Union: Aerial Fire Plan Was Ignored

Fire union officials are sparring with the fire department over whether a helicopter could have helped during a fire in the former Deutsche Bank building last month, where two firefighters died.

The fire department borrows police helicopters during major high-rise fires to help with communication — and at times uses them to dump water on a blaze. But fire union officials said yesterday that the fire department should have its own aircraft, a proposal the fire department has considered and discarded in years past.

According to the firefighters union president, Steve Cassidy, the fire commissioner ignored one such proposal brought to him by a group of fire chiefs researching the use of helicopters in response to the 9/11 Commission Report.

Mr. Cassidy said the report was brought to Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta in 2005. Shortly after, another chief suggested that a specific plan be put in place for fighting fires at the contaminated former Deutsche Bank building, where a seven-alarm fire killed two firefighters last month, he noted.

Mr. Cassidy says both plans were ignored.

"This proposal offered solutions, and yet the fire commissioner of the city of New York failed to act," Mr. Cassidy said at a news conference today.

Mr. Scoppetta said today that he was unaware of the specific plan from 2005, but said the fire department had considered many proposals to use a helicopter throughout his tenure as commissioner. A helicopter would be prohibitively expensive to maintain, he said.

Mr. Scoppetta also downplayed Mr. Cassidy's assertion that a helicopter could have helped during the Deutsche Bank building fire, which was on the 17th floor of a 26-story building.

Firefighters were not able to access water for about an hour on the upper floors of the building because a standpipe had been detached. The building was being dismantled because it was ripped open and showered with toxic dust when the twin towers collapsed next door during the attacks of September 11, 2001.