On second thought, take the stairs.
A week after cops were told to use caution when taking an elevator while responding to building fires, the NYPD has rescinded the directive and issued revised protocol that requires stairs to be used at all times.
“Responding units must use the stairs,” read a three-page “Finest” message, dated Thursday, in which Chief of Department Philip Banks outlines the new fire response procedures.
On April 9, in a Finest message released following the death that day of Police Officer Dennis Guerra, who died of injuries suffered after using an elevator to reach a high-rise fire, Banks had advised officers to “walk up to a reported fire whenever possible.”
But the April 9 message did not prohibit cops from using an elevator. Instead, it urged them to proceed with caution; use their flashlights to check for smoke in the elevator shaft; stop the elevator every five floors to continue checking the shaft for smoke; and to take the elevator no closer than two floors beneath the fire.
On April 6, Guerra and Police Officer Rosa Rodriguez responded to a fire in a housing project on Surf Ave. in Coney Island. They arrived before firefighters and took an elevator directly to the 13th floor, where the fire was burning. They were overcome by heavy smoke when the elevator door opened and were unable to retreat. Firefighters rescued them, but Guerra died of his injuries.
Rodriguez is still recovering at the burn unit of Weill-Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan.
Guerra’s death exposed the lack of NYPD protocol covering instances in which officers arrive at fire scenes before firefighters.
The new Finest message is the product of a newly formed working group of NYPD and FDNY officials tasked with examining fire response protocol, according to an NYPD spokeswoman. The new protocol, which rescinds the April 9 message, is preliminary, and a final order will soon be released, NYPD Deputy Chief Kim Royster added.
“We definitely took into account what [the FDNY] does when responding to fires,” said Royster, who is second in command of the NYPD’s public information office. “Out of that conversation came that police would use the stairs. This is the safest way to respond to fires.”
Elevators should neither be used nor held at a particular floor, the new message reads, since “FDNY units will need to recall the elevators to move personnel and firefighting equipment into position.”
The message urges cops to “size up” a building where a blaze has been reported, and notes that smoke and flames, which first-reponders often see shooting out of older buildings, are not obvious from the outside of modern, fire-proof structures.
Police must secure the building’s entryway and work to clear fire hydrants, the message says. Once inside cops must stay in teams of two and make sure to tell a 911 dispatcher which staircase they are using.
On each floor, the message says, cops should stop briefly to check for fire or smoke, looking into the hallway door’s window whenever possible.
Upon arrival on a floor where fire exists, cops should check to see if the hallway door is hot, the message says. If heat is detected, or if smoke is seen in the hallway, officers are to assume there is fire in the hallway or in an apartment in which the front door has been left open. In these cases, cops “should not enter the hall and should ensure the stairway door remains closed to lessen the risk of a chimney effect; leaving the door open can draw fire toward the stairwell and cause the fire to spread.”
Officers in such conditions are also prohibited from taking the stairs to floors above the fire.
rparascandola@nydailynews.com
