President Donald Trump’s time as a real estate developer who lobbied against installing sprinklers in NYC buildings was called into question on Sunday, April 8, a day after a fire at New York City’s Trump Tower left one man dead and six fireman injured.
Newsweek reports that back in 1999, Trump had asked city officials to block legislation that would have required high-rise residential buildings to be equipped with sprinklers.
The publication reports that at the time, Trump had called city officials to argue that sprinklers were too expensive — at $4 per square foot — to install throughout an entire building.
#FDNY members are on scene of a 3-alarm fire at 721 5th Ave Manhattan. There are currently no injuries reported pic.twitter.com/PKuPZBu70E
— FDNY (@FDNY) April 7, 2018
This comes after the president took to Twitter on Saturday, April 7, to declare that the Trump Tower fire was “very contained” in his “well built building.”
According to ABC News, the four-alarm fire began at around 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 7. About 200 firemen and emergency workers were at the scene of the blaze on the 50th floor.
“The apartment was entirely on fire. Members pushed in heroically, they were knocking down the fire and found one occupant of the apartment who is in critical condition,” the official account for the Fire Department of New York tweeted at the time. The injured man, art dealer Todd Brassner, 67, later died. “We had many floors to search, and stairways, and right now the only civilian injury is to the occupant of that apartment. There are four Firefighters with non-life-threatening injuries.”
The FDNY Twitter account later reported that the fire was under control at 7:57 p.m. — a little over an hour after President Trump, 71, tweeted that the fire was out. He has not tweeted about the incident since Brassner’s death was announced.
The president’s son Eric Trump praised the FDNY, tweeting, “Thank you to the amazing men and women of the NYFD who extinguished a fire in a residential apartment at @TrumpTower. The @FDNY and @NYPD are truly some of the most incredible people anywhere!”
The cause of the fire has not yet been released yet.
