FDNY FFs Practice New Rope Escape

[Guest]

October 5, 2005

Firefighters Practice Escape With New Rope

By KAREEM FAHIM

It is intended as a last resort for use during the most terrible fires, when there is nothing left to do but jump. At the Fire Academy on Randalls Island yesterday, 60 city firefighters practiced using a new rope system that was born of a fast-moving blaze in a Bronx tenement in January that killed two firefighters.

The students in this inaugural class - firefighters from companies in Harlem and the Bronx - tumbled out of imitation windows set high above an imaginary city street. After they had dropped to safety, many spoke well of the new system, calling it easy to deploy, and not too heavy.

"Everything was smooth," said Firefighter Rafael Badillo, of Ladder Company 47 in the Bronx. After a couple of jumps, he said, he felt that he had mastered the basics.

A woman wearing a red sweater watched the exercise, and reminded everyone of the stakes, if just by her presence.

The woman, Jeanette Meyran, is the widow of Lt. Curtis W. Meyran, who was killed in the Jan. 23 fire when he jumped from a fourth-floor window of the tenement, at 236 East 178th Street, on a frigid morning. Mrs. Meyran said she came to the training session after hearing about it through the grapevine.

An inquiry into the blaze found that safety ropes, which the department stopped issuing to most firefighters in 2000, might have saved Lieutenant Meyran and Firefighter John G. Bellew, who was also killed.

"I'm glad to see that my husband has a legacy, and that his death definitely made a difference," Mrs. Meyran told reporters. "We're a day late and a dollar short," she added. Mrs. Meyran filed a wrongful death lawsuit last week against the city and the owners of the tenement.

After the fatal Bronx fire, a design team from the Fire Department undertook an ambitious search for a new rope system, considering about 40 different designs. The team finally settled on a mix of components made in Maine, Texas, and France, a system that fire officials say is ideally suited to conditions in a city filled with tall buildings.

Contained mostly in a black pouch that a firefighter wears on the hips, the new system includes 50 feet of burn- and cut-resistant Kevlar rope; a descent device with a lever, modeled on a tool used by rock climbers; and a red metal hook, easily secured to a radiator or a windowsill and able to bear up to 5,000 pounds.

The whole system, which attaches to a safety harness, weight about six pounds, and can be deployed within 10 seconds, said Lt. Tim Kelly of Rescue 4, the leader of the design team.

Fire officials estimate that it will cost the city $11 million to outfit all of its members through the rank of battalion chief with the rope system by March 2006.

On the training ground yesterday, the firefighters jumped through the window frames head first, then swiveled their bodies until their feet dangled toward the ground. The journey through the window looked like an awkward bit of acrobatics, and as it turns out, deliberately so: Firefighters hook their left legs on the window sill as they exit, in case they change their minds, Lieutenant Kelly said.

Concerned that the new rope system might prompt firefighters to take unnecessary risks, the department also added a class on personal safety. Taught yesterday by Capt. James Brosi, it focused on the types of fires - and mistakes - that kill firefighters. "Changing one event could change the end result," he said.

At least one firefighter who trained yesterday had survived the kind of catastrophic blaze that the new rope system was designed for.

Firefighter Eugene Mahlstadt, of Ladder 47, recalled a Queens tenement fire in 1995 that killed his colleague, Peter McLaughlin, 31.

A flashover, or a sudden spread of the fire, sent Firefighter Mahlstadt out of the window, he said. Recalling that fire yesterday, he said there was little time - perhaps not even the 10 seconds the new rope system requires - to find a way out.

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the story

FDNY Trial Suspended As Safety Rope Frays

NY Post (October 12, 2005)

A ballyhooed rope- and-harness safety device distributed to city firefighters just last week has already been suspended from use - after one of the lines used in the survival gear frayed during a training test, fire officials said yesterday.

The "Personal Safety System" - which is supposed to allow firefighters to rappel from a building like a mountain climber - was hailed as a way to prevent any future tragedies like the Jan. 23 "Black Sunday" deaths of fire Lt. Curtis Meyran and firefighter John Bellew, who had to jump from a burning building because they had no safety ropes.

The FDNY in 2000 discontinued ropes as standard equipment.

The department this year had spent eight months testing and evaluating the new system.

The devices had so far been distributed to 250 firefighters as the start of an $11 million project to provide ropes to all 11,000 of the Bravest.

But this week, one of the ropes became jammed inside a pulley and frayed as a firefighter made a mistake while performing a slide at the department's Training Academy, officials said.

The firefighter was not hurt.

"This is a precautionary measure," FDNY spokesman Jim Long said.

While it was the rope that frayed, the department is now looking over the entire system - which includes a Kevlar rope, a harness and hook, a descent-control device and a carrying bag.

Each piece is made by different manufacturer. Long said the FDNY is now discussing the problem with Petzl, the company that makes the descent-control device and is well known to mountain climbers.

[Guest]

whoaaa, not good Clem..... PETZL is a solid name but, could be the rope itself. Anyone know the rope manufacturer ??

[Guest]

New Firefighter Safety Ropes To Be Distributed By Mid 2006

November 30, 2005

NY1 News

The Fire Department has announced that all firefighters will be equipped with personal safety ropes by the middle of next year.

The news comes six weeks after a round of ropes were recalled over safety concerns a week after they were distributed.

Firefighters began training on the new kevlar ropes in early October at the FDNY training center on Randall's Island. But during one of those exercises, a firefighter's rope got caught in the pulley that controls the descent and began to fray, prompting the recall.

Now, the fire commissioner says the mechanism that allows firefighters to descend from burning buildings has been fixed so that the rope no longer catches.

Training with 2,000 new ropes will begin on December 15th and another 2,000 will be distributed on January 6th.

“Six months of training for the entire department and everybody including chief officers who want the ropes can have them,†said Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta. “It will be an individual rope assigned to each firefighter or officer."

Commissioner Scoppetta adds that these new ropes were tested over 2,000 times.