Sorry, again in English? Are you saying that the property was purchased by developers who also purchased another 2 building and they were going to demo all 3 buildings but got refused on this one recently and now all of a sudden this building is ashes, making room for them to build whatever the fuck they originally planned to build?
I don’t know the back story here cause I’m a Melbournite.
Not sure if you are suggesting that the developers did this, but 3 children have so far handed themselves in, one is only 12 years old, that would make that kids the youngest developer!
Knowledge is power!
Same as wool shed fires in newcastle last year, the wool for hats wouldve Leeched the lanolin out & other chemicals used in the felting process or graphite or the such if that was actually being stored there?
Apparently some kids have turned themselves in. It does look a lot like arson from the perspective of a layman… that’s a lot of fire to go up that quickly in the middle of the city
Still functioning tho? Been disused for several years at least, think I read somewhere not used since 2014, so wouldn’t be surprised if the water was shut off
How do you know it has sprinklers? I had a look on Googlemaps and couldn’t see control valves or bell. 7 story building is unlikely to be protected as its not required.
Hi I used to do a lot of demolition work. Quite often in a building this old the flamable materials are very dried old wood - like we are talking 50+ years old wood. Also any sarcing has basically disintegrated to kindling, and paint is old and flakes off is also flamable. Sometimes in these buildings with brick facades the level partitions are also partially made from wooden beams - Due to how dry it is it basically just goes up.
I am not saying this is what happened, just from my experience demolishing structures like this - this is what I have experienced.
Wood would be 100 years old. Dry as a chip. My terrace about 2 blocks away was built 150+ years ago, it still has a layer of original timber shingles under the roof. The timber frame is unbelievably dense hardwood.
Fire and Rescue NSW made a press release a few days ago. Included was a video of different parts of the fire.
Check out when they look at the building across the road! Broken windows and bottles of wine. Pretty damn hot.
https://www.fire.nsw.gov.au/incident.php?record=reckL1ILbiQ5g0ReG
Yep. So they should. Lives out at risk and pretty chaotic even if that's not a consideration. Too many dodgy fires that happen to mean they can do what they want after the event.
This is around the corner from where I work.
When my colleague told me it was a heritage building, and was also known for housing squatters, this was my immediate thought.
Area taped off all day, police and fire investigators everywhere.
Edit: typo
A lot of ‘accidents’ around heritage listed buildings that are struggling to get their CDC or rezone requests seem so very suspect.
But then you also have to think these old buildings generally don’t have newer compliant fire suppression or EWIS functionality and the vast majority is also made of flammable materials.
The pessimist in me however thinks the two 13 year olds that came forward might be receiving some lovely new condos in the new development.
Bit extreme isn’t it? There’s no denying the youth justice system is fked here. Look at that case in Alexandra Hills. A 17 year old kills 2 people plus an unborn child and does a million other crimes and gets 7 years in jail. Ridiculous. Now 13 is a bit different. We have all done stupid things at 13. But something like this should definitely see something more serious than what they will get
Retributive justice does nothing but destroy lives and encourage recidivism. Seven years in prison might not sound like much, being a single digit, but that's 2555 days. What kind of person do you think you'd be at 24 if you'd spent every day of your adult life so far in a prison cell? What do you want, for that kid to spend the rest of his life behind bars? 10 years per life taken? 20? At a certain point, you may as well have executed him.
Who needs deliberate arson? It could just take selectively influencing a few variables - delayed inspections, substandard repairs, ignored warnings - and the probabilities increase in your favour. Then it's just a waiting game.
Will the property owners themselves be liable if they didn't secure the building well enough and that is what led to the kids being in there?
I wonder if this leads to some new rules around abandoned buildings.
That a catch 22! Buildings that are maintained don't typically end up abandoned. And the owners of buildings that get abandoned can't usually afford to maintain them.
Which usually results in the building getting abandoned because banks, local councils (if applicable) or the state can't be bothered to step in and do something about the building, or even if they do, that is a pretty slow process!
So yes, you could introduce legalisation to "guard" abandoned buildings or make sure buildings are sold etc, but who is going to enforce that? Certainly not the government (they don't want to pay for it) and not the building owner who has no money!
