Daily News photo by Cairo
Information from the FDNY report into the deaths of two firefighters at the Deutsche Bank building was leaked to reporters Wednesday prior to the report’s official release.
Here are excerpts from The New York Times report:
When a fire broke out last Aug. 18 at the tower, it took roughly 80 minutes to get water on the flames, in part because workers there waited some 13 minutes to call 911 and then gave firefighters inaccurate information about whether emergency equipment at the site was working.
And communication lapses further disrupted the firefighting response. Walkie-talkies failed, and critical calls for help went unheard. Men were lost in the confusion. One firefighter’s radio problems forced him to crawl to the building’s edge to report that two imperiled colleagues — Robert Beddia, 53, and Joseph Graffagnino, 33 — were trapped by stairwells that had been sealed off. Both men were killed.
The report, presented on Wednesday to fire union officials in a tightly controlled meeting at Fort Totten in Queens, will be turned over to the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau.
After the death of a firefighter, the Fire Department always empanels a team to study any problems that might have contributed to the death.
This team found the Deutsche Bank fire to have been an operational nightmare, according to those who have seen or heard its findings. The building, originally 41 stories but torn down to its 26th floor when the fire took hold, was wrapped in heavy mesh to trap construction debris. Thick plastic drapes were hung from the walls to contain asbestos and other contaminants. Stairwells were sealed with plywood and plastic. The fire burned those materials, spewing impenetrable black smoke that choked the teams of firefighters as they twisted through a maze of narrow construction barricades.
Firefighter Beddia was overcome by smoke. After his colleagues pulled him from a spot near Stairway B on the 14th floor, his air pack was found to still hold 800 pounds per square inch of compressed air — or about five to eight minutes’ worth of air, considering that a full tank has 4,500 pounds per square inch.
Investigators have surmised that Firefighter Beddia must have removed his face piece and pushed the manual shut-off switch of his air pack before he became unconscious.
Investigators could not say why Firefighter Beddia removed his face piece.
Stephen J. Cassidy, the president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, a union that represents roughly 8,900 rank-and-file firefighters, read the department’s report at Fort Totten and criticized many parts of it, saying it largely spared senior department officials. He said the report failed to investigate why senior officials had not developed a plan for fighting a fire at such a complicated demolition site.
“This report is filled with contradictions and omissions of management’s failures,” Mr. Cassidy said. “For instance, the findings say firefighters failed to don their face pieces upon entering the building, as is required in a contaminated building. But the contradiction is they never reference the fact that the incident commander, nor any other chief involved, notified them that they were operating in a contaminated building or required them to do so.”
Others who have read the report, however, said investigators concluded that firefighters had been informed that they should wear their face masks because asbestos abatement was in progress.
The Fire Department investigators also expressed concern about the fact that several of the fire commanders at the Deutsche Bank blaze were operating in new jobs, acting temporarily in higher ranks. The first commander that day was a battalion chief acting as a deputy chief, for example, and a captain acted as a battalion chief. Those kinds of temporary assignments can be troublesome when they force commanders into roles to which they are unaccustomed or for which they are not fully trained, the investigators said.
“Several safety reports in the past have all stressed this — the elimination of acting out of title — for safety reasons, because you are taking, even an experienced fire officer, and putting him in a new job,” said Deputy Chief Richard J. Alles, an official of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, representing 2,450 officers, who has not seen the report. “He has to think differently. It is a lot to ask somebody to be able to do that at the spur of the moment.”
Excerpts from Daily News report:
The report – which will be released today – blames the FDNY for not conducting mandatory inspections; the Buildings Department for not issuing a formal permit for demolition and the building’s contractor for shoddy work that turned the condemned skyscraper into a death trap, sources who reviewed the report told the Daily News.
“These guys’ fate was sealed as soon as they got in that fire,” said a source who was briefed on the 176-page document.
“And when they called for help, they couldn’t even get through right away,” the source said.
Tragically, when firefighters Joseph Graffagnino – who would have turned 35 years old Wednesday – and Robert Beddia began to scream “Mayday!” their cries could not be immediately acted upon, according to the report.
Though FDNY protocol is for radio communication to cease when a “Mayday” is issued, continued radio chatter made it difficult for the officers on the ground to hear where the panicked firefighters were trapped, the report says.
Among the key findings, the sources said, were:
- 14 “Maydays” and 19 “Urgents” – a distress call considered slightly less grave than a “Mayday” – were issued at the blaze. It was unclear how much time elapsed before officers were able to make out where the firefighters were located. Some walkie-talkies failed, forcing one firefighter to crawl to the building’s edge to call for help. He survived.
- Beddia’s air tank had about five minutes of oxygen remaining when he was located on the building’s 14th floor. Graffagnino’s was empty.
- The fire raged for more than an hour before firefighters were able to get water on the blaze; construction workers waited nearly 13 minutes before reporting the fire – believed to have been started by a discarded cigarette. It took FDNY units 67 minutes to get access to water because of a severed standpipe in the basement.
- The FDNY’s failure to do inspections every 15 days meant firefighters were unaware of the broken standpipe and other safety hazards like sealed stairwells and busted sprinklers.
Three fire officers whose commands were responsible for the inspections were reassigned in the wake of the fire.
“It is stunning and disgusting,” said Linda Graffagnino. “There are so many people responsible who need to stand up and say they made mistakes.”
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