Maloney follows up on supertall building fire safety
Maloney asks about supertall building safety in round two. Staff reiterate that newer supertall buildings are more fire-safe than older buildings due to auxiliary fire protection systems, though response times to upper floors can be longer.
Okay, great.
So round two, we have Councilmember Brewer followed by Councilmember Wong.
Sorry for the mistake earlier.
My question is just tall buildings.
Some of your previous commissioners would bring to my attention, because on the Upper West Side, there are developers who just want to build to the sky.
And the comment was, we just don't have enough capacity to deal with these supertalls.
And obviously, we want development, or some people want a lot of development.
I want lower development.
And yet, I really have no concept whether or not what was said in the past is true.
Is this something you're thinking about?
Is there something that you're concerned about with these supertalls, which seem to be...
proliferating.
So I'm just wondering about your opinion on that.
And then I didn't say earlier, I don't think that in participatory budgeting, we got a new HVAC system on ladder 25 on 77th Street.
So Westsiders just love your members.
Just want to let you know.
Well, thank you.
But in terms of the supertalls.
You want to talk about supertolls?
So since the turn of this century, the building materials and building technology has allowed us to build smaller buildings, but much taller than historically, than we've been able to.
And one of the issues that we face with that is it could take us longer to get from the sidewalk upstairs than it does to get from the EMS station or the firehouse to the scene.
So we do look at response times, but these are newer built buildings.
They have auxiliary fire protection systems.
They're generally more fire safe than the older buildings that we're talking about and generally have less fire instances in them.
You might have more emergencies, and the same with EMS and their response time to be able to get upstairs to provide life-saving care.
So you're saying in terms of the fire, not the emergency heart attack or whatever, the fire that you're feeling that they're somewhat safe is what you're saying?
Well, they're more fire safe than some of the older buildings that we have.
All right.
Well, I appreciate that.
I wish you had said the opposite because I can't stand them.
But thank you very much.
Councilmember Wong, followed by Ressler.