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Building Fires


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Posted by John W on Saturday, March 14th 2026:

I was reading last month's posts about building fires. I was remembering the old Bronx building I grew up in that was built in the mid to late 1920's. It's still standing. Each room had only one ungrounded electrical outlet per room. Back then, tenants only needed them for lights. Maybe a (high tech) radio if you had the money. As electrical needs expanded, we would run thin 18-gauge lamp cord along the baseboards and over and around door jambs using nail in insulated U-tacks to secure the wire connecting extra outlets where needed. You could buy those plastic surface mount plastic outlets to screw into the baseboards in any local hardware store. They were not grounded and looking back had to a fire hazard. Not to mention a code violation. 400 watts of Christmas tree lights certainly heated things up.

Reference ID: BX93330


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