Photographs of the two fallen firefighters hung on Sunday at their firehouse at Sixth Avenue and Houston Street. More Photos >
The Fire Department is investigating whether a malfunctioning standpipe sent tons of water cascading into the basement of the flaming Deutsche Bank skyscraper at ground zero on Saturday, denying water to air-starved firefighters battling the seven-alarm blaze above, including the two men who were killed.
Gov. Eliot Spitzer, right, visited the Deutsche Bank tower on Sunday. More Photos »
Members of Engine Co. 7 said they connected their hose to the standpipe and pumped thousands of gallons into the building, but one investigator said today that the water never made it beyond the fifth floor, leading to suspicions of a cracked or broken valve. The basement, officials said, was filled with water.
Firefighters were forced to spend crucial moments carrying and pulling hoses up the sides of the ghostly black building — a scarred remnant of the 9/11 attacks that is being dismantled — as wind-driven flames caught on 13 different floors after snaking up and down through voids and holes.
Officials were still trying to determine the cause of the blaze — eyeing either a tossed cigarette or faulty electrical panel — but one thing was clear: from the beginning, even before the standpipe failed, the blaze presented a series of unique challenges to those fighting it.
Asbestos had been removed from the building, and sealed plywood hatches in stairwells divided the floors, forcing firefighters — possibly including the two who died — onto the wide-open floors where they could easily become disoriented. Containment areas of plywood and polyurethane meant to keep in potentially dangerous particles sucked in air, fanning flames. Plywood outside of many floors can be seen burning in photographs.
Flames got around and under the firefighters, Robert Beddia, 53, and Joseph Graffagnino, 33. Firefighter Beddia was heard on one radio transmission saying he had run out of oxygen and was trying to follow his hose out. It was his last transmission.
“There were problems getting water on the fire,” said one official. “They are trapped and they run out of air because of how rapidly the conditions change and now they have no refuge and they cannot get out. They now, cannot see, and they have no air.”
Gov. Eliot Spitzer and the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which owns the building, promised investigations, and an official with the United States Department of Labor Occupational Safety & Health Administration has cited the company doing the demolition for 20 serious violations at the building. At the same time, officials said tests revealed that the air around the Deutsche Bank building was safe, and downtown residents in the area expressed an array of frustrations.
“You’d think that after six years, we would have learned something, but when this fire broke out, there was no notification system in place and the people who live around here didn’t know what to do,” said Patricia L. Moore, who lives at 125 Cedar Street, in the shadows of the burned building.
“Some of us left the building and some of us stayed, but we’re all concerned.”
Avi Schick, the chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, said the fire was “a perfect storm of misfortune that worked together to turn what is, under any circumstance a hazardous situation, into something that was perhaps even more treacherous.”
Mr. Schick said the mechanism to ensure negative air pressure within the containment areas might have worsened conditions by bringing in a supply of outside air that wound up feeding the flames and by drawing smoke across the floor without fully venting it, since the exhausts have filters designed to trap particulates.
“It’s likely that the very measures that were insisted upon by the E.P.A. to protect those on the outside had a less than salutary effect when the fire started, because there were too many pulls on the oxygen,” he said. “And the firefighters paid the ultimate price.” Officials said the fire would delay the dismantling of the building by about three weeks.
In addition to the transmission from Firefighter Beddia, fire department radios captured other snippits of Saturday’s chaos and confusion. One fire investigator said that as many as 20 mayday calls were issued from the 14th and surrounding floors in the fatal moments that claimed the two men, apparently when the conditions of the fire changed quickly.
A senior official, captured in live fire department radio communications, cursed as he said he did not care about the building — “Where are my men?”
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