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The leader of a city firefighters union says the department should have, and could have, had more help in fighting the fire that cost two of his members their lives last month. As NY1's Amanda Farinacci explains, that help could have come from a fire-fighting helicopter – if only a recommendation to buy one had been followed.
Could a helicopter designed to fight fires have saved the lives of the two firefighters killed last month at the former Deutsche Bank building? Firefighter union president Steve Cassidy says he thinks so - and wants to know why the FDNY doesn't have one.
"I think it's very possible that the outcome would have been entirely different," said Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy.
Cassidy points to a March 2005 proposal by a team of fire chiefs. The FDNY Helicopter Project looked at the feasibility of using a helicopter to extinguish high-rise fires.
The helicopter could have served the northeast, from Boston all the way to Washington, DC. The report says it could be paid for using homeland security grants and other federal money, along with private grants and some from the department's own budget.
A number of top-ranking officers backed the plan, which was presented to Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta. But it was never acted on, and Cassidy says the situation at Deutsche Bank, where a broken standpipe prevented firefighters from getting water on the fire quickly, is proof that was the wrong decision.
"No fire department can fight a fire at the top of a high-rise if they don't have water," said Cassidy. "What are we to do? Let people die in the buildings? What are we to do? Let the building burn to the ground? This proposal offered solutions. And yet the fire commissioner of the City of New York failed to act."
In its defense, the FDNY said, "It is simply unsafe to use helicopters to suppress high-rise fires in New York City, and the Fire Department has repeatedly rejected that idea due to many operational concerns."
Scoppetta said a helicopter was available for FDNY use. He said that a battalion chief in an NYPD helicopter monitored the August 18 fire, in keeping with a recommendation from the 9/11 Commission.
"I wish it had made the difference that seems to be alleged here, that we lost two of our people," said Scoppetta. "It couldn't and it didn't, although we made good use of the helicopter as a surveillance vehicle."
The fire commissioner also said the idea of getting the department its own helicopter is not off the table, though there's no timeline for when, and if, that will actually happen.
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