FDNY engineer: Pipe at bank knowingly cut

The pipe cut by workers at the Deutsche Bank building was easily identifiable as a standpipe because of unique red-orange couplings, a New York City fire department engineer testified Wednesday in the trial over the 2007 fire that killed two firemen.

"Almost every building I've been in uses Victaulic couplings for their fire protection system," said FDNY Lt. Simon Ressner. "It's less expensive and it's faster to put them in, and the prevailing practice in New York City is to try to do things as inexpensively and as quickly as possible."

Prosecutors say firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino died because the standpipe system in the basement of the building had been cut by workers during cleanup and demolition, depriving the firemen of water when they went to fight a 17th-floor fire.

Cleanup supervisors Mitchel Alvo, 58, of Huntington Station, and Salvatore DePaola, 56, of Staten Island; their employer, the John Galt Corp.; and Jeffrey Melofchik, 49, of New Jersey, the site safety manager for general contractor Bovis Lend Lease, have been charged with manslaughter.

The defendants say ventilation problems, not lack of water, caused the deaths, and insist that they couldn't tell the pipe they cut in the basement of the building was part of the fire system.

In his direct testimony and on cross-examination, Ressner appeared to provide at least some support for that assertion.

While insisting that the couplings -- Victaulic is the brand name for the company that makes them -- "almost certainly" identified the pipe, he admitted that he spent 4 1/2 hours on the first day after the fire trying to trace the basement standpipe without success because it was hidden by other pipes and walls.

"I was upset that I couldn't find it," he said. "I told my wife when I went home. I thought I would find it easily."

Although he was able to trace it and locate the 42-foot gap the next day, Ressner also testified that the standpipe was unusual because it exited the basement through the ceiling rather than a sidewall and because it was a black pipe in the basement -- different from the red color of the "risers" that carry water through stairwells to the upper floors.

Prosecutors claim that the defendants severed the pipe because it was cheaper and faster than cleaning asbestos off of it.

The trial is in its fourth week.