{"id":159232,"date":"2018-04-08T05:15:22","date_gmt":"2018-04-08T09:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=159232"},"modified":"2018-04-08T05:15:22","modified_gmt":"2018-04-08T09:15:22","slug":"man-67-killed-in-raging-fire-at-trump-tower-in-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/04\/08\/man-67-killed-in-raging-fire-at-trump-tower-in-new-york\/","title":{"rendered":"Man, 67, killed in raging fire at Trump Tower in New York"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
A raging fire that tore through a 50th-floor apartment at Trump Tower killed a man inside and sent flames and thick, black smoke pouring from windows of the president’s namesake skyscraper. (Photo<\/a> by Andrew Seaman\/Flickr<\/a>, CC BY-ND 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK \u2014 A raging fire that tore through a 50th-floor apartment at Trump Tower killed a man inside and sent flames and thick, black smoke pouring from windows of the president’s namesake skyscraper.<\/p>\n

New York Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said the cause of Saturday’s blaze is not yet known but the apartment was \u201cvirtually entirely on fire\u201d when firefighters arrived after 5:30 p.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very difficult fire, as you can imagine,\u201d Nigro told reporters outside the building in midtown Manhattan. \u201cThe apartment is quite large.\u201d<\/p>\n

Todd Brassner, 67, who was in the apartment, was taken to a hospital and died a short time later, the New York Police Department said. Property records obtained by The Associated Press indicate Brassner was an art dealer who had purchased his 50th-floor unit in 1996.<\/p>\n

Officials said four firefighters also suffered minor injuries. An investigation is ongoing.<\/p>\n

Shortly after news of the fire broke, Trump, who was in Washington, tweeted: \u201cFire at Trump Tower is out. Very confined (well built building). Firemen (and women) did a great job. THANK YOU!\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if that assessment was accurate, Nigro said, \u201cIt’s a well-built building. The upper floors, the residence floors, are not sprinklered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fire sprinklers were not required in New York City high-rises when Trump Tower was completed in 1983. Subsequent updates to the building code required commercial skyscrapers to install the sprinklers retroactively, but owners of older residential high-rises are not required to install sprinklers unless the building undergoes major renovations.<\/p>\n

Some fire-safety advocates pushed for a requirement that older apartment buildings be retrofitted with sprinklers when New York City passed a law requiring them in new residential highrises in 1999, but officials in the administration of then-mayor Rudy Giuliani said that would be too expensive.<\/p>\n

Nigro noted that no member of the Trump family was in the 664-foot tower Saturday.<\/p>\n

Trump’s family has an apartment on the top floors of the 58-story building, but he has spent little time in New York since taking office. The headquarters of the Trump Organization is on the 26th floor.<\/p>\n

Nigro said firefighters and Secret Service members checked on the condition of Trump’s apartment. About 200 firefighters and emergency medical service workers responded to the fire, he said.<\/p>\n

Some residents said they didn’t get any notification from building management to evacuate.<\/p>\n

Lalitha Masson, a 76-year-old resident, called it \u201ca very, very terrifying experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Masson told The New York Times that she did not receive any announcement about leaving, and that when she called the front desk no one answered.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I saw the television, I thought we were finished,\u201d said Masson, who lives on the 36th floor with her husband, Narinder, who is 79 and has Parkinson’s disease.<\/p>\n

She said she started praying because she felt it was the end.<\/p>\n

\u201cI called my oldest son and said goodbye to him because the way it looked everything was falling out of the window, and it reminded me of 9-11,\u201d Masson said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 A raging fire that tore through a 50th-floor apartment at Trump Tower killed a man inside and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":159233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24157,16],"tags":[1759,12654],"class_list":["post-159232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-american-news","category-news","tag-new-york","tag-trump-tower","mauthors-karen-matthews","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}