Sarah's Progress Memo

At this point I have interviewed a person whose 36-story building caught fire a few weeks ago. Fire alarms did not go off throughout the building, but they did go off on the floor where the fire started. Her apartment did sustain a lot of water damage from the building's sprinkler system and the fire fighters' hoses. She lives on the 12th floor.

I've also done some research through the FDNY Web site, which is help shedding light on how the fire department responds to emergencies in hi-rise residences. Especially insightful was story of the plane that crashed into the 30th and 31st floors of a 46-story residence on 10.11.06 -- Cory Lidle's small, fixed-wing aircraft. The story of this incident describes the way the fire department responds when they are dealing with a hi-rise evacuation in this way: "The Air Rescue plan calls for two ladder companies and a Battalion chief, who are trained in high-rise roof operations, to meet the NYPD emergency services unit and aviation unit at a designated landing spot to prepare for an airlift."

I've found that fire officials typically ask residents to stay in their apartments with the doors closed during a building fire. For the most part, fires can be contained in the apartment where the fire started due to the construction of the buildings.