{"id":223973,"date":"2026-05-07T22:59:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T22:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/223973\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T22:59:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T22:59:29","slug":"fdny-urges-nyc-residents-to-keep-apartment-doors-closed-in-the-event-of-a-fire-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/223973\/","title":{"rendered":"FDNY urges NYC residents to keep apartment doors closed in the event of a fire. Here’s why."},"content":{"rendered":"

Fire officials say the deadly Inwood fire<\/a>\u00a0earlier this week followed an all-too-similar pattern — flames spreading through open doors.<\/p>\n

As a result, the FDNY is now getting the word out to keep doors closed, demonstrating Thursday how easily fire can spread when a door is left open.<\/p>\n

The difference between life and death<\/p>\n

The contrast during the department’s presentation was apparent in the aftermath of Monday’s fire in Inwood that killed three people<\/a>. One apartment, which was charred black, had an open door, while its neighbor closed their front door.<\/p>\n

“This is what happens. As you can see, fire spread in the stairway and roof as well,” FDNY First Deputy Commissioner Dan Flynn said.<\/p>\n

Authorities say open doors also fueled last month’s\u00a0fire in the Bronx<\/a> that killed two people.<\/p>\n

“If not for an open door, I’m confident no one would have died in either fire,” Flynn said.<\/p>\n

Nakayla Moreno, 19, was killed in the Bronx fire. Family members said her boyfriend tried to break a window for them to escape.<\/p>\n

“Unfortunately, when he was trying to get the window open, he couldn’t see her anymore. It was completely black smoke,” said Tiara Sessoms, the victim’s aunt.<\/p>\n

What New York City law says \u00a0<\/p>\n

Across the five boroughs, apartment doors are required by law to swing closed and latch by themselves after being opened.<\/p>\n

The city has issued 52,000 violations over self-closing doors so far this year, compared to nearly 59,000 violations issued by this time last year.<\/p>\n

“We certainly encourage building owners to abide by that law and make sure those doors are closing. Unfortunately, a lot of times those doors are self-closing and occupants make changes in the apartment that limit ability for the door to close,” Flynn said.<\/p>\n

The Department of Housing Preservation and Development told CBS News New York that the Inwood apartment from Monday’s fire currently has three open violations<\/a>\u00a0regarding self-closing doors, and was actually enrolled back in January into an HPD program that targets buildings with multiple code violations and closely monitors that they’re making repairs.<\/p>\n

As for the Bronx apartment, it did not have any active self-closing door violations, but FDNY sources said a resident had propped a door open to allow their cat to escape.<\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fire officials say the deadly Inwood fire\u00a0earlier this week followed an all-too-similar pattern — flames spreading through open…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[9377,128,543,194,25790,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-223973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-apartment-fire","tag-bronx","tag-building-fire","tag-fdny","tag-inwood","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}