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www.citylimits.org 1

Vol. 35, No. 4September/October 2011

10 The Costliest LessonsFireghter deaths in New York City, 19912011

16 Do You Have Any of My Men?Progress and peril in the wake of Sept. 11

28 This Building Killed One Firefighterand May Save Dozens

Aer deaths and close calls, getting wise to the wind

34 When Fire WinsIn reghters deaths, patterns emerge.

51 Risks Versus RewardDecisions in a blink, lives in the balance

CHAPTERS

SIDEBARS

MORE

FIRST FOCUS

And what weve learned about saving them

By Jarrett Murphy

P otograp s y Marc Fa er

4 Young New Yorkers and Welfare5 Foreclosure Crisis Fades to Black & Brown

6 What Was the Impact of Impact Schools?

HE FEATUREWHY FIREFIGHTERS DIE8

City Limits is published bi-monthly by

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19 Buildings Save,Buildings Kill

Code changes aer Sept. 11,

and more coming up

26 The New 911

Cost and controversy aroundemergency calls

2 The HeartAttack Threat

Fireghters deadliest enemy

52 Diversity andthe Department

Lawsuits and slow progress

60 Look BackRemember


2/33

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 4 www.citylimits.org2 Why Firefighters Die

Director

Mar nt ony o

Editor in Chief

Jarrett Murphy

Contributing Ed

Patrick Arden, NeiJeanmarie Evelly, MJake Mooney, MaliHelen Zelon

Advertising Dir

Allison Tellis-Hind

Social Network

Coordinator

Nekoro Gomes

Creative Directi

Smyrski Creative

Proofreader

Dania ison

Interns

ena Mangiaratti,Lea Ro inson

BOARD

Mark Edmiston, chAdam Blumenthal

n y BresauMichael ConnorDavid R. Jones

Andy ReicherM ic e e e

OutsourciNew York

Private consultanpublic power in M

Bloombergs city

OMING IN NOVEMB

WHERE WEVE BEEN

or e t a n p eo p e a tten e t e

ity imits an t e useum for t e ity

f ew or co-sponsore event: ar

n overty . : e r an a enge,

resente as part of t e ongoing r an

orum series Power an Po itics, ew

or ty e. Presi ent amas anti-

overty initiatives were among t e

opics iscusse .

WHAT YOU LIKE

he ten most popular topics on our site

s o ugust , :

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4. ar y i oo

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. at ee n Ba c. Bo o s

e sure to c ec out our newCity

opcs pages or a compre ensive

esource of news, arc ives, events,

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e Blind Side

As our nation pays tribute to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacksand celebrates the rising of the new World Trade Center, Ameri-cans will gather this mont at memorials, public programs,

coee shops and across online platforms to discuss what thislast decade has meant.

Reuniting ourselves to commemorate the day and honorour shared values will be a welcomed and healthier momentthan this summers heated political rhetoric and constantcycle of news that has been destructive to our nations muchneeded emotional recovery.

As we reect, we should also celebrate how the months fol-lowing the attacks ignited a universal goodwill in the heartsof the American people. For a then-healing nation, the thingsthat once divided us were suddenly valued as reecting thediverse fabrics that compose the American dream.

As the smoke cleared, and the human eects of the tragedyemerged, so did a culture of compassion and c ooperative spirit.Volunteering was an act of patriotism. Philanthropy evolvedinto a shared social responsibility. Despite our identities political partisans, we all gave our nations leaders a vote ofcondence.

Over the last tough decade, weve watched new and estab-lished organizations, agencies and advocates redening andreshaping the thinking toward creating sustainable, safe andsound communities and adapting new technologies to con-nect citizen s, government o cials and causes i n ways thathave transformed how we converse about the issues thatmatter to us most.

While Sept. 11 is not the sole inspiration, the tragedy didshow us, in the most inarguable form, the interconnectionbetween politics, safety, nancial security, health and theconstant need for dialogue.

At ity Limits, we aim to be not just a magazine, but rathera media platform that captures that culture of compassion.We use our journalism to reect the passion of our 8 millionresidents and the nations urban agenda. New York City is our

ocus, but what we do is a global model for engaging under-erved communities and underreported voices.

With the support from the George Polk Investigative

Journalism Fund and Fund for Investigative Journalism, weommemorate Sept. 11 with a look at how reghting hasandasntchanged. New York City lost 343 reghters at theorld Trade Center, the largest loss of life for any municipal

gency in our nations history. In Jarrett Murphys in-deptheport, you will learn the steps taken to improve re safetynd understand the challenges faced by the rst respondershen tragedies occur.is issue concludes our series of issues that honor our 35 t

nniversary, but is the starting point for many exciting newrojects and initiatives for ity Limits over the next few months.

is fall, with support from the James L. Knight Foundationnd the Brooklyn Community Foundation, we will launch a

Brooklyn Bureau.We will collaborate with the Museum for the City of New

York to host a series of public programs and work with theUNY Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies to present a

tudent engagement conference in 2012 on issues of collegeccess and health disparties. City Limits will be a contentrovider for WNET Channel 13s MetroFocus program ande the featured investigative journalism organiz ation in NBCsew show Prime Suspect.Depend on us to keep you informed and engaged as our

ity and nation prepares for the future ahead.

incerely,ark Anthony omas

Director

ON THE COVER:

The helment of Capt.

Vincent Fowler, killed at

a June 1999 house fire.

Photo by Marc Fader.

HATS NEW AND WHATS

NEXT AT CITYLIMITS.ORG

Make the NewsPublicize your

organizations events.

Send news tipsSubmit opinion pieces

Do it all at

WWW.CITYLIMITS.ORGRRE TI N: ur uy issue conated t e num er of ouse odseceiving welfare benets with the number of people. Fieen years ago,ne in seven city residents (not one in three households) received welfare.

Today, about 350,000 residents, or one in 23 New Yorkers (not one inine households) receives welfare.

Photos by the White House, Marc Fader, Colin Lenton


3/33

Why Firefighters Die City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 54 The Death and Life of the Neighborhood Store www.citylimits.org4 City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 4First Focus www.citylimits.org

FIRSTFOCUS

REPORT: Young NYers FaceHigher Barriers to Public AssistanceIts a story thats repeated itself severaltimes now under the Bloomberg admin-

istration: A leading New York socialservices agency issues a report harshlycriticizing the administrations welfarepolicies as inappropriate for many poorNew Yorkers, and ineective at movingpeople into e conomic self-s u ciency.City o cials respond by ins isting thatthe study is awed, and that the citysWork First model has been a successat connecting low-income New Yorkerswith employment.

e latest study, Missed Opportunity,was issued jointly last month by theCommunity Service Society (owner ofCity Limits) and the Resilience AdvocacyProject to investigate how young appli-cants for public benets are handled bythe city Human Resources Administra-tion, which manages public benets.eir answer: poorly.

When young people are really at theirlowest point, down on their luck, they

seek cash assistance, says CSS youthpolicy director Lazar Treschan. Yetdespite state directives that young people,especially those without high schooldiplomas, should be oered educationaloptions, he says, the young people wespoke to told us that just isnt happening.Its not just that theyre not being placed,

theyre not being encouraged. eyreot even receiving information thatducation is an option. In fact, there is

this byzantine series of procedures thatmake it impossible for anyone to maket into an education program as their

work requirement.Many of the survey responses included

familiar complaints about the publicbenets system: HRA Job Center work-rs who, instead of tailoring referrals for

their individual cases, send applicants toone-size-ts-all job readiness programs

where they spend full days composingesumes and watching job-training

videos. In particular, a number of young

people report that they have been told byHRA workers that theyre not allowed toapply for benets until they turn 21a

violation of state and federal law.atthew Brune, HRAs executive

deputy commissioner for family inde-pendence, counters that drawing anyconclusions from a small samplethe

study interviewed 100 under-24 NewYorkers whod applied for public ben-etsis unwarranted. I think ultimatelythe concern would be that it still remainsa very small sample group, and its notbroadly illustrative of what HRA does, anddoes well, for millions of New Yorkers.

Neil deMause

Students at Bronx Community Colleges 2010 graduation. A CSS report contends that

young, low-income people who become involved with the public assistance system

arent always offered the educational opportunities to which they are legally entitled.

