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J’ACCUSE THE DEUTSCHE BANK TRAGEDY By Martin J.
Steadman |
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FDNY The fatal tragedy of
the Deutsche Bank building fire in New York City on August 18, 2007. Two firefighters perished in the
inferno. |
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J’ACCUSE By Martin J. Steadman This is the untold story
of how some of the most powerful people in New York City escaped blame for
the wrongful deaths of two firefighters in a toxic skyscraper on the edge of
what once was the World Trade Center. On August 18, 2007, a
seven-alarm fire broke out in the Deutsche Bank building, which was under
deconstruction, and killed firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino
and injured 115 more. Robert Morgenthau, the
long-time Manhattan District Attorney, conducted a 16-month Grand Jury investigation that
rivaled the fable of the elephant that gave birth to a mouse. When Morgenthau announced indictments in
December, 2008, he said “everyone screwed up,” but he declined to indict any
city, state or federal official sworn to bring the building down safely. Instead his Grand Jury returned felony
indictments against three construction supervisors. Almost four years after the fatal fire, all
three were found Not Guilty as charged. By the time of the trial,
Morgenthau had retired after 34 years of otherwise splendid service, and it
was his successor, Cyrus Vance, who prosecuted the case that went nowhere
with the judge and the jury.
Morgenthau left Vance with a weak indictment, and Vance made little effort
to bolster the prosecution. How easy would it have
been to do so? There exists a mountain
of evidence that suggests that city, state and federal officials could have
been indicted for at least gross negligence, criminal negligence and/or reckless
endangerment in the deaths of the two firefighters. For openers, there was an anguished warning
to the owners of the building, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation
(LMDC), that the ongoing demolition was “a serious accident waiting to
happen.” That warning, from
construction consultants charged with helping the LMDC to a safe and
successful demolition, came on August 3, 2007, just 15 days before the fatal
fire. But the warning was ignored; a
five-month history of dreadful neglect in the building was perpetuated, and
multiple serious violations were repeated after
the warning. Just 15 days from that one last plea to
bring the demolition under control, the “serious accident waiting to happen”
did happen because arrogant public officials thought they could get away with
deliberately sacrificing safety for speed in bringing the building to the
ground. That mountain of
evidence is still there, most of it locked away in voluminous files in the
District Attorney’s office and in Grand Jury minutes. But bits and pieces will always bubble up
to the surface, and here is just some of what the public has not been told. §
An urgent
written warning to the LMDC 15 days before the fatal fire has never been made
public. Until now. §
A Fire
Department Fatal Fire Report, detailing shocking illegalities at the Deutsche
Bank Building, was ignored by the Office of the District Attorney; the
Mayor’s Office, and by the reporters and editors of the New York City press
corps. Until now. §
Detailed
2005 memos from three veteran FDNY Chiefs that have never been made public
outlined plans for ensuring the safe demolition of the Deutsche Bank Building
as early as January, 2005. The
suggested plans hit a stone wall at the highest levels of the Fire
Department. The deconstruction of
the Deutsche Bank building began more than five years after it was heavily
damaged when the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed and tore a
15-floor gash in its side, leaving it a toxic hulk. Privately owned, it was purchased by New York
State and turned over to the LMDC, a city/state creation charged with
planning for a new beginning at the site of the terrorist attack. After a series of fits
and starts, demolition began on March 9, 2007. The original contractor, the Gilbane
Building Company thought they were
getting a relatively clean building..
But the LMDC brought in an environmental firm that found
higher-than-expected levels of a series of toxins and the LMDC decided to
rebid a contract that would do something never before attempted in New York
City. The new General Contractor,
Bovis Lend Lease, would conduct a simultaneous abatement and deconstruction
program. While toxic abatement was
occurring on one floor, acetylene torches would be cutting through steel and
concrete several floors above. No other contractors,
including Gilbane, chose to bid on the contract. The New York City Fire
Department was never involved in the planning or execution of this
unprecedented plan. I’ve spoken to
scores of FDNY battalion chiefs and deputy chiefs and all say the Fire
Department was not consulted, they were certain the FDNY would have had
serious objections to the plan. The John Galt Company,
taken on by Bovis as its sub-contractor to do the bulk of the demolition,
couldn’t pass scrutiny by the Mayor’s own Department of Investigation. Not only did John Galt have no experience
to handle such a high-risk job, the company had unsavory connections with
unsavory people known to law enforcement at several levels. Stop right there, a
prudent person might say. But no one
in city or state government said stop right there. Despite a seriously negative Department of
Investigation report on the Galt company, the LMDC approved them for the job.
