Firefi ghters escort tenants to safety after smoke consumed the
19-story building in the Bronx, claiming the lives of 19 people on
Sunday. Photo | Adrian Childress
BRONX TIMES REPORTER, J BTR JAN. 14-20, 2022 7
and smoke to exacerbate and spread
throughout the complex.
“Opening windows, leaving doors
ajar as they fl ee, it’s one of the biggest
mistakes people make in fi res,” said
Taylor Vecsey, who is a fi re captain
and EMS medical technician for Long
Island’s Bridgehampton Fire Department.
“If the door was closed, the fi re’s
spread would not have been as bad.”
Mayor Adams said the city has
opened an investigation into the
Bronx apartment building. In addition
to looking into the cause of the
fi re and how it spread so quickly,
he said the city would investigate
whether self-closing doors were properly
functioning.
In addition to the violations regarding
the self-closing doors, the building
management had been notorious, according
to residents, for not addressing
residential complaints regarding
lack of heat and hot water, among
other complaints. Before Sunday’s
fi re, there were 18 open violations
against the property,
with 174 total violations
levied since
new ownership took
over in 2020, records
fi led with the city Department
of Housing
Preservation and Development
show.
Throughout its
123 building portfolio,
Bronx Park Phase
III Preservation LLC
has a total of 11,801
residential units, but
within just the last
three years had received
2,468 heat and
hot water complaints
submitted to the
city’s 311 service, according
to NYC-based tenant-organizing
service JustFix NYC.
Hamza said that since he’s been
a tenant of Twin Parks North West,
there had “always” been issues with
suffi cient heat in apartments during
the city’s cold spells, and doesn’t
entirely blame the use of the space
heater that started the fi re. Instead, in
his eyes, fault lies mainly with building
management.
“The tragedy in this is that this
isn’t something that happened in
just one day, this has been years and
years of neglecting the needs of tenants,”
said Hamza, who said he is unsure
of his living plans following the
fi re. “There are families starting (Go-
FundMe) fundraisers for the family
members and friends that this ownership
group and this city failed to protect.
They should be the ones covering
funeral expenses.”
Last year, more than 30 complaints
were fi led by residents of the Twin
Parks North West over poor living conditions
from city-banned lead paint
in various units to invasive mice and
roach infestations through the 19-story
complex.
In 2013, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo
had given the landlord of the Twins
Parks North West property roughly
$38 million in tax-exempt bonds and
Photo | Lloyd Mitchell
$1.6 million per year in tax credits to
refurbish apartment units and also ensure
upgrades to security systems and
the lobby, but not fi re safety or equipment
upgrades.
While building offi cials said that
there were “no known issues” with
the smoke alarms in the Twins Parks
North West building, residents told the
Bronx Times on Sunday that the fi re
alarm would get “triggered” at random
times, and that it could’ve played a role
in residents not knowing if the alarm
was an emergency signal.
The spokesperson with Bronx Park
Phase III Preservation LLC said that
they are working on addressing any issues
stemming from the fi re, and that
anyone who needs long-term housing
due to the fi re will be accommodated
“without question.”
But for some, after the tragic events
of Sunday, home won’t be the same.
When Twins Parks North West
was constructed in 1972, it was hailed
as a fi rst-of-its kind housing venture
in New York City. The building once
lauded for its humane subsidized housing,
also was a refuge for immigrant
and Muslim communities from The
Gambia and elsewhere.
First-generation Bronxite Omar
Baldeh, 17, said when his family moved
from Gambia to the housing project in
the late 1990s, it was a different quality
of living than what he later experienced
growing up in the complex.
“My family used to tell me how nice
it was to have an apartment near the
mosques and in this beautiful Gambian
community,” said Baldeh, whose
mother is still in the hospital due to the
effects of smoke inhalation from Sunday.
“But as I started growing up, I realized
that things would stay broken
forever, and we would have very cold
winter nights without heat for months,
and it felt like landlords or whoever
don’t care about us.”
For Baldeh, who lives on the sixth
fl oor of the building, he continues to relive
the terrible memories and haunting
visuals from Sunday’s fi re.
“I can’t get the screams out of my
head, I can’t get the sirens out of my
head, I can’t look at my home anymore
without thinking about how many people
died, and how much of it could have
been prevented,” he said. “It’s going to
be tough going home, and I hope I don’t
have to (go home) without my mom.”
Sunday’s fi re was the second time
in a week that a massive fi re ravaged
a low-income apartment building. In
Philadelphia’s Fairmount neighborhood,
a fi re broke out in a duplex row
house — which is owned by the Philadelphia
Housing Authority — that
claimed the lives of 12 people, nine of
them children.
In both incidents, fi re safety offi -
cials believe the fi res were not only
preventable, but should be a wake-up
call for increased fi re safety legislation.
There is currently no federal law
requiring sprinklers and smoke detectors
to be retrofi tted in existing highrises
despite the fact that advocates
have been pushing for it over the last
several decades.
Chief Ronald Jon Siarnicki, the executive
director of the National Fallen
Firefi ghters Foundation and a former
Maryland fi re chief, has been vocal
about how lack of adequate fi re protection
in high-rises not only puts residents
and the public at risk, but also
is causing collateral damage to fi rst
responders. Sinarcki believes that one
way to prevent the tragedies that led to
loss of life and home in Philadelphia
and the Bronx is if local law required
adequate fi re protection in buildings.
“It shouldn’t take tragedies like
this to enforce
the minimum national
fi re and life
safety codes and
standards, especially
when we’ve
known for decades
how dangerous
this is for citizens
and fi rst responders,”
Siarnicki
said. “On top of the
unbearable loss
for the residents
and communities
impacted, there
is an incredible
toll on fi refi ghters
too. It’s hard to get
over the sights and
smells of responding
to tragedies like this. There is a
physical and mental toll — on top of the
toxic environment fi refi ghters are exposed
to responding to these fi res.”
Siarnicki said that for New York
City’s trademark multifamily and
high-rise complexes to adhere to fi re
code they should have functional
smoke alarms and sprinkler systems
and residents should be given two
possible escape routes. Fire safety advocates
hope that the $56 billion currently
included in the federal Build
Back Better plan to improve fi re protection
in public housing authorities
could make a big difference.
Additionally, fi re safety experts
hope that there will be an eventual
approval of The Public Housing Fire
Safety Act — which aims to hand out
$25 million in grants every year for a
decade to upgrade fi re protection including
fi re alarms and sprinklers in
public housing — that was introduced
to Congress in 2019.
“A minimum national safety standard
is not optional, nor should we allow
it to be ignored by those that are
responsible for the enforcement of
minimum fi re and life safety codes and
standards,” said Shane Ray, president
of the National Fire Sprinkler Association
(NFSA) and a former fi re chief in
Pleasant View, Tennessee.
Displaced tenants in shock after experiencing one the worst
fi res the city has seen since the 1990s.
Photo | Lloyd Mitchell