The Buildings Department slapped new violations on the owners of the building where three tenants died in a fire last week after inspectors found padlocks on doors leading to rooms with fire escape exits, records show.
Inspectors also alleged that a rear courtyard where the fire escape leads to was obstructed by debris, blocking access to the street.
“This poses a safety risk to tenants,” according to a violation served on owners Jack Bick and SB Dyckman LLC on May 7, three days after a fire allegedly caused by a dropped cigarette ripped through the six-story tenement at 207 Dyckman St., killing three tenants and leaving five others in critical condition.
Inspectors also discovered the basement of the aging tenement had been illegally subdivided into what they described as four single-room occupancy flats.
The danger of a blocked fire escape was made clear by the May 4 fire, which prosecutors say started with a flicked cigarette in the lobby that soon ignited and raced up the stairwell to the bulkhead leading to the roof.
Escape by the stairwell was impossible, forcing tenants to instead seek a way out via the fire escape. Three tenants, including a fashion journalist for People magazine and her mother, perished in the blaze. Five other tenants were critically injured.
The Buildings Department served the owners with three violations, including one that alleged they “observed throughout different apartments second means of egress was obstructed.” That included discovering padlocks “on the doors leading to some of the rooms leading to the fire escape in apartments #21 and #33.”
An attorney for Bick did not return THE CITY’s call Wednesday.
Homicide Charges
On Tuesday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Victor Arias, 29, a tenant in the building, with criminally negligent homicide. Prosecutors allege Arias returned home shortly after midnight on May 4th and sat down on a window sill in the lobby to smoke a cigarette. Law enforcement officials say he tossed his cigarette into a cardboard box and went upstairs to his apartment to go to bed.
The boxes soon ignited and the fire then jumped to the stairway. When firefighters arrived they found several tenants scrambling on to the fire escape fleeing the blaze.
THE CITY reported Sunday that the city Department of Housing Preservation & Development has sued the landlords of the Dyckman Street building 16 times over serious violations at 10 buildings they own across the city. The owners have also racked up more than 1,300 housing code violations, including citations for non-functioning self-closing doors.
Fire Department officials said apartments in the Dyckman Street building where the entry doors were closed suffered little damage. Eight units where the doors were left open were gutted.
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The post Landlords in Deadly Inwood Blaze Cited for Blocked Fire Escapes appeared first on THE CITY – NYC News.
