FORT MYERS Students make goodie bags for kids fighting Cancer A special delivery, straight from the heart, to Galisano’s Children’s Hospital. Three 8th graders from Lexington Middle School delivered 100 goodie bags to bring smiles to kids fighting cancer.
TICE Large police presence at park in Tice Deputies and K9s are investigating Schandler Hall Community Park on Palm Beach Boulevard in Tice.
CAPE CORAL Lee County superintendent candidates face off in debate These three people, Denise Carlin, Morgan Wright and Sheridan Chester, are making it clear that they want the job.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA DEA to reclassify Marijuana as Schedule Three drug When you think of marijuana in Florida, You might think of an illegal drug seized by law enforcement. Kim Rivers, the CEO of Florida-based cannabis retailer Trulieve, says when used medicinally, it can help a lot of people.
FORT MYERS Expect more delays on Colonial and Fowler due to intersection project Work on the Colonial Fowler intersection in Fort Myers is underway, and there are many moving parts.
FORT MYERS Possible pay-by-text scam in downtown Fort Myers may have cost woman nearly $1,000 Pay-by-text parking may have cost one woman nearly a thousand dollars after her credit card was hacked.
FORT MYERS Lee County STET team protecting our schools with cameras There are cameras in our kid’s schools, dozens of them, but did you know that Lee County Schools sends those live video feeds to the sheriff’s office, and it’s someone’s job to watch them?
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA Six-week abortion ban to take effect soon A stricter abortion ban will take effect in Florida on Wednesday.
Estero’s Golf Coast Driving Range shuts down, visitors devastated A place to relax, let loose and hit a few drives, has come to the end of an era for this community. “This is the first place we came to,” said Roxanne Henningsen, a Bonita Springs resident. “And it like became our second home. The people are wonderful. It’s just a great atmosphere. And we’ve […]
CAPE CORAL Business owners reeling after massive fire in Cape Coral “Very scary” are the words Denise Creacy used to describe what she felt when she saw plumes of black smoke, firefighters, and police fill her neighborhood.
LEHIGH ACRES Changing how you are represented in Lee County Leaders want to hear your thoughts this week at a town hall on how you elect county commissioners.
FORT MYERS Frontier Airlines announces nonstop flights from RSW to San Juan, PR These flights will take off on June 2 and run 3 times a week.
NAPLES Fight to save the trees in Naples neighborhood When Sue Canfield looks up in her front yard she sees light shining through the sprawling branches of a 25-year-old Oak towering above her. The trees, which line every road in the waterways of naples, is why she choose this neighborhood but soon those very trees will be taken down.
City of Naples hosts open house workshop for Naples road projects The City of Naples is hosting an open house workshop to hear from the public regarding road improvements.
CAPE CORAL Ollie’s Pub, the home of SWFL’s local music scene, closes after 4 memorable years Ollie’s Pub, once the center of local original music in Southwest Florida, is closing after a prosperous yet arduous four years.
FORT MYERS Students make goodie bags for kids fighting Cancer A special delivery, straight from the heart, to Galisano’s Children’s Hospital. Three 8th graders from Lexington Middle School delivered 100 goodie bags to bring smiles to kids fighting cancer.
TICE Large police presence at park in Tice Deputies and K9s are investigating Schandler Hall Community Park on Palm Beach Boulevard in Tice.
CAPE CORAL Lee County superintendent candidates face off in debate These three people, Denise Carlin, Morgan Wright and Sheridan Chester, are making it clear that they want the job.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA DEA to reclassify Marijuana as Schedule Three drug When you think of marijuana in Florida, You might think of an illegal drug seized by law enforcement. Kim Rivers, the CEO of Florida-based cannabis retailer Trulieve, says when used medicinally, it can help a lot of people.
FORT MYERS Expect more delays on Colonial and Fowler due to intersection project Work on the Colonial Fowler intersection in Fort Myers is underway, and there are many moving parts.