Housing Market Crisis

Isnt Over for Borrowers

of Color

While the national foreclosure crisisthat started in 2007 has receded in NewYork, it continues to rage throughoutmany predominantly black and Latino

city neighborhoods.Despite a slight dip in the number of

properties entering foreclosure citywideat the end of last year, we still see, byhistorical standards, very elevated levelsof foreclosure activity in predominantlynonwhite neighborhoods in 2010, saidJosiah Madar, a researc h fellow at NYUsFurman Center for Real Estate andUrban Policy.

Foreclosure activity remains highlyconcentrated in southeast Queens, north-central Brooklyn, and the north shore ofStaten Island. According to the FurmanCenters State of the City 2010, last yearmore than 50 percent of properties thatwere acquired by the foreclosing lenderwere found in fewer than nine percentof the citys community districts.

A report co-authored by theManhattan-based NeighborhoodEconomic Development AdvocacyProject (NEDAP) this spring found that,between 2008 and 2009, conventionalrenance lending decreased by 14 per-

cent in New York Citys neighborhoodsof color, while lending in the cityspredominantly white neighborhoodsincreased by more than 110 percent.Di culty renanci ng means distressedhomeowners of color may be having aharder time holding on to their homesthan distressed white homeowners.

odications hard to come byAdvocates are currently pursuing sevenues t hat address the forecloallout. Some look to the recently creonsumer Financial Protection Bu

s a potential bastion of consumer riAlthough the agency launched Jult still lacks a director, under Repan threat to block conrmation ore controls are placed on the age

owers. Others are monitoring the seent negotiation on nes and pena

etween the top ve mortgage servnd the 50 state attorneys general.Last fall, New Yorks judiciary bec

he rst in the country to requirettorneys ling foreclosure actionsubmit an a rmation t o verify heir clients paperwork is accu

e measure is intended to prehe robo-signing of foreclosuresrupted last year. On one handew rule has forced attorneys to re

A house in Southeast Queens, epicenter of the foreclosure crisis in New York City.

Photo by Colin Lenton.

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4/33

Why Firefighters Die City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 56 The Death and Life of the Neighborhood Store www.citylimits.org6 City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 4First Focus www.citylimits.org

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Outcome of School

Violence Crackdown

Hard to Detect

Early in the Bloomberg administration,

the mayor and then-Chancellor JoelKlein identied a list of high-crimeschools they called Impact Schools.In partnership with Ray Kelly of theNYPD, the Department of Educationtargeted the schools improvement byassigning additional s chool safety o cersand NYPD police o cers to assert andmaintain order.

We are cracking down on the schoolswith the worst safety records, the mayorsaid in early January 2004. ey will be

getting more police o cers. Disruptivestudents will not be tolerated. We have aresponsibility to provide an environmentfree from violence and fear so childrencan learn. We simply wont allow a fewpeople to destroy the educational oppor-tunities of others.

In 2004, the formal NYPD presencein city schools was relatively recenta1998 memorandum of understandingbetween Mayor Rudy Giuliani and theNYPD that permitted police in thepublic schools was quietly renewed byBloomberg in 2003.

Now, with police in the schools formore than a decade, it seems timely toask what happened to the Impact Schools.Seven years aer the Impact Schoolsinitiative, did the program make schoolssaferdid it permit more students tolearn well, to graduate on time, to suc-ceed in work or college aer high school?

Answering those questions provesonerousbecause most of the ImpactSchools have been shuttered by the DOE,

their school buildings now occupiedby numerous small-school organiza-tions. Some Impact Schools got saferand were removed from the list, evenas new schools were added. As publicrecords and privacy mandates rightlydont permit tracking the progress (or

failure) of individual students, deter-mining whether Impact School studentshave graduated from their phasing-outchools before they closed, transferred

to other schools, or le school entirely

s near-impossible.The Impact Schools theory was

rounded in broken-windows policing,ommon in many of the citys poorestistricts, like the South Bronx, Bed-Stuy,

East New York and Brownsville. eiuliani-era urban-crime strategy man-ates resolving small issues before they

become inamed. Adding extr a o cersto Impact Schools meant more rigorouscreening at building entries for metalbjects, like weapons, belt buckles andell phones. It meant additi onal o cersn hallways during passing times, makingure students went to class and stayedafe in lunchrooms and auditoriums.

Impact policing placed hundreds ofxtra adults in school buildings, oen

with little trai ning: Safety o cers get 14weeks at the Police Academy, comparedwith 6 months training for NYPD cadets.

oday, more than 5,000 safety o cerswork in the citys public schoolsa forcethats greater than the entire police corps

f Boston and San Francisco, combined.

To date, of nearly 30 Impact Schoolslisted by the DOE, more than 20 havelosed or are in phaseoutcurrent stu-ents may graduate, but no new studentsre permitted to enroll. ree former

Impact Schools are alive but on federallife-supportawaiting their share of

$22 million in School ImprovementGrants that are targeted to restart thecitys weakest schools. Only a handful of

Impact Schools are still openinclud-ing one, JFK High School in the Bronx,

where 46 percent of students graduate infour years and enrollment has been cutto less than a third of its 2002 census as

ve new schools have come to share itsbuilding. Long story short, of the targetedImpact Schools, only about 20 percentsurvived their improvement.

Asked about the status of the ImpactSchools, DOE o cials said the programwas still active, although much smallerthan in 2004-07. Currently there areeight campuses that are part of theImpact Schools program, wrote MargeFeinberg of the DOE pr ess o ce. Someschools have cycled o the Impact list, likeSheepshead Bay High School in Brooklynand Newtown High School in Queens.But most have closed, their buildingsrepopulated as educational campuseshousing up to six schools.

o did the program work? at mostbasic questionwas the outcome worththe eort?cannot be answered withthe statistics and accountability datathe DOE prizes. What is certain is

that many of the high-crime schoolstargeted for improvement by DOE nolonger exist; whether their eradicationqualies as improvement is a matter forongoing debate.

Helon Zelon

Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, then-Schools Chancellor Joel Klein

and current Chancellor Dennis Walcott at a 2006 event announcing a new phase in the

Impact Schools program. Photo courtesy City Hall.


5/33


By Jarrett Murphy / Photographs by Marc Fader

Why

FirefightersDie

TH E FEATURE

And what we have learnedabout saving them

This project was generously supported by the Fund for

Investigative Journalism and the George Polk Grants for

Investigative Reporting. The latter are supported by the Ford

Foundation and administered by Long Island University.

A photo in the home of late F

Capt. Vincent Fowler, who die

1999. Fowler had written a set

procedures for firehouses to f

when one of their own dies. T

first step was for the men who

survived to call their wives.


6/33

10

an Buren Street runs three blocks through NewBrighton, a few hundred yards from StatenIslands northern shoreline. It is a narrow, leafytreet of mixed fortune, with well-tended gardens

and rambling wood-framed houses sprinkled amongbruised A-frames and yards of weedy neglect. eyellow two-story house at 39 Van Buren Street is the

smallest and neatest on its block. A spotless p atio and hip-highiron fence separate the sidewalk from a compact front gardenof ferns and shrubs under a bay window. A slim cement pathruns around the back to a tiny fenced-in backyard. Cheeryand quiet, it does not look like the kind of building that wouldkill a New York City reghter. It does not seem like the kindof place someone would die to save. But it is.

is month, New York City and the world will mark therim anniversary of an event in which the New York City

Fire Department, the largest re service in the U.S., playedheroic and tragic role. e FDNYs 343 deaths on Sept. 11

epresent the largest loss of life by any public safety agencyn American history. And while just under 3,000 innocentsere murdered on 9/11, including many other rst respond-

rs, nothing captured the moral imprint of the day quite likehe image of hundreds of reghters making their way up thetairs while everyone else ed. Some reghters stopped to

ake a last confession before they began their ascent. Sometayed with injured civilians even when death was certain.

at days scenes will never leave us.

www.citylimits.org

T e

Cost estessonsFireghter deaths in New York City, 1991-2011

CHAPTER ON E

A November 2008 fire in this Staten

Island house claimed the life of FDNY

Lt. Robert Ryan, Jr.the 11th FDNY

death in a fire operation since Sept.

11, 2001. Photo by Jarrett Murphy.


7/33


Nor should its lessons. Sept. 11 was many thingsa politica learthquake, an intelligence debaclebut at its core, it was are. And so it had lessons to teach about how New York Citymight ght res like that in the future.

