Authorities yesterday said they are eyeing charges of criminally negligent homicide against the contractors responsible for a faulty water standpipe that contributed to the deaths of two firefighters in a blaze near Ground Zero.
The stunning development came as city officials revealed that the crucial standpipe in the basement of the Deutsche Bank building was disassembled and missing a piece when firefighters tried to pump water up to the blaze on Saturday.
“A section of the standpipe was not attached and was lying on the floor nearby,” Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement last night.
“The FDNY’s investigation into how the standpipe was disabled is continuing.”
Bloomberg also revealed a sprinkler system was still in place but not functioning, adding the FDNY is investigating that, too.
During the disastrous inferno, firefighters could be heard screaming, “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” as pandemonium reigned when they learned they were without a water source 14 floors above street level and rapidly running out of air.
The lack of pressure because of the faulty basement pipe meant that water reached only the first floor at the burning site, which had been under demolition after being damaged and contaminated on 9/11.
One of the companies responsible for helping to demolish the building insisted that its standpipe system had been regularly tested and inspected, according to a city official. It was unclear whether that was the main contractor, Bovis Lend Lease Corp., or John Galt Corp., the asbestos-removal subcontractor whose workers were toiling there at the time.
So far, authorities have only that contractor’s word for it.
The contractors were asked for the records on what testing was done, when it was performed and the results, but have yet to provide them, sources said.
City officials have threatened to issue a subpoena to obtain them, a source said.
“We know the water didn’t work,” one law-enforcement source said. “So you have to figure out whether they [the contractors] were negligent. If they are, they could possibly face under the law a form of criminally negligent homicide.”
Private companies aren’t the only ones under scrutiny – sources said the FDNY is supposed to inspect standpipes at such sites every five years. It was unclear when the last official inspection occurred.
Bloomberg said the fire started on the 17th floor on the building’s south side along Albany Street, next to an exterior elevator.
It ignited where asbestos-removal workers went after passing through a decontamination area – a place where they “would smoke and extinguish cigarettes,” Bloomberg said, quoting witnesses.
“There was also some electrical equipment at that location, including hot-water heaters for the decon[tamination] showers,” the mayor said.
The probe into the blaze’s cause has focused on the seven or eight workers who were boxing asbestos on the floor at the time.
All of the workers were Eastern European immigrants and heavy chain smokers, sources said. Smoking violates work-site rules.
Tragic firefighters Joseph Graffagnino and Robert Beddia perished after getting lost on the 14th floor in the blinding maze of smoke, plywood and construction equipment.
After their oxygen tanks ran out of air, they inhaled smoke and died of cardiac arrest.
The Bravest had to be taken up to the blaze in small numbers via the outside elevator, run by a construction worker who stayed to help, because there were no usable stairs in the structure until the 12th or 13th floor, sources said.
“They [firefighters] spun the [standpipe] wheel [on the fire floor], and all they got was air,” one official said.
On the sidewalk, crews were pumping water into the standpipe. But instead of snaking through the pipes to the waiting hoses above, the wasted water spewed into the building’s basement.
There should have been a functioning gauge on the firetruck that measured the water pressure going into the building. It would have shown that, because of the breech, it was not enough to send water as high as the firefighters, sources told The Post.
It took at least an hour after the firefighters arrived for any water to reach the blaze, sources said.
At one point, an unidentified firefighter was heard pleading on his radio, “I’m lost. I’m trying to make it on the charged hose line . . . running out of air.”
Shortly after, a supervisor said from inside the building, “I can’t account for my men.”
Since September 2003, the city’s Department of Buildings has responded to 25 complaints of unsafe conditions at the site, and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has issued 20 violations.
Mitch Alvo, an executive with Galt, declined to comment. Bovis Lend Lease referred all inquiries to the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. “Safety is our No. 1 priority. I think it’s best I leave it at that,” said LMDC spokesman Errol Cockfield.
Additional reporting by Chuck Bennett, C.J. Sullivan, John Mazor and Leonardo Blair