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NIOSH report faults first on scene for not properly assessing Brooklyn blaze on ‘Black Sunday’

By William Murphy
Newsday (New York)
Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.

The deaths of two city firefighters in the Bronx on Jan. 23, 2005, drew a lot of attention — in part because of the shocking idea of firefighters jumping to their deaths because they lacked personal safety ropes.

But a third firefighter, Richard Sclafani, died in another fire in Brooklyn that day — now called Black Sunday — and a new report chronicles the problems at that blaze.

According to the report from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the first fire officer at the scene of the Brooklyn fire checked the front of the private home and the two sides, but failed to check the rear. There he would have found an exterior stairway to the basement, where the fire was located.

Instead, the officer led Sclafani and other firefighters in the front door of the house and down an interior stairway, which was the only route for heat, flames and smoke to escape from the basement, the report said.

The report, dated June 13, was posted recently on the Web site of the institute, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A Fire Department spokesman, Jim Long, did not dispute the findings but said some of the firefighters with the officer did check the rear of the house. There was no mention of that in the National Institute report.

The report also said that the same officer failed to radio in his initial findings, which would have alerted other responding units to the gravity of the situation. Firefighters inside the house failed to make progress reports that might have enabled the incident commander to assess risks and plan a course of action, according to the report.

Sclafani, a 10-year veteran who lived in Bayside, became trapped on the stairway when the heat and flames forced his colleagues out, the report said.

At first, Sclafani’s superior officer did not realize he had not left the building. Minutes later, the officer did radio a “Mayday” alert, but it was not heard by the incident commander.

Sclafani was entangled in some way on a small landing, and the narrow stairs combined with the fierce heat and zero visibility contributed to the delay of his rescue for 20 minutes, the report said. He was later pronounced dead of smoke inhalation and burns.

Sclafani’s surviving family members, his mother and sister, said in separate interviews this week that they were struck by the amount of confusion at the scene, as depicted in the National Institute reports and a Fire Department report last fall.

“It’s so difficult for me to understand this,” his sister, JoAnn Sclafani-Asch, said. “I’m not standing there in the heat and smoke so I don’t know. But his death seems so unnecessary.”

An institute spokesman said the agency is still working on a report on the deaths that same day of Lt. Curtis Meyran and firefighter John Bellew, who both jumped to their deaths from the upper floors of a blazing Bronx tenement. Four other firefighters who jumped were badly injured, and two of the four credited their survival to the safety rope one of them was carrying.

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