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Close as required by law? both the apartment door and the stairwell door were left wide open causing the smoke to spread widely throughout a 19-story building and since the building has no fire escapes and the stairwells were full of smoke, the tenants had no means of escape. the tenants were trapped and victims were found on every floor. there were tenants that died from severe smoke inhalation and cardiac and respiratory arrest. housing conditions have implications for the safety of tenants, especially with fire prevention. >> this is what investigators are pointing to, a malfunctioning spac...

That we need investigators if that door was a cself-closing door y did it malfunction? we need to strengthen our fire safety code and also we need to improve our process of not only investigating violations of the housing maintenance code but also curing any violations. we shouldn't wait for a tragedy to happen for us to take action. >> the fire we're told was started by a space heater malfunctioning. people use space heaters if their apartments are not warm enough. this was section 8 housing, public housing in new york. is it, you know, why did these people need a space heater to begin with? ...

Some of the newer buildings have the equivalent of a semi firewall because of the new construction mandates. these older apartments don't have that. we still, dana, don't know the cause of the fire or how it started. but we do know it is very cold in philadelphia. this apparently is government housing. in a lot of these types of cases you have bad electrical, space heaters in there and potentially sometimes you have fireplaces and things just the end to go awry. we haven't gotten information on that yet. >> dana: one of the things that crossed the wire is that the smoke detectors in the buildi...

And until we know more, of course, it's too early to say exactly what led to it, but those portable space heaters as long as i've been a reporter have always been a problem in urban areas, and it could possibly be the cause here and in philadelphia, which is suspected. thanks so much, gabe gutierrez. and too little, too late. georgia voting rights sending a scathing message ahead of his visit there tomorrow, don't come without a plan. the president of the naacp joins us next. this is "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. a mitchell a mitchell reports" on msnbc. it's also temperature balancing ...

Careful with space heaters, the second most common category of fires is heating fires that tend to involve the use of space heaters. we have to ask a deeper question, why are tenants using space heaters in the first place? there are situations where landlords are denying sufficient heat and hot water and when the landlord is providing the legal minimum, what the law requires in new york city falls short of the amount of heat tenants need to remain warm in apartments when the temperatures are freezing so the feeling of freezing in your own apartment is what caused tenants to resort to space hea...