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A Times investigation shows how a high-rise in New York turned into a deadly chimney of smoke.
How stairwells became chimneys
Twin Parks North West, an affordable housing development built in 1972, is like many older apartment high-rises in New York City, which have minimal or no sprinklers: it relies primarily on compartments to keep smoke from spreading in the event on fire . This means that the doors must automatically close and lock after someone walks through them. If the doors are closed, the smoke is largely contained. If not, residents are at risk of serious injury or death from smoke inhalation.
At Twin Parks North West, the unit broke down in at least three locations on January 9. Not only the door of the Apt. 3N, where the fire started, remained open, as did the two doors to the third floor stairwells for long periods of time. Doors to stairwells on at least two higher floors also malfunctioned, allowing smoke to enter the building.
“You have a gross error of separation because after a few minutes there is smoke everywhere,” said Jose L. Torero, a professor at University College London who has investigated major fires, including the World Trade Center on 9/11 and Britain’s Grenfell Tower in 2017 .
There is sure to be considerable debate—technical, political, and legal—about who is responsible for leaving so many doors partially or fully open when closing them could have saved lives. Door maintenance and the actions of building staff and some tenants are likely to come under scrutiny.
Using evidence obtained by The Times and a 3-D model of the building created by the Times, a team led by Albert Simeoni, head of the fire protection engineering department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, created a simulation of the smoke path on Jan. 9 , The simulation was for corridors, stairwells and the apartment where the fire started – the main smoke channels – but not for individual apartments in the building, where information about door openings was limited.
Cries for help
The most direct indication of how quickly the smoke was moving through the building is also the most heartbreaking: calls to 911 from residents trapped in their apartments struggling to breathe, some with children, pleading for help, directions and information.
Within 10 minutes of the first 911 call, smoke was already reported on the 16th floor. The calls were made from over 40 of the 120 apartments.
While the city awaits the results of an official investigation, the scale of the disaster is undisputed. “The Twin Parks fire is one of the worst in our city’s history,” said Acting Fire Commissioner Laura Cavanagh, “with innocent lives taken by a deadly combination of a heater fire and open doors on multiple floors that let in smoke scattered throughout the building.
The investigation is likely to center around self-closing doors. In interviews with The Times, Mr. Yolles, a spokesman for the building’s ownership group, and a city official said that when the residents fled, the door to 3N was left open, possibly by an extra layer of flooring, although it was not clear whether it was thick enough to make a difference. An attorney representing the Wagues said there would be no comment from the family at this time.
Reliant Realty Services, the management company, said in a statement that door 3N “was found to be working properly” after an inspection last year, and that the fire department and the building’s tenants were primarily to blame. “Third floor doors were opened repeatedly during the fire by residents and FDNY firefighting operations, causing smoke to fill the stairwells and reach the upper floors,” the company said.
Reliant’s claims are difficult to reconcile with visual evidence from security camera footage. That evidence has not been made public, but a city official described it to The Times. The official said the footage showed the door to the third-floor stairwell never locked after a construction worker opened it, and that the door to the 15th-floor stairwell got stuck after a tenant opened it earlier .
“To be very clear, prior to the FDNY’s arrival at this fire, the third floor, stairwell and several upper floors were filled with thick, suffocating smoke due to multiple open doors throughout the building,” said James Long, a spokesman for the New York Fire Department. “To claim that the firefighters who are bravely working to save the lives of residents are the cause of the smoke reaching the upper floors is an insult and a gross abdication of responsibility,” he said.
The city’s more modern high-rises, or older ones that have been retrofitted, have numerous additional safety features, including sprinklers and fire alarms linked to ‘central stations’ and hence fire stations. There was an alarm system at Twin Parks North West, but it was not connected to fire stations, the building’s owners confirmed.
Mr. Yolles, a spokesman for the building’s owners, said that when the building was built, the system was in compliance with New York State code and that the owners planned to upgrade it.
The extra safeguards provide “redundancies” or backups in case another safety feature fails, said Jonathan Barnett, a fire safety expert who has investigated the World Trade Center fires since 9/11 and was a consultant on the official Grenfell Tower inquiry. of 2017 fire in London. “The point is, if you’re going to rely on one system and one system only, you better make sure it works,” he said.
Methodology
The 3-D model of the building is based on architectural drawings from the New York City Department of Buildings. The Times reviewed design and planning documents and personally inspected parts of the building, including one of the two stairwells, after the fire.
To better understand how the disaster unfolded, The Times spoke with residents about what they witnessed on Jan. 9 and the conditions on many floors of the building before and during the fire. Times reporters reviewed photos and videos taken by residents during the fire and evacuation, as well as those officers filmed afterward. The Times also examined video that witnesses shot and uploaded to Citizen, an app that allowed bystanders to document the minute-by-minute progress of the fire. Through a Freedom of Information Act request, Times reporters obtained audio recordings of 911 calls made by residents the morning of the fire. To verify which apartments the calls were made from and when they happened, we synchronized the 911 calls with the fire dispatch report received by the NYPD.
The Times asked scientists at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts to run multiple simulations to explain how smoke could race so freely through the building. The simulations were led by Albert Simeoni, professor and head of the department of fire protection, and performed by Muthu Kumaran Selvaraj, a postdoctoral researcher in the department. The simulations were created using software called Fire Dynamics Simulator, developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and widely used by researchers and investigators to evaluate smoke flow in structures.
Times reports and public information from the New York City Fire Department informed the boundary conditions and other inputs to the simulation. These include the starting point and overall development of the fire; the times when windows were broken; and whether certain doors are open, closed or simply not functioning properly — including the opening of stairwell doors on the third, 15th and 19th floors. This input also included first-hand observations of the stairwells, which helped us determine, for example, that the stairwells did not have pressurization or smoke extraction systems to mitigate the flow of smoke. Many different scenarios were run to determine the impact of opening or closing certain doors, exactly how the fire developed and other conditions in the building.
The simulations used ventilation calculations based on the New York State Building Code of 1964. Twin Parks North West was built in 1972. After consulting with fire safety experts, we chose a method to determine how long stairwell doors were open only to exit each floor. We used a conservative estimate of the number of seconds a properly functioning door would take to open for any occupant to exit.
When accurate information about conditions inside the building was not available, some approximations were made based on reasonable estimates derived from video surveillance, photographic evidence, descriptions contained in 911 calls, interviews with residents and city officials, and public statements by fire department officials. For example, heavy smoke coming out of several windows indicates that there is a path for smoke and air to flow from the interior hallway to the exterior. Since the details of this path are not known, the simulation approximates the flow.
Sources: Jose L. Torero, University College London; Albert Simeoni, Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Muthu Kumaran Selvaraj, Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Charles Jennings, John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Philip J. Landrigan, Program in Global Public Health and the Common Good at Boston College; Robin Gershon, New York University; Brian Meacham, Meacham Associates; Jonathan Barnett, Principal Expert; Jack J. Murphy, John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Gregory A. James, JB&B; Rainald Lohner, George Mason University; Brian Klein, Thunderhead Engineering; New York City Department of Buildings; New York Police Department; Fire Department of New York
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