When John Galt filed an Implementation
Plan with the New York City Buildings Department, at least one critical city
agency was excluded from the process.
The Fire Department did not participate in the planning or the review
of the Implementation Plan. That
building had to come down by December 31, 2007 and if safety had to be
sacrificed for speed, so be it. What
no one in law enforcement was willing to do was a thorough investigation of
who decided the Fire Department must disappear in the hope that nothing bad
would happen and no one would ever know. The building had to come
down by December 31, 2007 because JP
Morgan Chase Bank had an option on a new tower that would be constructed on
that site, but the option expired on December 31, 2007 and JP Morgan was not
inclined to suffer any further delays.
An October 3, 2007 New
York Times story quoted former Chairman of the LMDC Kevin Rampe saying New
York City had insisted that information about the building, including
communications to the Fire Department, had to be routed through the Mayor’s
Office. Did John Galt’s Implementation
Plan go to the Mayor’s Office and not make it to the FDNY? Someone in a position of authority or
influence should have asked, but did not.
Exclude the FDNY from the dismantling of a Toxic Tower? Someone must explain. Something equally
strange happened as the job was about to begin. New York City’s Building Department rolled
over and died when Galt applied for, and was issued a series of Alteration
Permits for each floor, instead of a Demolition Permit for the entire
building. The difference? By law, Demolition Permits had to be
reported by the Buildings Department to the Fire Department. No such requirement applied to Alteration
Permits. Who in the Buildings
Department did what they knew to be so wrong?
Who told the Buildings Department that under no circumstances should
they notify the Fire Department the Deutsche Bank building was about to be
completely demolished? THE URGENT WARNING Flash forward to August
3, 2007. The LMDC had thought it
prudent to hire a giant engineering and construction firm, URS Corp., as its
consultant on the project. Fifteen
days before the fire that killed Graffagnino and Beddia, a thoroughly
frustrated URS executive fired off an E-mail to a number of project managers
and to the President of the LMDC, David Emil.
His blunt assessment of a dire situation has never surfaced, until
now. Here is just some of that memo
from Jaime Daniels, in charge of the URS contingent at the site (it is in its
pristine form, typos and grammatical errors and all): “Attached is a draft
letter as discussed at this mornings legal meeting that URS strongly suggests
should be forwarded to Bovis under LMDC letterhead. Please feel free along with others to edit
as you see fit. “As you are aware, this
site is a serious accident waiting to happen due to the lack of Bovis’
attention to general house-keeping, fire watch and overall management. The futile attempts of Bovis always trying
to deflect responsibility for their actions is wearing rather thin. The fact that Bovis holds an $ 80 million
dollar contract there and does not have anyone on staff to remove garbage or
debris is appalling. In fact, the only
way anything gets done as it relates to labor is when Bovis has to beg their
sub John Galt to perform the work. If
Galt does not feel it is their responsibility or is not in the ‘mood’, the
work does not get done. URS has tried
as an owners representative to persuade Bovis through the months to pay
closer attention to these items.
Unfortunately, URS is NOT the GC as you are aware and does not have
the vehicle necessary to hire outside assistance to alleviate these concerns. “The LMDC through their
contract with the GC Bovis does have the authority to provide the additional
services if the GC is not up to the performance of their contract. I know we have discussed that option many
atime, but at this juncture of the project, I believe it is imperative that
something be done to convince Bovis that this is of a serious nature and
concern to the owner and others. “URS suggests that Bovis
be placed on a 1 day notice to commence performing and rectifying all the
deficiencies. If Bovis tries to
commence operations as stated above, we feel that the power of the contract
as it relates to hiring outside services by the owner for labor be
enforced. We also suggest that the
enforcement of withholding payments be made so as to illustrate the
seriousness of the owners concerns.” Mr. Daniels attached a
draft letter for the LMDC to sign and deliver to Bovis, but it is not known
if that ever happened. What is known
is that on August 18, just 15 days after the stern warning, a worker threw a
lit cigarette into a pile of garbage or debris on the 17th
floor. Smoking was prohibited in the
work areas, but there was only sporadic enforcement of the rule. That uncollected pile of garbage or debris
turned into a seven-alarm fatal fire.
