Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.
After 'Black Sunday' claimed 3 firefighters, the families struggle to cope, department takes safety measures
By WILLIAM MURPHY
By Newsday (New York)
It was a bitter cold January day exactly a year ago. Top fire officials shivered amid piles of snow on a Bronx street on a Sunday afternoon as they tried to grasp that two firefighters had just jumped to their deaths to avoid a raging blaze in a tenement, and four others had been badly injured.
Then came shattering news from cell phones, beepers and text messages - another firefighter had just died while searching the basement of a private home in Brooklyn. By sunset, Jan. 23, 2005, had been etched in department lore as "Black Sunday."
In the year since, the families of the victims have struggled to cope with their loss and the Fire Department has struggled to outfit all its firefighters with safety ropes that might have saved lives that day. Now, after some stops and starts, the ropes are in use for the newest trainees.
Fire Lt. Curtis Meyran and Firefighter John Bellew, posthumously granted a promotion to lieutenant, jumped to their death from the fourth floor of 236 E. 178th St. in Morris Heights.
Four other firefighters also went out windows of the apartment, and two later said they were saved when they broke their fall by sharing a personal safety rope that had been discontinued as standard equipment four years earlier.
Meyran's widow, Jeanette, a Malverne resident, sued the city in September, saying that "a lousy piece of rope" could have saved her husband's life.
She said she would be at a ceremony today unveiling a plaque in the Bronx firehouse where Meyran and Bellew worked. And she said she would try to make it to a plaque dedication in Brooklyn tomorrow for Firefighter Richard Sclafani of Bayside, who died in the Brooklyn fire.
"The politicians will be there," she said of the ceremony. "For them it's just a photo op. They need to be there. For me, I will never forget."
She has tried to get on with her life, raising her three children and taking things day to day. "This is very hard. You feel like you're moving forward for a while, but then you fall back," she said.
"You think you're handling it and then you get ready for the [plaque] ceremony and it all comes back to you, just like the funeral all over again."
Sclafani's mother, Joan, who lives on Staten Island, spoke of similar feelings. "It doesn't get any easier. It gets harder. There are no visits, no telephone calls, no talking," she said.
Eileen Bellew of Pearl River and her sister's husband, William Voigt of Ramsey, N.J., established the John Bellew Scholarship Fund to raise money for students at Pearl River High School, where she teaches, and his old high school, Archbishop Molloy, in Queens.
The fund evolved into the John Bellew Memorial Fund after a charity tournament at the Blue Hill golf course in Pearl River grew so big it had to be expanded to three other courses.
In addition to scholarships, the fund now helps families of firefighters and police officers who get lower benefits because their spouses died outside the line of duty.
"These other families can be really stretched when it isn't in the line of duty," she said in an interview last week.
She said she still teaches, raises her three kids and makes sure they remember who their father was. "We are actually a very lucky family," she said. "I know that sounds odd, but they had the best dad and he gave them so much."
She declined to discuss the ropes. "I would never want his life to be associated ... with a piece of rope," she said. "He was much more than that. That's all I'll say about it."
The day after the deaths, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said he was reconsidering the use of ropes. Two weeks later, he said all 11,500 firefighters and superior officers would get the ropes, including the harness and hardware.
The department began issuing the new ropes on Oct. 4 after testing and training firefighters in their use, but they were yanked from service a week later when one frayed during testing.
The device through which the rope plays out, called a "descender," was modified to prevent fraying and the department began re-issuing the ropes early last month, according to department spokesman David Billig, who said that all firefighters should have them by June.
Reflecting the Fire Department's family tradition, several of the 77 probationary firefighters who took their oath and began training last week were the sons or other relatives of firefighters killed in the line of duty.
Among them was Bellew's cousin, Daniel Bellew, 22, of Howard Beach.
