FDNY Reacts to Blistering Internal Report

(New York- WABC, Sept. 13, 2005) - For the first time Wednesday, the New York Fire Department reacted to a blistering internal report - a report that criticizes the way the department handled a deadly fire earlier this year.

Included in the report - released Wednesday - are the chilling and final communications of the firefighters who died.

The Investigators Jim Hoffer first had the story last night. He's here with new developments.

For two firefighters these were the last words ever spoken - urgent calls for help, before having to make a choice between certain death by flames or a five-story jump to concrete below.

Firefighter: "Mayday. Mayday. Mayday."

Firefighter: "You got to get a hole in the roof before the ceiling blows down on everybody."

These final radio communications reveal just how quickly a Bronx apartment fire spiraled into deadly chaos.

Firefighter: "Mayday. Get a rope to the roof. Rope to roof. 35 to the rear, 35 to the rear. Rope to the roof!"

Firefighter: "Top floor, we're losing the top floor Patty."

Jeanette Meyran, Firefighter Widow: "It came around like a locomotive and it was a holocaust in seconds."

Widow Jeanette Meyran says the last radio transmissions before her husband's fatal jump from the flames reveal what she has insisted all along, that safety ropes could have made a difference.

Firefighter: "The whole company just jumped out the rear. One, two, three, four, five, six who jumped in the rear. We need massive EMS here. Massive injuries!"

Jeanette Meyran: "You're talking 40 seconds from the time of that Mayday to the time they bailed out, that's not a lot of time."

Jim Hoffer: "Do you think it would have been enough time to deploy a safety rope?"

Jeanette Meyran: "Yes."

Nicholas Scoppetta, FDNY Commissioner: "They felt they had no choice."

Late Wednesday afternoon, the FDNY released a report highly critical of mistakes made by those who fought the Bronx fire - from the top brass down to the front lines.

Nicholas Scoppetta, FDNY Commissioner: "In this life and death business it's important to know what happened, what went right, what went wrong and what lessons can be taken away."

As we reported Tuesday, the investigation blames a failure to provide fire fighters with necessary equipment, inadequate training on a new pumper truck, failure to communicate to commanders.

The report also points to frozen hydrants, an inability to correct water loss in a main hose line and illegally partitioned walls as contributing to the death of two firefighters and the near-death of four others.

Nicholas Scoppetta, FDNY Commissioner: "When we do operational analysis like this, it does not result in discipline. We are trying to find out what went wrong, what can we correct."

Hours before the release of the controversial report, the last of the firefighters who survived the 50-foot jump eight months ago kept his promise to walk out of the hospital.

Eugene Stolowski, FDNY Firefighter: "Fires do go bad and fireman lose their lives. Thank God four of us are here to talk about it. We'll deal with the report later on."

The report makes 25 recommendations, everything from better communications between firefighters and incident commanders to providing self-evacuation training and equipment - in other words - safety ropes.

We were told they'll begin handing those out to firefighters in a few weeks.

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