Time, however, did not stop on 9/11. e city soon went backto living and working and burning. e FDNY has battled aquarter of a million structural res since the twin towers fell.And it has lost 11 men doing so. One, omas Brick, got lostand died in a furniture warehouse. Another, Richard Sclafani,met his end in a cellar. John Martinson died in an apartmentre. e others fell o roofs or leapt from windows, or diedin oor collapses or high-rise disasters.

Few will remember the anniversaries of these deaths. Butin a way, they are just as important as the deaths on Sept. 11,not just to the families who lost husbands or sons but also tothe reghters who, as you read this, are probably pulling upin front of a building somewhere in New York City.

Ten years aer Sept. 11 is a good time to revisit what thatdays very costly lessons were and whether the New York CityFire Department has learned them. But the prospect of another

Sept. 11 is as unlikely as it is terrifying. Fires in basements andfactories and two-story homes, however, will happen all thetime. So its important to also learn the lessons that peoplelike Brick, Sclafani and Martinson paid for with their lives.

Since 2006, City Limits has been using the Freedom ofInformation Law to gather o cial FDNY reports on line-of-duty deaths from 1991 to the present. ese documents andothers, along with interviews with current and former FDNY

personnel, re experts and kin of the deceased, point to aet of factors that contributed to those deaths, and the manyeports on Sept. 11 detail the lessons that disaster had to teach.

FDNY reports and interviews with experts indicate whetherthe lessons from these many fatalities have led to meaningfulhange in New York City. Our investigation found:

ew or ity re g ters are etter equippe an trainethan they were on Sept. 11, and the re department has madenormous eorts to improve planning and procedureslthough some questions linger about whether New Yorksmergency management strategy is fully prepared for another

major cataclysmic emergency.

A familiar set of circumstances is found in most other line-f-duty FDNY deaths since 1991. e department has mademprovements in several areas where its death investigationshowed weaknesses. Some of these innovations took years toeliver, perhaps because of technological obstacles.

Other factors that have contributed to reghter deathspersist. Some may be insoluble. Meanwhile, scal pressuresthreaten to introduce new dangers by reducing manpower onngine and perhaps ladder companies.

ew or ity as ong empoye an aggressive approacto ghting res. is oen saves civilian lives and propertybut also exposes reghters to greater risks.

A CONTEXT FOR DANGERIn addition to the 11 New York City reghters whodied ghting res since September 11, three reghtersdied of acute medical problems and two FDNY emer-gency medical services workers also died on the job.

Fireghting is, however, far from the most dangerousjob in America. Of all 4,551 people who died whileworking nationwide in 2009, only 41 were professionalreghters. In New York City alone, 81 constructionworkers died from 2006 through 2010, compared withnine FDNY members.

But reghting is one of the few jobs in which peopledie trying to save other people. And while reghterdeaths are fairly rare, they are more common than onemight expect, given the sharp decline in res over thepast four decades. e rate of res per 1,000 people inthe U.S. decreased from 14.9 in 1977 to 4.4 in 2009. enumber of reghter deaths (including volunteers) fellfrom 157 to 90 per year in that timean impressivechange, for sure, but not in line with the fall in res.

In the entire U.K. in 2008the last year for whichstatistics are availablenot a single reghter died.e year before, six did. More than 236 Americanreghters died over that span of time.

Across the country, eorts are under way to reducereghter deaths. e Department of Homeland Secu-rity is funding a program called the Fireghter NearMiss Reporting System, in which reghters sharenear-deadly experiences in the hope of allowing othersto avoid close calls. Meanwhile, the National FallenFireghter Foundation is mounting an eort calledEverybody Goes Home that intends to change policiesand practices that contribute to death at re scenes.

e FDNY has played a role in that national eortto make reghting smarter and safer. is March thedepartment hosted re commanders from around thecountry for a symposium on reghting tactics at itstraining academy on Randalls Island, which reght-ers call the Rock.

Comparing New York City reghting to that ofother American citi es is di cult. No city is as verticalas New York, nor as large, nor as appealing a target forterrorists. But a crude look at statistics suggests thatNew York does not stand out for reghter safety. Since1990, Los Angeles has lost 17 reghters in operations,Chicago 11, Houston seven. Not counting Sept. 11 ordeaths from acute medical causes like heart attacks,New York City lost 32 reghters in that period.

One of them was Lt. Robert J. Ryan, Jr. He is the manwho died at 39 Van Buren Street.

WHY DID HE DIE?Sometime around midnight on the Saturday beforeanksgiving 2008, electrical wiring overheated and

started a smoldering re in the space between thesecond-oor ceiling and the attic oor at 39 Van BurenStreet. A neighbor noticed and roused the residents,according to the report prepared by the FDNY Safetyand Inspection Services Command, which investigatesreghter deaths and major injuries.

Within 3 minutes, 17 seconds of being dispatched,Engine 155 traveled the seven-tenths of a mile betweenits rehouse on Brighton Avenue and the house onre. Ryan, E ngine 155s o cer or bo ss, radioed ina 10-75, meaning that there was a working re atthe address. He headed into the building with two ofhis men who carried the hose.

Fire could be seen lapping out and up the exterior ofthe house, but as Ryan climbed the stairs to the secondoor and then the attic, he saw no ames. Membersof a ladder company, using a special thermal-imagingcamera, saw that heat was concentrated in one cornerof the attic, so they ripped open a hole in the wall toexpose re and smoke. e attic quickly got very hotand smoky. Ryan spoke through his breathing maskinto the radio, telling Engine 155s pump operator,Give us water.

Another ladder company arrived and started to ripopen the walls and ceiling on the second oor. Ryancalled the battalion chief, who was standing outside,running the operation. Were trying to open up thewalls, he said. Fires got up in the walls.

A second engine company came into the house and

Deadly Firesivilian fire deaths in New York ity, 1993-2010

Another Sept.11 is as

terrifying as it is unlikely.

Fires in basements and

factories and two-story

homes, however, will

happen all the time.

So its important to

also learn the lessons

that people like Brick,

Sclafani and Martinson

paid for with their lives.

161 162173

149 145

107112

125

10798

109 106

92 9285

7867

94

93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

ource: FDNY. Deaths at the World Trade Center were not considered fire deaths.

Years 1993-2000 display calendar-year data. Years 2001-2010 reflect fiscal year data.


8/33


9/33


amazing as it seems now, there was resistance to inves-tigating Sept. 11. Twenty-two House Republicans votedagainst authorizing a study by the National Institute ofStandards and Technology (NIST). President George W.Bush resisted the creation of the National Commission

n Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, a.k.a. the/11 commission. Mayor Michael Bloomberg took no

questions from the 9/11 commission when it came to New York toinvestigate the citys response, and for a time he blocked the releaseof o cial records to the NIS T investigators a nd the 9/11 commis-sion, because the city was ghting an ultimately successfulNew YorkTimes lawsuit to make the records public.

Meanwhile, neither the FDNYs Safety Battalion nor the NationalInstitute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which rou-tinely probe reghter deaths, investigated the World Trade Centerfatalities. At the time, I just think because of the magnitude of theevent, nothing was done, says Tim Merinar, who leads NIOSHsreghter fatality investigations. I dont really think any organiza-tion did a true fatality investigation of the incident. (In fairness, the

eAny My

en

CHAPTER TW O

Progress and peril in the wake of Sept. 11

Remembering th

at Tiles for Ameri


10/33

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 4 www.citylimits.org18 Why Firefighters Die www.citylimits.org

scale of the losses would have made such investigations,which detail the precise circumstances of each death,di cult to compl ete.)

Despite these obstacles, three reportsthe NISTstudy, the 9/11 commission investigation and anFDNY-authorized report by the consultant McKinsey& Co.managed to, very delicately, spell out Sept. 11spainful lessons for the city and its re department.

Death in a disaster usually has multiple causes. Youcould talk about the Titanic and focus on the iceberg,not the lifeboats. You could discuss Hurricane Katrinaand omit any mention of the levees. You could blamethe Hindenburgonly on static electricity. But none ofthese would give a full accounting of why people endedup injured or dead.

ept. 11 would never have happened if terroristshadnt decided to kill Americans. But it might havetaken a lower toll on the re department if problemswith communications and personnel had been averted.