Bovis had not removed it, and apparently Galt was not in the mood to
help out. The August 3, 2007 memo
from Mr. Daniels wasn’t the first time the LMDC got a written rocket from
URS. In a warning dated June 19, 2007,
and addressed to Dear Mr. Emil, the consultant went off on a four-page rant
on its concerns about Bovis. “In the
past month alone URS communicated 54
e-mails on safety observations that needed immediate attention by Bovis,” the
memo said. The memo to the President
of the LMDC also included this devastating comment: “For nearly three years
URS has made numerous recommendations to benefit the safety as well as
progress of the project. Our earlier
recommendation was to have a separate environmental abatement contract in
order to eliminate the deconstruction activities overhead.” So long before, at the
project’s beginnings, someone stood up and told the LMDC they would be well
advised to scrap a deeply flawed plan to unloose a battery of acetylene
torches cutting through concrete and steel just a few floors above toxic
abatement workers below. The Fire Department
would have almost certainly had a problem with simultaneous abatement and
demolition, but the FDNY was never consulted. Numerous Chief Officers of the FDNY have
told me they do not believe the Fire Department would have approved
simultaneous abatement and deconstruction if the Department was
consulted. Such a project in a
skyscraper had never been attempted in New York City, and no one believes it
will ever be attempted again. As for
the Buildings Department, the State Labor Department, the Department of Environmental
Protection and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA), all of their employees in the building throughout the demolition, all
of them knew nothing from nothing.
Worst of all, the city’s Office of Emergency Management, headed by
Joseph F. Bruno, finished its role in developing an Emergency Action Plan in
September 2005 and vanished from the scene, never to be heard from
again.
FDNY THE FATAL FIRE REPORT— A
PACKAGE OF DYNAMITE There will be more here
about the astonishing government paralysis leading up to the start of
demolition in March, 2007 and throughout the demolition until the fatal fire,
but some things that occurred after the wrongful deaths of Graffagnino and
Beddia might have produced a different judicial result if attention was paid
to a carefully crafted Fatal Fire Report commissioned by the FDNY. It was completed in August, 2008, four
months before Morgenthau wrapped up his indictments. Here are significant excerpts from the FDNY
Fatal Fire Report that was ignored:: “On August 18, 2007, 130
Liberty Street did not meet the NYC Building Code requirements for buildings
undergoing alteration or demolition.
Some provisions of the NYC Building Code not followed were: §
“The
sprinkler systems were out of service. §
“The
standpipe system was out of service. §
“The means
of egress were blocked. §
“The fire
rated construction comprising the stairway enclosures was either compromised
or completely removed at many locations.” A demolition application
for 130 Liberty Street was never filed and the New York City Department of
Buildings never issued a demolition permit.
A demolition permit for the building would have required a working
standpipe system, sprinkler system, enclosed stairways, and unobstructed
means of egress and fire guards. And
a demolition permit, by law, required the Buildings Department to notify the
Fire Department. Someone should be made
to answer for (a) why the Buildings Department deliberately failed to notify
the FDNY, and (b) why Building Inspectors on the site every day neither saw,
nor heard, nor spoke of these egregious violations that were impossible to
overlook. This account will return
to the Fatal Fire Report, but not before it is emphasized, underlined and
repeated that the New York City Fire Department handed the District Attorney
a blueprint for the indictment of every public official who allowed that
project to proceed in violation of numerous laws of New York City that govern
demolition or alteration. The Fire
Department’s Safety and Inspection Services Command gave the District
Attorney a 176-page package of dynamite and delivered it four months before
the Grand Jury wrapped up its work.
Little of what was reported by the Safety Chiefs is reflected in the
indictments and the trial. THE FDNY SAFETY COMMAND’S CONCERNS Not much was ever made
about the fact that buildings under demolition or alteration must have
working sprinkler systems. The City
Hall Press Office and the FDNY Press
Office did mention that fact casually, as if there was nothing wrong ---the
sprinkler systems were destroyed when the South Tower of the World Trade
Center crushed them, they said. Stuff happens,
they said. Except that the Building
Code demands that before a building is either demolished or altered, the
sprinkler systems must be back in operation, just in case the sprinklers are
needed to protect the workers in the building, and everyone living close
by. Not to mention the safety of the
firefighters who were dispatched to battle a raging fire in a toxic hulk made
more dangerous with every passing day. As for the standpipe
system, it was reported to arriving firefighters that it was operational. It had been certified as operational every
day for five months by Safety Coordinators working for Bovis, but it wasn’t
in operation at any point in the demolition.