FORT MYERS Possible pay-by-text scam in downtown Fort Myers may have cost woman nearly $1,000 Pay-by-text parking may have cost one woman nearly a thousand dollars after her credit card was hacked.
FORT MYERS Lee County STET team protecting our schools with cameras There are cameras in our kid’s schools, dozens of them, but did you know that Lee County Schools sends those live video feeds to the sheriff’s office, and it’s someone’s job to watch them?
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA Six-week abortion ban to take effect soon A stricter abortion ban will take effect in Florida on Wednesday.
Estero’s Golf Coast Driving Range shuts down, visitors devastated A place to relax, let loose and hit a few drives, has come to the end of an era for this community. “This is the first place we came to,” said Roxanne Henningsen, a Bonita Springs resident. “And it like became our second home. The people are wonderful. It’s just a great atmosphere. And we’ve […]
CAPE CORAL Business owners reeling after massive fire in Cape Coral “Very scary” are the words Denise Creacy used to describe what she felt when she saw plumes of black smoke, firefighters, and police fill her neighborhood.
LEHIGH ACRES Changing how you are represented in Lee County Leaders want to hear your thoughts this week at a town hall on how you elect county commissioners.
FORT MYERS Frontier Airlines announces nonstop flights from RSW to San Juan, PR These flights will take off on June 2 and run 3 times a week.
NAPLES Fight to save the trees in Naples neighborhood When Sue Canfield looks up in her front yard she sees light shining through the sprawling branches of a 25-year-old Oak towering above her. The trees, which line every road in the waterways of naples, is why she choose this neighborhood but soon those very trees will be taken down.
City of Naples hosts open house workshop for Naples road projects The City of Naples is hosting an open house workshop to hear from the public regarding road improvements.
CAPE CORAL Ollie’s Pub, the home of SWFL’s local music scene, closes after 4 memorable years Ollie’s Pub, once the center of local original music in Southwest Florida, is closing after a prosperous yet arduous four years.
Firefighters work outside the apartment building in the Bronx on Monday, Jan. 10, 2022, in New York. Doctors are working to save the lives of several people gravely injured when smoke from a fire knocked them out or trapped them in their apartments in the New York City high-rise building. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura) Investigators sought answers Monday for why safety doors failed to close when a fire broke out in a New York high-rise, allowing thick smoke to rise through the tower and kill 17 people, including eight children, in the city’s deadliest blaze in more than three decades. A malfunctioning electric space heater apparently started the fire Sunday in the 19-story building in the Bronx, fire officials said. The flames damaged only a small part of the building, but smoke poured through the apartment’s open door and turned stairwells into dark, ash-choked death traps. The stairs were the only method of escape in a tower too tall for fire escapes. Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said the apartment’s front door and a door on the 15th floor should have been self-closing and blunted the spread of smoke, but the doors stayed fully open. It was not clear if the doors failed mechanically or if they had been manually disabled. Nigro said the apartment door was not obstructed. The heavy smoke blocked some residents from escaping and incapacitated others as they tried to flee, fire officials said. Firefighters carried out limp children and gave them oxygen and continued making rescues even after their air supplies ran out. Glenn Corbett, a fire science professor at John Jay College in New York City, said closed doors are vital to containing fire and smoke, especially in buildings that do not have automatic sprinkler systems. “It’s pretty remarkable that the failure of one door could lead to how many deaths we had here, but that’s the reality of it,” Corbett said. “That one door played a critical role in allowing the fire to spread and the smoke and heat to spread vertically through the building.” Dozens of people were hospitalized, including several in critical condition. Mayor Eric Adams called it an “unspeakable tragedy” at a news conference near the scene Monday. “This tragedy is not going to define us,” Adams said. “It is going to show our resiliency.” Adams lowered the death toll from an initial report Sunday, saying that two fewer people were killed than originally thought. Nigro said patients were taken to seven hospitals and “there was a bit of a double count.” The dead included children as young as 4 years old, City Council Member Oswald Feliz said. An investigation was underway to determine exactly how the fire spread and whether anything could have been done to prevent or contain the blaze, Nigro said. A fire department