WHAT WAS THE MISSION?Fighting res in high-rise buildings i s very dierent frombattling blazes in shorter structures. Fireghters cantleave a tool in their truck and run down to get it or easily

tep outside for a new tankf air. Most important, theysually have to use a waterystem built into the high-ise building to put out the

blaze. Even when that waters available, some high-riseres are simply too large to

put out. To extinguish even aaming half-oor of the WTC would have required, byNISTs calculations, 1,250 gallons of water a minute, adeluge that might take 10 engine companies to provide.

Rescuing people in high-rise buildings is compli-cated too. e time it takes a person wearing at least 50pounds of gear to climb dozens of ights of stairs couldbe longer than the time a civilian can survive trappedamid toxic smoke.

All these challenges were exacerbated on Sept. 11.Not only were multiple, huge oor areas in ame, theres were also whipped by wind pouring in through thebuildings shattered sides. e standpipes in both build-ings were believed to have been severed by the aircrasimpact, meaning no water could reach the upper oors.e elevators werewith a single exception in eachtowerrendered immobile, robbing reghters of amethod for reaching the re faster.

o FDNY commanders decided e arly on at the WorldTrade Center that they would mount a rescue operati on,not a reghting one. At best it would take hours to

stablish meaningful reghting operations on the upperoors of the buildings, the NIST report found. It was

likely that many of the occupants trapped at or above thempact zone would die before help could get to them.

Despite this decision, the NIST report and individualreghters oral histories reveal that some re companies

were ordered to head to the impact zone and set up apost for what NIST dubbed rescue and reghting

perations. at report found that as the senior com-and level strategies were communicated to the lower

levels, the concepts appeared to take hold at a slowerpace at the next level down. Some reghters at theompany level were disturbed by the operations order

that signaled a change toward assisting with the evacu-tion. ey wanted to go up and put the re out. In the

FDNYs oral histories, a number of reghters recalledbeing told to prepare to extinguish the blaze, or being

iven vague orders to simply head upstairs.Doing so was ext remely di cult. One unit took an

hour to reach the 31st oor. Many reghters went 10 or

12 oors, rested, climbed ve or six more, took anotherblow, then scaled three or four additional ights. Severalreghters reported chest pains. Large groups of exhausted

FDNY men were seen resting in a north-tower elevatorlobby just before the building came down.

Despite the confusion and physical strain, reghtersoubtless saved lives by helping people evacuate. But

late-arriving re companies found few civilians le i nthe building.

KEEPING TRACK OF A TRAGEDYAccording to NIST, the re departments personnel-tracking system generally worked well for the rst 30

inutes but then became overwhelmed with the largeumber of units and personnel arriving at the scene.ixty-one percent of the citys engine companies, 43

percent of ladder units and nearly half of all chiefs wereispatched to the World Trade Center, but all t he incidentommanders had to track them on was a suitcase-sizecommand board that used a whiteboard and magnets

to keep sense of who was being sent where.eres a misconception that dozens of FDNY units

eployed to the WTC on their own. In fact, only fourid. But according to the 9-11 Commission, more renits were dispatched to the scene than commanderssked for. Some re trucks and engines rode heavy,

with reghters who were going o duty leaping aboardto join the shi that had just come in. Several reght-rs arrived on the scene as individuals, asking to help.cKinsey found that as these units approached the area,any failed to report to the staging areas and instead

proceeded directly to the tower lobbies or other partsf the incident area. As a result, senior chiefs could not

Links to reports by NIST, McKinsey

and the 9/11 Commission.

www.citylimits.org/fire

READ THE REPORTS

The terrorists who attacked on Sept.

11 committed one, purely inadvertent

act of charity: They struck early. By

plowing American Airlines Flight 11

into the north tower at 8:46 a.m., they

hit a building that held about 8,900

people as oppose to the 1 , people

who might have been insi e later in

the ay. n thanks to the 1 minutes

that elapsed between the first impact

and the strike on the south tower, many

of the 8,500 people who were in the

secon buil ing gaine a precious

ew minutes hea start on their jour-

ney to saety. a both buil ings been

fully occupied, the National Institute

of Standards and Technology (NIST)

believes that 14,000 people might have

ie in the collapses.

iming was just one o the variables

in play. Lie an eath hinge on

where a person was, where the plane

hit and how the twin towers had been

esigne three eca es earlier. light

11 slamme into the part o 1

where the three exit stairwells were

unched closest together. All 1,393

eople trapped above the impact

ied. United Flight 175, on the other

an , cut at a point where the

tairwells were arthest apartleav-

ng one path to sa ety open or a ew

inutes. At least 18 people in the south

tower made it from above the impact

one to safety. Some 619 were trapped

bove an i e .

elatively ew people who were

elow the oors o impact perishe :

bout 107 in the north tower and a

ere 11 in the south tower. Its eerie to

magine how many more might have

ived if the designers of the towers

a obeye the city s buil ing co e

n esigne the buil ings with our

tairwells as opposed to three or if

loosening of New Yorks building

requirements during the time w

the WTC was being designed ha

permitted them to slash the numb

stairwells from the six that would h

been require .

he etai le I invest iga

laid bare the need for change

regulation, and many modificat

have been incorporated into the t

full revisions of the national-m

International uil ing o e s

the attacks. ut the real-estate lo

opposed some of the improvemthat safety advocates wanted,

the Building Owners and Mana

Association fighting to make sure

I recommen ations are not u

as justi cation or intro ucing un

essary new requirements in state

local building codes.

n 2008, New York City for the

time adopted a model building c

his inclu e sweeping chan

like requiring wi er stairs, stron

stairwells and built-in voice com

nication systems for firefighters in h

rises. Most of these rules apply on

new buildings. There is a rule tha

buil ings 1 eet or tallernew

existingmust install sprinklers, bu

ea line isnt until 1 . e wa

seven years. The opposition got

2019, says Jack Murphy, a retired

Jersey fire chief and national c

expert. e says the push or b

sprinkler coverage ates rom

ays when the was built. It

years weve been talking about t

ew York Citys code revision

based on the 2003 International C

Council model code. Since then

co e has been revise twice, w

thir revision ue out in 1 . o

York is preparing to update its

code once again. Some big-ticket it

u ngs ave, u ngsCode changes after Sept. 11, and more coming up

The Freedom Tower takes shape at Ground Zero. B ecause it is on territory controlled by

the Port Authority, the building is not subject to the citys construction and fire codes

although the Port has said it will exceed those requirements. Photo by Matthew Bisanz.


11/33

www.citylimits.orgCity Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 420 Why Firefighters Die

accurately track the whereabouts of all units.When the second plane hit, a sec ond h alarmthe

highest in the departments normal operational battleplanwas sounded. But, as had been pointed out aerthe 1993 bombing but never corrected, there was noprocedure in place for an alarm greater than h. Andit meant that units that were totally unfamiliar with theWTC were showing up at the scene, sometimes in thewrong place. Some reghters whod been assigned tothe south tower showed up at the north tower instead,leading the south towers re commander to call formore men. Because some units did not stage andchiefs were unsure of their location, additional units,that might not have been required at that time, weredeployed to the incident, McKinsey continued. If unitshad staged according to protocol, other units that weredispatched to the World Trade Center might have beenkept instead in the citywide pool.

And, one might speculate, more reghters wouldhave survived.

COMMUNICATIONS PROBLEMSNo part of the emergency response garnered moreattention than the radios that FDNY personnel wereusingthey were, aer all, the same devices that hadperformed so poorly at the 1993 Trade Center incident.A belated eort to replace them had been scuttledearlier in 2001 when a poorly tested replacement radiofailed at one re. NIST found that a third to a half of allemergency responders radio transmissions at the WTCincident were unreadable or incomplete. But the exactimpact of radio problems is not a simple thing to gauge.

All handheld radios are susceptible to problems inhigh-rise buildings because their low wattage generatessignals that are oen too weak to travel multiple oors.Aer 1993 the FDNY had installed a repeatera devicethat amplies and retransmits radio messagesfor bothtowers on the roof of 5 WTC. On 9/11, reghters in thesouth tower apparently used their repeater. Fireghters inthe north tower didnt, because chiefs there erroneouslythought that repeater was broken. But it might not havemattered. When the south tower fell, the repeater waswiped out. If reghters in the north tower had beenrelying on the repeater, their communications mighthave gone dark once the other tower fell.

