Teamwork saved two firefighters
Published: January 27, 2005
Teamwork between two firefighters during Sunday’s Bronx fire saved their lives, even though they suffered serious injuries, the father of one of the firefighters said Wednesday.
Trapped on the fourth floor of 236 E. 178th St., Rescue 3 Firefighter Jeffery Cool couldn’t find a place to tie his personal safety rope. He tossed it to Firefighter Joseph DiBernardo Jr., who tied it to a window guard and looped it around his arms.
Cool lowered himself 10 feet before losing control of the rope and falling, said Joseph DiBernardo Sr., a retired FDNY division commander.
DiBernardo Jr., also of Rescue 3, then began to lower himself using the rope. He got about 10 feet when the window guard snapped, his father said.
“They saved each other’s lives,” DiBernardo Sr. said. “These guys did a heroic job.”
DiBernardo, 34, who underwent surgery Wednesday, and Cool, 38, suffered serious injuries in the fall, as did Brendan Cawley, 31, and Eugene Stolowski, 33, both of Ladder 27.
Lt. Curtis Meyran of Malverne and Firefighter John Bellew of Pearl River were killed. A third firefighter, Richard Sclafani of Bayside, was killed in a separate fire Sunday.
In a week of bedside vigils, wakes and funerals, investigators are examining how illegal partitions in the Bronx building blocked the firefighters from reaching a fire escape, as well as how one hose line lost water.
The use of the rope by Cool and DiBernardo in those critical moments Sunday reinforced DiBernardo Sr.’s view that safety ropes should be reintroduced in the FDNY, a view echoed by fire union officials.
Department-issue ropes and harnesses were taken out of service in 2000 under then-Commissioner Thomas Von Essen.
“They never should have took them away,” DiBernardo Sr. said. “It wasn’t used 99 percent of the time, but that 1 percent of the time, it saves your life. It’s like having a smoke detector in your home.” The elder DiBernardo called the decision a “cost-cutting measure.”
Von Essen denied that claim.
“It had nothing to do with the cost,” he said. “This is an administration that spent millions on new safety gear and training.”
Instead, he said, there were complaints about bulk.
“It’s always good to look at things,” he said. “But I don’t think the first thing should be a piece of equipment that is never used. More important is the management of the fire: Why the chief on the scene, realizing that they had problems with the water, had eight people in an apartment.”
Current Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta has ordered a review of the rope issue.
Meanwhile, mourners gathered yesterday on Staten Island at a wake for Sclafani. “He was larger than life,” said Lt. Mike McVey, who worked with him at Ladder 103 in Brooklyn. “He was a muscular man and a real character in the firehouse — tough on the shell, but a real mush on the inside.”
Lt. Paul Brown, also of Ladder 103, recalled Sclafani as “quite the character.” “Firefighters have a very, very strong sense of immortality,” he said. “We don’t think of ‘What if?’ and this just brings it back to reality.”
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