NYC Council jacks up landlord fines, bans certain space heaters in response to Twin Parks fire

The City Council voted Thursday to beef up enforcement of self-closing doors in apartment buildings and outlaw space heaters that don’t feature an automatic shutoff setting — measures directly inspired by a catastrophic fire in the Bronx that killed 17 people earlier this year.

The Jan. 9 blaze at the Twin Parks apartment complex in Fordham Heights was sparked by a malfunctioning space heater. Once raging, the fire was exacerbated by two defective hallway doors in the 19-story high-rise that did not self-close as designed, allowing smoke to rapidly spread throughout the building.

Thursday’s action by the Council aims to “ensure that tragedies like the Twin Parks fire never happen again,” Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) told reporters before the vote, which was unanimous.

“It was one of the worst tragedies in our city’s history,” the speaker said. “If proper measures were put in place, our fellow New Yorkers would still be here with us today.”

Under existing city law, landlords must ensure that doors in their buildings are self-closing if they provide access to corridors or stairwells. The requirement was adopted in 2018 to prevent smoke from consuming apartment buildings in the event of fire.

But in the wake of January’s Twin Parks tragedy, Bronx community leaders and city politicians argued that enforcement around the self-closing door law has not been adequate.

Bills championed by Bronx Councilman Oswald Feliz that were included in the legislative package passed Thursday seek to address that.

For starters, Feliz’s bills decreases the window of time that landlords have to correct a self-closing door violation from 21 to 14 days.

Under the legislation, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development will also be required to manually reinspect any building cited for a self-closing door violation after the 14-day period. Previously, landlords could certify that a violation had been fixed without proof.

If a malfunctioning self-closing door is not fixed within the requisite time period, Feliz’s bills mandate that the landlord be slapped with a $300 fine, plus an additional $250 tacked on for every day the violation remains outstanding — doubling the current fine levels.

Any landlord who falsely certifies that a self-closing door violation has been fixed can face an even steeper $1,000 fine under Feliz’s measures, quadrupling the current $250 maximum.

Advocating for the legislative package ahead of Thursday’s vote, Feliz noted that smoke inhalation was the cause of death for most of the 17 Twin Parks victims — including eight children.

“There was one tool that could have prevented that Twin Parks devastating fire tragedy: Properly functioning self-closing doors,” said Feliz, whose district includes the Twin Parks complex. “Had those self-closing doors actually worked, that smoke would not have filled the entire 19-story high-rise and those families would’ve been able to safely escape.”

The other item in the fire safety package bans the sale of space heaters that do not feature a thermometer that makes the devices automatically turn off if they overheat. Anyone found to flout the ban will face stiff fines under the measure.

“The devastating and avoidable Twin Parks fire in the Bronx was caused by a space heater that was on for a prolonged period of time and then overheated. This may seem like a rare thing, but incidents like this are a leading cause of fires across the country,” said Brooklyn Councilwoman Shahana Hanif, who introduced the ban bill. She added that portable heaters cause roughly 1,700 fires across the U.S. annually.

The bills adopted by the Council must be signed by Mayor Adams before they can become law.

Aspects of the Twin Parks fire remain under investigation, and the city has not taken any formal action against the owner of the building so far.

The owner, a consortium of real estate companies called Bronx Park Phase III Preservation, is led by Rick Gropper, a prominent developer who served as a member of the mayor’s transition team committee on housing.

A spokeswoman for Gropper did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday’s Council action.

Bronx Councilwoman Pierina Sanchez, who chairs the Council’s Housing Committee, said that the bills passed Thursday should serve as a first step toward “holding landlords accountable.”

“This is the first package of legislation in the wake of the terrible tragedy,” Sanchez said. “But to be clear, we do not stop, we do not rest.”