Three Smoke Detectors In Noyac Home Were Inoperable, Outdoor Kitchen Wiring Was A 'Fire Hazard,' Investigators Say

At least three smoke detectors in the Noyac home where two sisters died in an early morning fire on August 3 had no power to them — including in one bedroom on the second floor — and there was no smoke detector in the common hallway between the two upstairs bedrooms, as required by state safety codes.

Additionally, an electrical outlet to the outdoor kitchen, where investigators have said the fire appears to have originated, had been improperly installed directly into the home’s wood siding without the protection of a metal electrical box. That creates a distinct fire hazard, according to the findings from the official investigation into the fatal fire.

The revelations about the dangerous conditions at the house were detailed in 29 code violations filed against the property owners, Peter and Pamela Miller, in Southampton Town Justice Court on Friday, August 26.

Affidavits from investigators said that the power supply to the smoke alarm in what was described as “the east bedroom” of the second floor had been disconnected, and the smoke detector had no backup battery, investigators attested.

Smoke detectors in the hallway outside the first-floor master bedroom and in the home’s garage similarly were inoperable and had no battery backups.

Officials would not yet say whether the second-floor room with the inoperable smoke detector was the room in which the sisters — Lindsay Wiener, 19, and Jillian Wiener, 21 — were sleeping, or the room their brother, Zachary, who escaped the fire by jumping out of a second-floor window, was in.

Their parents, Lewis and Alisa Wiener, were sleeping in the first-floor bedroom and told police they were awakened by the sound of breaking glass, which they later presumed to be from their son escaping his bedroom. None of the family, nor firefighters who arrived on the scene, said they heard smoke alarms sounding.

The Millers were charged Friday with 29 violations of the town code and New York State building, property maintenance and fire safety codes.

Among the safety failures listed in the charges were the inoperable smoke detectors, a lack of any carbon monoxide detectors anywhere in the house, improper electrical work, and the absence of a number of swimming pool safety features required by law. Several features of the house also were built without building permits and were not on the property’s certificate of occupancy.

The owners also failed to apply for a Southampton Town rental permit, which would have required a safety inspection that could have caught the hazards that were identified instead by the investigation into the fatal fire.

“Not having a smoke detector in the common space outside the upstairs bedrooms is of particular importance,” Southampton Town Emergency Management Administrator Ryan Murphy said on Friday afternoon. “Smoke and heat go up, and having that alarm could have provided an early detection of smoke coming into the house, and an opportunity to alert those residents in time.

“That’s one of those things that we would have identified if there’d be an inspection for the rental permit,” he added.

Assistant Southampton Town Attorney Sean Cambridge said in court Friday that the home had five smoke detectors, and Murphy said the other two were inside the second upstairs bedroom and inside the master bedroom on the first floor. But he could not say whether those detectors had been found to be operable and functioning properly.

The fire is still under investigation by the Southampton Town fire marshal’s office, and Murphy said that a full report on the cause of the fire will be forthcoming. But he has confirmed that investigators do believe the fire originated in the outdoor kitchen and a rear wooden deck of the Spring Lane house.

The Sag Harbor Fire Department was alerted to the fire at about 3:30 a.m. on August 3. Firefighters arriving at the scene were told by other family members that the two girls were still inside and used a ladder to enter the second-floor bedroom that the girls had been sleeping in, where they were found unconscious.

Firefighters performed CPR, but efforts to revive them were unsuccessful. Both were pronounced dead at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital.

The fire was extinguished quickly, and from the outside only a rear corner of the house, near the outdoor kitchen, was visibly burned.

According to the affidavits from investigators in the charges against the homeowners, the outdoor kitchen had both a gas and charcoal grill, two refrigerators, and a sink.

The cooking area had been added to the house without the benefit of building permits and was not on the property’s latest certificate of occupancy.

Neither was the home’s swimming pool, pool deck, a backyard gazebo or an outdoor shower that was adjacent to the grilling area where the fire started.

The Southampton Town Building Department had issued multiple notices of violations to the homeowners for building permits that had not been closed out, and for work that inspectors saw done that needed to be properly permitted.

Several of the violations issued cited the gates leading to the pool area as opening into the pool deck, rather than outward away from it, as required by safety codes, and that the latches for the gates did not meet code requirements.

The Wieners, who were from Potomac, Maryland, told investigators that they had rented the home from the Millers for a period of just eight days — also a violation in Southampton Town, where the minimum length of a rental is 14 days — according to the charges.

Most of the charges against the Millers are misdemeanors that include potential jail sentences, though incarceration is an extraordinarily rare occurrence in code violation cases.

In 2010, a North Babylon landlord was sentenced to one to three years in prison after three tenants of a home he owned died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

The Millers did not appear in court in person on Friday but were represented by an attorney, Edward D. Burke Jr., who entered a not guilty plea to all the charges on their behalf. Burke declined to comment on the case.

The case will return to court in October.