Trump Tower fire: President Trump once lobbied against sprinklers in NY high-rises because of high expenses
President Donald Trump reportedly opposed a proposal in the late 1990s by the New York City to have mandated fire sprinklers in all high-rise residential units in the city, including the Trump Tower.
A resident of Trump Tower died on Saturday and six firefighters were injured after a second fire erupted in the building within four months, according to reports. Fire officials later concluded that the apartment of the man who died in the blaze did not have sprinklers installed.
Trump, when he was a real estate developer in the '90s, had argued against installing sprinklers in the buildings, saying that their expense would be too high. The New York Post, at the time, wrote that the city council was considering such a mandate after fires in two of the high-rises in Brooklyn and Manhattan, which resulted in fatalities.
Reports state that Trump worked against the city council's proposed law and called a dozen members of the council, along with donating money to the city speaker, according to the Huffington Post.
An altered version of the bill came into law eventually in 1999, however, which excluded the installation of sprinklers in residential high-rises before the year of its passage. Trump Tower, therefore, did not have to install sprinklers as it opened in 1983.
A survivor of the fatal blaze in a high-rise in Manhattan in 1998, Jerome Rose, has been advocating for the installment of the sprinklers for nearly two decades. The Manhattan high-rise blaze started in an apartment where actor Macaulay Culkin’s family lived. Rose expressed his concern on Sunday after the Trump Tower incident.
"It’s criminal that people who live in these high-rise buildings without sprinklers do not have any protection," Rose, now 79, told ABC News.
He also commented on Trump's arguing against paying for the sprinklers in 1999, saying: "I would tell him if there had been a sprinkler in the Culkin apartment, the fire would have been out in 30 seconds, and nobody would have died. I will gladly pay a small rent increase to have sprinklers," he told the New York Post.
President Trump, on Saturday, tweeted praising the Trump Tower as a "well-built building, he, however, did not mention the casualty in the fire or the firefighters injured in the incident, attempting to douse the fire.