Second Safest City Blog

I happened to be at the Palisades Center mall during the fire that occurred yesterday, which just happened to be Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year — the day that numerous consumer whores travel from afar and line up in the freezing cold to wait for the chance to be told the item they want is already out of stock.

One group of local teens put together a video of exactly how ridiculous this entire event is. They didn’t capture the fire, however, so let me share a few points.

Some friends and I were there ’shopping’, or should we say, ‘watching shopping’. We were headed down the escalators, ready to leave the mall anyway, when our noses started to pick up the scent of something acrid.

“Do you smell smoke,” we asked each other. Within minutes, it was hard to deny that the mall was filling with this white acrid smoke, the kind of smoke that fires produce.

Remembering that Clarkstown is the Second Safest City, shoppers went about their business and pretended like nothing was wrong despite that something was obviously wrong at this point. They simply felt so safe, that they continued shopping even though the building may well have been on fire.

I walked towards where it seemed like the smoke was coming from. Was I stopped by security? Emergency responders? Alarms? Other shoppers? Not at all. No alarms went off, despite that it was difficult to even see while standing in H&M. No strobe lights, no sirens, no evacuations. I literally screamed at the manager of H&M to close the store and get everyone out. They insisted there was no problem as “the fire was upstairs”. Not even a moment later, a Clarkstown Police officer (who was actually wearing a uniform) walked in and said the same thing I said, but got more results. They shut down the store and got everyone out.

I walked upstairs to see Circuit City not filled with smoke at all. So much for the fire “upstairs”. I asked a Circuit City employee what was going on. Never in my life had I seen someone so obviously high on marijuana.

“Like, there was like this fire man, outside. But then like there was this fire inside, then everyone was like ‘get out of here!’ Man,” he uttered in his stoner drawl. We decided this was a good time to leave the mall. On the way out, I stopped and asked a security guard, “Hey, do you know what started the fire?”

“Fire?” he asked. Remember, we’re standing in the smoke still.

“You might want to go talk to your buddies, they’re over there putting out a fire.” Naturally, he smiled and went about his merry business pretending that he understood what I said to him in English.

The next day, we all found out that there actually was no fire in the mall itself, but rather in the ventilation intake for the mall, which had managed to suck in a mass of burning cardboard, allegedly ignited by a carelessly discarded cigarette butt. Of course, no one seemed to care that there should have been fire dampers in the ventilation to prevent this exact scenario from happening.

To summarize:

• There was a fire in the ventilation system that was billowing smoke into the mall, despite the requirements for fire dampers in the vents to prevent this exact situation from occurring.
• There were no visual or audible alarms in response to the fire.
• Smoke from the fire was thick enough to significantly reduce visibility. From inside H&M, you could not clearly see the store opposite H&M.
• Mall security didn’t even know there was a fire when the mall was filled with smoke. Even if it was just one clueless guy, you have to wonder how he could keep his job given his uselessnesses in an emergency.
• Retail store managers involved refused to close down operations until ordered to do so by police, despite that there was obviously an emergency.
• Shoppers felt so safe, they didn’t care there might have been a fire! Not more than a handful of people were reacting to it in a meaningful way. A number of shoppers covered their faces with their clothing, as if that would somehow filter the smoke. In reality, shoppers at the mall were probably just overwhelming themselves with the scent of their own sweat.

All in all, it was a happy holiday shopping experience, and we’re just glad that we were safe since steel doesn’t easily melt or burn.