Fire Inspections Skipped At Rikers Jail Where Detainee Started Blaze

QUEENS, NEW YORK — City jailers skipped a year's worth of fire safety checks before the Rikers Island blaze that left 20 people wounded, according to public defenders, court records and reports.

Fire safety officers at Rikers Island's North Infirmary Command did not complete mandatory weekly and monthly inspections between April 1 2022 and April 30, 2023, according to a Correction department audit dated July 27.

On April 6, a detainee started a fire that sent 15 people — 10 staffers and five incarcerated people — to the hospital, Patch reported at the time.

Two people suffered serious burns and it was later discovered the sprinkler system had been inexplicably shut down, according to the Legal Aid Society.

“This pattern of gross noncompliance at Rikers Island continues to put lives at risk,” said Veronica Vela, supervising attorney with the Prisoners’ Rights Project at The Legal Aid Society.

“The recent fire safety audit has proven, once again, that DOC has little interest in providing safe and humane living conditions for the people incarcerated at their facilities.”

Correction Department spokesman Frank Dwyer told the Daily News, first to report the audit, that the North Infirmary Command fire sprinklers now work.

“[The department] complied with all annual and semiannual inspections for fire safety equipment," Dwyer told the News. "Including sprinklers and alarms — in all facilities.”

Poor conditions on Rikers Islands have spurred advocates to lobby for a federal takeover, a possibility that became more likely Thursday when a judge ordered court filings on whether city officials' mismanagement of the troubled jail rose to contempt.

Manhattan federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain gave Mayor Eric Adams' administration months to avert a federal takeover, asking for proof of improvements to problems that include violence, open drug use and sanitation concerns.

"The defendants have not yet shown me that they are willing and able to make the rapid, radical changes in the administration of the jails that are necessary to protect the people who are in their custody," Swain said.

"Defendants should take the next few months as a challenge to prove that they can and will and are doing what the taxpayers have put them in place to do."