Let me guess: You’re new to these parts, aren’t you? Rick’s kinda famous for linking to items about Republican nefariousness (sometimes really OLD items, although he’s been better about that lately).
Well, more inattentive, I’d say. Thanks for the heads up, and apologies to Rick for the “bark first, think later” post.
Dan
Man, he didn’t wait long to start acting like a dickhead. What is it with NYC mayors?
Isn’t “Fuck you!” a polite greeting in NYC?
More on the new mayor of New York. There was a recent fire in an apartment building where 19 people died and multiple people went to the hospital. It turns out the building is owned by a member of the mayor’s transition team and it had multiple warnings about heating. The fire was caused by an electric heater because the residents didn’t have heat.
You make it sound like the member of the mayor’s transition team personally owned the building. Not exactly. From The New York Times, “The tower is owned by three investors — LIHC Investment Group, Belveron Partners and Camber Property Group — that purchased it with seven other rent-regulated buildings in the borough for $166 million in early 2020. One of Camber’s co-founders, Rick Gropper, is a housing adviser to Mr. Adams.”
So is he absolved from any problems in the buildings he and his group own?
Yes, that’s exactly what I said. (And now you’re changing your language to “the buildings he and his group own”.)
I changed my language in response to your comment. And you really believe that he has no responsibility to make sure the properties he is responsible for are not safe from killing people?
Did I say that he has no responsibility?
You said that you agreed with my question as to whether he is absolved from any problems in the buildings he and his group own.
Sorry, I was being sarcastic, which doesn’t always translate well to text.
I think I see four ‘no heat’ complaints in a year in the data from that tweet.
In a 50 year old, 19-story building with 120 apartments ?
Too soon to assess blame beyond the apparent faulty space heater.
I don’t see the complaint history as being particularly egregious. Looking at it closely, it seems like there are multiple complaints related to each reported incident…….for example, adjacent complaints of broken sink, water leak and mold made on the same day from the same apartment are probably the result of someone saying there’s a leak under my sink and it’s causing mold.
About a third of the complaints came from the same apartment over a 2 day period….there may be something else going on - or maybe it was a new tenant. But every building has that one person that complains about everything.
And some of the complaints are for minor items that are not safety related…like broken refrigerator seals.
That said, there is one complaint in particular that I found very interesting…and it may be damning for the building owner or management….the report that a self-closing door wasn’t working properly.
Self-closing doors are fire mitigation, and a malfunctioning door closing mechanism is a huge safety violation.
I have read reporting that an open door contributed to the rapid fire spread, but I’m unclear as to whether it was an apartment door ( which would not have to be self-closing ) or an interior door between halls or stairways (which would).
I think I had assumed it was the door to an apartment- it’s not uncommon for people in a panic to flee a burning apartment without closing the door- but if a broken interior door contributed to the spread, that would be bad news for someone.
Are you sure about that? I have not lived in an apartment with an interior door in decades, and I do not recall them being self-closing. Some hotel doors used to not be self-closing but now they all are. I would not be surprised to learn that regs have changed, or vary, or that insurance companies have taken to leaning on their customers harder.
I own an apartment in an NYC building of roughly the same vintage as the one that caught fire, and the apartment doors aren’t self-closing - only the door between the hall and stairwell and exterior doors have the mechanism.
I lived in NYC until a few years ago and I don’t recall ever seeing a closing arm on an apartment door- if you’re having a party it’s common to leave the door to your apartment cracked open so you don’t have to keep opening the door for new arrivals, and this would not be possible with self-closing doors.
And I very quickly checked the building codes before I made the post, and I didn’t see anything about self-closing doors on the individual apartment units.
So I’m not 100% positive, but I’m pretty sure.
However, if a fleeing resident leaving their door open was a primary reason for the fast spread of this fire, I would not be at all surprised if there wasn’t a big push towards legislating self-close mechanisms on the doors to individual apartments. It might not be a bad idea.
And seriously, if you ever have to flee an apartment because of fire, make sure the last person out closes the door. It makes a big difference.
Some reports I’ve read seem to say that the fire itself did not engulf the whole building, but the billowing smoke largely did, and that’s what caused many casualties.
Would smoke alone have triggered the self-closing doors?
I think the “self-closing” refers to doors that automatically shut behind you when you go through them, usually because there is a mechanism that pulls them shut if they are not being actively held open or blocked. Nothing triggers them.
Okay, I’m thinking of something else then. Fire doors. These are doors in hallways or stairwells that are held open by an electromagnet or mechanical latch, that are triggered (by heat?) in much the same way as fire sprinklers. Then they close.
I lived in a rooming house for a couple years that had these, at intervals along the whole length of the main hallway.
ETA: It was an old old wooden building. There was an open understanding that if the building caught fire, it would be fully engulfed in about 10 minutes, and some people would die. The fire doors and other safety measures we had in place were intended to, hopefully, minimize that.
A stairwell fire door – on the 15th floor – reportedly malfunctioned. I can’t find anything that mentions whether or not the door is normally held open.