Tragedy of London’s Grenfell Tower: Could it happen in New York? Maybe...Must follow FDNY rules - by Evan Lipstein

Evidenced by countless events that have occurred in New York City dating back as far as 1776. Six days after the British invaded New York in the Revolutionary War, a fire destroyed nearly 500 buildings. There was the Great Fire of 1835, nearly 700 buildings burned, mostly stores, warehouses and businesses in the city’s financial district. In 1876, The Brooklyn Theater Fire occurred in a theater in Brooklyn when a fire broke out killing 300 people. On March 25, 1911: The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire at Greene St. and Washington Place killed 146 garment workers, most of them young girls. The fire started on the eighth floor. Trapped on the top three floors of a 10-story building, some of the victims jumped to their deaths trying to avoid the flames. On the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire another tragedy occurred. On March 25, 1990, 87 people died after flames blocked the only open door at the Happy Land Social Club fire. This horrific list goes on and on. 

So what caused the Grenfell Tower to burn so horribly? Fire officials revealed that a fire started by a faulty refrigerator that ignited cladding and insulation cheap aluminum panels with a flammable core that appears to have created a chimney effect and spread flames and smoke up the building’s exterior.

In New York, buildings with Aluminum panels are common, but the less costly version with the flammable polyethylene core are not permissible materials here. Similar aluminum/polyethylene panels on Grenfell Tower’s skin were also blamed in three fires in Dubai.

In 2017, New York City has some of the most stringent fire safety laws in the United States, but that does not make us immune from these terrible tragedies.

Accidents occur without warning: gas leaks, faulty wiring sparks a blaze, smoking in bed, someone leaving a pot on the stovetop unattended...these things happen. It would be a true statement to say that all high-rise buildings are not protected equally — commercial towers have far more safety requirements than residential towers. 

Under more stringent commercial high-rise buildings safety rules office properties require sprinkler systems, fire safety plans, fire safety directors, mass communication systems and glow-in-the dark markings to help potential victims find their way safely to exits. Commercial office buildings occupants are well protected.

However the majority of fire tragedies occur in residential properties, not office buildings. Today’s laws leave the majority of residential high-rise occupancies comparably unprotected when compared to high-rise office buildings.

With people cooking, smoking, lighting candles in their home environment and where people are asleep for many hours; it is even more important to be protected in residential buildings.

Thankfully, Local Law 10 adopted in 1999 requires all residential buildings with four or more units built after 1999 to install a sprinkler system, which most experts agree is the single most effective way to save lives in a fire. However there are many hundreds of thousands of people living in apartment buildings without sprinkler systems.

Things are improving though. In June of 2016, a new rule enforced by the FDNY, 3 RCNY §505-01, “Apartment and Guest Room Identification and Directional Markings and Signs,” set new requirements for the design and placement of entrance door room markings for all residential properties in Group R-1 and Group R-2. These new rule mandates that residential properties install hallway corridor directional signs to assist firefighters crawling on hands and knees to identify apartment numbers in smoke conditions that obscure the regular (eye-level) door numbers. The markings help firefighters more quickly conduct search and rescue operations.

The bottom line is that residential property owners and managers need to reexamine their buildings fire safety measures. The relatively low cost to install non-electric photoluminescent low-location pathway markings is proven method to help control the response to a blackout, fire or smoke emergency and possibly help prevent loss of life.

Evan Lipstein is the president and owner of Hyline Safety Company, Manhattan, N.Y.