we continue our coverage of the federal investigation into last Summer's cargo ship fire in Port Newark the Coast Guard and National Transportation safety board today continued their public hearing with multiple high-ranking members of the Newark fire division testifying as Ted Goldberg reports their statements show firefighters battling the blaze were faced with nearly impossible challenges at every turn over an hour into this uh trying to free Acabou let alone we haven't found Brooks and it's like you know so and we're 12 stories up battalion chief Al Maresca described the chaos faced by Newark firefighters last summer contending with a growing fire and widespread problems with communication sometimes you hear something sometimes you didn't it it was uh I guess because of all the metal just depending on where you stood you know if I moved one foot to the right or left sometimes you didn't hear anything the structure of the ship being steel is going to block a lot of the radio communications so if there's steel between two radios that steel could be blocking those Communications over the last two sessions the Coast Guard and NTSB hearing investigating last Summer's deadly fire in Port Newark has focused on how firefighters approach the fire which ultimately led to the deaths of Wayne Brooks Jr and Augusto Acabou investigators explained how unfamiliar territory may have led to the tragedy you're trained if you become come lost or disoriented find a wall because in most normal circumstances if you can find a wall you can find egress it would have been very logical that once firefighter Brooks located a wall he would have followed that wall with an understanding that that would ultimately lead him to a way off of the deck the egress on the starboard side would have been in the engine casing or engine housing area which not being familiar with the ship he may not have recognized or realized battalion chief moresa testified that his firefighters weren't given a map of the ship when they arrived and took on a fire very different from what they're used to what if any specialized equipment are you aware of that the Newark fire department has specific to fighting fires on ships I'm not I'm not aware of any the structure of the Grande Costa D'Avorio led to inconsistent messages coming from firefighters radios when when people did hear each other there were still problems getting messages across we were trying to communicate with that the foreman or whatever um just trying to communicate find out what was going on was hard enough the the language barrier was very hard I need that crane can we get that crane to operate and the guy goes I don't know if we can we may not be allowed to because of Port Authority and I don't know if we can get to the control panel and it turned out later because of the communication the crane he ended up getting me was uh the small little one communication breakdowns didn't stop at getting wrong cranes Maresca testified that he wasn't told that the ship had deployed its carbon dioxide based firefighting system and nobody told him it didn't work out because a waterproof door failed to close that was described by testimony from second in command Benito LaFauci last week when if ever were you informed that the carbon dioxide fire suppress system had been discharged no one ever said anything to me but when I did go up the steps I opened up um I'm not sure what floor one of the floors just to see what they had like if I could see anything trying to get a little layout and as soon as I went in there I lost my breath and I knew that they had tried something to deploy a system I thought it was used I I thought maybe that's why we weren't seeing fire I thought maybe they had knocked the fire down I didn't know that they had I found out later that they never had sealed the whole place they never did it correctly more leaders from newark's fire division will testify this week as the hearing will continue for at least two more days shining a light on a dark chapter in the city's history of firefighting in Union I'm Ted Goldberg NJ Spotlight [Music] news