"As they left, they opened the door, and the door stayed open," Nigro said.
Self-closing door violations were issued to Twin Parks North West in 2017 and 2019, the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development said. The violations were corrected by 2020, and no self-closing door violations have since been issued to the complex, the department said.
Citywide, the department said it issued over 22,000 self-closing door violations in the 2021 fiscal year, and more than 18,000 of those violations were corrected.
"Yesterday's fire was a devastating tragedy, and our hearts go out to all the families affected by the worst kind of loss," the department said in a statement. "We urge residents to report malfunctioning doors to property owners or call 311 if issues are not corrected and HPD will respond.”
Karen Dejesus, 54, an 18-year resident of the building, told USA TODAY her doors didn’t close automatically. She said she didn’t know if any of the doors did.
Dejesus said the fire alarms in the building went off so regularly that it was like "second nature to us." But when she started to see the smoke and heard people yelling for help, she realized the fire was real.
Other residents echoed Dejesus' account. Many told multiple news outlets the building had a faulty fire alarm system that often went off unprompted, causing many to initially believe Sunday's alert was another false alarm.
Magee said there were no known issues with the smoke alarms and that residents smoking in the stairwells have previously tripped the alarms.
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