Deadly Ground Zero Fire Probed

Fire marshals plan to go back into a condemned Ground Zero skyscraper Monday to continue their investigation into the cause of the blaze at the building that killed two firefighters.

Officials said the fire was not believed to be electrical and that crews dismantling the building before the flames broke out on Saturday had not been working with torches. Fire marshals could not even enter the building until Sunday because small pockets of fire were still burning, but they have been questioning witnesses, including an elevator operator who first reported the blaze.

Investigators also were interested in graffiti on a work shed that made reference to a burning building, authorities said.

Fire Department of New York spokesman Frank Gribbon said the fire has not been deemed suspicious.

High-rise fires are always treacherous, but the firefighters who responded to the abandoned skyscraper faced a series of unforeseen complications: The main water supply failed, the fire on the 17th floor was difficult to reach and the condemned building was thought to pose health risks to emergency responders and the neighborhood.

Excerpts of radio transmissions published in the Daily News from firefighters at the scene offered a terrifying glimpse of what happened just before the men died.

A voice on the 14th floor can be heard saying, "We're outta air." A second voice on the same floor says, "It's starting to get bad up here. We gotta force our way." And then, a third voice from the 15th floor: "We're all running low on air and we're really taking a beating up here on 15. ..."

The former Deutsche Bank office building has been a toxic site since it was damaged on the morning of the 2001 World Trade Center attack.

CBS Station WCBS correspondent Lou Young reports that, after abandonment and years of legal wrangling, the building — originally 41 stories — was being slowly dismantled, about a floor at a time. It currently stands at 21 floors and, with work now stopped until an investigation can determine the fire's cause, it will stay that way.

After the fire was discovered Saturday afternoon, just steps from the site where 343 firefighters died nearly six years ago, the hundreds of emergency workers who responded encountered immediate difficulties.

The blaze began about a dozen floors up and burned on multiple floors of the building. The water supply system known as the standpipe did not work, forcing firefighters to use ropes to pull hoses to the upper floors to put out the seven-alarm blaze.

"The standpipe was not operating. We don't know why yet," Gribbon said.

The plan for dismantling the building, submitted by the project's main contractor to the owners last year, included a note that a "dry" standpipe would be maintained throughout the duration of the project.

Dry standpipes do not have water immediately available and can take several minutes to begin flowing, fire science expert Glenn Corbett said. They are typically used in open structures like freestanding parking garages, but city fire and building codes also allow them at demolition projects of this type, he said.

Many other jurisdictions throughout the country would not allow dry standpipes, he said. In some cases, if not capped properly, he said, they can fail and have air pressure problems.

"A dry system is really susceptible to problems," he said.

Glen Corbitt of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign told Young, "These fatalities were really, in a sense, needless deaths because there were so many things that should have been done and weren't."

A spokeswoman for the main contractor, Bovis Lend Lease, declined comment on the standpipe. The city could not say on Sunday who was responsible for inspecting it.

In addition to the water failure, authorities said some of the materials being used to protect the environment from toxins may have worsened the situation as firefighters tried to control the flames.

More than 10 floors of the skyscraper were sealed off with polyurethane to keep toxic dust containing asbestos, lead and trade center materials from leaking out into the air.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer said the protective materials were there because of federal Environmental Protection Agency requirements; a spokeswoman for the agency said it was a state labor requirement.

"It is standard operating procedure to put up these kinds of barriers when you're doing an asbestos abatement job," EPA spokeswoman Bonnie Bellow said.

No matter what the reason or whose rules were set, Spitzer said the polyurethane sheets on the building "may in fact have made this fire harder to fight."

"The smoke was being contained and they couldn't see. They were perhaps disoriented," he said of the firefighters who died.

The fallen firefighters, Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino, became trapped on the 14th floor, inhaled smoke and died of cardiac arrest. Others broke windows from the inside to get air, authorities said. More than 50 firefighters suffered minor injuries, the department said.

There was also a great deal of plywood and other combustible materials in the building, and firefighters inside were forced to navigate a maze of debris, authorities said. The only ways up were a construction elevator on the outside of the building and stairs inside.

The latest disaster at ground zero evoked memories of the attack nearly six years ago and renewed some of the same concerns that residents in lower Manhattan have had about possible harmful effects of the air.

Several floors of the building, including the one where the fire started, had not been thoroughly cleaned of asbestos and other toxic dust, state officials said. The floor-by-floor dismantling of the building had reduced the tower to 26 stories this week.

Officials said air-quality tests in the neighborhood for asbestos and other contaminants were negative. City environmental officials said 57 air samples near the building tested negative for asbestos since the fire.

Still, residents were concerned.

"To be honest, I don't trust that," said Esther Regelson, who lives two blocks from the building. "But I also don't want to leave my home, so I'm in a bit of a dilemma."

Two years ago, redevelopment officials said the building contained excessive levels of seven hazardous substances, including dioxin and lead. As part of the tear-down, a dozen air-quality monitors were installed in the area around the building.

Some scientific studies have indicated that as many as 400,000 people were exposed to toxic ground zero dust. Hundreds have fallen ill, several have died from lung ailments blamed on inhaled trade center ash, and thousands have sued various government entities.

Independent government reviews have faulted the federal EPA's handling of the immediate aftermath of the attacks, as well as the agency's cleanup program for nearby buildings.

The tower at 130 Liberty St. has become a persistent headache for redevelopers since the attacks. The 1.4 million-square-foot office tower was contaminated after the trade center's south tower collapsed into it, raining down toxic dust, debris and human remains.

By Amy Westfeldt; Associated Press Writer Sara Kugler contributed to this story.