Faced with no plan of attack and a disabled standpipe that left them with no water, quick-thinking firefighters coupled together lengths of hose to battle the Deutsche Bank blaze, Fire Department sources said yesterday.
“The firefighters did what firefighters often do – they innovated,” one FDNY source said.
And it worked – water began flowing through the makeshift standpipe, reaching the out-of-control blaze.
Tragically, water began flowing just before firefighters Robert Beddia, 53, and Joseph Graffagnino, 34 – who had carried one of the lengths of the hose – ran out of oxygen and died.
The 11th-hour operation began when firefighters – using the outside elevator shaft that ferried demolition workers to their jobs – arrived at the 14th floor of the burning building near Ground Zero Saturday and discovered that the standpipe wasn’t working.
The pipe was supposed to carry water to fight a fire in the building, but a 20-foot section in the basement had been removed.
The fire, meanwhile, was raging on the 17th floor and there was no water to fight it.
In the face of what seemed an insurmountable problem, the gritty heroes decided to improvise.
Firefighters carry folded 50-foot lengths of 21/2-inch fire hose. Each length is about four stories long.
So, the firefighters decided to couple four lengths together to create a 200-foot hose that would reach a hydrant on the ground, the sources said.
They did this by loading the first 50-foot length on the top of the elevator and dropping the lift down until the 50 feet were extended.
The process was continued until the firefighters had a 200-foot makeshift standpipe outside the building that was attached to a hydrant.
The problem was that while firefighters had been exerting all this effort, the fire above them began to expand.
There was heavy smoke and the men got trapped in the warren of plywood walls used to contain the asbestos in the building, which some workers called a “vertical Love Canal.”
The firefighters had air packs that contained 26 to 45 minutes of oxygen in them.
One of the firefighters who died actually tried to feel his way along the hose to find his way out.