NY Daily News – March 09, 2015
by Barbara Ross
The families of six firefighters who died or were critically injured a decade ago on the department’s “Black Sunday” are finally getting their day in court.
An appellate court ruled last week that the city must face charges that the FDNY caused the deaths and injuries by not equipping firefighters with personal safety ropes.
Firefighters use the ropes to drop from windows when they are trapped by flames on high floors, as the six were in 2005 in the Bronx. The FDNY, which started issuing the ropes in 1990, stopped providing them in 2000.
The Appellate Division in Manhattan said a Bronx jury should get to determine whether that decision contributed to tragedy when the firefighters jumped five stories to escape an inferno.
Two died that day — Lt. Curtis Meyran, 46, and John Bellew, 37. A third, Joseph DiBernardo, 34, was critically injured and died in 2011. The other three injured were Eugene Stolowski, Jeffrey Cool and Brendan Cawley.
The incident occurred on the same day as another firefighter, Richard Sclafani, 37, was killed in a Brooklyn blaze, a day since known in the FDNY as Black Sunday.
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