By Char Adams -
NBC News
While some blame electric heaters in overcrowded homes for the recent deadly fires in New York and Philadelphia, urban planning experts say the real culprits are poor residential conditions fueled by racism, which further influences city decisions. urban planning and infrastructure.
Within days of each other, the fire in the Bronx building in New York
killed at least 17 people
, including several Gambian immigrants, and the one in a Philadelphia row house killed a dozen.
But the origin of these fatal events, according to those who have studied them over the years, follows a historical pattern in which negligent policymaking and infrastructure decisions can kill black people more by disproportionate percentages.
A person looks out a window at the site of the fire in The Bronx, New York.
Carlo Allegri / Reuters
"We are looking at how zoning and land use policies are applied. Housing segregation shows that those policies
have been used against communities of color
," said Juanita Lewis, organizer with the New York Community Voices social justice group. Heard.
"We continue to act in the context of housing segregation and having to demonstrate who is worthy of protection and living in a decent home," added Lewis.
And he stressed: "The fire was caused by a heater because the heating was inadequate. The situation in the Bronx is extremely sad, unfortunate and heartbreaking, but
it is not uncommon
."
The legacy of the early zoning laws, which promoted segregation, continues to exist in the instability in the right to housing, which forces black people to live in neglected units full of maintenance problems.
That makes them more prone to all kinds of hazards: from fire deaths to lead poisoning.
[They reveal the complete list of the 17 who died in the tragic fire in the Bronx]
The black population is more likely to die from a fire than people of other races.
Although black people make up about 13% of the American population, they account for 25% of the people killed in residential fires nationwide, according to the New York State Department of Health.
A legacy of structural racism
"Racism influences almost every way to die by accident in America, and it has for a long, long time," said Jessie Singer, journalist and author of the book
There Are No Accidents
.
"I did research as far back as 1900 and black people die by accident at a higher rate than whites, in all accidents in total," Singer explained.
A 5-year-old boy playing with a lighter could start the deadly fire in Philadelphia
Jan. 12, 202200: 19
"Accidents are supposed to be unforeseeable and unavoidable events, but if that were true,
fatalities from accidents would be randomly distributed
across states, but this is not the case," he stressed.
Nine adults and eight children died in the recent fire in the Bronx.
Mayor Eric Adams and New York Fire Department Commissioner Dan Nigro confirmed it was triggered by a heater and smoke was able to move rapidly through the building after the security doors failed to close.
Built in 1972, the building did not have fire escapes or sprinkler systems, as the standards that require both do
not apply to older buildings in
the city.
They identify a part of the fatalities in the fire of a building in the Bronx
Jan. 12, 202201: 17
[Space heaters are "a symbol of inequality," say concerned activists after the Bronx fire]
The building is owned by Bronx Park Phase III Preservation LLC, and city records list Rick Gropper as the building's principal, who was also named a member of the Adams mayoral transition team before he took office, it reported. The New York Times.
Gropper did not respond to a request for comment from our sister network NBC News.
Little chance of claiming
For black immigrants, especially those with low incomes and little formal education, it can be difficult to claim safe living conditions, said Theodore Hamm, president of the journalism school and associate professor at St. Joseph's College in Brooklyn in New York.
"There are many structural impediments to solving the problems," Hamm said.
"If you are a tenant in one of these buildings and you need maintenance, what can you do? You can call your management company and complain, but if they don't do anything, what is the next step? You could call the mayor's office, but what about it? Will that remedy the complaint? In that position,
you don't have much power
. "
Rebecca Garrard, legislative director for Citizen Action of New York, a social justice organization, said black people are more likely to settle for unsafe housing due to financial instability.
He added that, because they live in unsafe residential conditions, they have to manage their own exposure to risks such as fire, flood, mold, lead poisoning, among others.
Investigators find battery-less smoke alarms in Philadelphia building fire
Jan. 12, 202200: 36
Black
and Latino tenants in New York have the most maintenance problems
: 25% of black tenants have three or more maintenance deficiencies compared to 18% of the general population who rents in the city, according to the Department of Preservation and Housing Development.
"Make no mistake, if this affected upper and middle class whites, we would have fixed this a long time ago," Garrard concluded.