Imagine that. A Big Lie every
day. It had been out of service since
before the demolition began. The
standpipe in the basement had been severed and a 42 foot section of the pipe
had been carted away. At no time
during the demolition was the crippled system tested. Repeat, for every day of the five
month-long demolition, the Site Safety Coordinator checked off the standpipe
system as operational. And when New
York City firefighters raced to the fire on August 18, they were told the
standpipe system was operational by Bovis supervisors. The result of all that
gross negligence? It took 67 minutes
to get water on a fire in a pile of garbage that grew to a seven-alarm fire
that killed two firefighters and injured 115 more. As for the means of
egress being blocked, where were the Buildings Department inspectors who were
there every day? Where was
Bovis? Where was the John Galt
Corporation? Where was the expensive
consultant URS? Where was the State
Labor Department? Where were the OSHA
inspectors? We know where the Fire
Department wasn’t. They were nowhere
throughout the entire operation.
Plywood slabs covered the stairwells at every other floor -- the
even-numbered floors. The plywood
traps were supposed to include a kick-out feature for easy removal, but that
wasn’t done either. Those illegal plywood slabs were in plain sight in the
middle of otherwise empty floors. When
the fire occurred, the platforms were extremely difficult for firefighters to
lift in the smoke, heat and dark and they blocked movement up and down the
stairs that by law must be unobstructed.
FDNY A PRINCIPAL CAUSE OF THE FATALITIES And that leaves the
illegal destruction of the staircase enclosures -- likely the most critical
failure to protect everyone working in the building and the firefighters who
were sent into a deadly trap. The Fatal Fire Report
filed by the Safety Team nailed this egregious violation of the laws, but
about all they added to emphasize the significance of the rampant destruction
of at least 10 floors of fireproof refuge was this additional mention in the
Report: “The NYC Building Code
requires stairway enclosures to remain intact. It requires these egress stairs to be fully
enclosed with fire rated construction and equipped with fire-rated
self-closing doors. On many of the
floors within the fire area, the fire rated construction surrounding the
required means of egress (the A and B stairways) had been either partially or
completely removed. This allowed
smoke and heat to enter the stairways preventing Firefighters from using
these stairways as areas of refuge.” A number of veteran chiefs, active and retired, told me
that particular violation should have been driven home in the Safety Chiefs’
report as the single most deadly failure that led to the deaths of the two
firefighters and the injuries to more than a hundred more. They suspect that the Safety Chiefs might
have so reported, but their work was edited by city lawyers. Firefighters Graffagnino
and Beddia were struggling to operate the first hose line that made it up to the fire
operations floors. They were both
found unconscious on the 14th floor, where the stairway enclosure
had been “compromised.” That was three
floors below the fire, and 12 floors below the top floor. Stairway enclosures had been removed at
every level between the 26th floor and the 15th floor,
and the bottom half of the 14th floor stairway enclosure where the
two firefighters died had also been removed.
Engine company Nozzle
men and Control men use the stairway enclosures as their safe haven from fire
and heat and smoke, and the place from which to attack the fire when the hose
is charged. Not only were Beddia and
Graffagnino blocked from exiting down to the 13th floor by hatches
on illegal wooden slabs over their stairwell, the first four feet of their
stairwell encasement had been illegally removed, and the stairway enclosures
for at least 10 floors above them were also destroyed. Other fire chiefs,
active and retired, point to 25 large exhaust fans that were operating on the
13th to the 17th floors. The Fatal Fire Report noted that “there was
no remote shut off for these exhaust fans.”
The demolition workers simply ran from the fire on the 17th
floor and left 25 giant fans running. Standard
Operating Procedure in high rise fires is to set up operations several floors
below the fire because fire and smoke rise.
In this fire, 25 giant fans were driving fire and smoke down, down,
down until fires broke out on numerous floors above and below where Beddia
and Graffagnino were found unconscious.
