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NEW YORK (AP) The New York Fire Department is preparing to give each firefighter a rope escape system, making New York the country's only large city to provide all firefighters a rope and anchor to use if flames force them to jump from a window.
The plan, reported in Monday's editions of The New York Times, comes less than five months after two firefighters jumped to their deaths to escape a fire in a Bronx apartment.
The new systems were designed largely by a team of city firefighters familiar with rock climbing and metal working and frustrated with the escape systems available on the market.
The new equipment features a metal hook that can grip a pipe, a wall, or a piece of furniture. The 50-foot ropes are made of bulletproof Kevlar which resists melting in intense heat for 2 minutes and 20 seconds. The equipment will allow firefighters to escape from a window in 10 seconds, officials said.
It will cost $11 million to purchase and distribute the 11,000 units and officials said they hope they'll be in use by September, according to the Times.
The firefighters who designed the systems conducted extensive tests on the equipment, drenching them in water and coating them in plaster to simulate the damage done to buildings at fires.
"We were going at it as if we were sending an astronaut into space," Lt. Tim Kelly of Rescue 4 in Queens told The Times.
The final system was selected from more than 40 designs and underwent a series of 5,000 tests, officials said.
The need for new escape equipment became tragically apparent on Jan. 23 when Lt. Curtis Meyran, 46, and Firefighter John Bellew, 37, died after jumping from a fourth-floor window to escape a fire in a Bronx apartment. Four other firefighters who also jumped were seriously hurt, including two who tried to use a rope that failed.
The Fire Department stopped issuing individual ropes to firefighters in 2000.
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