official said the space heater had been running for a “prolonged period” before the fire began. What caused it to malfunction remains under investigation, spokesman Frank Dwyer said. Fire then spread quickly to nearby furniture and bedding, Dwyer said. Nigro said the heat was on in the building before the fire started, and the space heater was being used to supplement it. But Stefan Beauvogui, who lived with his wife in the building for about seven years, said the cold was an ongoing problem in his fourth-floor apartment. Beauvogui said he had three space heaters for the winter — for the bedrooms and the sitting room. The heating system that was supposed to warm the apartment “don’t work for nothing.” He said he had complained, but it had not been fixed. Large, new apartment buildings are required to have sprinkler systems and interior doors that swing shut automatically to contain smoke and deprive fires of oxygen, but those rules do not apply to thousands of the city’s older buildings. The building was equipped with self-closing doors and smoke alarms, but several residents said they initially ignored the alarms because they were so common in the 120-unit building. Bronx Park Phase III Preservation LLC, the group that owns the building, said it was cooperating fully with the fire department and the city and working to assist residents. “We are devastated by the unimaginable loss of life caused by this profound tragedy,” the statement said. A spokeswoman for the ownership group, Kelly Magee, said maintenance staff in July fixed the lock on the front door of the apartment in which the fire started and, while doing that repair, checked that the apartment’s self-closing door was working. No issues were reported with the door after that point, Magee said. New York City inspectors have issued violations for problems with self-closing doors on five apartments in the building and one opening to a stairwell stretching back a dozen years, according to a database maintained by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The records state that all the violations were corrected. Residents smoking in the stairwells sometimes tripped the fire alarms, and property managers had been working with them to address the problem, Magee said. She said the alarms appeared to work properly on Sunday. The tower was required by building codes to have sprinklers only in its trash compactor and laundry room because it has concrete ceilings and floors, she said. Camber Property Group is one of three firms in the ownership group that purchased the building in 2020 as part of $166 million purchase of eight affordable housing buildings in the borough. One of Camber’s founders, Rick Gropper, served on Adams’ transition team, advising him on housing. He contributed to a dozen politicians in the past few elections, including $400 to Adams’ campaign last year. New York City has been slow to require sprinklers for older apartment buildings, passing laws to mandate them in high-rise office towers after 9/11 but punting in recent years on a bill that would require such measures in residential buildings. In 2018, a city lawmaker proposed requiring automatic fire sprinklers in residential buildings 40 feet or taller by the end of 2029, but that measure never passed, and the lawmaker recently left office. A sprinkler system set off by heat in the apartment might have saved lives, said Ronald Siarnicki, executive director of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. “Most likely it would have extinguished that fire or at least held it in check and not produced the amount of toxic smoke,” said Siarnicki, adding that firefighter groups have been lobbying for stricter sprinkler requirements for years. The building is home to many families originally from Gambia in West Africa. Resident Karen Dejesus said she was used to hearing the fire alarm go off. “Not until I actually saw the smoke coming in the door did I realize it was a real fire, and I began to hear people yelling, ‘Help! Help! Help!’” she said. Dejesus, who was in her two-floor apartment with her son and 3-year-old granddaughter, immediately called family members and ran to get towels to put under the door. But smoke began coming down her stairs before the 56-year-old resident could get the towels, so the three ran to the back of the apartment. “It was so scary,” she said. “Just the fact that we’re in a building that’s burning and you don’t know how you’re going to get out. You don’t know if the firefighters are going to get to you in time.” Firefighters broke down her door and helped all three out the window and down a ladder to safety. Dejesus clung to her rescuer on the way down. The fire was New York City’s deadliest since 1990, when 87 people died in an arson at the Happy Land social club, also in the Bronx. Sunday’s fire happened just days after 12 people, including eight children, were killed in a house fire in Philadelphia. ___ Associated Press writers Bobby Caina Calvan, Deepti Hajela and Bernard Condon contributed to this report.