As flames enveloped the Bronx apartment, whipping around the room where Lt. Curtis Meyran stood with his men on a cold, windy Sunday morning in January, the lieutenant seemed not to realize the level of danger. A voice on his radio asked if the flames had reached him; he answered that there had been a “slight extension” – meaning that the fire had grown, and gotten closer, but not by much.
But that was wrong: the fire was all around and beneath him. The question was asked again. “Slight extension, slight extension,” the lieutenant replied.
Around the time of that radio transmission, flames – kicked up perhaps by wind – were breaking through from the floor below, jumping into a hallway and then to a fourth-floor bedroom where the men were.
Lieutenant Meyran probably was not aware of this because an illegal partition blocked his view of the fire, as well as access to the fire escape. Flames gulped up the kitchen and raged on, eventually blowing out the front door of the apartment.
Less than two minutes after that last radio transmission, with the fire visible and intense, Lieutenant Meyran used his handset again, this time, to yell for help. “Mayday, mayday, mayday.”
Minutes later, he and five other men jumped from the fourth floor to escape the flames. The lieutenant and Firefighter John G. Bellew died.
These harrowing details and more emerged yesterday as the Fire Department released reports – as well as audiotapes – from investigations into two catastrophic fires on Jan. 23 that killed three firefighters. In the second fire, in Brooklyn, Firefighter Richard T. Sclafani died.
The investigation into the fire in Morris Heights, where Lieutenant Meyran was killed, was undertaken by a panel of five fire chiefs. It cataloged failings – on the part of the Fire Department, firefighters and officers on the scene, and even the city’s Department of Housing, Preservation and Development for failing to remedy the apartment’s condition.
The investigation found that the illegal wall had prevented firefighters on the fourth floor from seeing, and perhaps escaping, the fire; that the firefighters would have been better off with personal safety ropes; and that breakdowns in communication and discipline worsened matters.
Calling the reports “comprehensive, candid and constructive,” Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said he would enforce their recommendations. He acknowledged that had conditions been different – with better weather, a steady stream of water on the fire and the use of personal safety ropes – the firefighters might have escaped unharmed. The department, which in 2000 stopped supplying all firefighters with personal safety ropes, will start giving all firefighters new rope systems in October, Mr. Scoppetta said. Relatives of the firefighters who died and those who were hurt bristled at any hint that the men who were killed or injured should shoulder any of the blame.
A survivor of the fall, Firefighter Eugene Stolowski, left a rehabilitation center in West Orange, N.J., before the report’s release. He said that he had not seen the report. “We were up there doing our job,” he said. “It went bad.”
From the report, and the audiotapes, a picture emerges of that morning: About 8 a.m., firefighters entered a third-floor apartment on East 178th Street. “The wind and driving snow created near whiteout conditions,” the report said. “The temperature was 17 degrees Fahrenheit, and there were northwest winds gusting in excess of 45 m.p.h.”
Within minutes, firefighters found that hydrants near the building were frozen. That problem was fixed with a relay system, but the relay created other obstacles. Fifteen minutes after the fire started, a hose began losing pressure, either because of a kink, misunderstandings by crew members using the relay equipment or the failure to clear air from a pump, the report found.
The effects were terrifying, and the audiotapes reveal some of the confusion cited in the report. People listening to Lieutenant Meyran’s calls for help did not know who was making the calls, the report found.
The report by a separate panel on the Brooklyn fire found similar confusion regarding distress calls. The findings found that Firefighter Sclafani had been found without his facepiece, helmet and protective hood. But the report also faulted the department for inadequately training firefighters on how to provide a fallen member with an air supply.
Jeanette Meyran recounted listening to the transmissions. “I was just waiting to hear his voice,” she said of her husband in an interview at her home in Malverne, N.Y. “I just put my head down and listened.”
