Fire Safety: It Works

A Wilshire district apartment fire has provided graphic proof of the life-saving nature of the heavy fire doors required off stairwells, smoke detectors and other safety devices. It was a tragic fire, to be sure, because one man died and dozens are living in temporary quarters. But the first firefighters on the scene at the N. Oxford Street building saw the blaze leaping out of the stairwell windows and thought that they could lose 20 or more people.

They did not, largely because it was a cool evening. Had the temperature been higher, the safety doors that lead from the stairwell into each hall of the four-story building might well have been propped open to allow for a breeze. Nothing would have kept the blaze from roaring down the hallways, trapping people in the upper floors in their rooms.

The fire, now ruled to be arson, started in the lobby and swept up the front stairwell. All the Ponet doors--so-called because their installation was required after 19 people were killed in the 1970 Ponet Square Hotel fire--were closed, so the fire kept going up and roared through a small attic. It burned through the ceiling of some fourth-floor apartments before firefighters, bravely operating on the edge of a roof sagging from the flames, punched holes in the roof to let flames escape.

The heat in the stairwell was so intense that the wood is deeply charred. One set of stairs collapsed. Yet, with the exception of rooms on the top floor, damage to other rooms appeared minimal.

The quirk of weather that left the fire doors closed underlines the need for the fullest compliance with the latest set of safety regulations. Similar fire doors had been propped open at the Dorothy Mae apartments, where a 1982 fire killed 24. City law now requires that fire doors enclosing stairwells and those separating sections of interior halls must have devices that can be triggered by smoke detectors. When fire strikes, the doors close automatically. The new law also requires sprinklers inside each room door and in hallways in apartment buildings constructed before 1943.

Residents of the New Beverly Crest apartments, where the fire struck last week, understand that fire safety costs money. But they also know that their building did not join the tragic litany that includes the Ponet Square; the Stratford Arms, where 25 people died in 1973, and the Dorothy Mae.