Not used to cold weather, and may not even have known that closing a door is very good at slowing the spread of smoke and/or fire.
By fire code, the doors are supposed to have automatic closers. In some cases this means a spring closer that shuts the door every time, and in some cases it’s an electromagnet that holds the door open most of the time, only releasing it when the fire alarm is triggered. Whichever type they had in this building, they weren’t working properly, allowing the fire and smoke to spread.
On top of that, occupants of large buildings are absolutely terrible about responding to fire alarms. Thus has it ever been. Decades ago my dad was away on a business trip when the fire alarm at his hotel went off. He did the whole feel-the-door thing, took the fire stairs down to the lobby, and at that point noticed he was pretty much the only one down there. He asked the desk clerk WTF, and the clerk said that was a pretty normal response from occupants. I saw basically the same thing during a fire alarm at a hotel I stayed in ten years ago. The above article confirms that this was an issue in the Bronx fire
Some experiences of those caught in the fire:
or if you have paywall problems:
I have lived in NYC 20+ years and have never seen an apartment that had an automatic self-closing front door. Are they talking about the stairwell doors?
I have lived in two countries and seven states. I have never seen automatic door closer on apartment doors and I’ve been in many apartments in my 64 years. Every time I hear someone referring to them I get confused as well.
Fire doors everywhere I’ve been have automatic closers as do hotel rooms.
While I have much sympathy for everyone suffering from this, I would like to be able to understand how it happened a little better.
I’ve seen several of them in NYC.
My son who lives in the Bronx a mile away from the fire has one, I saw it today. Last year he lived in an apartment a block away from his current one which also had a self-closing front door. Another relative who lives on East 49th St has one, I saw it last week. And a longtime friend who’s lived on West 52nd St for 26 years also has one.
On the other hand none of the 5 apartments where I lived in the Bronx or Manhattan over a 10 year period had them.
Here’s a common closer on Amazon:
https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChcSEwivg6WKirj1AhVDklsKHYfcB_wYABAJGgJ5bQ&ae=2&sig=AOD64_2O-wgxCKB57HE6GGubsfpuX06HSg&ctype=5&q=&ved=2ahUKEwjn6ZuKirj1AhWzjIkEHfqgBswQ9aACegQIARBM&adurl=
I keep seeing articles that say "all residential buildings " must have self-closing doors - but the actual current law only requires self-closing doors in multiple dwellings (those with more than three units) , was only passed in 2018 and gave landlords until July 2021 to install the self-closing doors. ( there may have been some different law prior to 2018, but if so, I haven’t found it). So that might have something to do with why people have seen many apartments in NYC over many years and never seen a self-closing door.
Another thing that I am actually sort of wondering about is whether people are envisioning something specific by “self-closing doors” - it just means a door that closes if it isn’t held open. It might have the type of door closer linked above - or it might just have a spring hinge.
My apartment unit has radiators on one side of the apartment only. My room can get cold. (I invested in a very heavy blanket instead.)
Ah, thanks for the spring hinges link. I must have seen those too. And all my sightings of self-closing doors that I can remember are within the past 3 years, in buildings with 4+ apartments. The buildings I lived in that didn’t have them were either smaller with just 3 apartments and I’m looking back over 20 years ago as well.
Here’s some news:
There’s been another fire in a different building; no deaths reported this time.