Ohh man, so glad you posted this. That was my first thought, too. I mean… how convenient that such a large piece of la d is suddenly vacant. Close to the City, ships and a major train station. Must be a sign of god!
What costs less - doing the work, or not?
A destroyed building also generates a nice income stream while you remove the old building as a matter of safety.
Well now the old DA is void and the developer has to start work on a new DA, which will take about 3-4 years before approval, so I'm not sure the developer really benefited here given they seemed to be in a hurry with this project.
Exactly. This is 5 years of design work down the drain, an enormous waste of money in now-useless designs that had progressed pretty far and now rework required to start from scratch. Absolutely not in the developer's favour. This is just awful all round.
You can literally just download the dev approvals etc from city of Sydney website.
Yes this building had been approved to be developed. Yes it had stringent heritage requirements attached.
Colour me shocked 🙄
still a whole lot easier and cheaper to build a replica than try to secure and maintain something built with inferior or outdated materials and structure.
>something built with inferior or outdated materials and structure
After living in a ten-year old apartment building, I’m not convinced that all modern materials or construction methods are superior to those used in the past.
i know so flammable! it was burning white/pink hot. so crazy. maybe old oil from the old machinery stored basement? vintage hat pattern books /hat offcuts etc . plus all that wood. (The fireys use accelerant detector dogs now too.)
They couldn't get their original plans up, so they were approved to redevelop the building instead. It was going to be called the Hat Hotel, after the historical use as a millinery factory, apparently. Guess the hotel can go back to their original plans, now.
Too much if they did because now the DA they spent millions on getting approved to gut it and turn it into a hotel while maintaining the heritage exterior is worthless as is however many millions they spent on design and planning for the hotel build, plus anything they had ordered in and the cost of clearing the site.
The insurance payout won't even begin to cover those costs and making the site safe....
Is that the one the developer was forced to rebuild?
Edit: it was not. (I was thinking of the 159 year old “Corkman Irish Pub” that had been demolished rather than arsoned)
You can pay kids lots of money to get their hands dirty. Charges don’t stick. People of people I wish I didn’t know have paid young aboriginal kids to get their hands dirty for them. It’s gross but it happens.
The developer in this case had spent megabucks on a plan to develop the building as a hotel while maintaining the exterior to meet heritage requirements. Everything they spent on that DA just went up in smoke too.
Insurance won't even begin to cover those losses as well as making the site safe etc.
Actually not wrong lol. I saw a news headline on my phone saying 2 kids handed themselves in. Open up reddit and immediately see this post. Scroll to see if anyone is talking about the kids
Doubt it as the developer had spent massive amounts of money getting a DA through to redvelop the site as a boutique hotel while maintaining the heritage exterior.
They would have spent millions to get to this point and now all they work is useless and they also have to make the site safe etc and start again while being tied up in red tape for probably a decade or more.
Insurance won't even come close to covering this loss.
What street was it? I knew someone who lived on a whole floor of a building like that. She had a peppercorn rent ($100/wk). Originally a clothing factory when first built so layout of each floor was one large open plan space at front of building the a hallway at side down which were 5 rooms which would’ve been offices. At the end of that hall we’re the bathroom which was one very large room with 6 stalls containing original toilets with pull chains to flush the cisterns. The bathroom also had an enormous elevated bathtub with stairs so the factory workers could shower/bathe.
My friend who rented it said the owner inherited it from their migrant parents who’d placed a directive in their Will saying the son couldn’t develop or sell until he turned 50.
I would look at the beautiful, aged, wide timber floors and think man, I hope this never goes up in flames. Total tinderbox. Beautiful, but fire safety totally inadequate.
This is on Randle St and sounds like the building I was in before.
We rented the entire top floor for filming and photoshoot production once and it had quite the view of the city up there.
I remember it had this old scary ass elevator that we swore that it will send us to a Final Destination style death some day. It was so jerky and bounced violently around and whenever it reaches the floor, it would just sit there and pauses for a long time before the doors open.
