Residents in the New Jersey luxury apartment complex that went up in flames after a blow-torch accident last week had no idea how quickly the inferno was ripping through their building, recordings of 911 calls obtained first by NBC 4 New York reveal.
Even after the fire at the Avalon on the Hudson complex in Edgewater was well underway, Bergen police got a call from a woman about fire alarms that "keep going on and on and on and on and on."
"I don't know what's going on," she said. "It's everybody's alarms here, it's the whole building, the whole complex."
The dispatcher in Mahwah had to call Edgewater fire dispatchers to confirm that the building was in fact on fire.
The dispatcher told the woman caller: "Everyone with the fire alarms, you should be evacuating the building."
"Oh, my God, thank you," the woman said.
In another call, a man told the 911 dispatcher there were people still inside the burning buillding.
"I just drove by it and I had to tell a guy to get out. He didn't know that the building's on fire," he said.
Another woman witnessing the blaze told 911: "I see the fire spreading to the parking lot. I don't know if they know that."
Yet another caller said she was seeing the embers from the fire rising and floating to where she was.
An early investigation has found that a blow torch used in a void in the wall for a plumbing repair by unlicensed maintenance men accidentally caused the fire, but affirms that Avalon on the Hudson was built to code.
Nevertheless, fire officials and lawmakers are worried that current safety codes aren't strong enough. Edgewater Fire Chief Thomas Jacobson has said he thought lightweight wood construction was a factor in how quickly the fire spread.
"If it was made out of concrete and cinderblock, we wouldn’t have this problem," he said in the days after the fire. "But it’s lightweight construction with sprinklers, and this is the problem you face with this type of construction."
Michael Feigin, chief construction officer for AvalonBay, has said the wood frame construction of the complex is "a standard, common and safe construction method for multifamily housing used throughout the United States."
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Assemblyman Scott Rumana of Wayne disagrees.
"You don't let that continue," said "We are playing with people's lives."
Rumana is now pushing a bill that would put a two-year moratorium on new construction of similar apartment buildings while code standards are reviewed, though it would not stop projects that are already underway.
The New Jersey Apartment Association calls the proposal premature considering the need for affordable housing.
"What we don't want to see is a knee-jerk reaction that puts a halt to a significant industry that plays a significant role in New Jersey's economy," said Dave Drogan of the New Jersey Apartment Association.
Rumana said it's a miracle that 200 people didn't die in the fire, while the NJAA said that's proof that the code-required systems worked: no lives were lost.
In Princeton, where an old hospital is coming down for a new 280-unit Avalon project, a moratorium would mean big delays. The mayor said she's fine with that.
"Something can be built to code, and it can still be an inferno that results after an accident," said mayor Liz Lempert.
The bill to create a moratorium on building still has some ways to go before it can become law. There was no comment from the governor's office Friday, other than to say it was already reviewing fire and building codes.
Earlier this week, displaced families filed a class action suit against AvalonBay, the complex owner, alleging negligence caused the fire that initially displaced 1,000 people. Half of them have been allowed to return, but more than 500 people are permanently displaced.
The same apartment complex burned to the ground while under constructed in 2000.
