. A family spokesman said the pastor is innocent. “We do feel that there is some sort of bias with this situation, because he’s a very respectable member of this society; of the Flatbush community,” said spokesman Luc Pierre. “Everybody knows him.” At the time of the fire, 23 people were living in Lorient’s Flatbush Avenue building that he allegedly converted into 11 illegal apartments, while illegally running his church on the first floor. Investigators said the deadly fire was caused by an overloaded electrical circuit – an issue that prosecutors said Lorient failed to fix. Prosecutors said the pastor intentionally overlooked several safety issues, ignoring multiple building violations and vacate orders from the city. Prosecutors further said the problems stretched over more than a decade. “The most egregious of these violations included not having a working fire escape in the rear of the building, while continuously illegally converting the second and third floors into SROs,” Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Samantha Magnani said in court. Lorient claimed his tenants divided the apartments themselves and subleased them to make more money. “He was trying to evict those people for so many years, and he was very unsuccessful in doing so,” Pierre said. If Lorient is found is found guilty of the most serious charge of second-degree manslaughter, he could end up spending 15 years in prison. The judge said given the pastor’s age, that could be a death sentence. Lorient is also facing civil lawsuits in connection with the fire. He was being held on $1 million bail late Thursday.
1 Hurt After Fire Escape Collapses in…
The FDNY told News 4 Investigates on Monday that the last time the fire escape had been inspected was in 2014 and that the building’s owner never received a a violation. Andrew Siff reports. (Published Monday, March 21, 2016)
A fourth-floor fire escape partially collapsed while a man was sitting on it in Brooklyn, according to police.
The man, in his 20s, was smoking on the fire escape outside his building in Prospect Lefferts Gardens at about 11:30 p.m. Thursday when one of the metal bars gave way. The man tumbled down and was taken to the hospital, where he remained in critical condition Monday.
News of the fall surprised Karina Sahlin, a tenant who had hung out on the escape a day earlier, showing it to a friend.
“I showed her, ‘this is the fire escape, this is how you open the grate,'” Sahlin said. “She’s like, ‘is this safe?’ I was like, ‘it’s fine.’ And then the next day the dude apparently fell off.”
The FDNY told NBC 4 New York on Monday that the last time the fire escape had been inspected was in 2014 and that the building’s owner never received a a violation. Fire companies are tasked with taking periodic looks at the escapes in their areas, but it’s up to owners to maintain the metal structures.
The landlord of the building didn’t return calls from NBC 4 New York seeking comment.
Published at 1:43 PM EDT on Mar 21, 2016
MICHAEL SCHWARTZ/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
The man, 62, fell to his death while grabbing equipment being passed to him by a worker standing near him on scaffolding.
MICHAEL GRAAE/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
The blood and rope in the back alleyway where the worker fell.
MICHAEL SCHWARTZ/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWSEnlarge
MICHAEL SCHWARTZ/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWSEnlargeBronx Apartment Building Fire Leaves 1 Dead, 3 Injured
6 HURT AS FIRE BURNS THROUGH HOME IN ELMHURST, QUEENS
Eyewitness News
ELMHURST, QUEENS (WABC) —
Six residents were injured, one seriously burned, in a second alarm house fire in the Elmhurst section of Queens early Monday. The residents were inside the Ketcham Street home when heavy fire broke out just before 4:30 a.m. The most seriously injured, a woman in her 30’s, suffered burns to her face and abdomen. She was rushed to the Cornell burn unit at New York Presbyterian Hospital. The other residents, including a 12-year-old girl, were treated for smoke inhalation at Elmhurst Hospital. The six people inside were fast asleep and woke up to intense smoke in every room of the house.
Three firefighters were treated for minor injuries. One went to Elmhurst Hospital, the other two were treated at the scene.
