Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective
Dorothy Mae Apartment-Hotel fire
1982 fatal arson, California, U.S. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Remove ads
The Dorothy Mae Apartment-Hotel fire was a September 4, 1982, arson that killed 25 people in Los Angeles, California, in the United States.[1] An additional 30 people were injured.[2]
In 1985, Humberto Diaz de la Torre was convicted of starting the fire and sentenced to 625 years in prison.[3] de la Torre started the fire with gasoline and a match in response to an argument with his uncle, who lived in the building.[4] The perpetrator and most of the victims were immigrants from El Salitre, Zacatecas, Mexico.[3] The vast majority of the victims were from four families.[5]
The Dorothy Mae building, located at 821 Sunset Boulevard, was constructed primarily of bricks and had been opened to tenants in 1927.[6][7] The 43-unit building housed nearly 200 people.[4]
The Dorothy Mae Apartment-Hotel fire was the impetus for the 1984 passage of a fire sprinkler law known as the Dorothy Mae ordinance.[2] The Dorothy Mae ordinance "requires all pre-1943 residential buildings of R-1, Occupancy, three or more stories in height, to meet certain specified retroactive fire safety requirements."[8]
The November 15, 1973, Stratford Apartments fire also killed 25 people in Los Angeles.[5] The 1970 Ponet Square Hotel and Apartments fire that killed 19 people led to the enactment of the "Ponet doors ordinance."[9]
Remove ads
References
External links
Wikiwand - on
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Remove ads