Results tagged “illegalsubdivision”

After the Queens fire that killed three and injured four others in an illegally subdivided home, people are speaking out against illegal subdivisions. Queens Civic Congress president Corey Bearak told the NY Times, "It’s not just about taxing sewer lines and overcrowding in schools and parking. Ultimately, what happens with these fires, it manifests itself in people dying, and it’s absolutely outrageous." And some tenants have no idea they are living in dangerous apartments or rooms, with one saying "We didn’t know. Where are we going to go? It makes me angry." Landlords have said they bought the buildings with the subdivisions already in place.

As debate continues over whether a fire dispatcher's typo led to three deaths and four injuries in a Woodside, Queens home on Saturday, it turns out the basement apartments where the victims lived had been eyed by the Department of Buildings before. According to the Daily News, the two-family home "had been illegally converted into a five-family residence with another seven single rooms"—but when the DOB inspected it in 1990 and 2004, they found nothing wrong!

Firefighter Jeffrey Cool described the conditions of the January 23, 2005 fire that claimed the lives of two firefighters, "I saw flames from the floor to the ceiling... It was just real crazy. It was starting to get like hell in there." The tenants of a Bronx building, as well as the building's owner and manager, face manslaughter charges for illegally subdividing the space, essentially creating a death trap for the firefighters. The fire also raised questions about the FDNY's decision to stop supplying ropes to firefighters (Lt. Curtis Meyran and Firefighter John G. Bellew leaped to escape the blaze, but died, while Cool had a personal safety rope he bought). Cool admitted he sued the FDNY over not supplying ropes, but the Post reports he was testy when the defense lawyer asked him how long it took to fight the fire, "That's a good question. Because I was laying on my back in the alley."