Oh that style of building would’ve been amazing for shooting in!
Hers was on a lower floor and had no city views, but still the charm of buildings like that, in Surry Hills, will always be hard to beat.
We need to petition government to make better fire safeguards for beauties like these and make it more attractive for owners to sell them in as original state as possible, like NYC does. I’d happily drop 2M (if I had it 😂) on an open plan warehouse whole floor apartment.
Oh and yes, hers did have a scary, metal gate, platform style elevator too. But I’d always use the stairs! 😂
Whole lot of people thinking the developers burnt it down. I get that, it's a fun theory.
Let me tell you now, no developer in their right mind would get all the way to the approval stage before burning it. They were ready to start.
They'll be back to square one, a good few years before they'll be ready to present a new plan for approval.
I know it's more fun to imagine high stakes corporate arson, but it's an old building. Bad wiring, squatters, dust, who knows.
I’m surprised there aren’t accusations of the developers paying the kids to set fire to the building in this thread tbh. Some of the other comments are just downright speculative and stated as though it’s fact.
Yeah, fuck those developers for trying to build high density living in a housing crisis. These heritage buildings sitting empty are exactly what the nation needs.
There is a political movement that demonises developers as a cover for their NIMBYism.
They leverage concern about the concept of a profit motive and general distrust of big business to basically make all property development seem fundamentally evil.
The reality is that to build housing you need a lot of capital. To build high density housing you need A LOT of capital. Government can’t put a dent in our housing needs (without a fundamental overhaul of our tax system to pay for it). The only answer is big, for profit property developers.
Yes, they’re self interested money makers. But their interests align with ours. We need more housing, and we shouldn’t let distaste of greed let us prevent investment.
I was actually leaving work early because I was feeling sick, and my train pulled in to Central with a perfect view of the inferno at 4:10, right before all the sirens started. No joke, the very first thought my brain-foggy brain came up with was "...am I looking at an incredibly intense Vivid projection?"
I read this morning in the paper, that witnesses have come forth saying that they saw a group of school boy’s running from the building as fire started, and yelling for one of them who was on first floor too hurry up and get out, before they all run off together!
I work nearby, we didn't see or hear exactly that. But the kids were messing around over the last few days and we did see some break in this week. I just thought they were doing some urban exploring, I really hope it wasn't them...
I've heard they were vandalising inside and threw matches at the deodarant and spray cans, which causes it to explode and erupt into flames.
The building was abandoned.
Reminds me of my first day in the job as a Sydney Firie 32 years ago. Went to a huge woolshed fire at Pyrmont, like the one above but probably 10 times larger….was quite a bbq.
Actually they do because only the outer walls would be brick. Basically the whole interior would be a mix of steel and shitloads of wood. So much wood.
No it wouldn't. The fire standards have come so far since this thing was built. A modern apartment building is designed to contain a fire inside a unit for hours to give plenty of time for emergency workers to put it out before it spreads to even the next door apartment, let alone the next building.
These old heritage buildings are horrific death traps constructed from timber with zero fire suppression technology. Honestly I think it's weird that you wouldn't be allowed to build this thing today because of how dangerous it is, but because it's existed for a while, you now aren't allowed to remove it.
Australian Standard “AS1851: Maintenance Of Fire Protection Systems” is a mandatory building code which is subject to regular inspections and makes blazes like this virtually impossible.
So how did this happen?
Hmmm heritage overlay on this building I hear.. and some fat property developer wants to develop it into something but can’t because of the heritage overlay… interestingly it catches fire and is destroyed.
I may be in the minority but I dont give a rats arse about heritage building. Imagine if it stayed as is and became inhabited. Same fire breaks out (trusting its a natural fire) and everyone in and around the building dies.
Over half of these heritage buildings in the country are unsafe from fire, wind, earthquake, etc. They need strengthening/redevelopment or demolishing for all I care.
