By Josh Rogers
Kathleen Moore asked officials last year what they would do if the former Deutsche Bank building caught fire after the painstaking demolition work began next door to her.
“That’ll never happen,” she remembers Charles Maikish telling her at a Community Board 1 meeting. Maikish, who until recently was the executive director of the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, came up to reassure her, but to Moore it sounded like he was saying “don’t worry little lady, we’ll take care of you.”
The meeting was one of dozens the community board had over the years in which officials with the building’s owner, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, or its subsidiary, the construction center, told residents their fears and concerns about the project were unfounded.
On Saturday, Aug. 18, two firefighters, Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino, died responding to a fire in the building at 130 Liberty St. Deutsche did not have a working standpipe for water.
On Sunday, Gov. Eliot Spitzer was on the roof of the 10/10 firehouse right outside Moore’s building checking the air monitors, which have not shown that any asbestos or elevated levels of particulate matter have escaped Deutsche since the fire.
Pat Moore (no relation), one of Kathleen’s neighbors at 125 Cedar St. and a C.B. 1 member, spoke to the governor through her window.
Spitzer showed her the air quality readouts, which Moore couldn’t decipher, and told her the building was also safe structurally.
“He said everything is fine and I said ‘we were told that before, and the governor smiled,” she said.
She and most of her neighbors fled the building but they did not get any instructions from the police or fire departments.
A certain level of outrage over the deaths has pervaded Downtown since Saturday but perhaps nowhere has it been higher than at 125 Cedar St. — still dwarfed by the now 26-story Deutsche building.
“The L.M.D.C. and the L.M.C.C.C. are responsible for the deaths of two firemen,” said Mary Perillo, another tenant in the building.
Residents were displaced for over a year after 9/11, and in addition to worries about air quality and living next to a damaged building with toxic chemicals, they are among the few Downtowners that regularly hear the loud World Trade Center construction across the street.
Mark Scherzer, said it has been obvious for a long time the contractors were not being safe. A large piece of concrete he believes came from Deutsche landed on his Cedar St. terrace several months ago and a large piece of metal landed on his roof about an hour before the fire. Community Board 1 passed a resolution a year ago questioning the wisdom of hiring John Galt Corp., given the firm’s lack of experience removing toxic chemicals.
Galt, and the project’s parent contractor, Bovis Lend Lease, stood to net an extra $6 million if it finished by the end of the year – a deadline now out of reach.
“I thought the economic incentives were making them move too fast and this is just a horrible, horrible confirmation of that.” Scherzer said. “Every time we said this to [L.M.D.C. chairperson] Avi Schick he would say this is the safest deconstruction project that there has ever been. That clearly was not the case.”
Contractor problems and the L.M.D.C.
Schick and other state as well city officials appeared at an emergency C.B. 1 meeting Tuesday night. He suggested to residents that Bovis had no financial incentive to finish by the end of the year. But his spokesperson later acknowledged that the amended contract with Bovis says otherwise. The L.M.D.C. has reserved the right to try and recover $34 million from Bovis, but if the job were to have been completed by Dec. 31, 2007, the L.M.D.C. would have been able to fight for only $28 million.
[Downtown Express has previously reported that Bovis stood to net an extra $29 million, because a mayoral spokesperson confirmed that figure in February, after it was first published in The New York Times.]
Bovis dropped Galt from its subcontract on Wednesday.
Schick acknowledged that Galt did not have much experience but he has given differing assessments of Bovis, a large well-known construction firm.
On Monday night, he told New York 1 that Bovis was a “world-class contractor,” but then he told residents Tuesday that the firm has not answered his questions about the fire and he is considering a range of options to deal with them. He said a Bovis executive told him the firm planned to send a representative to the community meeting and he was surprised that they did not show up. Schick, who was appointed to head the L.M.D.C. this year by Gov. Eliot Spitzer, told Downtown Express after the meeting that he couldn’t fault his predecessors for selecting Bovis since it is a well-known firm with a good reputation.
Bovis declared and Galt in default Wednesday and canceled its contract. Executives have not commented since the fire.
Julie Menin, Community Board 1’s chairperson, said early Wednesday she had not heard for certain that Galt had been dropped, hoped it was true because of the “truly shocking” violations reported by the city Dept. of Buildings and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration over the years.
On Aug. 1, Galt and Bovis were cited for using blow torches too close to the building’s combustible materials, a violation that was first reported in Downtown Express last week.
Menin said the L.M.D.C. is the right agency to continue to take the lead on the Deutsche project because the corporation has gotten much better since Spitzer took office in January. “There’s a real difference in terms of responsiveness with this administration,” she said.
Avi Schick, chairperson of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., spoke at an emergency community board meeting Tuesday night.
Under Gov. George Pataki, the L.M.D.C. seldom responded to letters she sent or questions asked by residents on Deutsche, Menin said. The corporation is a federally-funded state-city authority that Pataki set up at the end of 2001 to manage Downtown’s rebuilding efforts. The city appoints half the board’s members, but the L.M.D.C. has been dominated by the governor since its inception.
