Saturday, July 14, 2012

Does this look safe?

From the Daily News:

Dozens of Sunset Park tenants fear they are living in a fire trap that could go up in flames at anytime.

Hazardous electrical wiring and faulty fuse boxes requiring the constant use of a portable fan to keep from overheating forced tenants at the three 46th Street buildings to start a rent strike last year.

“I’m living in a nightmare,” said Sara Lopez, 64, who lives at 553 46th St. Lopez said power in her apartment goes off every 15 minutes and that she saw sparks shooting out of the fuse box last week. “This building is about to catch fire.”

The buildings’ landlord, Orazio Petito of Peto Management was ranked on Public Advocate Bill de Blasio's list of the City’s worst landlords in Brooklyn.

The conditions in the three buildings has also led to 484 city housing code violations including exposed electrical wiring, no smoke alarms, lead paint, water damage, mold, bed bugs, roaches and mice.

Tenants say their major concern is their fire-prone homes.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Take the landlord out on the street, shoot him, hand over the property to the tenants, give them a low interest loan to fix the place up and allow them to purchase their units, case closed.

Anonymous said...

Since you are not paying rent..put any valuables in storage or safe deposit boxes, so when it goes all you have left is the ikea furniture to burn.

Joe said...

Those appear to be 75 amp time delay bullet bus fusses (red/black stripes) in a sloppy handman added 60 amp sub panal.
That building is likley all cloth covered romex wire. Yes once it reaches its flashpoint with all those cheap 500 watt plasma TVs, window ACs and god know what "handyman wireing" going on some part it opt to light up like firecracker fuse.
Now add 60+ year old dry timber.

BTW:
That 99 cent store plastic fan can light right up and spit molten plastic fireballs eveyplace.
Its 10X more dangerious then that overloaded sub panal torching up.

Anonymous said...

Hate to say it but that fan does very little if anything that effects safety.
Fuses do not create heat until the last few milliseconds of their lives and since they are wrapped in a material that does not transfer heat, the effect of the fan is negligible.
My guess is the landlord heard an urban myth about using a fan.

Anonymous said...

The fan is like those suits in "K-19: the Widowmaker," it would seem.