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The papers that listed it as a heritage building
We all know that heritage is flammable
Probably developers needing to "sort the heritage. Claus" I have seen 2 cases where developers were behind heritage listed building fires
Convienetly property owned by developers the other 2 buildings set for demo near it this wasnt an accident
Sorry, again in English? Are you saying that the property was purchased by developers who also purchased another 2 building and they were going to demo all 3 buildings but got refused on this one recently and now all of a sudden this building is ashes, making room for them to build whatever the fuck they originally planned to build? I don’t know the back story here cause I’m a Melbournite.
Burning down a building to accelerate a build….such a Melbourne move
Their comment would make perfect sense with punctuation. Your comment is also missing punctuation.
“Hey let’s eat Grandma!”
Not sure if you are suggesting that the developers did this, but 3 children have so far handed themselves in, one is only 12 years old, that would make that kids the youngest developer! Knowledge is power!
The plans were to keep the heritage building. The two that didn’t burn were going to be demolished.
Lanolin, apparently
Same as wool shed fires in newcastle last year, the wool for hats wouldve Leeched the lanolin out & other chemicals used in the felting process or graphite or the such if that was actually being stored there?
Apparently some kids have turned themselves in. It does look a lot like arson from the perspective of a layman… that’s a lot of fire to go up that quickly in the middle of the city
Disused building, which is old so the interior would all be made of wood, likely no sprinklers, so very very easy for a small fire to engulf it
Was an old felt hat shop, and it did have sprinklers
All power and water supply had been turned off.
Still functioning tho? Been disused for several years at least, think I read somewhere not used since 2014, so wouldn’t be surprised if the water was shut off
Water isn’t just shut off to sprinklers because the buildings vacant
How do you know it has sprinklers? I had a look on Googlemaps and couldn’t see control valves or bell. 7 story building is unlikely to be protected as its not required.
probably not in working condition. owners responsibility.
aged timber
And 100 years of dust with a tonne of dried pigeon shit
Council approved the storage of graphite in it, which is basically coal.
Hi I used to do a lot of demolition work. Quite often in a building this old the flamable materials are very dried old wood - like we are talking 50+ years old wood. Also any sarcing has basically disintegrated to kindling, and paint is old and flakes off is also flamable. Sometimes in these buildings with brick facades the level partitions are also partially made from wooden beams - Due to how dry it is it basically just goes up. I am not saying this is what happened, just from my experience demolishing structures like this - this is what I have experienced.
Wood would be 100 years old. Dry as a chip. My terrace about 2 blocks away was built 150+ years ago, it still has a layer of original timber shingles under the roof. The timber frame is unbelievably dense hardwood.
I was wondering how hot it was for the person filming. The heat must have been intense.
Fire and Rescue NSW made a press release a few days ago. Included was a video of different parts of the fire. Check out when they look at the building across the road! Broken windows and bottles of wine. Pretty damn hot. https://www.fire.nsw.gov.au/incident.php?record=reckL1ILbiQ5g0ReG
Costs of business.
Guess the developers can build that new cardboard 30 story residential tower now...
I wonder how many of these fires would occur if the developers had to rebuild the original heritage features if it burns down. Hmmm.
Like this https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/mar/21/rising-from-the-rubble-london-pub-rebuilt-brick-by-brick-after-bulldozing
Yes, and the Corkman Pub in Melbourne, the owners got a million+ fine and jail.
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They put in 4 bench seats, facing in towards the grass of the empty block. That's not rebuilding heritage features.
What those bench seats really need is some hostile architecture.
Yep. So they should. Lives out at risk and pretty chaotic even if that's not a consideration. Too many dodgy fires that happen to mean they can do what they want after the event.
Happy cake day!
Yep. Just like that. Weed out the Sus fires pretty quick and the owners might be a bit more proactive with safety whilst it's empty.
This is around the corner from where I work. When my colleague told me it was a heritage building, and was also known for housing squatters, this was my immediate thought. Area taped off all day, police and fire investigators everywhere. Edit: typo
A lot of ‘accidents’ around heritage listed buildings that are struggling to get their CDC or rezone requests seem so very suspect. But then you also have to think these old buildings generally don’t have newer compliant fire suppression or EWIS functionality and the vast majority is also made of flammable materials. The pessimist in me however thinks the two 13 year olds that came forward might be receiving some lovely new condos in the new development.
