By AMY WESTFELDT |
Associated Press |
Aug 21, 08 5:56 PM
They had no water, hardly any air and no
way out.
In frantic, confused radio dispatches from
inside a burning toxic skyscraper near ground
zero last August, firefighters made a series of
desperate pleas for help as they encountered
boarded-up stairwells and a broken water pipe,
got lost in the smoke and ran out of air.
They had to saw through wood to get up the
stairs and run a hose up the side of the
building from a hydrant on the ground; some
ended up jumping from windows to escape.
"We're on 17 but we ain't going much past the
stairway," one firefighter said from the floor
where the Aug. 18, 2007, blaze began. "There's
fire up here, no water, ah, we gotta stay on air
the whole time here too. So we ain't gonna stay
up here too long."
The emergency radio transmissions were
released Thursday in a 176-page report on the
Fire Department of New York's response to the
disaster at the government-owned building, which
was being cleaned of toxic debris and dismantled
floor by floor.
Firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph
Graffagnino were found dead of smoke inhalation
on the 14th floor of the former Deutsche Bank
tower, a building heavily damaged in the Sept.
11, 2001, attacks.
Prosecutors are investigating a litany of
failures at the government-run project, which
was inspected by city and environmental
regulators and owned by a state rebuilding
agency.
Beddia, 53, and Graffagnino, 33, did not send
distress calls, Fire Commissioner Nicholas
Scoppetta said. The emergency radio dispatches
came from 16 different radios, but the
firefighters aren't identified.
The fire department's report acknowledged
that its inspectors had not been to the building
for over a year and if they had, would have been
able to point out the maze of hazards that
awaited more than 100 firefighters.
"It was very, very important that the
building had not been inspected, and we will
deal with that," Scoppetta said. He said his
department would begin its own inquiry into
actions before the blaze once the criminal
investigation is complete.
Among the hazards: The pipe supplying water
to fire hoses was broken and the sprinklers
didn't work, stairwells were blocked with
plywood paneling meant to keep toxic debris in,
no working elevator existed inside the building,
and an air pressure system created more smoke.
"It's starting to get bad up here," another
firefighter reported close to an hour after the
blaze was reported. "We gotta breach some of
this, ah, plywood to get the hell outta here.
It's getting bad. We're losing visibility."
It took 67 minutes for the firefighters to
get water to fight the blaze, which was reported
13 minutes after it started, the report said.
Construction workers at the scene told
firefighters the standpipe was working, and the
department wasted 20 minutes trying to activate
it before attaching a hose to a nearby hydrant,
the report said.
Firefighters sent more than 30 distress
signals, including 14 maydays, from inside the
burning tower, but some weren't heard because
commanders and others kept the lines open.
Scoppetta said the firefighters would receive
more training in "radio discipline."
"Some messages were not being received.
Everybody was speaking over them," Scoppetta
said.
The first call came 45 minutes after
firefighters went into the building: "It's
starting to get hot." Twenty minutes later,
firefighters were jumping out the 14th
floor-windows and onto scaffolding to escape the
smoke.
"It just blew through the wall here. We're
going over on the scaffold," one firefighter
said. Eight minutes later, another distress
call: "I'm in the stairwell. I need help."
Several others said they were running out of
air; firefighters have tanks with air supplies
of under an hour. Both Beddia and Graffagnino
used their air tanks, although Beddia had about
five minutes left of compressed air in his tank
when he was found.
Scoppetta said Beddia was probably trying to
conserve air while he continued to fight the
fire, "and probably thought he still had enough
to get to the perimeter and get out."
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