Three firefighters were treated for minor injuries. One went to Elmhurst Hospital, the other two were treated at the scene. The FDNY stopped the flames from spreading to several other homes, limiting the structures to exterior damage. The flames were so intense they jumped to neighboring buildings, forcing people to climb down to safety from the fire escape. Marvin Mercado was fast asleep with his friend Eman Villamin. She woke up to the loud sounds of popping and crackling, screamed for her aunt and realized they were trapped. “She opened the door and there was a big fire already and we couldn’t get it out it was too close, and it’s so hot we were trapped in there,” said Villamin. Firefighters received calls from multiple other buildings on the block of people in distress, but all residents got out safely. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
11 People Hurt in Williamsburg Apartment Fire, FDNY Says
By Gwynne Hogan and Aidan Gardiner | November 30, 2015 10:46am
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5 injured in Yonkers apartment fire
Two residents were plucked from a sixth-floor fire escape when a blaze broke out in their apartment shortly after 5 a.m. as a result of an overwhelmed power strip in the living room, Deputy Chief Kevin Ford said.
One of the residents and four firefighters were injured.
Firefighters responded to the seven-story apartment building at 200 Valentine Lane and fought the blaze for about an hour.
“As bad as the fire was, it was contained to the fire apartment,” Ford said. “The guys did an amazing job. They got in quick and they knocked it down.”
Firefighters had to call in extra manpower to cut a hole in the roof due to heavy smoke in the attic area, but the fire had not spread.
One of the residents was taken to St. John’s Riverside Hospital, citing minor difficulty breathing. His wife accompanied him to the hospital but was not injured.
Three firefighters had minor injuries, and the fourth was taken to Westchester Medical Center with elevated carbon-monoxide levels.
Ford said only the
two residents needed to be relocated and that the adjoining apartments only suffered minor water damage and were fine for occupancy. The local Red Cross was working to relocate the residents.
Map:Yonkers fire
How Safe Are New York City’s Fire Escapes, Really?
Monday, August 31, 2015, by Amy Plitt [Photos by Bob Estremera. More fire escape photos over here.] The spotlight is once again on New York City’s ubiquitous, iconic fire escapes following the tragic death of actor Kyle Jean-Baptiste, a rising Broadway star who had recently finished a run as Jean Valjean in Les Misérables. On Friday, the 21-year-old performer fell from a fourth-floor fire escape on an apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Police have determined that his death was an accident. The tragedy led the New York Times to take a look at the role of the fire escape in New Yorkers’ lives—namely, as “storage closets, front porches and back gardens, a perch of one’s own above the bustle of the street.” The Times offered a brief history of the fire escape: They were first added to buildings in the mid-1800s, and became a refuge for residents crammed into tenement buildings, who would use the iron perches as a place to air out clothing and mattresses, escape crowded dwellings, and even as beds in the summertime. But there have always been concerns about their safety and relative usefulness. From the Times:Even then — to say nothing of now — fire professionals had their doubts about fire escapes. The National Fire Protection Association noted in 1914that they were often hard to reach; poorly designed and badly maintained; lacking ladders or stairs from the ground to the second floor; and blocked by residents’ possessions. (People often aired their mattresses and chilled their perishables there.)When the NYC building code was updated in 1968, it banned fire escapes from new dwellings, preferring more modern safety methods like sprinkler systems and interior stairwells. And in recent years, they’ve begun disappearing from older buildings, too—in part, as we reported in April, because of aesthetics, but also because of safety concerns. When older buildings are renovated, architects are choosing to replace the fire escapes altogether: In April, Joseph Pell Lombardi called them “a detriment to the building,” in reference to two Soho buildings he’s in the process of revamping. Even NYC historians are re-examining the romance of the fire escape: William B. Helmreich, the City College professor who wrote The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6,000 Miles in the City, said, “This tragedy occurred because not enough attention is given to the dangersinherent in sitting on fire escapes.…A fire escape should be an escape from fire; it shouldn’t be an escape from reality.”
Women Actually Invented Things
After posting the article below we found this in wikipedia…
I am curious where people got this information about Anna Connelly having the first registered patent for a fire escape in 1887. New York City building codes required exterior balconies and stairs (referred to as fire escapes in the code) already in 1860. And numerous patents for such exist prior to 1887, the earliest in 1860. The article needs reliable references. —Metro2008 (talk) 05:53, 19 January 2008 (UTC) Well, after searching on the internet for about 5 minutes, I was able to obtain the patent number for Anna Connelly’s fire escape. I then when to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office online archive of full text patents and searched the number. As I suspected, she did not actually invent the fire escape, she invented a type of fire escape that is actually nothing like the exterior stairs and balconies that this wikipedia entry discusses. Her patent is for a bridge that connects the roofs of buildings. I am disturbed to find that she is noted all over the internet as the inventor of the fire escape. I am a woman and am all for promoting inventions by women, but we can’t give her more credit than is due. Clearly people need to check their facts, because once something ends up on the internet, it ends up being taken as truth. —Metro2008 (talk) 05:53, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
People Really Don’t Know That Women Actually Invented Things
Now’s your chance to learn.
