Two Apartment Fires, NYC Dec 16 and, NYC, 11 AM Jan 9 5

[FacEngrPE]

News 4 New York City December 17, 2021 10:05 pm
FDNY: Deadly Apartment Fire Caused by E-Bike Batteries
Event was DEC 16 2021

The cause of Thursday’s apartment building fire has been linked to lithium batteries from an electric bike. NBC New York’s Jonathan Dienst reports.

East 181st, (Bronx) NYC. 11 AM Jan 9, The toll 19 dead, 60 injured. Initial reports said the fire was on the third floor of the 19-story building. The 120-unit building in the Twin Parks North West complex was built in 1973. A sprinkler system is not installed.

Investigators are trying to determine why safety doors failed to close in a New York City high-rise when a deadly fire broke out.

If the LiIon battery in bicycles theory holds up in the investigation, now we have a serious contender with LiIon car battery fires, with a higher likelyhood of storage in living spaces.

Moon161 is correct these two events are separate but as both contain situations which engineering can be improved, I am going to leave this thread up to see what develops.

 

[moon161]

Not that I didn't get a LiFePO4 battery for my scooter instead of a Lithium Ion because of the rep for fires, but you're conflating two different fires, and the last one was traced (apparently by witnesses) to a space heater instead of bike batteries, per the article that you linked.

 

[cranky108]

And made worse by a door that was supposed to be closed, but was open.

Lets see, affordable housing, a fire door to be kept closed, a space heater (likely because the normal heat did not work well), and someone moving in (I made that up), so they blocked the fire door open.
Sounds likely, and could happen in most affordable housing in the US.

What lessons will be learned out of this? (I expect none).

 

[spsalso]

So a space heater malfunctioned and generated huge quantities of smoke.

I wonder why this space heater was made using a substance that would do that. Since most/all metals won't, I am left with plastics. Why would that much plastic be used in making a space heater?



spsalso

 

[TugboatEng]

Maybe the space heater was used to heat the battery on the bike?

Hydrogen flouride is a byproduct of burning lithium batteries. That would explain why the smoke was so deadly.

An interesting thought on what really is "smoke inhalation". We all breath smoke sitting around the camp fire and it causes no immediate damages. I think with smoke inhalation in general the damage done by breathing super hot air, smokey or not. It sounds as if the fire was relatively contained and there weren't burn victims in the hallways, only victims in respiratory/cardiac arrest. I think that would point towards the presence of a more toxic or acid gas.

 

[SwinnyGG]

Why would that much plastic be used in making a space heater?

I mean.. I suspect that in 202X you would be hard pressed to buy a space heater in the United States that isn't majority plastic by volume.

 

[TugboatEng]

Are these residents required to practice evacuation drills? Maybe that needs to be a regular practice for residents of high rise buildings. They make cruise ship passengers do it.

 

[spsalso]

Plastic space heaters?

Looked on Amazon, and there they (appeared) to be, judging by the swooping curves of some of them.

But, no, not "hard pressed" to find metal ones. They're there, too. The last one I bought, when I lived in a tiny little shack, was one of those 1500W 6" sheet metal cubes. Worked great!

Well then. It surely is interesting to find what appear to be "flammable" space heaters (a small version of those famous London towers).

Hmmmm. Lawsuits or criminal charges. Hmmm....


spsalso

 

[bones206]

so they blocked the fire door open.
Sounds likely, and could happen in most affordable housing in the US.

There is widespread reporting of investigators flagging malfunctioning fire doors as a potential factor.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/01/11/bronx-apartment-fire-updates/9168150002/

New York City inspectors had cited the building at least five times for issues with its self-closing doors between 2013 and 2019, according to a Department of Housing Preservation and Development database. Four were at apartments and one was at the stairwell on the third floor, and all were corrected, the records show.

A complaint related to a self-closing door was also listed on the Department of Housing Preservation and Development website as recently as last month.

From what I understand these doors and their mechanisms are finnicky and a constant maintenance issue. I don't know too much about them, but I feel like there is probably room for some engineering to improve reliability here.

 

[SwinnyGG]

Are the complaints publicly available? I would bet money that the complaints filed and corrected are for people blocking the doors open or disconnecting the closer arms.

There are two common types:

A) A normal fire door with a standard closer which is not ever permitted to be blocked open for any reason. These are typically located on exterior walls, stairwell entrance/exits, and in major thoroughfares, and as such are blocked open constantly. These are the door type on 99% of stairwell doors in the US; in high rise housing I would be people get tired of having to open them with handfulls of shit when they're bringing home groceries or whatever, so they disconnect the closer arm (which takes about 10 seconds with a screwdriver for most types) and render the self-closing function of the door inoperable.

