200º Bathwater Scalds Boy In Building With Years of Problems
By Steven Wishnia

For years, tenants at 101 West 140th St. in Harlem have had to cope with an erratic hot-water supply.

“When you turn on the hot water, nothing comes out at certain times of the day,” says Linda Daniels, who lives on the sixth floor with her six children. Tenants in the building take baths by stopping up the tub, turning on the hot-water tap, and waiting until it comes on. When the bathtub is half full, they turn the hot water off and fill it the rest of the way with cold water. “I’ve complained to three managements since 1995,” says Daniels. “I shouldn’t have to run hot water and go away and wait. I pay $931 a month.” The situation turned to tragedy on the morning of Feb. 22, when Daniels’ 10-year-old son was running water for a bath before going to school. “He was screaming, ‘Mommy, Mommy, I couldn’t see the knob,’” she says. “He said he reached to turn off the water and he couldn’t see because of the steam.” The boy slipped and fell into the bathtub, sustaining second and third-degree burns over almost 40 percent of his body. “He had no skin,” Daniels says. “The water was 200 degrees.”

The 52-unit building has a long history of problems. There was no heat or hot water for three months in the winter of 1996, and tenants filed an HP action against the landlord, Kromo Lenox Associates. An inch-thick printout from four inspections in the fall of 1998 by the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development lists hundreds of old violations, including water leaks in the ceilings, peeling lead paint, and rodent infestations. The inspectors found scores of new violations, with leaky and crumbling ceilings, peeling lead paint, and defective bathroom fixtures the most serious.

In February 1998, inspectors requested that HPD’s Emergency Repair Program come into two apartments to fix bathroom faucets putting out scalding hot water, in the sink in a first-floor apartment and in the sink and bathtub in a sixth-floor home. The violations had been issued more than a month before, but the landlord hadn’t fixed them.

Daniels’ son is now in the burn unit at Cornell University Hospital. “These are some of the results when violations go unanswered,” she says. “There needs to be a change in the way code enforcement does inspections. Who’s to say this won’t happen to another child?”