A judge overturned the convictions of the owner and former owner of a building where two Fire Department of New York (FDNY) firefighters, Firefighter John G. Bellew and Lt. Curtis Meyra, died after leaping from a window during a 2005 fire incident.
In 2009, the defendants, Cesar Rios and the corporation that owned the building, were convicted of criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment because, according to prosecutors, they knew of illegal partitions in the structure that turned it into a maze and, in this case, a death trap for firefighters. Justice Margaret L. Clancy of State Supreme Court overturned the convictions, however, saying that prosecutors had failed to prove the defendants knew about the partitions.
According to the NIOSH report on the deaths:
On January 23, 2005, a 46-year-old male career Lieutenant (Victim #1) and a 37-year-old male career fire fighter (Victim #2) died, and four career fire fighters were injured during a three alarm fire in a four story apartment building. The victims and injured fire fighters were searching for any potentially trapped occupants on the floor above the fire. The fire started in a third floor apartment and quickly extended to the fourth floor. Fire fighters had been on the scene less than 30 minutes when they became trapped by advancing fire and were forced to exit through the fourth floor windows. The six fire fighters were transported to metropolitan hospitals where the two victims were later pronounced dead.
Read more about the decision at the New York Times HERE. The complete NIOSH fatality report can be found HERE. Read “Personal Safety System Aims to Prevent Bailouts” by Patrick T. Grace from the April 2007 issue of Fire Engineering, which discusses the new rope systems the FDNY purchased after the Black Sunday incident, HERE.
