By Sean Leahy and Wale Fatade

he personal safety ropes enable a firefighter to flee conditions from which his only option for escape is through a window.  Peter Gorman and Nick Visconti, the president and chief's representative at the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, provided a demonstration of how a firefighter would deploy the safety device.

Upon determining that the window is his only point of egress, a firefighter would quickly find somewhere sturdy in the room to tie off the rope.  In fire and smoke-filled conditions, however, finding anything would be difficult.  Gorman said a radiator or a heat vent would be ideal points to tie off on, but the easiest thing to find is a doorknob.

The firefighter would tie the rope securely around the doorknob, loop it through his harness and hold the length of it in his hand.  He would then exit the room from the window and loosen his grip on the rope to rappel down the side of the building.  There is a metal plate at the end of the rope that can catch a firefighter if he looses his grip.  Upon reaching the end, he could grasp the plate instead of falling away from the end of an empty rope.

Image 1: Rope in firefighter's pouch. Image 2: Firefighter drawing rope from pouch. Image 3: Firefighter demonstrating how to use rope. PHOTOS: MorningPride.com Images

In the deadly Jan. 23 Bronx fire, Cool and DiBernardo tied their rope to a child safety gate in the window.  Gorman said that was probably a poor choice because most gates are only held in place by small screws that are unlikely to support the weight of the rappelling firefighter and his gear.  In the intensity of the moment, however, the child safety gate was all they could find, he said, and was better than not tying off at all.