Nina BahadurDeputy Editor, HuffPost Women
Posted: 08/10/2015 04:23 PM EDT | Edited: 08/10/2015 05:45 PM EDT
If this video is anything to go by, New Yorkers need a serious refresher course on women in history. In the video created by MAKERS, a host asks people on the street who made a certain historical discovery, letting them choose between the woman who actually did it and a fictional man. Unsurprisingly, most respondents assumed that the men were the creators.
“Hmm,” one participant says when asked who invented the fire escape, inventor Anna Connelly or ’90s heartthrob Jonathan Taylor Thomas. “I’m feeling like [whoever invented] the first fire escape could be a woman, but is probably a man.” Spoiler alert: She’s wrong.
This lighthearted video reminds us that women’s contributions to history just aren’t as well known — something that seriously needs to change. Because #HerStoryIsHistory, too.
National Women’s History Museum
Should Buildings Still be Built with Fire Escapes?
Outdoor fire escape systems have been a familiar escape device for those living in high rise buildings for many years, but are they becoming obsolete? Buildings all over the world are beginning to lose their fire escapes and instead, are being built with internal fireproof staircases. This is due to the 1987 change in building code, which moved towards supplying safer fire evacuation methods for taller buildings and more common use of fire detection systems. While the new buildings codes brought about safer alternatives for emergency escape, some argue that taking away fire escapes is like taking away a piece of history.Fire escapes have been in use since 1784 in England, but didn’t become popular until the mass urbanization of areas like New York City and Chicago. Building external fire escapes was much cheaper than building a somewhat “fireproof” internal staircase. However, as fire escapes grew in popularity, more and more people started to use them for unintended purposes. In poorer areas of New York people would use their fire escapes to cook, clean clothes, and even sleep there during extreme heat. This would protrude the walkway and cause hazards for when actual emergency evacuations were necessary. Furthermore, fire escapes were rarely maintained, and many fell into serious disrepair.
The infamous Triangle Factory Fire of 1911 also proved that fire escapes were finicky in real live emergency use. In a first hand account, Rose Hauser spoke of what she saw during the fire,
“I looked around and I saw the flames coming in all the windows. The fire was in the shop and was coming toward us. There was a fire escape at the windows near the freight running and hollering and people were choking from the heavy smoke…Before I went down the staircase I looked to the fire escape. I saw one woman climb on there and fall right over the rail.”
Triangle Factory on Fire- March 25, 1911
This shows just how poorly regulated fire escape were at the time, when it came to an actual emergency, the system failed to complete its job.The code in 1987 prohibited the use of outdoor fire escapes on newly erected buildings and instead, outdoor emergency escapes were to be replaced with internal fire-proof staircases. These internal stairs were meant to be a safer egress alternative, even though in an emergency it’s possible that they could become inundated with toxic smoke. Many buildings also moved towards adding sprinkler and gas systems in order to suppress the blaze of a fire.
Despite the new building codes, the number of fire escape preservationists is growing and numerous preservation projects have taken place. These preservationists argue that fire escapes allow us to appreciate our cultural and architectural heritage, while also providing a unique space to enjoy, just as our ancestors once did. Fire escapes have been a part of architectural and firefighting history for over a hundred years, but what once offered a solution for those stuck in burning buildings, are now becoming obsolete in light of new inventions and findings.
Barista falls to death from fire escape after drinking
By Dana Sauchelli and Georgett Roberts
June 16, 2015 | 1:51pm
Modal Trigger
Photo: Demetrius E. Loadholt
A Wisconsin transplant who regularly drinks on her Manhattan rooftop with pals drunkenly slipped off the fire escape as she climbed back to her apartment and fell to her death early Tuesday morning, authorities said.