More important than the brand of radio or the use ofthe repeater might have been the sheer number of re-ghters trying to talk on one channel, which was simplyoverloaded. In addition, despite recommendations aerthe 1993 bombing and subsequent reghter fatalitiesthat such a device be developed, chiefs didnt have aspecial tone alert to help in ordering the evacuation ofthe north tower aer the south tower collapsed. (Despite

oul be on the table. ne is the question o whether all

ew one- and two-family homes should have sprinklers;

he new International Residential Code says they should.

DNY, meanwhile, is interested in having the code address

ll the new uses o ew orks roo s or cellular phone

quipment, plants, solar panels, ecks an cocktail hours.

nother looming topic is whether buil ing owners

hould be permitted or even required to provide special

levators for fire evacuations.

For years, the message drilled into building occupants

as been to never, ever use elevators in the event of a

re, because you coul get trappe insi e. ut ept. 11

as change the thinking about high-rise emergencies,

ntroducing the possibility

f full-building evacuations

nd highlighting the fact that

ome people are not physi-

ally capable o walking

any ights o stairs.

So-called occupant evac-ation elevators offer a

otential solution to those

roblems. n since buil -

ngs have to have elevators

nyway, they give buil ers

way to provide for egress

with out bui ldi ng one of

hose annoyingly unrentable

tairwells.

n elevator woul

ave to be specia l ly

esigned to be protected

rom smokewhich could

ill its occupantsand water, which might render it

noperable. And there are tricky questions about how

elevators shoul operate. resumably, they woul

e programme to scoop people rom the re oor

n the two oors above an below. ut some insist on

iving humans the ability to override that program. If,

or instance, there are 100 kindergartners on the top

oor, it might make sense for the elevator to get them

rst, then eal with the oors nearest the re. here are

ome things computers o well, says orman roner, an

uthority on buil ing evacuation. hen it comes to situ-

tional awarenessunderstanding an event and what it

eanspeople do that well. Computers are terrible at it.

The current IBC national model code calls for OEE eleva-

ors (or an extra stairwell) in new buildings 420 feet and

igher. i size buil ings are exempte . ew ork itys

o e alrea y allows elevator use in non- re emergen-

ies, Groner says. The question is whether New York will

oon allowor mandateelevator usage in fires as well.

Sept. 11 haschanged thethinking abouthigh-riseemergencies,

introducingthe possibilityof full-buildingevacuations andhighlightingthe fact thatsome people arenot physicallycapable ofwalking manyflights of stairs.

The New York CityFire Department

n ug. 1, 1 , a pai pro essional re

department replaced a mostly volunteer force

in providing fire protection to New York City.

Today, just under 11,000 uniformed firefighters

and fire officers serve the five boroughs.

he is hea e by a civilian com-

missioner, alvatore assano. perational

control is vested in the chief of department,

Edward Kilduff. There are 14 staff chiefs who

each oversee a portfolio, including training,

communications and five prevention. Other

top chie s comman the re personnel in a

particular borough. special operations com-

man inclu es the chies who lea the rescue,

marine and hazardous-materials divisions.

he department splits the city geographi-

cally into nine divisions, each headed by a

eputy chie . very ivision contains several

battalions overseen by battalion chie s; there

are battalions in the city. battalion com-

prises several engine companies and ladder

companies. A fire company has a captain in

charge and a group of lieutenants who help

the captain administer the unit. On a par-

ticular shit, a captain or a lieutenant might

comman the our or ve re ghters who

make up a company. There are 218 firehouses

in New York, and most have an engine and a

ladder company.

Photo by Jarrett Murphy


12/33


this, the 9/11 commission concluded that at least 24 ofthe at most 32 re units known to be working in thenorth tower heard the evacuation order.)

And while having the ability to communicate isimportant, having good information to share is vital.e reports on 9/11 indicate that some re command-ers inside the towers had little idea what was going onoutside, while re leaders outside the buildings hadno inkling of what NYPD helicopters were reportingto police commanders. is situation worsened expo-nentially when the rst building came down, wipingout much of the FDNY command post, which hadbeen set up within the collapse zone of the buildings.is loss of human life and the capital assets makesit imperative that emergency operations protocols fortall buildings be critically reassessed, NIST concluded.

A DECADE OF REPAIRIn earlier days, New York reghters resisted the movefrom a volunteer department to a paid one, then from

hand-drawn re apparatuses to horse-drawn enginesand nally from horses to trucks. When blacks andwomen sought to join the department, there was anew generation of resistance. More recently, McKinseynoted in its report, the FDNY had considered severalchanges that would have made a dierence on 9/11new radios, a re operations c enter, retraining and evensanctioning units that failed to deploy correctlybutthe department hadnt followed through.

Paradoxically, even while stubbornly resistingsome changes, the FDNY has throughout its historyspearheaded others, like pushing for safer tenementconstruction and, aer the Triangle Shirtwaist factoryre, demanding stricter re regulations for businesses.Nicholas Scoppetta, who led the re department from2002 through 2009, believes this second side of theFDNY is what it has shown since Sept. 11.

Its an entirely dierent department, he says of theFDNY since 9/11. e equipment is improved. etactics are i mproved. Scoppetta is proud that under hisleadership, the FDNY achieved the fastest responsetime in history: 4:01. ats astonishing. Almost beforeyou put down the phone, the trucks were arriving, aswell as the lowest number of civilian fatalities in anyeight-year period of the department.

Beyond the 343 people (boasting a combined 4,400years of experience) who were ki lled on 9/11, the FDNYsoon lost hundreds more who were forced out by injuryor illness or who deci dedperhaps encouraged by theirfamiliesto retire. e department decided to makeup for lost experience with new training. It expandedthe academy for new reghters from 13 weeks to 23weeks, instituted a Fire O cers Management Instituteand created new training programs for battalion and

eputy chiefsthe top two civil service ranks in theepartment. Every member of the department received

training in the national incident command system, orICS, an emergency leadership matrix geared to handlingvents like Sept. 11; o cers have received intermediatend, in some cases, advanced training in ICS. On Ran-alls Island, the department built a new, $4.2 million

high-rise simulator and, thanks to a g rant from the LearyFireghter Foundation, created two special trainingooms to show new reghters the subtle, lifesaving

warning signs that a room is about to ash overaterrifying phenomenon in which a room becomes souperheated that its contents simultaneously burst intoames, creating a reball that can kill in secondse training is unbelievable, says Jim Ellson, a

etired re captain who was once the executive o cer atFDNYs special operations command and now consults

n emergency preparedness. eres no comparison.eyre light-years ahead. Its constant training.FDNYs Fire Department Operations Center, complete

with live video feeds from police helicopters and com-puterized deployment systems, was launched in 2006.Aer replacing in short order t he 91 pieces of apparatusthat were destroyed in the collapses, the FDNY addedto its number of hazardous-material tactical, or haztac,mbulances (which specialize in handling emergenciesnvolving toxins), elite-trained ladder companies, and

reboats. e FDNY also re-evaluated its proceduresor roof rescues, which would not have been feasiblen Sept. 11 but mightas a last resortcome into playn a future disaster.

e FDNY modernized and automated its recallystem, which brings in o-duty reghters to helpn major emergencies, while also establishing formal

utual-aid arrangements in which towns outside theve boroughs can supplement FDNY resources in theity, or vice versa. A newly i nvigorated planning unit waset up to develop strategies for dierent WMD attacks.ixty-ve key targets in the city were assessed for risknd vulnerability. It took more than ve years, but in007 the FDNY released a comprehensive terrorismnd disaster planning strategy to avoid another Sept. 11.

Capt. Alexander Hagan, the head of the UniformedFire O cers Association, says it was a herculeanort to rebuild the re department. It was not an easy

period. It was a daunting task, and it really wasit wasangerous, he recalls.e expansion of the re academy to 23 weeks did

ot last long; budget pressure soon forced the city tocale it back to 18 weeks. But that was still ve weeks

longer than before. ey increased t he level and inten-ity of training, Hagan says. ey brought training toplace it had never been before in a re department

that trained a lot.

Opposi

Remem

the loss

the Eng

4/Ladde

firehou

Manha

South S


13/33


In 2007, Scoppetta wrote in the preface to the FDNYsstrategic plan: e past two years are proof that strategicmanagement has a tremendously positive impact on both ouroperational and organizational development. e Depart-ment has made great strides in the past two years to enhanceits preparedness and eectiveness. Scoppetta added, ereis much more to do.