The L.M.D.C. does have the support now of many of Downtown’s local elected leaders, who have also raised similar concerns about Deutsche over the years.
In his opening remarks at a press conference Tuesday, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver volunteered that he had confidence Schick and the L.M.D.C. would make the necessary changes to make the project safe.
“This is probably the first time, I think we have had an open dialogue and a willingness to come before the community board,” Silver said.
The L.M.D.C. has appeared many times before the community board under both governors, but when the subject turned to Deutsche, board members were often frustrated because their questions were not answered.
Councilmember Alan Gerson agreed that the L.M.D.C. under Pataki did not heed the warnings or answer his questions on Deutsche, but not everyone sees much difference in the administrations.
Esther Regelson, who lives near the building, said Tuesday night: “We’ve been here before. I’m hearing questions and answers I heard two years ago.”
Kevin Rampe, who was president and later chairperson of the L.M.D.C. under Pataki, said in a telephone interview that the suggestions that the agency could have prevented the deaths if it had listened to community warnings are “just ridiculous,” and declined to comment further.
Fire’s cause
F.D.N.Y. investigators on Wednesday confirmed previous reports that Engine 10, housed next door to the Deutsche, had not inspected the standpipes in the building for over a year. The standpipes were not working the day of the fire, which made getting water to the fire’s origin on the 17th floor enormously difficult. The last complete test of the system was done in 1996. The next 5-year test was scheduled for Nov. 2001 but was never done because the Fire Dept. and others had their hands full putting out fires still burning across the street and searching for human remains.
A visual inspection is required every 15 days during a demolition project. The president of the fire union said Tuesday that the fire company was told not to inspect the building. Deutsche’s black netted covering has been an eyesore since 9/11 and the project was delayed by insurance disputes until 2004, when the L.M.D.C. bought it for $90 million. Subsequent delays were caused by demolition plans which the Environmental Protection Agency did not approve for safety reasons, contract disputes, and new discoveries of human remains from the Twin Towers.
The Dept. of Buildings, which had a representative on the site whenever work was underway, did make regular visual inspections of the pipe on its upper floors, including the day before the fire. On the day of the fire, there was a broken piece of the pipe’s bottom, but investigators do not know how long that it was broken.
The cause of the fire is still unknown but it began in an area on the 17th floor where witnesses have told investigators that people sometimes smoked. Schick said that smoking was not permitted in the building because of the combustible materials.
No blow torches were used that day.
The plastic seals protecting the Downtown environment also made it difficult for the firefighters to breathe and find their way out. Both Beddia and Graffagnino died from cardiac arrest after breathing carbon monoxide.
Firehouse mourns
Both firefighters survived 9/11 and were from the Soho firehouse at W. Houston St. and Sixth Ave.
Graffagnino, 33, lived in Bay Ridge and is survived by his wife, their 4-year-old daughter and infant son, and his mother.
Beddia, 53, lived in Staten Island and was divorced. He is survived by two sisters and a brother.
At the Sixth Ave. firehouse, the firefighters came together in their sorrow for their fallen brothers, as family members and other department members came by to join them in mourning. Bouquets, many bearing farewell notes, piled up around metal gates on the sidewalk in front.
Arturo’s on W. Houston St. sent over 10 pizzas on Saturday night, just as they did on 9/11 and the days after and as they have done every Sept. 11 since.
“I knew Bobby,” said Lisa Giunta, 45, Arturo’s co-owner said of Beddia. “He’s been in the neighborhood a long time and I grew up here. He was a great guy. Very easygoing, very humble. They’re all young guys over there. They lost so many on 9/11. He was the senior fireman in the house. He was teaching them the ropes.”
She said Beddia and the firefighters often would come by to check Arturo’s coal-burning oven. Tourists would say they smelled fire — but it was just the restaurant starting up the oven.
Giunta said she had a feeling something disastrous had happened last Saturday when she heard so many sirens outside, and ran over to find out “who had died.”
Suzie’s Chinese restaurant also sent food to the firehouse last Saturday.
Assembly Speaker Silver stopped by Tuesday afternoon to pay his respects. Actually, the Engine 24/Ladder 5 men were being spelled by other firefighters from local firehouses so that they could attend Graffagnino’s wake in Brooklyn. But Silver said he just wanted to convey the message that Downtowners are thankful for the firefighters’ efforts, wherever they may be posted.
“I just thought it was important to go by the firehouse, with the firemen,” Silver said, “to have coffee, express appreciation. Basically, all I said was, on behalf of the city, we want to thank them.”
Andy Jurinko, Pat Moore’s husband, said he knows the firefighters were thinking about protecting the buildings near Deutsche including his, but he can’t help but think that two men died saving an abandoned building.
“This building sat for years because Deutsche wanted 10 times what they paid for it,” he said. “Meanwhile we come back in [Feb. 2003] and they haven’t even cleaned it. Now these firemen die in a needless wasted cause. They had to put the fire out, but they died for a ghost building that should have been taken down years ago. Their families are inconsolable.”
With reporting by Lincoln Anderson and Jefferson Siegel
