A former city Department of Buildings official ignored a crucial warning from one of his inspectors that may have saved the lives of two firefighters during the 2007 Deutsche Bank fire, according to a new report.

The 35-page report, released June 19 by the city’s Department of Investigation, aimed at identifying administrative breakdowns connected to the disastrous Aug. 18, 2007 fire that killed Firefighters Joseph Graffagnino and Robert Beddia.

Two months before the fire, according to the report, then-Department Of Buildings supervisor Robert Iulo told an inspector assigned to the demolition of the damaged Deutsche Bank tower not to report finding a breach of the building’s water standpipe. Iulo, the man in charge of the DOB’s daily inspections of the toxic tower at 130 Liberty St., also never ordered workers to test the pipe after it was repaired.

Had the test been performed, a larger breach in the pipe would almost certainly have been discovered in the basement of the building, and the deaths of two firefighters might have been prevented.

“Not conducting the pressure test was a serious missed opportunity to discover the other issues that then existed with the standpipe,” investigators said in the report.

Graffagnino and Beddia’s deaths were attributed in part to a breach in the same standpipe that city inspector Aaron Williamson pleaded with Iulo to test two months prior. A 42-foot section of the standpipe had been cut out in the basement of the building sometime in 2006.

On June 25, 2007, Williamson, one of four city inspectors assigned to the tower, discovered a small section of the building’s standpipe missing on the 28th floor. The report said Williamson told Iulo that he thought the demolition should be shut down while the pipe was repaired, and that the pipe needed to be tested for other breaches. That test, investigators said, would have revealed the pipe was missing a section and was essentially useless. Williamson told investigators that Iulo instructed him to allow work on the building to continue while the pipe was fixed, and to omit the incident from his inspection report.

The order for a test, investigators said, never came. The report Williamson submitted for department review made no mention of the incident, however he wrote a second version of the report that included a photo of the broken pipe, which he gave to investigators after the 2007 fire.

Iulo is reported to have told investigators he did not recall “any conversations with Williamson about such a situation and how to handle it, or any request from Williamson for the standpipe to be tested.”

It was unknown if the city’s investigation would result in criminal charges against Iulo, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office said. Three construction managers and a former subcontractor on the project were all charged with manslaughter in December in connection to the fire. The US Attorney’s office in Brooklyn recently opened a second criminal investigation of construction manager Bovis Lend Lease’s payroll and billing practices on the demolition, among four other projects citywide.

Iulo retired from the DOB on Feb. 20, 2009, three days after being slapped him with disciplinary charges for failing to properly inspect the tower and to adequately train his inspectors. None of the inspectors assigned to the 130 Liberty St. job had any experience with demolition projects, according to the city’s report, nor had they received any training specific to the tower. One inspector, Simone Bridgeforth, told investigators that she did not understand how the standpipe system worked.

“She said that she did not know what she was looking at, and except for being told it was the standpipe, she might have thought it was a gas line,” investigators wrote in the report.

“This tragic series of events emphasizes the importance of inspectors and the proper training of inspectors,” said Catherine McVay Hughes, who chairs Community Board 1’s World Trade Center Redevelopment Committee. “When [inspectors] do their job correctly they don’t make the news, but unfortunately when there are mistakes, it does make the news.”    

Investigators also faulted FDNY officials for failing to inspect the tower every 15 days beginning in March of 2007. Capt. Peter Bosco, the commanding officer of the Engine 10 firehouse on Liberty Street and the person ultimately responsible for conducting the inspections, told investigators that he “thought that it was not a ‘hard and fast rule,’” according to the report.

“Clearly, Capt. Bosco had no appreciation for his responsibilities as per 130 Liberty
Street under the 15 Day Rule, even though it was a building that was frequently brought to his attention,” investigators said. “It was across the street from Engine 10.”

The report said Bosco, who was transferred out of the Liberty Street house after the fire, received a memo from his battalion chief dated August 7, 2007—11 days before the fire—imploring him “to take every precaution at 130 Liberty Street. The report concluded, in bold face type: “THE ONLY SAFE ASSUMPTION IS TO ASSUME THE WORST.”

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