There were piles of
garbage and debris on the 14th and 15th floors. This debris was comprised of metal studs,
ductwork, piping, conduit and other materials. And the Fatal Fire Report said “Access and
egress was blocked by sealed wooden platforms on even numbered floors. As a result members on the 14th
floor were prevented from dropping down to the safety of the 13th
floor via the A and B stairways.” The
Safety Chiefs Report added that “It was very difficult and time consuming to
open the hatches on the 14th floor.” Nozzle Man Robert Beddia and Control Man
Joseph Graffagnino had fires above them, fires below them, heat and smoke and
blackness all around them. Sealed
hatches blocked their descent to the safety of the 13th
floor. Stairway enclosures that were
illegally removed from the bottom half of the 14th floor, and
every floor above. Beddia and Graffagnino
never had a chance. So far no one in a
position of authority or influence has bothered to act on these horrific
violations of the laws on the books.
But they did know all about them, thanks to the FDNY Fatal Fire
Report. Those who had the obligation
to enforce the laws that were violated did little or nothing about it. THE LMDC EMERGENCY ACTION PLAN When Mr. Daniels of URS wrote his urgent warning
to the LMDC on August 3, 2007, it was probably prompted by a fire in the
building that morning, caused by hot slag running down a steel column from
the 28th floor to the 24th floor, where it ignited some
garbage or debris that was left laying around by the abatement workers. A Stop Work order for all burning
operations was then issued by a Buildings Department inspector when he
discovered that the Fire Department permit for the acetylene torches had
expired. The slag fire, the Work
Stoppage ordered by the Department of Buildings, and the E-mail from Mr.
Daniels all occurred on the same day, a Friday. But Bovis and its sub-contractor, the John
Galt Corporation, were back at work Monday, when the Fire Department renewed
the burning permit, no questions asked.
Of all the mysteries
surrounding the horrific fire is the central question of why veteran Commanders
of the Fire Department accepted their exclusion from the planning and
execution of the demolition of the Deutsche Bank building., even when they
were jolted awake. One day in May, a
steel pipe fell from an upper floor of the building and crashed through the
roof of the firehouse across the street, hitting it like a 30-ton bomb. Alarms went off all over the Fire radio,
and the Commissioner and half of his Command Staff raced across the Brooklyn
Bridge with lights flashing and sirens wailing, to the quarters of Engine 10 and Ladder
10. What a catastrophe! Several firefighters were taken to the
hospital and it was a miracle no one was killed. A Stop Work Order was
immediately issued to the contractors by the Buildings Department, and that Stop
Work Order was in effect for two weeks, until it was lifted. Is anyone trying to tell us that the Fire
Department never asked any questions about what was going on in that building
for those two weeks? Is anyone trying
to tell us that the Fire Department never asked any questions about the lack
of a fire plan for the building, or a Fire Inspection Plan? Early on, in 2005, the
Fire Department participated in the first draft of an Emergency Action Plan
(EAP) for the demolition. As early as
December, 2004, the city’s Office of Emergency Management was quarterbacking
this comprehensive safety plan, and it was the Fire Department that insisted
that any fire in the building must be reported to the Fire Department
immediately. The EAP went through
s series of drafts, but the admonition to notify the Fire Department in the
event of a fire was a constant through every revision until the EAP was
finalized on September 7, 2005. The August 3, 2007 fire
that triggered the outburst from URS was not called in to 911, and the FDNY
was not sent to the scene. That August
3 fire was the seventh such fire that was not reported to 911. Sadly, there were two more such fires after the warning.
They weren’t reported to the Fire Department either. On the day the “serious accident waiting to
happen” did indeed happen, there was a 13-minute delay in calling 911. It was not called in by anyone working or
supervising on the job. It was called
in by someone in the neighborhood who saw fire and smoke on scaffolding on
the side of the building. Ten fires in the
building over five months. None of
them called in from the building to 911 and relayed to the FDNY. All of them in gross violation of the
LMDC’s Emergency Action Plan. THE STRAKOSH MEMO Flash back now to
January 30, 2005. His name is
Battalion Chief Robert Strakosh, just one of thousands of special people who
make the New York City Fire Department the best in the nation, and many
believe the best in the world. The first draft of the
Emergency Action Plan (EAP) landed in Chief Strakosh’s lap, probably because
it was a Toxic Tower and he worked in the HazMat Battalion. The construction company Gilbane had taken
an initial crack at a draft of the plan, but a first-class public servant,
MaryAnn Marrocolo, Director of Recovery and Mitigation at the city’s Office
of Emergency Management, spotted a big fat No-No. Gilbane said it would handle small fires
itself, and Marrocolo wrote she didn’t think that was a good idea. That first draft of the EAP was sent along
to the FDNY, and went down the line from the Fire Commissioner to Battalion
Chief Strakosh, and here is what he wrote
on January 30, 2005: “I liked the MaryAnn
Marrocolo review of the plan.
