Firefighters wrote a warning on the door to the elevator shaft just two minutes before their their colleague Daryl Gordon opened the door, stepped in and fell to his death in March.
"Do not enter, open shaft," the firefighters wrote on the light colored door in what looks like black marker.
Smoke and poor visibility in the tight hallway may have prevented Gordon, 54, from seeing the warning written in what looks like black marker on the the light colored door. Gordon, 54, died after falling down the elevator shaft of a burning Madisonville apartment building on March 26. He was the first Cincinnati firefighter to die in the line on duty in nearly seven years.
"We believe he did not see that marking due to heavy smoke," said Ed Dadosky, assistant chief of the Cincinnati Fire Department.
It was a foggy morning and the door "looked like a janitor's closet," Dadosky said.
Gordon took a short step into the shaft and fell head-first into the shaft and between the elevator and the wall of the shaft.
Gordon, who enetered the building 10 minutes before he fell down the shaft, was not present when the warning was written. He was likely checking doors elsewhere and helping rescue people.
The fire was sparked by food left unattended on a stove in apartment 27, an investigation into the incident released Friday stated.