Newsday

The Fire Department stopped the inspections of the former Deutsche Bank building's standpipe system because of health concerns about the toxic tower, according to Uniformed Firefighters Association President Stephen Cassidy.

"They were told that they should no longer do that because the air quality in that building was not safe," Cassidy said Tuesday.

The broken standpipe pumped thousands of gallons of water into the basement, leaving firefighters without enough water to fight Saturday's deadly fire.

Fire Department and environmental officials didn't immediately comment Tuesday. But as prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into the fire, several agencies sought to deflect blame for the failed water-supply system, the response to the fire and who was responsible for inspecting the tower.

State officials who own the building and the contractor responding to charges that firefighters might have walked into a maze of protective sheeting and plywood covering toxic materials said that senior fire officials were given detailed layouts of each floor at the fire scene.

And the building's owner said the tower wasn't equipped with a city sprinkler system because environmental regulators had ordered that they not be in the building, which still contains multiple floors of asbestos, lead and World Trade Center dust.

"Every step that we take in this building is overseen by multiple layers of regulation, from the federal to the local level," said Errol Cockfield, spokesman for the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which bought the tower three years ago.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the department's decision to send more than 100 firefighters up into the building to fight the blaze, saying they bravely improvised in a crisis.

Of the broken standpipe, he said, "Nobody, at this point, knows whether that was a contributing factor to the two tragic deaths or not. That's what an investigation is for."

Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said his office is talking to city fire marshals and will investigate whether charges should be filed in Saturday's fire. State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said his office also would investigate the cause of the blaze.

Authorities said it was not unusual for prosecutors to join the investigation of a serious building fire, which would give fire marshals subpoena power should they need it.

Firefighters Joseph Graffagnino and Robert Beddia died of smoke inhalation on the building's 14th floor after their oxygen tanks ran out.

The cause of the blaze is under investigation. City officials have said that workers routinely took smoking breaks near the spot where the fire started, and there were hot water heaters nearby for workers' decontamination showers.

But the work supervisor on the 17th floor, where the fire started, told the Daily News that nobody was smoking there.

"I have no idea what started it," said the supervisor, Miroslaw Szabat.

City Department of Buildings officials were reviewing their records Tuesday to determine when a complete test of the standpipe system occurred. A piece of the water supply line was found unattached and lying on the basement floor after the fire.

City officials have visually checked standpipes on floors that were to be demolished to see whether they were capped. But it wasn't clear whether or when the pipe had been tested by filling it with water and examining its pressure, or visually checked on every floor.

That test, called a hydrostatic test, would have been the "only way to test the integrity of the system," fire safety expert Glenn Corbett said.

The 41-story tower has loomed as an eyesore above ground zero since Sept. 11, 2001, when the trade center's south tower partially collapsed into it, tearing a 15-story gash and leaving toxic dust, debris and hundreds of tiny body parts. Its cleanup and demolition was postponed for four years by lawsuits over who would pay for it, concerns that the dismantling would pollute the neighborhood and the ongoing discovery of Sept. 11 victims' remains.

Bovis Lend Lease, the main contractor overseeing the tower's cleanup and demolition, offered its first public statement Tuesday on the fire. It said the company "has and will continue to make ourselves available to all the coordinating agencies from the city and state with their investigations into the cause of the tragic fire." The company extended its "deepest sympathies" to the families of the dead firefighters, the statement said.

Officials with John Galt Corp., the subcontractor that employs the majority of workers at the building, didn't return a message Tuesday.

Associated Press writers Sara Kugler, Samantha Gross and Tom Hays contributed to this report.