Five of the buildings tied to the South Bronx Legionnaires' cluster had no recent record of the monthly cooling tower testing the city requires, according to Gothamist's review of DOHMH inspection records.

New York's cooling tower law, passed after the 2015 South Bronx outbreak that killed 16 people, requires building owners to register every cooling tower with the health department, test for legionella bacteria every 90 days during operating season, and keep those results on file for inspectors. The rule exists specifically so a cluster like this one gets traced fast and treated before it spreads further.

The gap Gothamist found isn't a paperwork technicality for a contractor who services these systems. If you maintain, inspect, or install cooling towers in the Bronx right now, the borough is about to get a lot more attention from DOHMH inspectors than it has in years — and untested towers on your service list are the ones that will get flagged first.

DOHMH's cooling tower registry is public, and a building's testing history is checkable before you take on a service contract or bid a remediation job tied to this cluster. The registry lists registration status and connects to enforcement history; if a building on your route isn't current, that's a liability question worth raising with the owner before the department raises it for you.

This follows The RFI Wire's earlier coverage of the outbreak and the city's cooling tower rules; the new detail — that testing records were missing at multiple buildings before anyone got sick — sharpens what inspectors will be checking for citywide in the coming weeks.