Critics still have their doubts about whether police and recommanders are really better positioned to cooperate duringa major emergency. NYPD and FDNY commanders now haveradios on which they can talk to one another. e question iswhether they will use the special cross-agency channels whenthe time comes. And the Bloomberg administration outragedre department leaders when it created the Citywide IncidentManagement System, which, instead of laying out a clearhierarchy, split hairs on the question of who would commandduring a hazardous-materials i ncident. Peter Hayden, FDNYssecond post-9/ 11 chief of department, was driven from o ceaer publicly protesting the move to put cops in charge ofhazmat incidents whenever terrorism is suspecteda policy

that set New York apart from other cities and the nationalincident management model that post-September 11 reviewshad insisted New York adopt.

Doubts of a dierent kind emerged aer a re broke out inthe summer of 2007 at a building across the street from wherethe towers had fallen.

A HARSH TESTTwenty-three minutes aer the rst re companies pulled upto the burning, half-deconstructed Deutsche Bank buildingon Aug. 18, 2007, Assistant Chief omas Galvin arrived totake command. First he had to nd the command post. Hecontacted the incident commander, a battalion chief who wasacting out of title as a higher-ranking division chief (andwhose name we dont know):

GALVIN: Hey Steve, where are you setting this up causetheres just a little bit of confusion on how you wantus to get in. Where do you want us to come in at?

COMMANDER: If we could get a company to force that, ah,plywood right behind Ladder 10s apparatus. We can get access towhere we want to set up the, ah, operations, ah, the command post.

GALVIN: Steve, we have no idea what you are talking about.Were a little confused right now.

Galvin eventually found the post. But within a few minutes,there were more signs of trouble. A reghter on one of theupper oors of the building radioed, Be advised that we haveno water in the lines up here yet. So keep a good distance back.Its gonna be a little while before we get good water.

In fact, it would be 67 minutes from the time the rst com-panies arrived at the building and the moment water nally

egan owing into reghters hoses. By days end thered bet least 10 separate Mayday calls and several more urgent-rgent-urgent transmissions as the re roared from the 17thoor up to the 23rd and top oor and down to 16, 15, 14theoors where reghters were stagingblanketing the air withhick smoke, separating men from their units and blindinghem as their oxygen supplies diminished. At one point inhe chaos, a company o cer asked int o his radi o, Do youave any of my men?Most of the reghters made it out, some by leaping out

nto scaolding that jacketed the building. But FireghtersRobert Beddia and Joseph Graagnino died of smoke inhala-ion. One hundred other reghters were injured.

e issue of who was to blame for the Deutsche Bank disasters well-trodden territory. is summers failed prosecution ofhree construction supervisors pinned the deaths on the deci-ion to cut a pipe, the standpipe, that should have providedater to reghters on the upper oors. But according to

hen-Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morganthau, theBloomberg administration avoided being indicted in the deaths

nly because of its status as a government entity, which givest sovereig n immunity. Repor ts by Morganthaus o ce andhe Department of Inves tigati on found that FDNY o cersad failed in their responsibility to inspect the building andlan how to ght a re there. On at least ve occasions, sub-rdinate re chiefs tried to get their superiors to pay attentiono the unique risks of the Deutsche Bank building, but littlection was taken. Morganthaus report, for instance, says thatin February 2005, a memo was written by a Hazmat Bat-alion Chief and forwarded to the then-Chief of Operationsontaining recommendations for an emergency reghtingperation plan for the building. However, the Chief of Opera-ions neither approved nor endorsed the recommendations;or did he distribute them to the rst-due units, the [nearby]

10/10 Firehouse, or the Battalion, Division, Special Op erationsommand or the Manhattan Borough Command. e DAs

eport does not name current FDNY commissioner Salvatoreassano, but he was the chief of operations in February of 2005.e DA conrmed that reghters at the local house didnt

ven have the right protective equipment to conduct thenspections they were supposed to do every 15 days.

In an exceedingly rare move during the 2009 campaign season,he FDNYp ublicly reprimanded seven o cers (Cassano notmong them) for failing in their duty to inspect the building.

But six of those seven o cers appear to have remained on t heFDNY payroll at least into 2010.

coppetta also came in for some blame, with the New YorkPost ampaigning for his resignation. e former commissionerttributes the tabloid criticism he faced to a misunderstand-ng of his role, in which he did not have control of day-to-dayperations. Itd be very unusual for a commissioner to be

nvolved in supervising the inspections of a particular build-ng, he tells ity Limits.

BEYOND THE INSPECTIONSWhat has gotten less ink than the standpipe and theinspections is the fact that the FDNY response to theDeutsche Bank building on the day of the re sueredfrom some of the same problems that exacerbated thetoll on Sept. 11.

eres no denying that the Deutsche Bank building,which was being simultaneously decontaminated anddismantled, was dangerous. It had a severed standpipe,heavy barricades between oors that served to trapreghters and even banks of industrial fans that couldnot be shut o, adding noise and mechanized wind toan already treacherous operation.

But these obstacles werent the only problems on Aug.18, 2007. e FDNYs o cial invest igation i ndicatesthat because commanders waited until too late to setup a separate command channel, the tactical radiochannel was overwhelmed. Some of the many May-days given werent heard or acknowledged by otherreghtersapparently, Beddia and Graagnino both

gave Maydays, but they did not come up on the audiorecording of the event. Commanders never said whichof the three engine companies that had been dispatchedto the upper oors was supposed to be in charge of get-ting water on the blaze. Windows were broken to ventthe re in a manner contrary to procedure. Fireghterseither couldnt or didnt leave the area of danger whentheir air canisters ran low.

e FDNYs report recommends, among dozens ofsuggestions, that the department develop policies onalternative ways to get water to a high-rise re whenthe standpipe is unusable.

But a separate investigation by NIOSH goes evenfurther in hinting that FDNY reghting strategy waseither not followed at the Deutsche Bank disaster or isin need of revision given what occurred there. It callsfor the FDNY to review and follow existing standardoperating procedures on high-rise re ghting to ensurethat re ghters are not operating in hazardous areaswithout the protection of a charged hoseline and todevelop and enforce risk management plans, policies,and standard operating guidelines for risk managementduring complex high-rise operations.

In other words, the Deutsche Bank response may havesuered not just from water problems, but also from trou-bling tactical choices. Galvin, the high-ranking chi ef whoeventually took charge of the operation, himself seemedconcerned about the way the re response was beingrun, barking into the radio at one point, Do we have aroll call nished up there? I do not give a shit about thebuilding. I g ive a shit about the guys , and later, Lets geteverybody below this fucking re for a change.

One would need a lot of chutzpah to question thedecisions made in the heat of the moment by men with

decades of reghting experience. But some wonder whyFDNY commanders kept shuttling men into a burningbuilding where there were no civilians to save and nowater to put the blaze out. Christopher Naum, the headof training at the Command Institute in Washington,D.C., has written that re suppression operations inbuildings during construction, alterations, deconstruc-tion, demolition and renovations present signicantrisks and consequences that require a methodical andconservative approach towards incident stabilizationand mitigation.

He adds: You cannot implement conventional tacticaloperations in these structures. Doing so jeopardizes alloperating personnel and creates unbalanced risk man-agement proles that are typically not favorable to thesafety and wellbeing of reghters.

incent Dunn, however, does not believe there werecommand errors at the Deutsche Bank building. estrategy for high-rise re is to send a blitz attack duringthe initial stage to quell a re, says the veteran re chief.e Deutsche Bank building re was a one in a mil-lionstandpipe shut o and stairs blocked. Like 9/11, thiswas not a strategy problem. It was a building problem.

THE TRIALS OF TRACKINGAs the situation as the Deutsche Bank re grew tense,

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14/33

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 4 www.citylimits.org26 Why Firefighters Die26 City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 4Why Firefighters Die

On an average day, New York Citys 911

sys tem receives , ca s . n ept.

11, 1, i t logge more than , ,

according to former Mayor Giulianis

testimony to the 9-11 Commission. These

included calls from people inside the

twin towers asking for instructions on

whether to stay or leave or whether

to hea up or own. In at least a ew

cases, 11 operators gave the wrong

advice. Meanwhile, fire dispatchers

went beyond protocol in the number of

units they assigned to the disaster. And

those problems, experts later note ,

pale in comparison to what woul

have be allen the city i the 11 system

itself had been targeted by terrorists.

