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I own a 5-floor brownstone as a rental investment. I don't live there. Here's what happened:
There is an extension roof on the back of the third floor. On Friday afternoon, as best I can tell a small cardboard box on the ext. roof began smoldering for some unknown reason. This caused quite a bit of smoke but apparently no fire. The smoke drifted through the open windows of the fourth and fifth floor apartments. Both tenants were home. I got a call from the fourth floor tenant who described what happened and told me that he had managed to put out the smoldering by spilling a few gallons of water down on the cardboard. Unfortunately while he did that the fifth floor tenant called the FD. By the time the FD got there the smoldering had stopped. The fifth floor tenant (who had called the FD) was waiting outside to meet them and told them about the smoke coming from the extension roof.
There is a ground floor apartment which has access to the back yard. But the extension roof is two floors above the yard. For some reason they made a bee line to the door of that apartment, AXED the door and its two locks to pieces and also completely destroyed the fancy molding. They went into the yard and did NOTHING because they realized there was no fire. If they had bothered to go upstairs first they would have found that out. They did go upstairs afterward and the fourth floor tenant told them that it was only smoldering and it was out before they arrived. I was on the phone with him at the time and asked him to tell these guys that the owner wanted to talk to them. They refused. And they were very rude to that tenant. A contractor came later and estimated the damage at $1800, maybe more. They also damaged the third floor door but not nearly as much.
I'm shocked that the FD had to cause so much damage! It wasn't even an emergency. If they had bothered to find out they would have been told that there no longer was any danger and in fact there really never was. It was smoke, not flames. And they could have used a crowbar to gain entry to that ground floor apartment, which would have caused minimal damage instead of destroying the door and molding with an ax.
To top it off, they broke down the door for nothing. They did it to get to the back yard didn't even use the back yard. They never went on to the extension roof. They accomplished nothing.
The ground floor tenant is taking pictures of the damage and documenting everything. I'm very aggravated. Is there anything I can do about this? Can I complain to the city? Any chance of compensation?
Ehh.... better safe than sorry. The fire department thought there was a fire and I would want them to gain entry the fastest way possible if I were a tenant. It might be a different story had there not been somebody in front to meet them and the FD didn't smell or see fire.
And what if there had been an actual fire and they had been more "careful "???? Then you'd be pissed that they didn't make absolutely sure that they had extinguished all of the flames.
You can't have it both ways. I had a fire in the last building I lived in that caused extensive damage (smoke, water and heat) throughout my apartment in spite of the fact that the flames didn't come through the rear wall off of the back porch where it started.
Whose box was it and why did it catch fire? Find that out and that's who is responsible.
Still not as much damage as an actual fire would've caused at least.
Quote:
Originally Posted by spectator11040
It wasn't even an emergency.
Yeah, but you have to understand that they received the call as an emergency, and were dispatched to the location being told that there was a fire. So on their end it was an emergency call. They didn't find out until later that there was no actual fire, and they had no way to know that.
I agree with kapikap, talk it over with your insurance company and let them handle it for you.
And I'm really sorry this happened to you and your property - hate to see lovely old architecture destroyed needlessly.
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