The woman, identified by sources as Kasey Jones, 26, was intoxicated when she lost her footing and fell five floors before slamming into a concrete passageway on the side of her Vermilyea Avenue building around 2:20 a.m., cops said.
The impact of her body hitting the pavement woke several of her sleeping neighbors.
“I heard people running on top of the roof,” said Jones’ next door neighbor, Sangelys Perez, 15.
Moments later, her horrified roommate frantically opened the boy’s window and screamed for help.
“Her roommate opened my window,” the boy said. “She was crying. She said I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“I asked her ‘are you OK?’” Perez recalled. “She looked down and said ‘she fell she fell.’ I was scared I didn’t know what to do or say.”
The boy’s father Julio Acosta, 57, said he “heard a big boom,” when her body smacked the pavement, and went to check on his son.
“I feel sad. She was so young,” Acosta said, adding that Jones was an avid cyclist who worked as a barista at Plowshare Coffee Roasters on West 105th Street.
“Yesterday I saw her going out with the bike,” he said. “She said hi to me. It pains my heart.”
A family friend who knew Jones said the woman attended the University of Wisconsin, and recently moved to New York within the last year.
Several of Jones’s social media accounts show her drinking on the roof on different occasions, including some showing her sitting and standing dangerously close to the edge.
Last week Jones posted a photo of herself dangling her feet over the fire escape where she would later fall to her death.
“It scares the bejesus outta me whenever you post these ‘casually leaning over the edge’ pics,” a friend wrote on her Instagram page.
Jose replied by saying, “well I have a lot of whiskey to help me out.”
Another recent photo shows a bottle of beer brewed in her home state resting on the ledge of the rooftop.
Hours after the tragic fall, several liquor bottles could still be seen on the rooftop near the fire escape ladder, including a bottle of Tullamore D.E.W. Irish Whiskey and a bottle of Tanqueray London Dry Gin.
“They drink up there, that’s what they do,” said Frances Guerrero, 34, who said the girls access the roof by using the fire escape to not trip the fire alarm linked to the door in the stairwell.
“I used to climb the fire escape too, It’s very slippery when wet, and it was raining last night” she said. “When you are inebriated you don’t use your head.”
REAL ESTATE
Keeping a Fire Escape Clear
Ask Real Estate is a weekly column that answers questions from across the New York region. Submit yours to realestateqa@nytimes.com.
Air-Conditioner in the Way?
I live in a co-op building and have an air-conditioner in my living room window, which is one of two windows that look out onto the fire escape. The air-conditioner does not block access to the fire escape. However, my building manager says city rules prohibit an air-conditioner in a fire escape window. But the Bureau of Fire Prevention told me that I could have one in that window as long as it does not extend out onto the fire escape. Who is correct?
Upper East Side, Manhattan
Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of summer, and many New Yorkers will likely spend part of it hoisting unwieldy air-conditioners into their apartment windows. I imagine some of them are eyeing their fire escape windows as a prime location for such an installation. But they should pause, as a fire escape is not an unofficial balcony to be adorned with potted plants or blocked by an air-conditioner. A fire escape is what its name suggests: an escape route for people fleeing or fighting a fire. And it should be free of obstructions. “There should be a focus on safety, fire safety to be specific,” said Joel E. Abramson, a Manhattan real estate lawyer.
The arrangement you described might be permitted by city rules. In general, residents are prohibited from installing air-conditioners in fire escape windows. But they can install one in a fire escape window if the apartment has a second window onto the fire escape that is large enough to be used as an emergency exit. Keep in mind that the alternate window must be large and easily accessible. (A small bathroom window, for example, would not suffice.) The air-conditioner should not extend more than five inches onto the fire escape balcony or obstruct the flow of foot traffic, according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. So if the unit you installed blocks the fire escape in any way, it should go. And even if it doesn’t, you still might want to consider a safer alternative.
SCHENECTADY, N.Y. Fire Escape
SCHENECTADY, N.Y. (NEWS10) – Many of those displaced by the fire across from City Hall had to escape flames; one man at the Red Cross Shelter saying he barely made it out alive.
