Another tragic loss as yet another family member “awoken by broken glass” lost their two young daughters on the 2nd floor of a vacation rental property in an affluent area of Long Island this morning.
In our world as firefighters, it’s unbelievable, but yet-in 2022, smoke alarms are still missing, not working, missing batteries or whatever. Fire personnel said that while the home had smoke alarms, the ongoing investigation has not yet determined if they were working as designed….in a house that did not have a valid rental permit. More on that below.
Residential fire sprinklers? Yeah. Same thing. But when fire sprinklers are brought up, the political influencing clown squad responds, whining about the costs, freedom of choice etc. That’s for discussion another day.
BUT SMOKE ALARMS?
URGE your friends, family, your public-everyone and anyone who will listen to INSURE that wherever they stay-home or away-sleepovers, friends homes, vacation homes-name it..that there are working smoke alarms. Pack them in your suitcase, clip them to handles, put them in kids backpacks-whatever. Stay NOWHERE without working smoke alarms.
Check them, Test them. Bring your own.
I mean look, you can get a smoke alarm THAT FITS IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND:
1.5″ x 1.5″
https://tinyurl.com/2d3w42n8
https://tinyurl.com/2d3w42n8
TEENIE TINY LITTLE LIFE SAVERS.
These two beautiful girls died in a rental house where there was no valid rental permit on file for the property…so therefore there was no safety inspection, there was no rental inspection and none of those things occurred because there was never an application submitted for this to be a rental. This was not an area where affording a well maintained smoke alarm system or even fire sprinklers would have been an issue.
The family, visiting rental guests vacationing from Potomac, Maryland, Lewis Wiener, 60, Alisa Wiener, 52, and their son Zachary, 23, all escaped the fire and smoke on Spring Lane after Mr. Wiener was awakened by “the sound of glass breaking” —and his son leaping to safety from a 2nd floor window. But not his sisters.
Lewis Wiener tried to re-enter the burning home to reach his girls, suffering burns from the heavy fire conditions that turned him back.
The Sag Harbor Firefighters arrived and made a push to get to where the girls were trapped, using a ladder to get to the 2nd floor, found and got the girls out. But Jillian Wiener, 21, and Lindsay Wiener, 19, were unconscious and unresponsive, and were later pronounced dead. The Sag Harbor Firefighters gave it their all. But as we know, this kind of fire for Firefighters is often like trying to win an arm wrestle, starting with your arm pinned down by someone twice your size. Not good odds. But Firefighters, like those in Sag Harbor this morning, try anyway-no matter what-against any odds.
IT’S 2022 and while there is enough sh!t to worry about these days, the one thing people should NOT have to worry about is if fire breaking glass will wake them vs a screeching smoke alarm that has well proven itself over the past many decades. Smoke alarms have been around since 1965.
So until someone successfully develops a “smoke sniffing smart phone app” that is automatically installed on everyone’s phone (https://
Our condolences to the family involved as well as the Sag Harbor and other area fire and EMS departments who responded, but couldn’t do what they would have loved to have done. Or better yet-to arrive with the entire family out front, smoke alarms going off and everyone a little wet from residential fire sprinklers spraying water – all doing as expected.
Here is more with video:
https://tinyurl.com/3ekcv65x
https://tinyurl.com/3ekcv65x
Take Care. Be Careful. Pass it On.
#Longisland
#Noyak
#Southampton
#firefighter
#firefighters
#housefire
#fatal
#fatality
#newyork