Metadish, Fresh from NYC

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Around 11 p.m. in the Bronx last night, a fire was ignited that firefighters, who were at the scene minutes after the 911 call was made, were unable to contain for two hours. Eight children and one adult died in the flames that, it’s believed, was started by a space heater that may have put too much strain on the building’s wires.

The fire should’ve been easy to calm; there were a number of human oversights that contributed to the speed with which the flames spread.

The fire alarm didn’t go off because it didn’t have any batteries. When the woman, whose space heater it was, saw the flame, she ran through the building to alert the other residence. The woman made the mistake of leaving the door to the room open because this allowed the fire to spread through the house quickly. It’s easy to understand how she could’ve forgotten to do this because, in a panicked situation, one tends to forget the basics emergency training received in second grade. Stop drop and roll, closing doors and putting towels under a door mean nothing when there is a fire devouring your home.

The three adults of the house also took a heartbeat too long, which is more like an hour when there is a fire, to call 911.

“The fire doubled itself every 30 seconds,” said Salvatore J. Cassano, the chief of department with the Fire Department of New York.

Excluding 9/11, this fire was the deadliest that New York has seen since 1990.

Despite the devastating nature of the fire, Mayor Bloomberg decided to stick to his plans to go to Florida.

“I’ve got some other things to do,” Mr. Bloomberg said during an afternoon press conference at the University of Miami’s medical school. “I have some obligations to try to raise some money for the World Trade Center memorial, and I have an event, a meeting, set up, which I’ll probably continue with that.”

We are pretty sure that people wound understand if you had to cancel.

Basic Oversights Linked to Bronx Fire [New York Times]

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