Apparently she spent a lot of time on review and picked up and
highlighted a lot of small fine points that need to be addressed. Especially the one on Page 7, Sec.
7.1. Gilbane emergency coordinator
should not be determining if the fire is manageable, he should be calling us
immediately so as to avoid any type of delayed alarms. It will also give us a better idea of how
the work is progressing. Lots of
alarms may tip FDNY off as to poor adherence to this aggressively proposed
EAP. I also liked MaryAnn’s comments
as to additional copies of the EAP on page 1 section 3 including the
FDNY. I think if and when the FDNY
gets copies of the plan, we should ensure that copies are also distributed to
Division 1 first due units for this area.
I am sure Division 1 will address this. “We should ensure
Division 1 first due units have a scheduled walk through of the EAP and a
good working knowledge of the site.” None of that excellent
advice ever reached Division 1 or any other FDNY field officer. No one in Division 1, Battalion 1, or
Ladder Company 10 or Engine Company 10 ever saw a copy of the Emergency
Action Plan in any of its drafts. All
of the fire officers later held responsible for a safe demolition were never
brought into the planning for the demolition.
In fact, they were deliberately excluded. There was more to the
Strakosh memo, which was routed through Battalion Commander Robert Ingram and
Staff Chief John Norman, who was the head of the Special Operations
Command. Chief Ingram echoed
Strakosh’s recommendations and offered six bullet points in support. The first bullet point said, “Larger
distribution of the EAP within the FDNY.”
The triple header package from three veteran Chief Officers was sent
up the chain of command, but it never came back down. The one thing we can say
for certain is that the FDNY Deputy Chiefs
in Division 1, covering all of downtown Manhattan, NEVER KNEW OF THESE MEMOS;
NEVER GOT A COPY OF THE EMERGENCY ACTION PLAN
IN ANY OF ITS DRAFTS, AND WERE NEVER BROUGHT INTO PLANNING FOR THE
DEMOLITION OR THE INSPECTION OF THAT TOXIC BUILDING. In the wake of the deaths of Graffagnino
and Beddia, FDNY headquarters was forced to admit it didn’t have a plan to
fight a fire in a toxic building, and it didn’t have a plan to inspect the
building under demolition either. MAYOR BLOOMBERG AND THE SCAPEGOATS When the accident that
was waiting to happen killed two firefighters, the Mayor of New York City
went for the throats of three field officers, with a vengeance. On August 28, 2007, just
10 days after the fatal fire and while the District Attorney had barely begun
his investigation, Bloomberg called a news conference in City Hall and
announced that three field officers had been relieved of their commands
because they failed to follow a rule in the Fire Manuel that buildings under
demolition must be inspected at least once every 15 days. The newspapers, radio
and TV News did the rest. Screaming
headlines blamed the three field officers for the deaths of the two
firefighters. The Daily News editorial
writer urged the Mayor to fire them.
Their careers were destroyed, and all three are now retired. The Mayor failed to
mention that immediately following the 15-day inspection rule in the Fire
Manual was another section requiring that the Bureau of Fire Prevention must
notify the Division commander whenever a demolition was about to
commence. But that notification never
happened.. The Mayor had his
scapegoats, and there would be no attempt by his administration to inquire
any further. As for the reporters and
editors who helped the Mayor rush to judgment, they weren’t interested in
asking any questions either. Let’s stay with that
outrage for another moment. The New
York City Fire Department failed to construct a plan to fight a fire in the
building if one occurred, and they didn’t design a fire inspection plan for a
toxic building before or during the demolition either. Throughout the five months of demolition
leading up to the fatal fire, no one from the FDNY set foot in that building. And no orders emanated from FDNY
Headquarters to ensure a presence in the project. Repeat.