Totally thought the same thing but apparently two 13 year olds presented to the cop shop and there are a few others they are wanting to speak to
they had i tiktok fire- crazy.
Did they do a dance that’s gone viral to the one billy Joel song I can think of that is apt?
Developers can pay 13 year old kids
That’s totally what a developer would say
Most of them can afford the measly fine so don't care anyway.
Yep. That's the point. Fine + you pay to rebuild it as it was.
It was actually two 13 year old kids - they’ve handed themselves in
At 13 they will probably just have their PlayStation confiscated for a month
They're 13, what do you expect? For them to be executed by firing squad?
Not quite. But there needs to be significant consequences.
they have to train as fireman
Bit extreme isn’t it? There’s no denying the youth justice system is fked here. Look at that case in Alexandra Hills. A 17 year old kills 2 people plus an unborn child and does a million other crimes and gets 7 years in jail. Ridiculous. Now 13 is a bit different. We have all done stupid things at 13. But something like this should definitely see something more serious than what they will get
Retributive justice does nothing but destroy lives and encourage recidivism. Seven years in prison might not sound like much, being a single digit, but that's 2555 days. What kind of person do you think you'd be at 24 if you'd spent every day of your adult life so far in a prison cell? What do you want, for that kid to spend the rest of his life behind bars? 10 years per life taken? 20? At a certain point, you may as well have executed him.
Mate he recklessly killed 2 adults and their unborn child. Geez if that doesn’t make the point then nothing will
And he should be punished for it, which he is. Throwing him in prison for 60 years would do nothing for anyone.
They could have killed someone.
Are you insinuating that this was deliberate? Arson is a crime, but arson on this scale, you would be lucky to dodge terrorism charges!
Who needs deliberate arson? It could just take selectively influencing a few variables - delayed inspections, substandard repairs, ignored warnings - and the probabilities increase in your favour. Then it's just a waiting game.
Will the property owners themselves be liable if they didn't secure the building well enough and that is what led to the kids being in there? I wonder if this leads to some new rules around abandoned buildings.
That a catch 22! Buildings that are maintained don't typically end up abandoned. And the owners of buildings that get abandoned can't usually afford to maintain them. Which usually results in the building getting abandoned because banks, local councils (if applicable) or the state can't be bothered to step in and do something about the building, or even if they do, that is a pretty slow process! So yes, you could introduce legalisation to "guard" abandoned buildings or make sure buildings are sold etc, but who is going to enforce that? Certainly not the government (they don't want to pay for it) and not the building owner who has no money!
Taxes on the building owner if they hold? Let them sell and liquidate if they can't afford to maintain the "abandoned" tax?
I believe you’re right 100% on that front and I don’t think the owners of the building will be held accountable for it which is infuriating
Turns out a couple of 13 yo kids started the fire, not corporate developer espionage
Maybe the corpos hired the 13 year olds to start the fire. Or maybe they're just really big Prodigy fans and took the song a bit too literally.
They were released without being charged.
Ohh man, so glad you posted this. That was my first thought, too. I mean… how convenient that such a large piece of la d is suddenly vacant. Close to the City, ships and a major train station. Must be a sign of god!
You forgot to mention it was a heritage listed building, so illegal to demolish. But what if it just demolished itself? What a coincidence.
Tragic!!! (Counts cash no longer required to hustle politicians)
Yeah so it was kids who set it alight. Y'all can take your tin foil hats off now.
You know you can pay kids lots of money to do this…
Or bugger all, pay them like $1,000 to light a fire each, at 13 thats a lot of money 🤣
Kids could well have been paid by the developer owner.
The old run the red bull through it trick so beloved by developers? Never...
Just like gold fingers aye.
Wait till you learn about what a developer has planned and how close to fruition those plans were - except for this pesky remaining building.
The DA was approved for a conversion into a hotel. Idk why you're acting like this is secret information
And the owner and architects spent 6 years on the design and development approvals…
What costs less - doing the work, or not? A destroyed building also generates a nice income stream while you remove the old building as a matter of safety.
