The estates of two people who died in the 2021 Second Street house fire have filed a lawsuit against Riverhead Town and the property owner, alleging that both parties’ “negligence” and “recklessness” in maintaining the safety of the property contributed to the victims’ deaths.
The complaint, filed in Suffolk County Supreme Court on Feb. 8, argues that Carmela Cannella, the landlord and homeowner of 46 East Second Street, was “negligent, careless and reckless in causing the wrongful death” of the two victims by failing to properly inspect and/or maintain fire safety systems in the home. Cannella also failed to comply with mandated safety requirements and failed “to ensure the premises had a functional means of egress and escape for 3rd floor residents” in case of a fire, the complaint states.
The complaint alleges that the Town of Riverhead “failed to enforce the aforesaid summonses and violations” issued to the property for not having rental permits, “and/or follow up to ensure that the smoke/fire detection alarms were operational and there was an appropriate means of egress and escape from the third floor in case of fire.”
A late-night blaze engulfed the historic three-story home on East Second Street on the night of Nov. 16, 2021 after recently extinguished cigarette butts discarded in a plastic receptacle on the porch sparked the fire, according to Suffolk County Police. Residents of the two apartments on the second floor and Cannella, who lived on the first floor, escaped, but the family of Guatemala natives who lived on the third floor perished.
Zonia Dinora Rivera Mendoza, 41, her children, Carlos Cifredo Peñate Rivera, 25, and Andrea Isamar González Rivera, 16, and her nephews, Duglas Edgardo Rivera Aguirre, 27, and Carlos Alberto Ramos Aguirre, 24 all died from smoke inhalation when trapped in a bedroom, with their only means of escape, a wooden staircase, destroyed by the fire, according to a Suffolk County Police Department report.
The lawsuit was brought by Jason Hernandez, the administrator of Rivera Mendoza’s estate; Matthew Kiernan, as public administrator of the estate of Ramos Aguirre; and Hernandez individually. The plaintiffs are seeking monetary damages; all three plaintiffs are being represented by the firm Davis & Ferber, LLP of Islandia.
Riverhead Town served three criminal summonses on Cannella just three weeks before the fire because she did not have rental permits, according to code enforcement records. Previous rental permits issued to Cannella for the three apartments, last issued in 2018, had expired on March 7, 2020. Town code requires inspections for safety, building and fire code compliance before permits can be issued and at that time expired after two years.
Cannella never responded to renewal notices, and attempts to contact Cannella went unanswered for more than a year and a half, according to notes made by code enforcement investigators. Cannella’s attorney on the matter, Edward Burke Jr., told RiverheadLOCAL in a prior interview that his client could not renew the permits in a timely manner due to personal health issues and the coronavirus pandemic.
The complaint accuses the town of “failing to issue violations to the owner of said premises.” That allowed “the fire detection equipment at said location to remain in a damaged, dilapidated and in a state of disrepaÍr due to prolonged lack of maintenance which created a dangerous and hazardous condition at said multifamily dwelling.”
In her statement to Suffolk County Police, Cannella told investigators that the third floor apartment had hard-wired smoke detectors; the lawsuit alleges that the fire and smoke alarms “did not operate, or exist, so as to timely or sufficiently warn the occupants of the 3rd floor apartment of a pending fire.”
Burke did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
The complaint also faults both the property owner and the town for failing to ensure the building had a “functional means of egress and escape for 3rd floor residents and other protection for the residents in case of fire.”
A RiverheadLOCAL investigation in March 2022 found that the third floor apartment where the five victims of the fire died did not have two independent means of escape, as required by the N.Y. State Multiple Residence Law.
| MORE COVERAGE: Trapped by blaze, five people died in third-floor apartment that lacked second means of egress |
Town Attorney Erik Howard said that the town’s fire safety officers did not check for a second means of egress, and that a letter of pre-existing use issued by the town in 2009 exempted the building from that requirement.
However, town records do not present a clear picture of the building’s pre-existing use status, as far as the third-floor apartment is concerned and contained numerous inconsistencies. The records also show Riverhead Town issued rental permits for the third-floor apartment for more than 20 years, despite the fact that town tax records have the structure listed as a three-family dwelling containing apartments on the first and second floors only — and notwithstanding the lack of a second means of egress for the third-floor apartment.
In an email to RiverheadLOCAL on Monday evening, Howard said the town has not yet been served with the lawsuit.
“I will not discuss the merits of the case at this early stage except to say that generally, I would maintain the position I stated when the underlying claim was filed in that I do not believe that the Town of Riverhead bears any responsibility for this tragedy,” Howard wrote. “I do not believe that the Plaintiff in this suit will be able to prove otherwise and it is my opinion that the Town is being joined in this case because the property owner did not have insurance, is likely judgment-proof and from a plaintiff’s perspective, the Town has “deep pockets”.”
The Riverhead Town Board took action to prevent similar incidents from occurring, introducing a local law to reform its Rental Dwelling Units code. The amendment, which passed in June and takes effect in the new year, requires that homeowners renting homes three stories or more have a sprinkler system, a second means of egress and an interconnected smoke detection and alarm system. The local law also reduced the term of the town’s rental permit from two years to one year to allow town officials to inspect rental homes more often for compliance with fire safety codes.
The court record did not indicate whether the defendants have already been served with the lawsuit.
Editor’s note Feb. 14, 2023, 10:20 a.m.: This article was amended after initial publication to include comments on the lawsuit made by Town Attorney Erik Howard.
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