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As the investigation into August's deadly fire at the former Deustche Bank Building continues, NY1 is now learning that contractors did have a plan in place to allow emergency use of sealed staircases, but the firefighters who responded to the blaze were unaware of it.
A Fire Department spokesman says the FDNY was not involved in creating the plan, and officials were not notified or consulted about it.
Fire officials say the stairwells in the building were sealed with heavy plywood and plastic to prevent toxic materials from escaping, which forced firefighters battling the August blaze to go down exterior scaffolding or seek other escape routes.
The two firefighters killed in the blaze were found dead near one of the sealed stairwells, one of them actually on top of a plywood slab. Fire officials cannot say at this point if the firefighters might have been able to escape had they known about the plan.
One of the contractors at the site tells New York Times it had given the emergency plans to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which owns the building. The LMDC is declining to comment on the story.
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