September 13, 2007 -- Union leaders blasted Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta yesterday, saying he ignored a plan to fight high-rise fires with helicopters and abdicated authority over the downtown skyscraper where two firefighters died last month.
According to the firefighters' union, Scoppetta passed up a chance to use federal Homeland Security funds more than two years ago to help buy helicopters that could hold 1,000 gallons of water and shoot it at flames.
Union officials said the aircraft could have saved the lives of Joseph Graffagnino and Robert Beddia, who died Aug. 18 when a high-rise fire at the former Deutsche Bank building grew out of control after a broken standpipe failed to deliver water to firefighters.
"If you had a high-rise fire without sprinklers or a working standpipe, how else are you going to fight the fire?" said Uniformed Firefighters Association president Stephen Cassidy.
Top commanders, including then-Chief of Department Peter Hayden, urged Scoppetta in March 2005 to buy the copters.
Hayden said they proposed paying $30 million for two or three regional-use helicopters, a purchase that would have been offset by Homeland Security funds.
The commanders made their pitch just two days after a battalion chief wrote a March 22, 2005, "smoking gun" memo detailing a strategy for fighting a fire in the contaminated building.
"It didn't go anywhere," Hayden, who retired last year, said of the helicopter proposal. "He didn't see the need for it."
Scoppetta yesterday said it would be unsafe to use helicopters for high-rise fires in the city, and that they can be utilized only for observation.
The Police Department makes its choppers available when needed, he said.
