In Flagami, the fire took the elevators before it reached the fourth floor

MIAMI

MIAMI — A second-alarm fire that broke out at 2:30 a.m. at the 52-unit Blue Lakes Apartments, 5275 NW 7th Street in the Flagami neighborhood, displaced 28 residents and sent two people to hospital with smoke inhalation, according to fire and news accounts of the incident.

More than 80 firefighters and 35 specialized units responded. Crews worked the fourth floor through near-zero visibility and heavy soot accumulation.

The fire was on the fourth floor. The emergency was the stairwell.

What is established

Established: a second-alarm structure fire in a 52-unit residential building, a large multi-unit response, two hospitalizations for smoke inhalation, and 28 residents displaced.

Also established, and less commonly reported: several occupants could not evacuate themselves. Residents who were wheelchair-bound or bedridden remained inside the building after the alarm, and the elevator network serving them was disabled early by cascading water and fire damage.

Firefighters carried them down the stairs. In a working fire, that is not a rescue technique of first choice. It is what remains when a building's assisted-evacuation plan depends on the one system the fire is guaranteed to remove.

The elevator is the first thing a fire takes

Elevator lobbies are where the water goes. Sprinkler discharge, hose streams and the firefighting effort itself put water into shafts, and a shaft is a vertical well from the top of the building to the pit.

When the water arrives, two things follow in sequence. First, the elevator's own protective devices detect the condition and the car is recalled or taken out of service, as they are designed to be. Second, the building loses the only vertical route that anyone unable to use stairs can take.

That is not a failure of the elevator. It is the elevator doing exactly what it is supposed to do. The failure, where one exists, is in the plan that assumed the elevator would still be available at the moment of need.

For high-rise residential buildings, codes generally require an area of refuge or an equivalent strategy for occupants who cannot use stairs. The requirement is not the difficulty. The difficulty is that an area of refuge is only useful if it is staffed, communicated, and known to the people who are supposed to go there, which is a building operations question rather than an architectural one.

What a carry-out costs

A firefighter carrying an adult down four flights of stairs in full turnout gear, on a charged hose line's stairwell, in zero visibility, consumes time and personnel at a rate that no incident commander can ignore.

Every occupant who needs to be carried occupies two or more firefighters for the duration of the carry. Those firefighters are not advancing a line, not venting, not searching the floor above. In a building of 52 units, the arithmetic of needing even half a dozen carries can reshape the entire operation before the first line is charged.

USPA does not respond to structure fires. What the company does is stand fire watch when a building's protection systems are out of service, and the Flagami incident is the reason that posting exists: a written hourly patrol of every floor and every exit, staffed by people whose only job is to see the fire early and get people out while the stairs are still clear.

For the building operator

The questions worth answering before an incident, not after:

• Which residents have documented mobility limitations, and who holds that list after hours?
• Where is the area of refuge, and has anyone stood in it during a drill?
• Who is assigned to check the stairwell doors, the standpipes and the exit signage on each shift?
• When the elevator is taken out of service for maintenance or water damage, what changes about the building's readiness that night?

A building can answer all four and still have a difficult fire. A building that cannot answer them is relying on the fire department to solve a problem it did not create.

For residents who cannot use stairs

Tell the building, in writing, and keep the copy. Confirm where the refuge area is and how to reach it without an elevator. Keep a go-bag at the door rather than in a closet. And know that in a fire, the stairwell is survivable and the corridor may not be — the sooner a person is in the stair or the refuge area, the better the outcome, whether or not anyone is coming to carry them.

Related coverage

• A car fire under an apartment floor reached the second story in minutes
• The e-bike beside the front door turns the only exit into a wall of fire
• When the building has no standpipe, the stairwell becomes the water main

Fire watch when a building's protection systems are down: (800) 214-1448 or request emergency fire watch.

The Watchline will update this report if the department releases the cause determination.