A fire at Tracey Towers housing complex, located on the Norwood-Bedford Park border, on Saturday resulted in no injuries the FDNY said. An FDNY spokesperson said the department was alerted to reports of a fire at the 871-unit complex, located at 40 West Mosholu Parkway South, at around 5.10 p.m. on Saturday, June 24. A security guard later told Norwood News the fire broke out on the 27th floor.

 

Meanwhile, the FDNY spokesperson said the incident was caused by an “oven fire” and was contained to the stove. The spokesperson said the gas was shut down on the stove, the relevant utility company was notified, and that there were no reported injuries.

 

Norwood News spoke to two female residents of the towers, built in 1975 and owned by Tracey Towers Associates with an address at 1613 3rd Avenue in Manhattan, as they were leaving the affected tower. They said they lived on the 38th floor and had smelled smoke earlier inside their apartment. Other residents we spoke to on the day did not appear to be aware there had been a fire at all.

 

In response to an inquiry about the incident, Don Miller of West End Strategies PR firm, which represents RY Management, the management company for Tracey Towers, said, “There was a reported stove fire that was extinguished before the fire department arrived.” He added, “There was no extension of the fire and no reported injuries.”

 

Meanwhile, Jean Hill, president of the Tracey Towers Tenants Organization, later told Norwood News, “It was a grease fire on the stove. It was put out quickly as a neighbor had an extinguisher. No one was hurt and no damage to the apartment except for the stove.”

Tracey Towers, designed by architect, Paul Rudolph, is made up of two, high-rise towers, comprising units of various sizes, including one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments and is part of NYC Department of Housing, Preservation & Development (HPD)’s Mitchell Lama affordable rental and cooperative program for moderate and middle-income families, the 2nd largest Bronx co-op, according to HPD. It is home to a large Ghanaian community, among other residents.

 

According to a fire safety notice posted to the notice board on the ground floor of the affected 38-floor tower (Building 40), which also has one floor below ground, the affected building structure is “non-combustible,” and there is an alarm on each floor by the exit door of Wing A. The alarm does not transmit to the fire department according to the notice.

 

Also, according to the notice, there is no emergency voice communication system and no public address system. The building has a “partially covered” sprinkler system, according to the notice, with coverage in the compactor chute and sprinkler heads inside the chute on the 39th, 5th, and 3rd floors, as well as in the laundry room, storage space, and main concourse compactor roof.

 

As reported, a larger fire broke out on the 24th floor of the other 41-floor tower located at 20 West Mosholu Parkway South (Building 20) on July 23, 2021. This followed an even more more serious fire at the complex on March 10, 2020 [also in Building 20] just as the COVID-19 pandemic was starting to hit New York City. The latter was a compactor fire, with reports at the time of “heavy smoke from the 15th floor up to the 41st floor.”

 

Hill told Norwood News in July 2021 of the March 2020 fire, “We had a tremendous fire here and it did a lot of damage so hopefully, this [July 2021 fire] is not as bad because it seemed to be contained on the 24th floor, but the water has kind of gotten into other people’s apartments.” She added, “I know that the management company sent out notices because they have the phone numbers [of the tenants], so they sent phone messages telling people what’s going on. They asked people to stay in their apartments.”

 

At a residents meeting following the 2021 fire, concerns had been raised about large amounts of trash piling up on balconies which were seen as a potential fire hazard, along with concerns over residents being careless with lit cigarettes. At the same meeting, concerns had also been raised about some elevators and the intercom not always working.

 

As reported, the Tracey Towers housing complex usually has its own onsite polling site in a community room in Building 40 around election time. With early voting ongoing ahead of Tuesday’s primary on June 27, we made inquiries with Hill in case there had been any disruption to voting in light of the fire on Saturday.

 

Hill said the usual community room used as the onsite polling site was being used to film either a commercial or a music video on Saturday. “The voting will be in the other Community Room B in Building 40,” she said. We asked FDNY if the building had been evacuated but did not receive an immediate response. According to a Tracey Towers security guard we spoke with, no evacuation appears to have taken place.

 

Meanwhile, a UPS delivery worker we spoke to by the elevator banks inside Building 40 on Saturday who was holding a large industrial size cart filled with various packages for residents of the building appeared frustrated when each time he attempted to enter the elevator with the cart, residents cut the line and got into the elevator ahead of him. When he protested, one resident told him she didn’t care that he had been waiting. The UPS worker later described some residents of the building as “rude.”

 

Meanwhile, as reported, longtime resident of Tracey Towers for 40 years and esteemed community leader, Sallie Caldwell, was laid to rest at Woodlawn Cemetery on Friday, June 23, after a funeral service in Wakefield the previous evening. A flier displaying Caldwell’s photo and details of her funeral service were still seen displayed on a TV screen inside the towers by the elevator bank on Saturday. A short video of her casket being carried out of the United Christian Baptist Church on 222nd Street on Thursday night, June 22, can be watched here.