The New York City Fire Department announced Saturday evening that one elderly man died, and six firefighters were injured as a result of a fire on the fiftieth floor of Trump Tower in New York City. The man, later identified as 67-year-old Todd Brassner, was found unconscious by first responders in his apartment on the fiftieth floor of the building. He was taken to Mount Sinai Roosevelt Hospital where he was later pronounced dead.
“We found fire on the 50th floor of the building,” FDNY Commissioner Daniel A. Nigro said Saturday afternoon. “The apartment was entirely on fire. Members pushed in heroically, they were knocking down the fire and found one occupant of the apartment who is in critical condition.”
“This was a very difficult fire,” Nigro wrote on Twitter. “As you can imagine, the apartment is quite large, we are 50 stories up. The rest of the building had a considerable amount of smoke. 200 Firefighters and EMS members are on scene. We had many floors to search, and stairways, and right now the only civilian injury is to the occupant of that apartment. There are four Firefighters with non-life-threatening injuries.”
The upper residential stories of the tower are not equipped with a sprinkler system according to Nigro.
The President tweeted his appreciation for the FDNY and cited the quality of the building as a reason the blaze was not worse. “Fire at Trump Tower is out,” he wrote. “Very confined (well built building). Firemen (and women) did a great job. THANK YOU!”
Donald Trump’s son, Eric, also tweeted his appreciation writing, “Thank you to the amazing men and women of the NYFD who extinguished a fire in a residential apartment at @TrumpTower. The @FDNYand @NYPDare truly some of the most incredible people anywhere!”
The fire was contained to the fiftieth floor of the tower and Nigro later reported that no one from the First Family was in the building at the time.
This is the second time in the course of three months that a fire has broken out at Trump Tower. The last one broke out in a cooling tower at the top of the building. Two people were injured in that fire which was believed to have been caused by electrical heaters inside the cooling towers.