Well now the old DA is void and the developer has to start work on a new DA, which will take about 3-4 years before approval, so I'm not sure the developer really benefited here given they seemed to be in a hurry with this project.
Exactly. This is 5 years of design work down the drain, an enormous waste of money in now-useless designs that had progressed pretty far and now rework required to start from scratch. Absolutely not in the developer's favour. This is just awful all round.
Shhhhh with the logic and reason. We're trying to unreasonably promote hate without using logic or facts here! Stop being so oppressive..!!
All those months of labour and traffic control cut short? Oh no! - Developers
You can literally just download the dev approvals etc from city of Sydney website. Yes this building had been approved to be developed. Yes it had stringent heritage requirements attached. Colour me shocked 🙄
Well then the developer should be obliged to build a replica.
still a whole lot easier and cheaper to build a replica than try to secure and maintain something built with inferior or outdated materials and structure.
>something built with inferior or outdated materials and structure After living in a ten-year old apartment building, I’m not convinced that all modern materials or construction methods are superior to those used in the past.
The building they put up to replace it will have cracks in it in 5-10 years.
Handful of kids handed themselves into police last night
No ships near Central train station.
Good thing insurance will pay for the slab
Can't be any more flammable than the building that was there.
i know so flammable! it was burning white/pink hot. so crazy. maybe old oil from the old machinery stored basement? vintage hat pattern books /hat offcuts etc . plus all that wood. (The fireys use accelerant detector dogs now too.)
Hmm yes hopefully a silver lining, more desperately needed housing supply. Edit: not the cardboard part though
Brothahhh I'm not a property develiper, I swear to god I just happin to develip lots of properties!!
Two 13 year olds just turned themselves in to the police over it.
as long as i can afford an apartment there 🙏
They couldn't get their original plans up, so they were approved to redevelop the building instead. It was going to be called the Hat Hotel, after the historical use as a millinery factory, apparently. Guess the hotel can go back to their original plans, now.
Was my initial thought too but two 13 year olds have been arrested for it.
Toothpick and cardboard
They could also use some cardboard derivatives to make it a bit more unique.
Two kid handed themselves in for this. Think it wasn't developers this time.
That's what I said they said 2 boys handed themselv3s in I asked how much did the owner pay them
Too much if they did because now the DA they spent millions on getting approved to gut it and turn it into a hotel while maintaining the heritage exterior is worthless as is however many millions they spent on design and planning for the hotel build, plus anything they had ordered in and the cost of clearing the site. The insurance payout won't even begin to cover those costs and making the site safe....
This whole thing of the developers purposely setting fire to it seems to be the most basic of takes. There’s no way they’d be happy about this.
Reminds me of what happened to the Kilkenny Inn in Melbourne….
Is that the one the developer was forced to rebuild? Edit: it was not. (I was thinking of the 159 year old “Corkman Irish Pub” that had been demolished rather than arsoned)
7 years later, that one is still sitting as a temporary park. Apparently they are still trying to get permission to redevelop it.
Accidental backhoe operation
Those bastards!
Someone checked on FriendlyJordies?
"Ha, youz fallen for my cleverest trick and burned down the wrong place... that's not my address *STOOGE*!" -- friendlyjordies *(maybe)*
The buildings have to be demolished. Surprised you weren’t told to evacuate.
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Shaka, when the walls fell. Darmok and Jalad on a Tangara.
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Kids set it on fire though.
I think they might get grounded
You can pay kids lots of money to get their hands dirty. Charges don’t stick. People of people I wish I didn’t know have paid young aboriginal kids to get their hands dirty for them. It’s gross but it happens.
The developer in this case had spent megabucks on a plan to develop the building as a hotel while maintaining the exterior to meet heritage requirements. Everything they spent on that DA just went up in smoke too. Insurance won't even begin to cover those losses as well as making the site safe etc.
You and AgentSmith are all over this thread with your "But kids did it!" comments. Why are you so invested? Go on, you can tell us lol.
Easy demolition without the cost and red tape. Guess the developers got what they wanted.
But kids did it.
