Nineteen people were injured late Saturday night after a fire erupted in the trash chute at the New York City Housing Authority’s Farragut Houses in Brooklyn.
About 60 firefighters responded to the blaze at the Fort Greene public housing complex just before 11:15 p.m. on Nov. 26, an FDNY spokesperson said. The fire began in the compactor chute on the third floor of 111 Bridge Street, one of Farragut’s 14-story towers, and spread throughout the building.
The blaze was declared under control at 1:26 am, but the hardships were only just beginning for many of the building’s residents: 19 people, including 18 civilians and one firefighter, were removed to area hospitals to treat their injuries.
The FDNY did not provide a cause of the fire nor the source of the residents’ injuries.
Functioning trash chutes reduce the risk of fire, but without proper cleaning and maintenance they can pose serious fire risks, according to the experts at the Chute Doctor.
The build-up of “grease, sludge, and grime” in a chute can greatly increase the risk of fire, and if the chute door doesn’t properly close, a fire’s ignition plus oxygen from the air can cause an inferno that quickly travels up and down a large building. The sludge can ignite from as little as someone tossing a cigarette butt down the chute.
