Posted on 12/28/2017 7:17:58 PM PST by Lonely Bull
BELMONT, the Bronx — Twelve people are dead and several others injured as a massive fire ripped through an apartment building in the Bronx on a frigid night, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a press conference on Thursday.
About 170 firefighters responded to the blaze at the five-story, walk-up apartment building at 2363 Prospect Ave., near East 187th Street around 7 p.m. It quickly escalated to a 5-alarm fire.
(Excerpt) Read more at pix11.com ...
Very sad. Not being familiar with New York, what does “walk-up apartment building” mean?
Horrible.
Yikes! It couldn’t be much more than 15 degrees there tonight...possibly unsafe use of a space heater.
"...walk-up apartment building..."
The building (or at least the part with the apartments) lacked an elevator.
Thanks for the info. After posting, figured that’s what it might mean.
I'm not sure of the exact definition but I think it's a building that has a basement floor that you walk down stairs to get into and a long stairway up into the main foyer.I've never been in one but I've seen many...they're very common in NYC.
Old. No elevators.
Rent control, strict zoning codes, anti-landlord laws. Landlords will say F it and won’t do a thing to invest in their properties. Other landlords simply won’t build.
With 12 degree temps outside, this was likely a faulty space heater or someone using their oven to heat the place.
“walk-up apartment”
Unless there were fire-doors, the building was one big chimney - once she caught.
Very sad.
imagine trying to carry the little ones down the fire escape in minus 12 degrees in the dark
prayers for all
I know someone who was a landlord in NYC. There are far more tenants than landlords in the voting rolls, and government there does not respect many limits, so all the laws there are very heavily slanted against landlords.
These older buildings freak me out because there’s typically no fire control equipment like smoke curtains, sprinklers, or fire doors.
Probably ovens were turned on, space heaters on, steam was not working and somewhere there was a gas leak which a space heater ignited.
Prayers for those experiencing shattering loss tonight.
RIP.
That’s right; one of the problems in the city is that individuals found it less and less profitable to operate rental properties, so the city is heavily involved with public housing - and it is a nightmare (with no evil landlord to blame but the city government itself).
A news story last year showed a lot of darker residents complaining that new city housing buildings were being filled with Orientals; apparently the gibsmedats were “entitled” to those new units...
You’ll probably find an extension cords with what appear to be droplets of copper in the wire itself, that is where the fire started. Ordinary structure fires do not get hot enough to melt copper, but electrically induced heating will(overloaded circuits.shorts,etc)melt copper.
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