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One person was killed and four firefighters were injured in an apartment fire on the 50th floor of Trump Tower in central Manhattan, fire officials said.
Key points:
- Todd Brassner, 67, died after a fire at Trump Tower
- Fire authorities are still determining the cause of the blaze
- It has been revealed the residence floors were not fitted with sprinklers
Todd Brassner, a 67-year-old resident of the building, was found unresponsive and unconscious in the apartment. He later died in hospital.
New York Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said the cause of the blaze was not yet known but the apartment was "virtually entirely on fire" when firefighters arrived just after 5:30pm on Saturday (local time).
"This was a very difficult fire. As you can imagine, the apartment is quite large, we are 50 stories up. The rest of the building had a considerable amount of smoke," Mr Nigro said on Twitter.
United States President Donald Trump, who has an office and a private residence in the midtown Manhattan structure, was not in the building at the time.
"Fire at Trump Tower is out. Very confined [well built building]. Firemen [and women] did a great job. THANK YOU!" Mr Trump tweeted.
No member of the Trump family was in the building at the time.
When asked if Mr Trump's assessment of the building was accurate, Mr Nigro said, "it's a well-built building. The upper floors, the residence floors, are not sprinklered".
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 the older residential high-rises were not required to install sprinklers unless the building underwent major renovations.
Mr Nigro said firefighters and Secret Service members checked on the condition of Mr Trump's apartment on the top floors of the 58-storey building.
About 200 fire personnel responded to the incident that the department said was a four-alarm fire.
Video on social media showed flames outside of a few windows and black smoke billowing up from the high-rise.
In January, three people were injured in an early-morning fire at the top of Trump Tower.
One firefighter was hospitalised while two people received minor injuries that were treated at the scene, the New York Fire Department said.
In addition to the president's 66th-floor penthouse, Trump Tower houses the headquarters of the Trump Organisation as well as other residences, offices and stores.
'It reminded me of 9/11'
Some residents said they didn't get any notification from building management to evacuate.
Lalitha Masson, a 76-year-old resident, called it "a very, very terrifying experience".
Ms Masson, who lives on the 36th floor with her 79-year-old husband who has Parkinson's disease, told The New York Times that she did not receive any announcement about leaving and nobody answered when she called the front desk.
"When I saw the television, I thought we were finished," Ms Masson said.
She said she started praying because she felt it was the end.
"I 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," she said.
Reuters
Topics: fires, donald-trump, united-states
First posted