- PHOTOS // Fire & Ice: New York Apartment Fire
“It was horrible. It was like hell on earth,” said Anthony Cortese of Schenectady. Cortese was sitting quietly at a Red Cross Shelter on State Street when he told NEWS10ABC about his escape from his apartment at 104 Jay Street. It caught fire early Friday morning in Schenectady. “It was so hot and the smoke was so bad. The last thing I managed to do was pull the fire alarm,” said Cortese. Cortese says he had to make a quick decision if he wanted to make it out alive. “So I ended up climbing out my window, grabbing onto some cables on the building swinging over to the fire escape. The fire escape door wouldn’t open in the hallway. By that time the flames were going through the hallway like a blast furnace,” Cortese said. Flames so terrifying, Public Safety Commissioner Wayne Bennett says one person jumped from the fifth floor window. Cortese says he saw that man who suffered a broken back and other injuries according to officials. “As I was climbing out my window a gentleman jumped from the fifth floor right passed me. He hit the ground, I grabbed him and dragged him away,”Cortese said. Before escaping, Cortese said he noticed his friends couch was on fire, that friend he says didn’t make it out. “The last thing I heard was my friend Harry screaming,” said Cortese. Officials do believe at least one person at this time is unaccounted for. The Red Cross is providing shelter food and other items to around 25 people at the Christ Episcopal Church on State Street. “What I have now is the clothes on my back so I’ll be OK,” Cortese said. Authorities have not confirmed if anyone was found inside that wasn’t able to get out.
Brooklyn fire in East Flatbush injures six people, including mother and 2-year-old daughter: officials
BY KELDY ORTIZ , BARRY PADDOCK , DENIS SLATTERY NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Published: Saturday, March 28, 2015, 11:07 AM Updated: Saturday, March 28, 2015, 11:54 PM
A fire broke out inside a three-story multi-family home in East Flatbush about 9:15 a.m. Six people were injured, including a mother and daughter taken to the hospital.
A Brooklyn mother selflessly fought wind-whipped flames raging through her East Flatbush home Saturday morning to rescue her trapped 2-year-old daughter. Six residents were injured in the 9:15 a.m. blaze inside the three-story multifamily home — including the mother and her daughter — after a frenzied search punctuated by the heroics of city firefighters and an off-duty cop. “We saw flames shooting out from the second-floor window right here,” said neighbor Kwanza Butler, 39, who watched in horror as people ran from the burning building and a woman screamed from a top-floor window. “There were people on the third floor yelling, ‘Help!’ At one point, this woman on the third-floor (fire escape) was almost engulfed in flames,” said Butler. “It just covered her. People came out with no clothes, no pants on.” The 32-year-old mom was fighting for her life at Kings County Hospital after rushing into the burning building in search of her toddler, police and witnesses said.
The 32-year-old mother was fighting for her life at Kings County Hospital, while her daughter was also brought to the hospital, and is in serious but stable condition.
The woman’s daughter was in serious but stable condition at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Center. Both suffered from smoke inhalation after being trapped by the flames, cops said. Two other people were hospitalized with minor injuries and two refused medical attention. The fire broke out inside the home on Clarendon Road near E. 32nd St. in East Flatbush about 9:15 a.m. Firefighters had the blaze under control at 9:38 a.m., officials said. While the cause of the fire was under investigation late Saturday, sources said it was likely ignited by a cigarette.
The fire broke out on Clarendon Rd. near E. 32nd St. in East Flatbush at a multi-family home.
Residents Fear Developer’s Plan to Remove Greene Street Fire Escapes
By Danielle Tcholakian | March 18, 2015 3:11pm
@danielleiat
Meet the Drummer Who Rescued Woman Stranded on an East Village Fire Escape
By James Fanelli and Danielle Tcholakian | March 27, 2015 3:27pm
Austin Branda, a humble East Village drummer, bounded up a fire escape to save a stranded resident after Thursday’s explosion. View Full Caption
DNAinfo New York/Danielle TcholakianNEW YORK CITY — When Austin Branda heard Thursday’s massive explosion in the East Village, the aspiring Broadway drummer didn’t miss a beat, immediately springing into the role of hero.
Branda, 45, was the mystery man caught on cell phone video bounding up a fire escape in the minutes after the blast to help save a stranded woman.
The heart-pounding footage shows a frantic resident at 121 Second Ave. — where the explosion emanated — stuck on the lowest level of the fire escape, unable to lower the fire ladder and reach the ground.
