FDNY practices best ways to get people out of bad situations

A terrorist blows up a building, or a parking garage collapses, or a passenger jet crashes and the fuselage splits in half — trapping people in the wreckage.

A Manhattan skyscraper’s elevator gets stuck somewhere between floors — and there are no doorways except at the lobby and maybe 100 flights skyward.

Now what?

“We get that all the time, where somebody’s stuck in the elevator shaft, and there’s no way to get to ’em except drop somebody down, or go through the wall, and we practice doing that here,” said FDNY Battalion Chief Joe Downey of West Islip, who is the commander of the FDNY’s rescue battalion.

“Here” is a pile of rubble on Randall’s Island by the East River, at the edge of the FDNY’s academy, where personnel learn and practice how to carry out those and nearly two dozen other rescue scenarios.

On Thursday, that site was named in memory of Deputy Chief Raymond M. Downey, who died in the collapse of the World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks on 9/11, when Downey of Deer Park was FDNY chief of the special operations command.

Downey began the rescue school in 1995 with a trailer on the same site on Randall’s Island.

“Ray put the very first piece of equipment on this site, so it is truly full circle,” said Laura Kavanagh, the acting FDNY commissioner.

Downey — himself an expert in rescuing trapped victims from building collapses who in 1996 established the FDNY’s Technical Rescue School after he led rescue operations following the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 — is Joe’s father, and also the father of Deputy Chief Chuck Downey of Commack, who is in charge of the FDNY’s academy.

At a dedication ceremony next to the rubble — including an airplane fuselage, a concrete slab like what rescuers faced at Oklahoma City, a crashed vehicle, tunnels and dummies to simulate victims to be rescued — Joe and Chuck recalled their dad’s technical prowess.

“He was sometimes referred to as the Godfather of Technical Rescue, the Master of Disaster. He just seemed to be everywhere there was a disaster. He was there,” Joe Downey said.

Before and after Thursday’s ceremony, which was attended by hundreds, firefighters were training on that rubble, now “the D.C. Raymond M. Downey All-Hazards Disaster Training Site.”  The dedication included the sprinkling of holy water by a Jesuit priest.

In one corner, firefighters worked on a “widow maker” — the type of hanging concrete slab  found in the Oklahoma City wreckage — so that “victims” below could then be rescued safely.

“They had to come up with a plan to tie back that slab, so while they were operating, it didn’t fall on anybody,” Joe said. “So, they came up with a plan of putting members on the rope, which is kind of difficult to operate heavy machinery while you’re on rope.”

Except in the real world, rescuers would be working higher up.

“Picture it up five stories," he said. "They’d have to hang off the side, and then drill in. And what they’re doing is, they’re creating an opportunity to put an anchor point in there, so they could put steel rope, and tie it back, so it doesn’t come off.”

(The concrete slabs are made, and replaced, by FDNY personnel on Randall’s Island.)

Terrorist attacks are rare, but passengers getting stuck in elevators is not, he said.

The FDNY handles thousands of elevator rescues every year citywide, a few dozen in which the wall needs to be broken, he said.

Sometimes, rescuers must break through concrete. On Thursday, on another side of the pile, rescuers from Squad 1 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, which Raymond Downey established in 1977,  practiced breaching an elevator wall shaft using a saw.

“You live in Manhattan,” Joe Downey said, “there’s a lot of times that elevators die. So we’re in ’em a lot. A lot of times, we’re not breaking through the walls. We don’t want to cause damage, but there’s those times the only option you have is breaking through the wall.”

Joe's sons, Joseph and Connor Downey, both of West Islip, now work for the FDNY's emergency medical service. Joe joked that he will need to add more scenarios to the rubble for EMS personnel.

"My two boys just got on EMS," he said, "so I gotta work better with those people."

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.