US News

DEUTSCHE PIPE’S KEY TEST

Firefighters today will test a repaired standpipe that failed to deliver water to the upper floors of the Deutsche Bank building as two firefighters died in the inferno overlooking Ground Zero.

FDNY officials said the test will involve flushing water through the crucial pipe, which investigators said was cut or disassembled weeks or months before the Aug. 18 fire at the under-demolition tower.

Firefighters Joseph Graffagnino and Robert Beddia ran out of oxygen trying to fight an intense blaze that grew out of control as they waited in vain with dozens of colleagues for water to make it up to the 14th floor.

Firefighters pumped water into the standpipe from the sidewalk, only to see it spew out in the basement where the standpipe was broken.

“The work has been done to get that back to being serviceable,” said FDNY spokesman James Long. “They will do a hydrostatic test to see if it can hold the pressure all the way up to the top.”

Long said the standpipe test is the final step in filling a department directive to develop a pre-fire plan at the dangerous building.

Last week, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta admitted that commanders sent more than 100 firefighters into the burning, toxic high-rise with no plan of attack.

He subsequently urged department brass to develop a plan for the building.

Days later, The Post published a smoking-gun FDNY memo that detailed several firefighting recommendations for the building – all of which were ignored.

Meanwhile yesterday, an Environmental Protection Agency administrator called proposals to change cleanup plans at the partially demolished skyscraper “unacceptable” as the building’s owner considered changes on the contaminated floors where a deadly blaze broke out.

In a letter to Lower Manhattan Development Corp. President David Emil, EPA regional administrator Alan Steinberg rejected the agency’s proposal to “revisit abatement procedures” after the Aug. 18 blaze at the former Deutsche Bank tower.

leonard.greene@nypost.com