Branda can be seen grabbing a chair from the next-door restaurant, Pommes Frites, climbing on it and preparing to jump up to grab the lower rung of the ladder.
Luckily, he didn’t have to make the leap as the woman, with the instruction of an off-duty firefighter, was able to release the ladder down to the ground.
“She finally got it released, and I just flew up,” Branda told DNAinfo New York Friday morning.
When he reached the woman, he got her to hand over her cell phone, then guided her down the ladder as he moved from one rung to the next below her.
“I was body-guarding her against the railing, so if she fell, I’d catch her,” he recalled.
Branda, who works as an usher at Broadway shows, but dreams of joining the pit orchestra as a percussionist, said he was practicing his drums in his apartment when the blast knocked him off his seat.
“I pretty much got blown out of my chair,” he said. “My teeth rattled — and my heart and chest.”
His apartment was directly across from 121 Second Ave., so when he looked out the window to see what happened, he saw the wreckage. The blast had torn through four buildings, leaving a fiery inferno.
Branda said he immediately thought there was a terrorist attack and scanned the street for anyone acting suspiciously.
Then Branda thought back to his childhood, when he lived in Italy while his dad attended medical school there. He remembered a similar explosion of the dry cleaner underneath their home.
“[My dad’s] reaction was to grab ice and towels,” Branda recalled. He did the same Thursday and then headed to the street.
“I ran out of the building and as soon as I ran out, I fixed my eye on this lady on the fire escape,” he said.
When he got the woman back on the ground, he rubbed her back and said, “I’m sorry about this,” to her.
After the good deed, he headed back to his apartment to check on his cat.
Branda said helping the stranded resident wasn’t a big deal.
“I was just one of the guys helping,” he said.
His fiancée, Jessie McGee, thinks otherwise.
“In my eyes, he’s a true New York City hero every day,” she said, “always quick to help anyone he sees in trouble.”
Mom steps out for fresh air, plunges from fire escape
By Kevin Fasick and Natasha Velez
May 8, 2014 | 2:24pm
Modal Trigger
Judy Rivera fell from her building’s fire escape.Photo: Seth Gottfried
A Manhattan mom stepped out onto her fire escape for some fresh air — and it nearly killed her when she reached a faulty step and plunged to the sidewalk Thursday morning, relatives and police said. Judy Rivera, 58, climbed out of her fifth-floor window on West 16th Street at around 6:45 a.m. and was walking the stairs when she is believed to have hit what is now a gap between the third and fourth floors and lost her footing. She tumbled down the stairs and grabbed a railing for dear life. “I looked out and saw her hanging from the outside of the fire escape,” said a neighbor Andrew Rivera, 62. Rivera lost her grip and fell from the third floor to the sidewalk. “I thought she might have been dead,” Andrew Rivera said. “I couldn’t stop crying.” Judy Rivera’s husband, Anthony, said his son woke him up in a panic to say that she had fallen off the fire escape. After they rushed downstairs, they found her writhing in pain on the ground. “It looks like she was walking down and the step just collapsed,” said Anthony Rivera. “I don’t know if she dropped something and went to get it. I just don’t know. I want to know what happened to the step from that fire escape. It’s missing. It was hanging, and now it’s gone.” Minutes before falling, Judy Rivera, a retired nurse, had told her 19-year-old son that she was stepping out onto the fire escape for some air. “I went to the bathroom and . . . all I heard was ‘doom, doom, doom’ — three bangs,” said the son, who, like the neighbor, is named Andrew Rivera. “I looked out and I saw her head, her hair. I looked closer and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s Mom!’ “She was just laying down. It looked like her head was injured.” Modal TriggerRivera’s fire escape allegedly was missing a stair.Photo: Seth Gottfried 
Judy Rivera was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, where, incredibly, she was listed in stable condition. “It’s a miracle [she’s alive],” said Anthony Rivera, who added that his wife may have a broken hip. “[The doctors] said from the height she fell, she’s lucky to be alive.”
