could climb. so firefighters say they found victims on every floor of this building. many survivors feared they would not make it out. i would see the flames an the smoke and everything and coming into my apartment. okay. you re being trapped somewhere as you see we have no fire escapes, and obviously the building was not fireproof like we thought it was. just smoke coming in, just the fact that we re in a building that is burning and you don t know how you re going to get out. brin ging grass is joining us. there was just a briefing from officials. what did you learn? reporter: you could just hear the panic that these residents were feeling as they tried to escape the fire yesterday. officials pointing to the cause of the fire as the space heater on the third floor of the building behind me. that apartment rather is actually a dupe flex and what happened according to fire officials is when the residents of that particular apartment
the point of programs like this is to give low income families safe homes. i know you re looking into legislation and policies that by the contributing of this, how do things even get to this point? it s a lack of investment. these doors were supposed to be self-closing and the question is why did these doors fail to close as required by law? both the apartment door and the stairwell door were left wide open causing the smoke to spread widely throughout a 19-story building and since the building has no fire escapes and the stairwells were full of smoke, the tenants had no means of escape. the tenants were trapped and victims were found on every floor. there were tenants that died from severe smoke einhalation ad cardiac arrest. housing conditions have implications for the safety of tenants, especially with fire prevention. this is what investigators
buildings have proper heat, residents would not feel the need to use space heaters in if first place. we have to look at all of this with a very tailored approach. we announced earlier today with congress member torres we will form a task force on fire education and safety and look at building codes, sprinkler system, fire alarms, fire escapes. we re going to look at everything to swee what we can o at a federal and state level. so important. our deepest condolences to the families. please pass along our love to all of them. thank you so much for joining us. thank you so much. thank you for your prayers and support. thank you. for more information about how you can, our viewers can help, go to cnn.com/impact. very important. just ahead, he s out of detention but the covid related saga of the world s top male
residential buildings do not. like this one. there has been a push in new york and the city council in the past to do that, but it is extensive. landlords have complained about how much that would cost to upgrade. there are no discussions about whether that needs to be pushed through. also, there are no fire escapes on this building. updated buildings now have internal stairwells, that we can see these older buildings what happens when residents are faced with that smoke and fire. many had to wait to be rescued from their windows and were trapped inside. rescued from their windows and were trapped inside- trapped inside. striking similarities trapped inside. striking similarities we - trapped inside. striking similarities we are i trapped inside. striking i similarities we are having, the debate we are having in the uk. the first big test for the new new york city mayor eric adams. coming up next. will the uk be following the usa s lead in having five day isolation
residents didn t know where to escape, where the fire escapes were. can you comment on that? well, on buildings like this, there are no fire escapes, there are interior stairways. so the residents should know where the stairwells are. and i think some of them could not escape because of the volume of smoke. [ inaudible question ] i can t give you the exact number right now. i believe there s 120 apartments in the building. there s a very large number of people right now who need a place to stay. can you tell us anything about the children, what were their ages of the ones who passed away? i do not have that now. [ inaudible question ] there are some people in a building now, whether they will stay, we re not sure. but there s very few.