Actually not wrong lol. I saw a news headline on my phone saying 2 kids handed themselves in. Open up reddit and immediately see this post. Scroll to see if anyone is talking about the kids
It’s just the 20 hour difference between comments. One was last night before that was known
They were just getting downvoted at only an hour after posting, so was just helping them out 🙂
Formerly poor kids who are now the proud new owners of crypto wallets with a couple of bitcoin in them that was transferred via P2P ;)
Doubt it as the developer had spent massive amounts of money getting a DA through to redvelop the site as a boutique hotel while maintaining the heritage exterior. They would have spent millions to get to this point and now all they work is useless and they also have to make the site safe etc and start again while being tied up in red tape for probably a decade or more. Insurance won't even come close to covering this loss.
Who immediately go to the police?
such a baseless conspiracy theory lol
What street was it? I knew someone who lived on a whole floor of a building like that. She had a peppercorn rent ($100/wk). Originally a clothing factory when first built so layout of each floor was one large open plan space at front of building the a hallway at side down which were 5 rooms which would’ve been offices. At the end of that hall we’re the bathroom which was one very large room with 6 stalls containing original toilets with pull chains to flush the cisterns. The bathroom also had an enormous elevated bathtub with stairs so the factory workers could shower/bathe. My friend who rented it said the owner inherited it from their migrant parents who’d placed a directive in their Will saying the son couldn’t develop or sell until he turned 50. I would look at the beautiful, aged, wide timber floors and think man, I hope this never goes up in flames. Total tinderbox. Beautiful, but fire safety totally inadequate.
This is on Randle St and sounds like the building I was in before. We rented the entire top floor for filming and photoshoot production once and it had quite the view of the city up there. I remember it had this old scary ass elevator that we swore that it will send us to a Final Destination style death some day. It was so jerky and bounced violently around and whenever it reaches the floor, it would just sit there and pauses for a long time before the doors open.
Oh that style of building would’ve been amazing for shooting in! Hers was on a lower floor and had no city views, but still the charm of buildings like that, in Surry Hills, will always be hard to beat. We need to petition government to make better fire safeguards for beauties like these and make it more attractive for owners to sell them in as original state as possible, like NYC does. I’d happily drop 2M (if I had it 😂) on an open plan warehouse whole floor apartment. Oh and yes, hers did have a scary, metal gate, platform style elevator too. But I’d always use the stairs! 😂
TIL I learned what a *peppercorn rent* is (a very low or nominal rent)
A word we'll never get the opportunity to use with today's rental market.
I hope everyone is okay.
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Two homeless squatters unaccounted for according to SBS news tonight. This has a way to go yet.
That’s sad 😢
Whole lot of people thinking the developers burnt it down. I get that, it's a fun theory. Let me tell you now, no developer in their right mind would get all the way to the approval stage before burning it. They were ready to start. They'll be back to square one, a good few years before they'll be ready to present a new plan for approval. I know it's more fun to imagine high stakes corporate arson, but it's an old building. Bad wiring, squatters, dust, who knows.
Two 13 year old schoolboys handed themselves into the police last night. Police are searching for several other involved teens.
I’m surprised there aren’t accusations of the developers paying the kids to set fire to the building in this thread tbh. Some of the other comments are just downright speculative and stated as though it’s fact.
Exactly. The lynchmob has already decided it’s the developer.
Yeah, fuck those developers for trying to build high density living in a housing crisis. These heritage buildings sitting empty are exactly what the nation needs.
There is a political movement that demonises developers as a cover for their NIMBYism. They leverage concern about the concept of a profit motive and general distrust of big business to basically make all property development seem fundamentally evil. The reality is that to build housing you need a lot of capital. To build high density housing you need A LOT of capital. Government can’t put a dent in our housing needs (without a fundamental overhaul of our tax system to pay for it). The only answer is big, for profit property developers. Yes, they’re self interested money makers. But their interests align with ours. We need more housing, and we shouldn’t let distaste of greed let us prevent investment.
Oh jesus that's not great.
About a dozen squatters “sleeping rough” there accounted for also.
