The most heartbreaking thing about the loss of firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino in the Aug. 18 fire at the former Deutsche Bank building was that government did not pay enough attention to the repeated, unmistakable signs that people’s lives were at risk.
Glass fell off the building onto the street and luckily missed pedestrians in 2004 and 2005. A 15-foot pipe crashed into the adjacent firehouse in May, injuring two firefighters — luckily no one was killed. Nearby residents have reported debris falling on their buildings in recent months. There have been repeated fire and safety violations, and Community Board 1 warned officials about one of the contractor’s safety record more than a year ago. On Aug. 1, the city issued a stop-work order because workers were so careless using blowtorches that sparks were landing near combustible materials — again, luckily no one was hurt or killed.
Our luck ran out three weeks ago.
Each time people raised questions about Deutsche, officials with two agencies effectively under the governor’s control — the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the building’s owner, and the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center — gave assurances that there was no need to worry and everything was safe.
Now the L.M.D.C. is leading the state investigation into what went wrong. That just won’t wash. A full, independent inquiry, perhaps from an inspector general, is essential to look into the entire problem.
After the pipe narrowly missed killing firefighters in May, Charles Maikish, who until recently ran the Construction Command Center, said it was “sort of a perfect storm.” He admitted to Board 1 that the push to speed the demolition of the damaged Deutsche Bank building led to the crash. Three months later, Avi Schick, L.M.D.C. chairperson, called the fatal fire a “perfect storm.”
Perfect storms are called such because they happen extremely rarely — having two so close together points to endemic problems.
Governor Spitzer and Schick inherited a long-delayed project with substandard contractors when they took over from the Pataki administration in January. The city bears responsibility, too, as does the federal government. The Fire Department didn’t inspect the standpipe for at least a year, and the broken pipe was a major reason for the deaths. The Department of Buildings continued to dutifully issue violations and fines for serious violations. Yet no one in power seemed to recognize we were heading for a disaster.
After the deaths, we heard more assurances, but five days later a 300-pound forklift plunged 23 floors onto a shed and seriously injured two more firefighters. As our sister publication Downtown Express reported, it appears the contractor, Bovis Lend Lease, has finally been pressured by the L.M.D.C. into putting its “A” team at Deutsche. Why weren’t the deaths, the near misses or the frightening safety violations enough to bench the “B” team before?
There are still 26 stories of Deutsche that need to be dismantled, and Fiterman Hall’s demolition hasn’t started. If we don’t learn from this tragedy, we are inviting others.
