Inspection Detail

Inspection: 106867898 - Freddies Fashion Mart

Inspection Information - Office: Manhattan Area Office

Investigation Summary

At 10:30 a.m. on December 8, 1995, Employees #1 through #7 were working at the clothing store Freddies Fashion Mart. A fire was set by an arsonist, who prevented escape through the front door; there were no other exits. Employees #1 through #7 died from smoke inhalation. OSHA conducted a fatality investigation to determine if lack of exits and failure of the automatic fire sprinkler system significantly increased the fire hazard to the employees. Citations were issued to Freddies Fashion Mart for lack of a secondary exit. Other citations were issued to the property owner, the property manager, and construction contractors for various violations having to do with emergency egress and fire sprinklers. A secondary door had been removed from the basement of the store by construction crews renovating the building that housed Freddies Fashion Mart, thus taking out of service a potential secondary exit. The construction company and building owner had planned to give to the store a new independent exit from the basement, but it had not yet been installed. The fire sprinkler system serving the store basement was a shared sprinkler system, and construction crews had disabled it when they were working on other portions of the sprinkler system during building renovations. Sprinkler violations were issued for disabling the system and for failure to plan renovations to have minimum shutdown of the sprinkler system.

Keywords: FIRE EXT SYSTEM, OBSTRUCTED EGRESS, ASPHYXIATED, WORK RULES, FIRE, INHALATION, SMOKE, WORKPLACE VIOLENCE, SMOKE INHALATION