SILVER SPRING, Md. — Tenants who survived a high-rise apartment fire here are disputing the building management company's claim that fire systems "were in working order."
Thursday night, friends and neighbors lent their shoulders to the family of 25 year-old Melanie Diaz who was killed in the fire on the seventh floor of Arrive Silver Spring.
"She was just always a very calm person," said Diaz's cousin Odalys Roblero. "Even during arguments, she would always be the person to be like, 'OK, everyone, let's just sit down and let's just talk.'"
But five days after the fire, any calm is hard to come by for Diaz's family and neighbors.
"She was robbed of her life," said Arianna Garcia. "There is no justification as to why a building that charges so much did not take the proper precautions," she said.
"There absolutely was no alarm going off in the main building," said resident Joseph Tresh, who crawled through rough smoke to pull a fire alarm on the floor below the fire.
"One of my main concerns, beyond getting myself and my partner out was to get to that fire alarm because I know it wasn't going off," he said.
After days of silence, the California-based building operator Trinity Property Consultants told WUSA9 in a statement, "All fire systems within the building were in working order," alarms that were pulled "functioned as intended" and "all smoke detectors were in working order."
Residents say they installed their own smoke detectors in their units.
Montgomery County authorities say the smoke detectors in the hallways are not connected to the buildings' general alarm.
"What if I hadn't been awake at that time?" asked Tresh. "How long would it have taken for that smoke to kill me and everyone else on my floor and on the eighth floor?"
Diaz's family wants changes in the building's fire systems.
Garcia said, "The county needs to do something. The state needs to do something."