The 50th-floor apartment in Trump Tower where a man was killed in a fire on Saturday did not have sprinklers – the requirement of which Donald Trump fought against in the 1990s. Todd Brassner, 67, died at a hospital on Saturday after a fire ripped through his apartment 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. Trump was among the developers who spoke out against the retrofitting as unnecessary and expensive. He later changed his views, saying sprinklers made tenants feel safer. He ultimately decided to spend $3m to put sprinklers in all 350 units of another building, Trump World Tower near the United Nations, The New York Times reported.
New York fire commissioner Daniel Nigro said the apartment was “virtually entirely on fire” when firefighters arrived.