For one, an air horn — a loud device commonly used at construction sites to warn workers of emergencies — never sounded, according to state Department of Labor records obtained by The Charlotte Observer through a public records request.
The five-alarm blaze, Charlotte’s biggest in recent history, killed Reuben Holmes and Demonte Sherill , two men installing windows on the sixth floor of the rising apartment building.
In April, Department of Labor officials fined three companies more than $56,000 for a series of violations related to the monstrous fire.
The 169-page file recently released fills in more details on how safety code violations at the site likely slowed the escape of some of the roughly 35 workers at the job site, or — in the case of the two workers who were killed — could have prevented them from reaching safety.
“It’s insane,” said Faith Fox , a Charlotte attorney representing the families of Holmes and Sherrill. “All of these little things could have saved two people’s lives. Basic things, like the placement of an air horn, contributed to the deaths of my clients.”
An air horn could have warned workers
The state labor inspector determined that sounding an air horn could have quickly warned workers about the May 2023 fire.
“The use of an audible alarm, such as an air horn or multiple air horns, would have provided an instantaneous alert for all workers to evacuate the building to a safe location,” the DOL report states.
Shortly after the fire, an unnamed construction site representative told a North Carolina investigator that he didn’t know where the air horn was stored. Minutes later during an interview, he changed that and said the air horn was in a “job box” in an on-site parking garage, documents show.
The state investigator eventually found an air horn attached to a fence near an entrance to the complex, according to the just-released documents. It’s unclear if that was the air horn closest to where the fire broke out, according to the records.
Previously filed court records say that workers at the site ran up and down the site’s lone stairway yelling “fire, fire” to warn those working above the ground floor.
According to the state investigation documents, that’s an inadequate way to warn people in such danger.
“Workers, traveling up seven stories of stairs, traveling throughout each level to verbally warn all workers of the evacuation of the building during a rapidly growing structural fire and intensifying smoke is not an effective alarm system,” a document in the investigation file states.
No alarms or plans of escape
The seven-story Modera SouthPark project was planned to include 239 apartment units overlooking Liberty Row Drive.
Work on the complex started in January 2022 with builders using an increasingly common kind of construction, where the bottom story is made of noncombustible material like concrete and the upper floors are built with wood. This type of building is particularly vulnerable to large, fast-burning fires during construction, industry experts have found.
The fire started in the bottom-floor garage, where a parked trailer held a generator and flammable spray foam chemicals.
At 8:55 a.m. on May 18, 2023, a worker spraying foam insulation on the building’s second level walked to the ground floor and saw flames coming from the back of the trailer.
He and at least one other worker tried to put out the flames with fire extinguishers, according to the DOL’s timeline. But they could not.
“The fire traveled quickly to involve the recently applied foam insulation on the ceiling of the two-story parking garage,” the investigation found.
Investigators concluded that the likely cause of the fire was “diesel engine failure,” the newly released records state.
As the labor department has said previously, the construction site did not have a code-required alarm system to warn workers of the pending danger, the report states.
Department officials also said that safety steps taken by MCRT Carolinas Construction LLC , the contractor, didn’t match the construction site’s emergency action plan. The plan described three exits from upper floors, but only one existed the day of the fire, for instance.
The newly obtained records state that MCRT failed to discuss its safety plan with subcontractors on the site. That, along with the lack of exits, “could have contributed to the delay of safely evacuating all personnel from the building during a fire emergency.”
Officials with the subcontractor Baker Insulation, for instance, had not been briefed about the site’s emergency plan, according to the state documents.
An unnamed representative of another subcontractor, Diversified Insulation, said he was not briefed on the plan and did not attend MCRT’s site safety orientation.
Holmes and Sherrill, the men killed by the fire, also did not attend the safety orientation, the newly released documents state.
In an email response to The Charlotte Observer , a representative for the developer, Mill Creek Residential, did not address the labor department’s findings.
Trapped on the sixth floor
Holmes and Sherrill were six stories up and about 460 feet away from the only stairway exit when the fire broke out, DOL records show.
Charlotte firefighters attempted to save them and their efforts are documented in court records.
First, they tried to find a working standpipe, a code-required water source that firefighters use. The vertical pipes allow firefighters to tap into water sources on multiple floors, preventing the need to drag hundreds of pounds of hose up stairways. But there was no working standpipe in the building that caught fire, records say.
Firefighters climbed to the sixth floor and could hear the two trapped men crying for help, according to a lawsuit their families filed this year.
The smoke was so heavy that the firefighters got lost, couldn’t find their way out and called a mayday, the families’ complaint said. Eventually they found the one set of stairs and escaped.
The bodies of Holmes and Sherrill were recovered the next day.
In April, DOL officials fined MCRT $46,875 for not implementing an emergency response plan or having an alarm system. They were also cited for not having exits that were not arranged to provide an easy way out for all workers, inspectors said.
State labor officials also fined subcontractor Diversified Insulation, $3,125 for not maintaining and making readily available to workers copies of safety data sheets for hazardous material.
And they fined Kentucky Overhead Door, Inc. , doing business as Baker Insulation, $6,250 for two violations. They included not having a written “respiratory program” and not having a list of hazardous chemicals on the site.
MCRT and Diversified Insulation paid their fines, said Erin Wilson, spokesperson for the labor department.
The state reduced the penalty for Kentucky Overhead Door to $4,687 following a settlement agreement in January.
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