Taken together, these concerns

led the Bloomberg administration to

undertake a four-pronged emergency

communications trans ormation

program. his inclu e grouping all

police, fire and ambulance dispatchers

at one Public Safety Answering Center

or PSAC) at MetroTech in Brooklyn,

reating a backup 11 center II

n the ronx an getting all ispatchers

nto a unified dispatch system.

The plan also called for implement-

ng unified call taking. Previously, a

aller to 911 spoke to a police operator

n then, in the case o a re, talke

to a re ispatcher. his secon con-

versation consiste o three questions:

Whats your address? Whats on fire?

Whats your phone number? Fifteen

econds after that, fire apparatus was

ut, one re ispatcher says. ut the

loomberg a ministration consi ere

that a 1 s-era system un er which

oth police and fire call takers sepa-

ately and redundantly interviewed

allers, wasting valuable seconds.

Under the new unified call taking,

the police operator takes all the inor-

ation an relays it electronically to

re dispatchers. The FDNY soon said

the system, introduced in May 2009,

reduced response times. But there were

glitches. Police operators unfamiliar

with getting the information needed for

fires made mistakes. The administra-

tion move to a ress the problem by

having re ispatchers listen in when

911 operators received a fire call. But

firefighters say they still regularly get

address information that is vague or

wrong. ccor ing to one contributor on

the ant website, when he calle

in a car re on the arlem iver rive

at 138th Street recently, the operatorasked what borough he was in. Then

she asked for an address. Again I told

her it was about 138th Street, just west

o the arlem iver rive. ext question

was est or ast 1 th

ew technology often causes grum-

bling, and the fire dispatcher we

talked to acknowledged that some of

the resistance to the new system can

be chalke up to tension between re

ispatchers, who ten to be white men,

and 911 operators who are mostly black

women. The FDNY points to response

times that, since the system was imple-

mented, have dropped to their lowest

levels ever, but opponents say

response times ont capture the time

callers spen on the phone beore

theyre transferred to fire dispatchers.

he rest of the transformation plan

also hit snags. PSAC I exists, but not

all personnel have been move there

yet. ter encountering community

opposition to its height an propose

location off Pelham Parkway, PSAC II is

now under construction, but the price

of its technology contract ballooned

to from $380 million to $666 million

be ore being restructure last year

un er pressure rom ity omptroller

John Liu.

ewCost and controversy around emergency calls

On Sept. 11, the 911 emergency call system was overwhelmed and some callers received

bad advice. Photo by Wally Gobetz.

commanders ordered roll calls to see which members werentaccounted for. Not only did this prove hard to accomplish onthe overcrowded radio channel, but the roster of companiesinitially read o by chiefs also didnt even include the unit,Engine 24, that the dead men were i n, and there was constantlyconfusion about which oor dierent units were on, who wasin the building and who was down below.

ismore than anything else about the Deutsche Bankreechoed 9/11 and the overwhelmed command board atthe World Trade Center. As the NIST report on the WTCpointed out, tracking reghters is an issue that has beenstudied by the emergency responder community for manyyears. It added, Unfortunately, failures of accountability onthe re ground have oen been associated with the injuryor death of reghters. Indeed, problems with keeping recompanies together and tracking personnel at a re scenehaveaccording to investigations by FDNY or NIOSHfactored into at least seven other FDNY deaths since 1991.

e McKinsey report, which the FDNY commissioned,called for the department to develop better technology for

tracking reghters. By mid-2002, Motorola was rolling outa re ground accountability tool. e Tulsa, Okla., re depart-ment was beta testing that system by 2003. Departments assmall as the Ponderosa Volunteer Fire Department in Houstonhave implemented such a system.

e FDNY, however, facing unique needs as the largest andmost vertically oriented department in the country, wantedto develop its own system through a partnership with outsidetechies. Its 2004 strategic plan said that by the end of that year,electronic wireless command post boards, using personalcomputers that can graphically display the locations of unitdeployments, will improve on-scene incident management.When that deadline passed, the department said it woulddeploy such a system in 2007. Its only now that the FDNYis deploying its electronic re ground accountability system,or EFAS, which keeps track of who is issuing a mayday. eelectronic command post is close to being unveiled.

NIOSH investigator Tim Merinar says tracking reghtersis an issue all across the re service all across the country.He adds, Because of limitations with the technology, theresstill not a real good solution to that problem.

Perhaps the FDNYs caution in embracing such a systemwill help it avoid those technological pitfalls. But the humanfactor still concerns Steve Mormino, a retired FDNY lieuten-ant who runs the Fireghter Near Miss Reporting System.I think that [EFAS] is a positive development, but its not a100 percent cure-all. It might give you a bit more informa-tion, especially when things go crazy, like when you have acollapse, he says. Like anything else, you have to be realcareful. Too much information can be just as dangerous asnot enough information.

In the wake of the Deutsche Bank disaster, the FDNYincreased the amount of time each week that a re company

oes inspections. And it developed new policies for who when re o cers run out of air and must leave, and

aced with either leaving their company leaderless or ta

veryone under their command out with them; now,ake everyone out.

A DAY NO ONE DIEDFor every re in which something goes terribly wrong,

id at Deutsche Bank, there are hundreds where most tho mostly right. ese success stories are oen retold in

FDNYs internal magazine, With New York FireghterWNYF, which since 1940 has allowed re commandehare with other FDNY personnel their lessons learned

One recent issue detailed the response to a re in Woaven, Queens, in early 2009 in which wind gusting tph pumped re through a common cocklo (or v

hat ran through 20 wood-framed buildingsone of wnconveniently, held more than 2,000 rounds of ammunhat began exploding when the ames hit.

Following prescribed incident command system procehe chief in charge set up separate radio channels to ommunications owing and delegated the control of cespects of ghting the re to other chiefs: One oversawght on one ank of the re; another chief took the other thers were responsible for doing roll calls to make surreghters were accounted for and ensuring that wateretting to the water cannons washing down the re futside. ree hours aer the initial alarm, the re was uontrol, several homes had been saved, and no one was d

Fires like that, where things go well, do not take away fhe pain of errors made at the Deutsche Bank incident o

orld Trade Center. ey suggest, instead, that the FDNYlearn from its tragedies. Even if it takes a decade.

Unfortunately, failures of

accountability on the fire

ground have often been

associated with the injury

or death of firefighters.


15/33


CHAPTER THREE

n the night of Jan. 5, 1996, Fireghter James B.Williams was the can man for his company,Ladder 121, when it pulled up to the 13-storybuilding at 40-20 Beach Channel Drive in FarRockaway aer just aer 10 p.m. It was windy.

Ladder 121 arrived four minutes aer the 911call came in reporting re in a third-oor apart-

ment. Capt. John Rokee led Williams and Fireghter BrianGallagher into the lobby and up the stairs to the third oor.Other reghters on the scene took to their assigned tasks.Engine companies grabbed hoses and nozzles o their rigsand marched into the building. Rokee and his men came tothe entrance to the re apartment, put on their face masksand pushed through the unlocked door, Rokee and Williamsmoving to the le, Gallagher to the rightall three search-ing for people who might be trapped inside. ey got about

10 feet in. Within 15 seconds, an investigation later found,conditions in the apartment deteriorated to extreme heat andlinding smoke conditions.Rokee, the report said, saw a reball coming at him fromithin the apartment. e temperature in the apartmentecame unbearable. Out in the hallway, three engine companyreghters were quickly surrounded by smoke; they hit theround and hurriedly put on their masks. Heat roared frompartment 3F, burning these men on their faces and ears andorcing them to evacuate. Outside, residents sc reamed for helprom windows, and re dispatchers began to get calls frompanicky people and elderly folks stuck inside.

Rokee, Gallagher and Williams ed down the hall. epartment door stuck open as they ran out, allowing the heatnd smoke to race aer them. e hallway was shaped like a, with the exit located at the long end. As they hustled out of

his BuildingKilled One Fire-

ghter and MaySave DozensAer deaths and close calls, getting wise to the wind

In 1996, a firefighter

was killed at this

building on Beach

Channel Drive in the

Rockaways. In 2006, a

near fatal experience

at another fire here

helped prod the

FDNY to rethink the

way it deals with

wind-driven blazes.