FILED UNDER ACCIDENTS, MANHATTAN
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2013
Stairs collapse, fire escape unstable, FDNY evacuates kids from roof
 |
| From Daily News |
LABELS: EAST VILLAGE, FDNY, FIRE ESCAPE, INJURY, PARTY, ROOF, STAIRS
OPERATING SAFELY ON FIRE ESCAPES
03/01/2009BY JOHN FLYNN
In more than 20 years as a MEMBER OF THE Yonkers (NY) Fire Department, I have had to use fire escapes many times. Long ago, I came to realize that fire escapes, while designed to be a method of emergency egress from a building for that building’s occupants, are actually used far more by firefighters than building occupants. Of course, fire escapes have saved many building occupants over the years. Unfortunately, despite the many benefits of fire escapes for building occupants and firefighters, I have seen firefighters become seriously injured while operating on or around fire escapes. Early in my career, I became friends with a senior Yonkers firefighter who had previously been injured and eventually disabled as a result of being struck in the head by a flowerpot that was on a fire escape and knocked off by fleeing occupants. He was working in the area below. Shortly after my graduation from the Fire Academy, one of my classmates was operating on the fireground when a fire escape drop ladder came loose from its tracks while being dropped by other members. My classmate and his lieutenant were struck and injured. The lieutenant suffered serious, painful, disabling neck and back injuries. Later in my career, another friend of mine had climbed a fire escape to reach and assist several building occupants who had scrambled out onto the fire escape to flee an apartment fire. A frantic mother placed an infant in his arms, and he began to descend the fire escape. The fire escape became so crowded with panicked residents that this firefighter, along with the baby, was knocked off the second-floor fire escape landing. Heroically, he managed to orient himself in the air so that he landed on his SCBA and the baby, cradled in his arms, was protected. He fortunately wound up returning to work, and he loves to tell the story that, as thanks for his efforts, another firefighter scooped up the baby and left him there lying in pain to be showered by glass from a window being vented. Another time, another member and I had climbed a fire escape drop ladder to the second-floor landing. We were preparing to vent-enter-search the second-floor apartments. The firefighter with me put down his halligan tool to don his SCBA face piece. He inadvertently knocked the halligan tool off the landing, and we watched helplessly as it spiraled down, striking a firefighter below who was forcing entry to the locked storefront rolldown gates. The firefighter below was injured; fortunately, his helmet took the brunt of the impact, and he returned to work. Most recently, during the time I served as captain of Rescue 1, one of my firefighters was operating on a second-floor fire escape landing, attempting to reach out and vent a window not served by that landing, when he slipped and fell, somersaulted in the air, landed awkwardly, and was impaled by his halligan tool. He suffered very critical injuries and was permanently disabled. This article addresses the lessons learned from these mishaps.BACKGROUND
Understanding different types of fire escapes and the tactics involving their use is important for both urban and suburban firefighters. For the purpose of this article, the term “fire escape” refers to open iron or steel (and in some parts of the country now, aluminum) balconies with steep, generally narrow stairs connecting them, placed on the outside of buildings, primarily intended as a means of egress from the building in case of fire. The first patent for a fixed metal fire escape with stairs in the United States was issued to Anna Connelly in 1887, and she is generally credited for its invention.1 However, as many as 20 years earlier (1867), New York State passed a public law, the First Tenement House Act, which required fire escapes and a window for every room.2 Throughout the United States, fire escapes began to be required in new construction around the turn of the 20th century and were also widely required to be retrofitted to existing buildings depending on local building codes at the time. In most of the United States, fire escapes have not been allowed in new construction, with certain exceptions, since the late 1960s, since interior fire resistant stairs were determined to be a better alternative. Therefore, most of the fire escapes we encounter are anywhere from 40 to more than 100 years old. Sometimes, the buildings to which they are attached are even older. For the most part, these fire escapes have been poorly maintained. Although fire escapes exist for the main purpose of providing a secondary means of egress for tenants from the interior, firefighters regularly use them to access the roof or to reach interior portions of the building for ventilation; rescue; or, occasionally, to advance hoselines.FIRE ESCAPES AND SIZE-UP
During your size-up, when you strive to get a quick look at a minimum of at least three sides of the building, do you see fire escapes? If so, what in particular should you look for regarding their placement and construction? The first thing to note is if people are out on the fire escapes when you arrive. If so, keep this in mind. If the fire has moved so quickly or the alarm has been delayed such that people inside the building have been forced out onto the fire escapes, chances are that additional people are still inside the building and are in more dire need of fire department assistance (rescue and fire extinguishment) than those on the fire escapes. The people on the fire escapes have actually already “escaped” the fire. These people will most likely be in a panicked state, and they are not completely out of harm’s way; but in the overwhelming majority of cases, the priorities for first-arriving fire companies should be forcible entry and search, placement of hoselines, and accessing the roof for ventilation purposes.
