Three firefighters, Harry Ford and Brian Fahey, both assigned to Rescue Company 4 in Woodside, and John Downing, with Ladder Company 163, also in Woodside, died, and Firefighter Joseph Vosilla and Lieutenant Brendan Manning were seriously injured. Other firefighters and police officers sustained less severe injuries and were treated and released. Downing, Fahey and Ford left widows and eight children among them.

Nearly two weeks ago a three-volume report from the Fire Department Safety and Inspection Services Command began circulating through New York City firehouses. The report, as well as another by an independent fire science expert, raises some extremely troubling questions.

According to the report, the two attached buildings occupied by the hardware store should have been in the department's Critical Information Dispatch System, providing responding units with information about any special conditions in the buildings they are approaching, because they were interconnected on the first floor and cellar, had large quantities of flammable liquids and gases in the cellar, had one set of interior stairs that had been sealed off and had a heavily secured rear entrance.

Why wasn’t Long Island General Supply Company in the Critical Information Dispatch System?

The two buildings housing the Long Island General Supply Company store were classified as "E" type structures by an unidentified commander of a field unit in 1995. After that, the store should have been inspected by the local fire unit every five years. It wasn’t.

Why was there no inspection from 1995 to 2001?

Despite their “degree of hazard,” the two buildings housing the Long Island General Supply Company store were classified as “E” structures, rather than “A” structures, subject to annual inspection.

Why weren’t the structures reclassified as “A” and inspected annually?

A standard air cylinder, which many firefighters carry on their backs, has 45 minutes of air. Firefighters rely on about 30 minutes, giving themselves a 15-minute “window” for safety’s sake. Some firefighters at the Fathers’ Day fire had only about 11 minutes of air in their air tanks. This meant they had 5.7 minutes to operate and 5.7 minutes to retreat.

Why were firefighters sent into a blaze with less than half a tank of air?

There was a delay getting water on to the fire.

Why?

Some firefighters told investigators they saw greenish and heavy smoke near the rear door just before the building exploded. Other firefighters reported blue flames that turned orange and that came and went. Still others reported yellow smoke, an indication of a potential backdraft. Firefighters also reported that the smoke had an unusual odor or smell. Taken together, a more ominous situation could have become apparent to the incident commander.

Why did the incident commander not get enough information from his firefighters to understand that a potentially deadly backdraft was developing toward an explosion?

Downing and Ford were killed when the building explosion blew the front wall down on them minutes after they broke through two windows on the 14th Street side of the building.

Could Downing and Ford have been warned, and could they have escaped in time if they had been?

We will never know the answers to some of the questions arising from the report. Many of the firefighters working on the hardware store fire on June 17, 2001, as well as two senior department officials conducting the formal safety report, died three months later in the World Trade Center attack. From all that has been said and written about the September 11 attack, however, it appears that similar questions arise every time a building burns in New York City. We owe it to the memory of Ford, Fahey and Downing, their injured comrades and 343 of their brother firefighters who died three months after the fathers Day fire to find as many of the answers as soon as possible. Like police, our firefighters sign on for the job knowing the dangers they face. For their safety and ours we must eliminate or mitigate as many of those dangers as we possibly can.