THE FIESTA FIRE: HOW ONE BOARD PRESIDENT COORDINATED

Communication with the affected residents takes serious effort. “It’s not like everyone is home and there’s a loudspeaker and an announcement that there’s a fire in the building,” says Ellen Stoller, board president in March 1999 when the block-long, 11-story Manhasset Apartments co-op at 301 West 108th Street and 300 West 109th Street was devastated by a fire that began in the ground-floor Fiesta Mexicana restaurant just after lunchtime. “It’s not an orderly process. It’s confusing.”

Like most residents, Stoller was at work. Someone phoned her to report that the building was on fire. Stoller phoned her family to make sure they were all right and then rushed home to see firefighters battling the blaze.

Stoller phoned her family to make sure they were all right and then rushed home to see firefighters battling the blaze.

“The building sponsor had been alerted and there was someone from the building management already there,” Stoller says. But with no formal communication plan in place, information that afternoon was sketchy and ad hoc.

“My job came later,” Stoller says. “We found a place to meet in the neighborhood and had meetings every other week – not just the board, but the board with a team of professionals: our architect [for a previously begun renovation project] and lawyer were intimately involved from the first, as was our sponsor’s lawyer.”

Information got to the displaced residents through “lots of informational meetings for people affected by the fire,” with word getting out through an informal method that, while perhaps more heartwarming than strictly efficient, nonetheless worked. “It was neighbors helping neighbors and people staying connected to people,” Stoller says. “People made sure they knew where their neighbors had gone.”

– Frank Lovece