(1) Typical fire escape stairs to the roof with platform. (Photos by author.) |
FIRE ESCAPE CONSTRUCTION
Do these fire escapes have drop ladders, counterbalance stairs, or gooseneck ladders?Drop Ladders
Most fire escapes have a drop ladder, also known as a guillotine ladder, which is a heavy iron or steel ladder, usually fixed to the side of the lowest balcony landing and held off the ground by an iron or steel hook attached on a hinge to the second-floor balcony landing or to a point on the building wall above. This is done to prevent intruders from gaining access to the building through the fire escape and also to keep the sidewalk or roadway below clear.
(2) This drop ladder rail came off its guide (all too typical). |
(3) The proper positioning for safely lowering a drop ladder. |
(4) This angle iron has broken loose from its weld and will fall to the ground when the drop ladder is lowered. This piece is part of the assembly that holds the drop ladder in its tracks.
Counterbalanced Stairs
Some fire escapes are designed with counterbalanced stairs instead of a drop ladder, although this is much less common in most localities. This system is more likely to be found on commercial occupancies. Fire escapes with counterbalanced stairs are often found on old factories being converted into loft apartments. These fire escapes have, instead of a drop ladder, a set of stairs to the ground attached on a hinge system. A counterweight system usually holds up the stairs; the stairs are designed to go down gradually as the occupants walk out onto them and their weight exceeds the opposing weight of the counterbalance system. Counterbalanced stairs can be very dangerous. Do not stand underneath counterbalanced stairs or the counterweight at any time, especially when you must pull down the stairs with a hook to gain access.
(7) This very old counterweight stair is attached to an overhead pulley system. |
(8) A very odd (and dangerous) counterweight system that has been retrofitted to a drop ladder. Always look up and expect the unexpected. |
(9) Drop ladders will typically bend when dropped, which is evidence of how heavy they are and how much damage they can do to the human body. |
Gooseneck Ladders
A gooseneck ladder is attached to the topmost fire escape landing, which extends straight up to the roof, over the roof line, and then bends down (like a gooseneck) and attaches to the roof structure. Normally, the ends of the ladder are lagged into the roof joist and are covered with the roof tar. In some instances, the neck of the ladder can also have two metal support arms, which are also tied into the roof joist or parapet for added support. Climbing a gooseneck ladder can be very dangerous. It is difficult when carrying a tool and almost impossible when carrying a saw. So, use a strap on the saw.
(5) Proper positioning for climbing a questionably anchored gooseneck ladder. Note also the saw on the strap. |
(6) Resist the temptation to jump down from here, creating an impact load. |
(10) A typical gooseneck ladder. |
(11) Use the slim-profile maneuver to get through this space while wearing SCBA. |
Endnotes
1. United States Patent and Trademark Office, www.uspto.gov/. 2. Lower East Side Tenement Museum Web site-description of New York Tenement Laws, http://www.tenement.org/features_dolkart2.html/. JOHN FLYNN is deputy chief and a 20-year veteran of the Yonkers (NY) Fire Department. He has served as an instructor at two Yonkers Probationary Fire Academies and was an adjunct fire instructor for the New York State Fire Academy, teaching technical rescue. He was assigned as captain of Rescue 1 for nine years. He attended Fordham University and has a degree in fire protection technology from Corning Community College.
Fire Forces Residents To Flee
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Thick, black smoke billowed from a building in Brooklyn this morning as a fire forced residents to climb down the fire escape to safety. The fire broke out in a Benson Avenue apartment building in the Bath Beach neighborhood. Five people were injured – one critically, three seriously and one minor. Chopper 2’s Dan Rice was over the scene as fire officials inspected the damage. One side of the building could be seen blackened from the fire. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
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