New London — As city firefighters used new rope kits to tumble out of a Hamilton Street home this week, they thought of Joseph DiBernardo, a New York City firefighter who died six years after jumping from a burning building in 2005.

Trapped on the fifth story of a Bronx tenement that had been illegally modified, DiBernardo and five others had little choice but to jump. Two of them died on impact. DiBernardo, whose heels and feet were crushed, died by overdose in 2011 at the age of 40. His family, who said he never recovered from the physical injuries or mental anguish of the 2005 jump, started a foundation in his name. Since 2013, it has been giving grant money for training and equipment to help other firefighters avoid similar situations.

After all, the foundation’s website says, “firefighters can’t save lives if they can’t save themselves.”

City fire Chief Tom Curcio said the New London department got a $24,900 grant from the foundation last fall. With it, Curcio said he purchased 60 rope kits — they sit in pouches on firefighters’ waists — and enlisted New Jersey-based All Hands Fire Equipment for training.

Like other departments, New London has a firefighter assist and search team, or “FAST,” designated for each fire. In a typical blaze, the role falls to the third engine to respond. In more serious fires, Groton-based Naval Submarine Base or Poquonnock Bridge firefighters form the FAST.

FAST members may look like “they’re just standing around,” Curcio said, but they set ladders up on each side of a burning building and prepare to respond, should a firefighter call for help.

“They’re there for a purpose,” he said.

The issue, Curcio said, is that sometimes — especially in serious fires in which people may be trapped — responders go into the building before the FAST or anyone else is in place. 

With the new rope kits, even a lone firefighter can punch through a wall, hook into a stud and hoist himself out of a window, should it come to that, Curcio said.

Practicing ‘without adrenaline or panic’

After a classroom session Wednesday, firefighters were at 15 Hamilton St. putting what they learned into practice.

The building, owned by Westport-based developer Eric Hamburg, is gutted to its studs and windowless on the second floor. Firefighters thus could learn, without having to punch through a wall, how to properly hook their ropes. They also learned how to properly thrust themselves — headfirst — out of the windows.

Curcio said most firefighters needed just one day of training. Each completed nine progressively harder “jumps.” On the final run, each had to wear an air tank and a mask simulating the darkness of a house fire.

The lieutenants and a couple lieutenants-to-be were exceptions, Curcio said. He paid an extra $1,500 so they could take two days of training and become certified to train future officers.

Curcio said the rope kits could have been useful as long ago as March 2002, when then-firefighter Chris Bunkley tried to save residents trapped in a blaze at 122 Blinman St.

In harrowing video footage of the raging fire, another firefighter helps a blackened, soot-covered Bunkley from the house in the nick of time. A grandmother and her 6-month-old granddaughter died in the blaze.

“If you watch the video, you’ll see the ladder they put against the building,” Curcio said. “But that’s an instance where he could have bailed out with a rope kit if he had one and had the time to deploy it.”

Watching firefighters plunge from the windows, Chris Ostarticki, a trainer with All Hands Fire Equipment, said the controlled environment allows firefighters to practice without adrenaline or panic.

During the jumps, he and the other trainers analyzed the firefighters’ techniques — how taut the rope was, or where they had placed their heads, stomachs and feet — and sometimes adjusted the strategy based on injuries or mobility.

“The important thing is getting them to the ground safely,” said Ostarticki, who also is a career firefighter in New Jersey.

Curcio gave kudos to Hamburg for allowing firefighters to use his property.

“We usually do not get the opportunity to train in homes,” he said. “We make do with what we have. So any time we have a chance to use a vacant building, we will take it.”

l.boyle@theday.com