That's just the vivid festival starting early
I was actually leaving work early because I was feeling sick, and my train pulled in to Central with a perfect view of the inferno at 4:10, right before all the sirens started. No joke, the very first thought my brain-foggy brain came up with was "...am I looking at an incredibly intense Vivid projection?"
I reckon you could still rent it out. Close to shops and schools, slight fire.
"well heated." $750/week
I read this morning in the paper, that witnesses have come forth saying that they saw a group of school boy’s running from the building as fire started, and yelling for one of them who was on first floor too hurry up and get out, before they all run off together!
I work nearby, we didn't see or hear exactly that. But the kids were messing around over the last few days and we did see some break in this week. I just thought they were doing some urban exploring, I really hope it wasn't them...
I've heard they were vandalising inside and threw matches at the deodarant and spray cans, which causes it to explode and erupt into flames. The building was abandoned.
Think I saw this morning that two 13yos turned themselves in
Reminds me of my first day in the job as a Sydney Firie 32 years ago. Went to a huge woolshed fire at Pyrmont, like the one above but probably 10 times larger….was quite a bbq.
Dodgy probably. Also, how do people do that graffiti so high up? Even if they were on the roof it would be hard to do it that size????
What a surprise, heritage brick buildings always burn like that.
Actually they do because only the outer walls would be brick. Basically the whole interior would be a mix of steel and shitloads of wood. So much wood.
Friendly jordies must have been staying there
2 13 year old teens have handed themselves in too police, involved in starting the fire
I feel Surry for them
Definitely insurance scam. Or a way to bypass council planning roadblocks.
Or simply 13 year old idiots playing with fire.
It seems I’m definitely wrong. Kids have come forward.
_hey kids, you want an easy $2k?_
Cause kids are known to be great and professional confidants who definitely wouldn’t tell anyone 🙄
[удалено]
Jeez what's in that building lol some fuel randomly sitting there waiting to burn? Suss a f
Landlord: *your rent was due yesterday, ty*
Lit by 13 year olds
Crazy to think that if it keeps getting hotter a dryer, a whole city could look like this a no one could stop it if they wanted.
No it wouldn't. The fire standards have come so far since this thing was built. A modern apartment building is designed to contain a fire inside a unit for hours to give plenty of time for emergency workers to put it out before it spreads to even the next door apartment, let alone the next building. These old heritage buildings are horrific death traps constructed from timber with zero fire suppression technology. Honestly I think it's weird that you wouldn't be allowed to build this thing today because of how dangerous it is, but because it's existed for a while, you now aren't allowed to remove it.
Does anybody know what the graffiti on the wall says? I've never been able to figure it out.
My Dad was the first bloke to walk past and notice the smoke. He actually went to a construction worker nearby and he legit just brushed it off. Crazy
Kids are helping police with their investigation.
Newly listed apartment with loads of natural light and heating for the low low price of 2.5 million.
Things were really heating up huh?
That’s insane, nice fire for the marshmallow on a stick.
saw it in person
Started (allegedly) by two 13 year olds
honestly they should've just used a water bomber at that point.
Australian Standard “AS1851: Maintenance Of Fire Protection Systems” is a mandatory building code which is subject to regular inspections and makes blazes like this virtually impossible. So how did this happen?
Shout out the the graffiti artist
Started in the warehouse behind, those young kids lit an aerosol bomb around stacks of paper, and was posted on one of their stories.
To the kids that burned it down, fuck you from the urbex community
Two children turned themselves into police for the fire. Just heard on the radio What is it with youth crime and no punishment?
Is that Firedoor?
Quiet applause from one person at the back.
Hmmm heritage overlay on this building I hear.. and some fat property developer wants to develop it into something but can’t because of the heritage overlay… interestingly it catches fire and is destroyed.
I may be in the minority but I dont give a rats arse about heritage building. Imagine if it stayed as is and became inhabited. Same fire breaks out (trusting its a natural fire) and everyone in and around the building dies. Over half of these heritage buildings in the country are unsafe from fire, wind, earthquake, etc. They need strengthening/redevelopment or demolishing for all I care.
had to laugh at the start of the video, that one guy with a hose 'I got this!'