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Subscribe to RSSMore than two dozen people, including a firefighter, were treated for smoke inhalation after a fire at a storm-damaged office skyscraper in Manhattan's financial district, officials said.
The Fire Department said it was not yet clear what caused the blaze Friday in the basement of the Water Street building.
The building's tenants include Standard & Poor's and the city Department of Transportation.
In all, 27 people were injured. The firefighter and most of the others were treated at the scene. Four were taken to a hospital.
The building's web site said it was without power after superstorm Sandy.
Utilities have been largely restored electricity citywide, but some buildings' own equipment was so badly damaged they are still without power.
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Well if it didn't have electric you can rule that out. Probably a tenant with a candle.
Kindly name the owner.
I know what you mean. I wonder about the backround also.
From the local NBC news (from NYC) that is linked to the article:
"The owner, the Retirement Systems of Alabama, was closed Friday."
So, indirectly, another storm hits Alabama.
I think the owner's name was Kindly.
I'm curious who was having people work inside the building if it was without electricity.Relocating to temporary offices would have been prudent up to this point. I wonder if someone was trying to improvise with the electrical system to get lighting and something went wrong. If that was the case, it might have caused the fire.And without any built in alarm system, smoke would have spread until people noticed. But wow, if people would have died due to those reasons, how foolish and talk about lawsuit.
Sprinklers and alarms are required in New York City buildings because of history; nobody wants a fire in a big building that is hard to evacuate.
On the other hand, why were people back in the building if it was unsafe? The Retirement Systems of Alabama is the owner, but the manager of the building (certainly not running it from Alabama???) should be answering some questions about now.
Actually fire alarms and sprinklers have been required in all new buildings in every state in the nation for decades. Depending on the city regulations and codes, sprinklers are usually required to be retrofitted in most older commercial and community buildings.But sometimes the cost and building materials and design make that nearly impossible. However, due to deaths from such fires in older buildings, it is the rare exception found today.
Home owners have the option to purchase smoke alarms with either the wire in/ battery backup feature, or just a battery unit. Office buildings don't have the battery backup feature, as it is considered not efficient. So if there is no electricity there will be no alarm to warn people a fire is in progress. Sprinklers will still work however.Smoke will still spread and may be the only warning before trapping people in a building.These twenty-seven people got very lucky indeed.
Windancersong and Elizabeth--I believe the people working in the building were utility workers who were working to restore the electricity to the building. Office workers have not been allowed back into the building.
Who can we sue, Who can we sue?
May I please apply for the post of Copy Editor for the nbcnews.com web site? I would expect better from NBC News. You obviously require someone for the position, LOL!
'Utilities have been largely restored electricity citywide, but some buildings' own equipment was so badly damaged they are still without power.'
BillyBoy-- I agree. As an ex-copy editor, I find myself refraining from commenting on poor sentence structure all the time. It does no good to comment on it; improvements are never made.
While I agree, it seems that some people don't really want to hire experienced grammarians, but only computer techies, and not even them. It's all somehow swallowed up in their big business over content; at one time these news companies provided middle-class salaries to a huge staff of reporters. Now they have few reporters, little news, and a few ridiculously high-priced anchors that just tell jokes to each other. Ugh... I can't bear to watch it, so I go on the internet instead, and try to ignore the mistakes. There is very little news here; almost nothing with any depth, and very little editing.
At least we didn't have to press 1 to read it in broken English.
Coming soon.
Just another typical Moochicana who uses the USA like any other illegal. A reason why this nation needs to stand up and declare war on these vermin.
Did it collapse? Everybody knows Manhattan skyscrapers collapse when they catch fire.