On January 30, 2005, Battalion Chief Strakosh wrote, “I think if and
when the FDNY gets copies of the plan, we should ensure that copies are also
distributed to Division 1 first due units for this area. I am sure Div 1 will address this.” I’ve spoken to every one
of the Deputy Chiefs assigned to Division 1, all of whom ultimately suffered
disciplinary punishment for failure to inspect the building every 15
days.. All said they never saw a copy
of the Emergency Action Plan in any of its stages, including the final draft
dated September 7, 2005. None of them
were notified by anyone in FDNY headquarters that they were expected to send
their members into a notoriously toxic building on 15-day inspections without
training or proper safety equipment. One Deputy Chief told
me, “I never saw a scrap of paper from Headquarters, and I never got a phone
call either.” It is important to note
here that the Fatal Fire Report by a team of FDNY investigators did point to
that section of the Fire Department Manual that required notice to the
Division Commander. At the bottom of
page 79 of a 176-page report, the investigators wrote the following, with
italics and capital letters and bold face portions theirs: “Note: Section 5.8.2 of
the Fire Prevention Manual states, “Notice
of demolition operations about to commence shall be forwarded by the Bureau
of Fire Prevention on Form A-102 to Divisions and District Offices.” It is not known why this section of the Fire
Prevention Manual was not being complied with. (THE INVESTIGATION TEAM DID NOT INVESTIGATE
THE REASON WHY THIS WAS NOT BEING COMPLIED WITH DUE TO THE ONGOING
INVESTIGATION BY THE MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE).” The Fire Department
kicked the can to the Office of the District Attorney, where it died. The District Attorney never demanded
answers; the Mayor’s Office didn’t inquire further, and Fire Department
headquarters acted as though their Safety Chiefs never raised the
question. Form A-102 never arrived at
Division 1, and any mention of the failure to notify Division 1 would have
torpedoed the Mayor’s plan to dump all the blame on the field officers. It wasn’t just failures
by the FDNY. According to District
Attorney Morgenthau, a slew of Bloomberg’s agencies failed in their
duties---Buildings, Fire, Environmental Protection and Emergency Management
were all in a state of paralysis. In
New York City, the buck stops long before it reaches the Mayor’s desk. THE SERIES OF UNREPORTED FIRES More than two years
before the demolition commenced, Batallion Chief Strakosh put the Fire Department and all the
responsible parties in the loop on notice that every fire in the building had to be reported to the FDNY
immediately. That was written on
January 30, 2005. The Gospel
according to the FDNY. Those words
were central to the final draft of the Emergency Action Plan. But here is what actually happened during
demolition:
THE THIRTEEN-MINUTE DELAY
What convinced the District Attorney to ignore that abominable
record of gross negligence at the trial of the three construction
supervisors? Building Inspectors
observed, or were aware of these fires, but they also did not call 911.
As for the LMDC, it was its own Emergency Action Plan that the agency
repeatedly violated. All of these witnesses
to outrage after daily outrage were determined never to bring the Fire
Department into the building. When the 10th
fire in the building broke out on August 18, 2007 and ultimately went to
seven alarms, there was a 13-minute delay in notification to the Fire
Department. The call to 911 came from
a civilian who spotted fire in the scaffolding of the building. The Bovis and Galt workers by then had
fled the scene without bothering to call the fire in to 911, and without
bothering to shut down 25 giant fans, driving the fire and smoke down. Thirteen minutes can be an eternity in a
fire A fire officer of one of the
first arriving units took one look and called in a second alarm. It was an out-of-control fire before the
first unit set foot in the burning building. To this date, no city,
state or federal official had been held accountable for the deaths of two
firefighters, and the injuries to 115 more.
No one working for General Contractor Bovis or sub-contractor John
Galt has been convicted of any charges.
Two firefighters died, and no one killed them. Another 115 firefighters and fire officers
were injured. Stuff happens, the
guilty say. Get over it, they say. We have to move on. We need to put things like this behind
us. When a politician says we need to
put these things behind us, it can only mean he (or she) has no alibi for
what happened on their watch. Across the face of the
Criminal Courts Building at 100 Centre Street, carved in stone, are these
words, “The True Administration of Justice is the Firmest Pillar of Good
Government.” Those who come and go in
that Art Deco building, and those who are just passing by, take those words
to heart. But all too often, the rich
and the powerful are allowed to laugh at mere words carved in stone. www.evesmag.com |
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