Trump Tower fire: no sprinklers in 50th-floor flat where resident died in blaze
Donald Trump once fought measure requiring sprinklers in buildings
Todd Brassner, 67, died at a hospital on Saturday after a fire ripped through his flat in the high-rise, which opened in 1983 at a time when building codes did not require the residential section to have sprinklers.
Subsequent updates to the codes required commercial skyscrapers to install sprinklers retroactively, but owners of older residential high-rises are not required to install them unless the building undergoes major renovations.
Some fire safety advocates pushed for a requirement that older flat buildings be retrofitted with sprinklers when the city passed a law requiring them in new residential high-rises in 1999, but officials in the administration of then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani said that would be too expensive.
New York Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro confirmed no sprinklers were in place in the upper, residential floors of Trump Tower, where the fire broke out.
