For
several critical minutes, a Bronx firefighter
testified yesterday, he couldn't find the flames
that ultimately trapped his colleagues inside an
illegally subdivided apartment, leading to two
deaths from catastrophic injuries when they
jumped out the window.
"The smoke was very, very thick - no visibility
at all," firefighter Patrick McKenna said,
describing his second search of apartment 4L.
"You couldn't see anything. There was a lot more
heat. In the back of my mind I was thinking the
whole time, 'We're missing a room up here
somewhere - there's got to be a room filled with
fire.'"
Moments later, with McKenna pulling stuff out of
a closet, the fire roared out of the nearby
kitchen, he said.
"The next thing I know I was surrounded by
fire," he testified. "It just lit up on us. It
was basically just a big orange glow everywhere.
It was coming out with extreme pressure - like a
blow torch."
McKenna, assigned to Rescue
3, was able to flee the apartment. Only later,
he said, did he learn that six firefighters in
other parts of the apartment had been forced to
jump 50 feet to a concrete courtyard in a
last-ditch effort to cheat death.
Lt. Curtis Meyran, 46, of Malverne, and John
Bellew, 37, of Pearl River, died from their
injuries. Four other firefighters were badly
hurt.
That day - Jan. 23, 2005 - is known as Black
Sunday because firefighter Richard Sclafani of
Bayside also died that day while fighting a
blaze in Brooklyn, the only time in memory that
separate fires have killed city firefighters on
the same day.
Now two tenants of that building, Caridad Coste,
58, and Rafael Castillo, 57, plus landlord Cesar
Rios, 52, and the Tremont building's corporate
owner are on trial, charged with second-degree
manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide
for dividing apartments into illegal warrens
that prosecutors say created a death trap for
firefighters.
Defense lawyers, in turn, pin the blame on the
equipment problems that firefighters had to
overcome - fire hydrants frozen shut and no
safety ropes.
A Fire Department inquiry concluded there were
lapses in equipment and procedures, no safety
ropes and a breakdown in communication.
During McKenna's testimony he used a laser
pointer to indicate on a schematic of the
apartment how he searched for victims, feeling
his way around, often on his hands and knees and
reaching for the wall for guidance through smoke
that limited his visibility to about two feet.
McKenna was not asked about the partitions - his
testimony was cut short when a juror got sick -
but it appears from the schematic that a wall in
one bedroom cut off direct access to the fire
escape.
The trial will resume today.
Nowhere to go
Fire officials said an illegal subdivision in
the burning Bronx apartment cut off the escape
of six of eight firefighters.
1. Illegally added wall blocked firefighters
from the fire escape
2. An escape route existed but it apparently was
blocked by flames.
3. Trapped, six firefighters leaped out a
window. Two died of injuries.
related...
Bravest Tells Of 'Orange Glow' Hell In Black Sunday Trial NY Daily News 1/9/08