B) A fire door which is, by design, open all the time but has a hydraulic closer and an electric hold-open mounted to the wall. This is an electromagnet mounted to the wall which works with a bracket on the door leaf to hold the door open. Any power failure or trip of the fire alarm depowers the magnet and the closer pulls the door shut. These are by definition on a fire alarm circuit, using fire alarm electrical components. These are extremely reliable. Very common in hospitals.

Type A is mechanically very reliable, but people CONSTANTLY block them open. If an inspector finds a fire or smoke barrier door blocked open, the owner or occupant of the building is getting cited every time, even if it's with a door stop that is instantly removed during the inspection.

Type B is almost never blocked open (because they're open all the time by design) but are typically very, very reliable. In hospital settings they are tested yearly; I've installed dozens and dozens of them, and never had a failure even on doors more than a decade old, with zero maintenance.

 

[FacEngrPE]

Moon161 pointed out I had intertwined two separate incidents. The initial post and title have been corrected.

You can inspect current violations for both buildings here HPD Building, Registration & Violation
The address for the most recent fire (the one with fire door problems) is 333 EAST 181 STREET, Bronx 10457

 

[spsalso]

SwinnyGG,

Thanks for the door discussion. I kinda sorta knew that, but your clear writing did a great job of pulling it together.


spsalso

 

[bones206]

Great explainer. Thank you. I confess I’m mostly ignorant on the subject. I’ve just heard anecdotes over the years on various projects where they were struggling to get the doors to shut due to seals or air pressure problems.

Maybe making the closer arm more tamper proof would be an improvement?

 

[TugboatEng]

Tamper "resistant". I like the second door. It eliminates the temptation to tamper all together.

 

[spsalso]

Yeah, that second style is the way to go.

It is better to go WITH people's natural behavior, instead of trying to fight it. Nobody wants a stupid door that slams them on the butt every time they go through it. They're just naturally going to try to fix THAT problem.


spsalso

 

[SwinnyGG]

Maybe making the closer arm more tamper proof would be an improvement?

Tamper-resistant versions of most closers are available (they basically just replace all the fasteners with like-for-like tamper-resistant) but so few people buy them that for the largest manufacturer in the US they don't even appear in the catalog, you just have to know they exist and ask for them.

Yeah, that second style is the way to go.

The problem with the mag hold-open door is that they're open 24/7 unless there s a power or alarm trip.

You likely wouldn't want to live in an apartment building or stay in a hotel where the doors to the stairwell were always open on every single floor; it'd be quite the noise complaint generator.

I’ve just heard anecdotes over the years on various projects where they were struggling to get the doors to shut due to seals or air pressure problems.

Without a doubt, this can be an issue - depending on occupancy, a lot of the time stairwells are under positive pressure; making sure the doors function properly takes some attention to detail (ie you need to spec the correct door hardware) and if HVAC balancing isn't done in a precise way, doors that don't close can be one of the symptoms.

I could be wrong but that doesn't sound like the case here; two doors which were not-quite-closed would typically not create nearly enough pressure loss for the stairwell to go negative and get pumped full of smoke. Two doors blocked 100% open would do it pretty easily though, which is where my suspicion comes from.

The website above gives me an error when I try to search that address for previous complaints, so I can't find out if I've speculated correctly.

 

[itsmoked]

Usually it's charging gone-wrong not just a battery pack sitting around.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[bones206]

Some more reporting:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/nyregion/deadly-smoke-bronx-fire-door-open.html

The mayor, in only his second week on the job, said officials would “double down” on efforts to raise awareness about the importance of closing doors during a fire. The building’s residents did not shut the door behind them as they ran from the apartment. The door had a self-closing mechanism, as required by the city, but it malfunctioned.

Fire Department investigators tested most of the doors in the building in the course of their investigation on Sunday, a fire official said, and most were found to have automatically closed properly. But the door at the apartment where the fire started — and doors at a handful of other units — did not close as designed, the official said.

The building’s owners said in an email that all of the doors were self-closing, as required. Maintenance staff members repaired a lock on the door where the fire started in July, and at the time, “the self-closing mechanism” was checked and found to operate properly, they said.

 

[dik]

From the Intercept:

https://theintercept.com/2022/01/11...ium=email&utm_source=The Intercept Newsletter

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik

 

[TugboatEng]

The Bronx fire was not only a tragedy, but also an injustice, suffered by predominantly poor, working-class, African immigrant families living on Section 8 vouchers, a form of government rental assistance for low-income people. This injustice highlights the need — made ever clearer during the Covid-19 pandemic — to drastically shift power over housing stock away from landlords and investors and into the hands of tenants.

Wut?