Midtown Blogger/Manhattan Valley Follies: FF Nation- All Out Safety Effort in NYC

NYC Officials Launch Fire Safety Effort

Brooklyn fire that killed seven children causes redoubling of public education efforts

AARON SHORT and KATIE SHEEHY, The New York PostPublished Wednesday, March 25, 2015

City officials have launched an all-out fire-safety push after seven Orthodox Jewish siblings died in a Brooklyn house blaze over the weekend.

"It is an unspeakable tragedy, and there has got to be something that we take from it,'' Mayor de Blasio said Monday.

"Today . . . there is a meeting with Jewish community leaders that was previously planned in anticipation of Passover," he said in Boston, where he was at the US Conference of Mayors.

Hot Plates and Jewish Sabbath Become Focus of Brooklyn Tragedy

"Certainly, at that occasion, [Fire] Commissioner [Daniel] Nigro is talking about some of the key safety actions that people have to take, the most important being that everyone needs smoke alarms."

"We are going to be redoubling our public-education efforts around smoke alarms, but we'll look at other lessons from this tragedy and find ways to work closely with the community,'' he said.

The children, ages 5 to 16, were killed when an apparently malfunctioning hot plate caught fire at their Midwood home just after midnight Saturday.

Observant families often keep such plates on overnight during the Sabbath to keep food warm.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams pushed for the construction of a burn unit in the borough.

"Brooklyn . . . home to the fourth-largest population in the United States, currently has no such facility,'' Adams said.

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FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro addresses a news conference at the firehouse of Engine Company 21, in New York, Monday, March 23, 2015. He discussed the the deaths of seven siblings in a house fire after a hot plate left on for the Sabbath is believed to have caused the blaze. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)