Eyewitness
News
NEW
YORK (WABC) -- Every two weeks, firefighters
ascend a 26-story condemned, black-shrouded skyscraper,
checking its carefully marked exit signs, rebuilt water
supply system and wide-open corridors.
They wear protective suits on floors where toxic dust
from the World Trade Center' still lies.
A year ago, more than 100 firefighters ran into the
same building as it burned and had trouble finding their
way out, many jumping out windows onto scaffolds. Thick,
plastic coating meant to contain asbestos made it hard
to breathe. Firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph
Graffagnino died on the building's 14th floor when their
oxygen supply ran out.
The Aug. 18, 2007, fire at the troubled former
Deutsche Bank tower across from ground zero exposed the
incompetence of multiple government agencies assigned to
near-daily inspections of the building, which was being
dismantled. The blaze also unmasked a questionable
subcontractor and the Fire Department's failure to point
out dozens of hazards - including a break in a pipe
meant to supply water to fire hoses - before the blaze.
"The community had been raising red flags for months
and sometimes years" about the toxic tower, said
environmental activist Kimberly Flynn. "It's a mystery
to us how you can have the number of inspectors that ...
were practically living in that building and have that
level of disaster."
Manhattan prosecutors are preparing to conclude soon
whether the failures before the blaze at the state-owned
building were bureaucratic blunders or crimes. A grand
jury has been meeting for nine months, deciding whether
to lodge criminal negligence charges against
contractors, the government or both.
Officials have stepped up inspections, outfitted the
tower with state-of-the-art fire safety systems and come
up with dozens of new proposals intended to make
demolition sites safer. But they say the building posed
challenges like no other.
The tower "is a tragically unique building," said
deputy Mayor Edward Skyler. "It exposed an area that the
city had never looked at this comprehensively. When we
looked at it, we found a lot of areas that could be
improved."
The Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the rebuilding
agency that owns the tower, has switched subcontractors
and resumed cleaning the building of toxic debris - but
not simultaneously demolishing other floors at the same
time, a practice the city opposes.
The city has pledged to have the building's multiple
regulators talk to each other more, and inspectors will
be cross-trained to spot any kind of hazard.
Firefighters now inspect the building regularly; a fire
chief is assigned full-time to the site and two other
nearby buildings that still need to be demolished. Three
fire officers were reassigned in the week after the
blaze.
The original, $45 million budget for taking down the
building has tripled, and the project is four years
behind schedule.
Planners hope eventually to supplant it with one of
five office towers replacing the trade center.
The blaze is believed to have started when a
construction worker discarded a cigarette after the work
day ended.
The spark shed light on multiple lapses.
Regulators - including the city Buildings Department
and federal, state and city environmental agencies - had
not corrected multiple fire hazards. Among them were
blocked stairwells and a negative air pressure system
that sucked the fire downward. A standpipe had been cut
into pieces in the basement, leaving firefighters
without a water supply for an hour after they entered
the building.
The Fire Department was required to inspect the site
every 15 days but hadn't been there in more than a year.
The department had not prepared a fire plan, as it has
for more than 200 other sites that pose special
challenges.
"This wasn't any building. This was a public
spectacle. This was a high-rise, toxic, vacant building
that was under deconstruction," said Stephen Cassidy,
president of the city's firefighters' union.
Prosecutors are looking at how subcontractor John
Galt Corp. was hired, though community leaders and a
city agency had recommended against it because the
company had no history of demolition or abatement
experience. Investigators have suggested Galt employees
were transplanted from another contractor whose former
owner had reputed mob ties.
Galt - dismissed a week after the August blaze - and
the general contractor, Bovis Lend Lease, haven't
commented on details of the investigation, citing the
prosecutor's probe.
A year later, hundreds of workers are on double
shifts at the building, now scheduled to be removed by
next summer - the original date was 2005. The investment
bank JPMorgan Chase & Co. had planned to build a tower
on the same spot, although the land won't be available
by a promised timeline.
The building had a scandalous history before the
fire, becoming a looming eyesore that symbolized the
inertia of post-Sept. 11 rebuilding.
The trade center's south tower collapsed into the
building on Sept. 11, 2001, leaving human remains that
went undiscovered for years, pieces of aircraft and
hazardous trade center dust.
The LMDC bought the tower three years later to end
squabbles between the bank and insurer over who was
responsible for taking it down. Federal, state and city
agencies spent another year approving plans to remove
the toxic debris without polluting the neighborhood.
Hundreds of body parts of Sept. 11 victims were
discovered at the tower beginning in 2006. Last year, a
steel pipe from the building fell through the roof of a
firehouse next door. A piece of equipment fell off a
high floor and injured two firefighters a few days after
the blaze.
Given the building's past, neighbors still eye it
warily.
"We cannot afford to have anyone else lose their
life," said Julie Menin, president of the area's
community board. "If that means it's going to take a
little bit longer to take the building down, then it's
going to take a little bit longer."