16/33

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 430 Why Firefighters Die

At the Fireem ers o eng n e an a er

companes o spec c o s a a re.

www.citylimits.org

were caught in a wind-driven blast of ame. Some reghtersheard two maydays, but it wasnt clear who they were from.It took the rst engine company three tries to get a hose lineanywhere near the re, so intense was the heat. Only whenthe engine company got close to the apartment door did theydiscover the rst of the three, badly burned men. e othertwo were found a short time later. All three died.

A PRESSURE PHENOMENONA re is not a simple matter of ame on fuel. A re feeds onoxygen. It thirsts to burn e ciently and produces smoke whenit does not. It can ignite its own vapors. And it produces pres-sure, heating air so that molecules ricochet o one anothercreating gasses that expand, seeking release. It is this force thatpushes smoke into the paths of people eeing down stairways:Fire and smoke want to go where they arent.

is has long been recognized by the re service. In fact, in1972, the FDNY used one of the buildings that were to be torndown to make way for the construction of the World Trade

enter to conduct a test in which stairwells were pressuro keep smoke out. is technology was eventually requireode in new high-rise buildings that lack sprinklerssuystem uses fans located on the buildings roof to pump airtairwells so that when doors are open, smoke is pushed arom the exits. But many buildings were not covered byequirement. So if pressurizing stairwells was something aepartment needed to do, a portable fan would be necese problem, says National Institute of Standards

echnology researcher Dan Madrzykowski, is that re depents have a hard time getting private industry to prod

he gizmos they need. e re service is rather small,o, as a result, there are very few things that would be m

just to serve them, he says. Many times were lookinie-ins for somebody who is making a tremendous amf technology for the military for some purpose and can evelop it for the re service. ermal-imaging cameras

nstance, which are used by reghters to detect re bealls and civilians behind smoke, came into re departm

the aming apartment, all three men missed the turn.Rokee and Gallagher found their way back to the cornerand down the hall. Williams did not, and collapsed. Inthe anxious moments that followed, a reghter fromanother ladder company crawled into the hallway,found the hose the engine company had dropped andmoved into position to spray the re but came uponWilliams lying in the hall. It took several reghtersto get Williams down the stairs and into the street. Hewas pronounced dead at Peninsula General Hospital.

A lot went wrong the night Jimmy Williams died.As at Deutsche Bank 11 years later, the delay (a halfhour this time) in getting water on the re was dev-astating. FDNY investigators blamed this largely onone engine company bringing the wrong hose andtrying to hook up to the standpipe so close to the rethat they were exposed to ame and smoke and wereunable to nish the job.

But the report concluded that adverse weatherconditions were a signicant contributing factor. e

tenant in the re apartment had le her window open.When the door to the re apartment was opened, gust-ing winds drove the re back into the apartment andtoward the members of Ladder 121, the report found.

en years later, on Jan. 27, 2006, there was a re in asixth-oor apartment in the same building, 40-20 BeachChannel Drive, which is a 234-unit building owned bythe New York City Housing Authority. irty-three

FDNY units responded, led byLadder 121. is time, it wasthe apartment door that wasle open. As reghters weresearching the room for vic-tims, the windows failed and40-mph winds turned the reinto a blowtorch. Fireghter

James T. Byrne grabbed a probationary reghterworking with him and ran to a nearby apartment toseek refuge. ere he heard a Mayday, crawled back i ntothe hallway and discovered Fireghter Kevin McCarthylying on the ground near the door to the re apartment,surrounded by ame. Byrne dragged McCarthy 22feet to safety. For this, Byrne won the FDNYs highestmedal for valor. Had he not acted, 40-20 Beach ChannelDrive might have killed a second reghter. As it was,10 reghters were injured in the blaze.

Less than a month later, 138 reghters respondedto a blaze at Tracey Towers, a two-building high-risecomplex on Mosholu Parkway in the Bronx. By the timethe re was brought under control, ames had lappedfrom the 24th oor to the 30th, and nine reghterswere injured, including one who suered second- andthird-degree burns. e wind conditions were terrible,

Mike Parrella, a re department spokesman, told thelocal Norwood News.

Wind has been a factor in at least ve FDNY deathssince 1991. e two nearly disastrous wind-drivenres in 2006 spurred the FDNY to consider new waysof approaching a re when ame and wind are alliedagainst them. Luckily, the hunt for better methods wasalready under waythanks, in no small measure, toLionel Hampton.

A BETTER WAY?A year after James Williams died, a breeze blewthrough an open window in the 28th-oor apartmentnear Lincoln Center where Hampton, the legendary

jazz vibraphonist, lived. It knocked over a halogenlamp, which fell on a bed, starting a re. A womanwith Hampton in the apartment apparently openeda window to relieve the smoke and then, to get thewheelchair-bound 82-year-old band leader out of hisat, propped the apartment door open. Soon, says

former FDNY battalion chief Gerry Tracey, the wind-driven re became a blow torch.

Tracey retired from the FDNY in 2009 with 31 yearsof experience. Back in the 1990s, he was the commanderof a ladder company that responded to the LionelHampton blaze. He was o duty the day of the re butlater learned what happened: As they responded tothe alarm, re companies came up a stairway that putthem 54 feet from the door to Hamptons apartment.Bueted by heat and re, it took the FDNY 45 minutesto cover that distance. e heat was so intense that onelieutenant was burned by the brass ring of his helmet.We kept sending companies. We went through eightengine companies, Tracey says. e fuel sort of burntaway. ats what allowed entry, nally, to that apart-ment. Eleven reghters were hospitalized. MayorGiuliani told e New York Times that a re that couldhave been life threatening was an inconvenience withsome injuries, none of them life threatening and mostsustained by reghters.

But Tracey knew that the eort it took to extinguishthe Hampton blaze was a wake-up call. Aer that, Ibegan taking a look at our tactics. e only tactic weattempted to employ at the time was the direct, frontalattackmeeting this re head-on and trying to dobattle with it, he says. I said to myself, eres got tobe a better way.

e year aer the Lionel Hampton re, the FDNYreceived another costly object lesson on the power ofwind. At a re on Vandalia Avenue in East New Yorkin December 1998, Lt. Joseph Cavalieri and reght-ers Christopher Bopp and James Bohan from Ladder170 opened the door to a 10th-oor apartment and

Watch videos of the NIST tests

www.citylimits.org/fire

WIND AND FIRE

Engine companies extinguish fires. Theyoperate fire engines (pumpers). At a fire, the

engine company must locate a working hydrant

and connect enough hose to reach from their

engine to the fire itself.

Officer

Either a captain or a lieutenant who leads the team.

Chauffeur

Also called motor pump operator. Drives the engine

and operates the water pump.

Control

Assists in hooking up to the hydrant and stretching the

hose from the engine to the fire.

Nozzle

Leads the hose team, aims the hose.

Backup

Helps the nozzle maneuver the hose and can take over

the nozzle position.

Ladder companies (sometimes called truckcompanies) ride a fire truck and are responsible

for forcing entry, searching for victims, locating

and tracking a fire, and opening holes in struc-

tures to relieve a fires smoke and heat.

fficer

ither a captain or a lieutenant who leads the team.

rons

Also called the forcible entry firefighter. Carries tools

o force open doors or rip into walls and ceilings.

an

arries a fire extinguisher. He and the irons search the

nside of a building.

oof

earches for victims and fire extension above the fire.

ight cut holes in a roof or ceiling to allow a fire to

vent.

utside Vent

Assists in the search for victims and fire extension.

mashes windows and makes other openings to

ventilate the fire.


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City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 432 Why Firefighters Die www.citylimits.org

use only because the military was buying them.

Luckily, the way Madrzykowski remembers it, about0 years ago a reghter saw a fan being used to inatehot-air balloon and realized it could be handy at re

cenes. But in the early years, these fans were used fornegative pressurizationdrawing air away from a

re, usually as a way to clear out smoke once a re wasmostly under control.

In the mid-1990s, however, interest was turning topositive pressurizationusing fans to force smoke orven ame back toward their area of origin and maybeto resist the wind. is shi became possible because thefans in play got much more powerfulfrom producingir at 3,400 cubic feet per minute to more like 24,000ubic feet per minute.Before the Lionel Hampton re, Tracey had been

hearing about pressurization research at reghtingonferences. e idea rst appealed to him as a way to

keep smoke out of stairwells and possibly spare reght-rs the danger of retreating to a stairwell when they were

low on air only to nd that it, too, was contaminatedwith smoke. But aer the Lincoln Center re, he andMadrzykowski began talking about a more intense

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