By Carol Tannenhauser
“All hands” were dispatched at 9:20pm, Wednesday night, to a fire at 382 Central Park West (97th Street) that left one person critically injured, the FDNY told WSR.
The fire was on the 10th floor of The Olmstead, a 19-story, fireproof, residential building, the FDNY said. Twenty units, including 78 firefighters extinguished the blaze by 10:21pm. Firefighters “pulled the victim from the gutted apartment and rushed the person to Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital,” according to the Daily News.
No cause was reported, and the investigation is ongoing.
Does anyone know anything about the cause of the fire? I live in this building. Was chaos last night.
Re: “The FIRE was on the 10th floor of The Olmstead, a 19-story, FIREPROOF, residential building.
Now that’s either:
1. an OXYMORON, a “figure of speech,…in which seemingly contradictory terms appear together”; or
2. a PARADOX, no, not two doctors, but a statement that contradicts itself, as in “I’m an atheist, thank God” (the late Luis Buñuel).
‘Fireproof’ in this context has a technical meaning. It means that fire cannot travel between floors or apartments for a given amount of time, longer than it will take the fire department to put out the fire at its source. Because the materials used in the building’s construction are fireproof, as in concrete, steel, gypsum wallboard, etc.
You will note in the story that the person who suffered severe injuries was removed from the apartment that the fire started in.
Obviously, the _contents_ of any apartment will not be fireproof. Your books, magazines, clothes, bedding, mattresses, etc., are not fireproof, and will catch on fire if ignited.
So, naturally, you can still have a fire in a fireproof building. The fire will be contained within the apartment it started in and not spread to other apartments.
This is why it is SO CRITICAL to understand whether you live in a fireproof building or a non-fireproof one. If you live in a fireproof building, you stay put within your apartment during a fire until you are instructed otherwise, unless the fire is IN your apartment, in which case you leave at once, closing the door behind you.
In a NON-fireproof building, you just get the hell out of the building ASAP.
The fact that you don’t know this means you haven’t been reading and/or understanding the information that your landlord/coop board has been giving you every year on this subject, nor have you posted the required sign on the inside of your door.
The city uses the terms “combustible” and “non-combustible” to describe the structure of buildings
Neither an oxymoron nor a paradox. Note the word “building.” In a fireproof apartment building, the contents of an individual apartment may combust and burn but the structure of the building itself should remain intact, so that the effect of the fire may be contained and limited.
Thank you for a clear, and to my understanding absolutely correct, summary of a confusing term.
Meanwhile, prayers for the injured, gratitude for the Firefighters, and hope that the investigation will reveal useful information to avoid a repeat.
Or, it’s a classification of a building that has certain design features and safeguards that, properly implemented, limit damage to the apartment in question.
We can’t thank our firefighters enough for the great job they do, saving lives and saving property.
Sadly, much like what happened in Brooklyn on Sunday morning, not always able to save themselves.
When you see a firetruck go by, please keep a good thought for their safety and the safety of the people that, hopefully, will come out of such a tragic situation in in good health.
Fireproof, eh?
If you have say mounds of paper in a fireproof apartment the paper will burn causing damage and injury.
Or say anything non-fireproof that everyone has in their homes, from curtains to towels to piano music to kids’ school supplies to books on wooden bookshelves etc etc.
Poor person who was injured, we hope they will be ok.
I do believe that “fireproof building” means that the construction of the building is such that the spread of a fire in any one apartment will not breach the walls and spread to other locations (all doors being shut tight behind those fleeing the flames, of course).
Does anyone know why these buildings are fireproof, and Park West Village buildings are not? I believe they were built at the same tim by the same developer, so it seems odd.
Does know if the injured person is safe now?