by Josh Rogers
Of the 885 state, federal and international buildings in New York City that are exempt from city codes, one stands out in Borough President Scott Stringer’s mind: The former Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty St.
“That was the worst example of stumbling and bungling and incompetence that resulted in death…and revisiting 9/11 for the community,” Stringer told Downtown Express last week.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. was in the process of decontaminating and demolishing the former Deutsche Bank building, which was damaged on 9/11, when a fire broke out last Aug. 18 and killed two firefighters. The L.M.D.C., a subsidiary of a state public authority, does not have to follow city codes. While the L.M.D.C. allowed Buildings Department inspectors inside the building before the fire, the building’s broken standpipe was never inspected.
Since last August, 130 Liberty St. has been awash with federal, state and city inspectors, and L.M.D.C. spokesperson Mike Murphy assures that the L.M.D.C. is following city codes.
But Joseph Graffagnino Sr., whose son was killed in the fire, said the L.M.D.C. has a record of broken promises.
“They said they would comply, but they didn’t,” Graffagnino said. “That’s why two people died.”
In the year since the fire, the L.M.D.C. and contractor Bovis Lend Lease have made many safety changes at 130 Liberty St., including adding a standpipe alarm that would detect malfunctions, installing an external switch to turn off the negative air pressure in the building and constructing two internal fire-rated stairwells. The L.M.D.C. also promised to separate the decontamination and demolition of the building, which the community had strongly urged them to do for years.
“They made it safer because they had to,” Graffagnino said. “If it wasn’t for the media on their case, they wouldn’t do anything. If they could save a dollar — they don’t care. They’re being forced to comply.”
Earlier this summer, Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler recommended that the city apply the L.M.D.C.’s new safety measures to all abatement and demolition projects in the city. Among the recommendations is a zero-tolerance policy on smoking, since investigators believe a worker’s cigarette reportedly started the Deutsche Bank fire. But, as Borough President Stringer put it at a press conference Sunday: What’s the point of New York City having the best building code in the country, if hundreds of buildings within the city’s borders don’t have to comply?
Jim Riches, a retired F.D.N.Y. deputy chief whose firefighter son was killed on 9/11, said the agencies currently exempt from the city’s codes will respond to nothing less than legislation. He scoffed at memorandums of understanding, agreements in which agencies voluntarily put themselves under the city’s control.
“A memorandum of understanding means nothing,” he said. “It’s like piece of paper you throw in the garbage.”
State Sen. Martin Connor said Sunday that he would introduce legislation to bring state buildings under the city’s jurisdiction.
Robert LiMandri, acting Buildings Department commissioner, declined to comment for this article.
The L.M.D.C. resumed decontamination at 130 Liberty St. earlier this year, after 13 regulator agencies approved the plan. Since then, new contractor LVI Environmental Services Inc. has finished cleaning floors 16 to 19, and those floors have passed inspection. Murphy, the L.M.D.C. spokesperson, expects floors 12 to 15 to be clean by the week of Labor Day and floors six to 11 to be done by mid-November. He expects the entire building to be clean by the end of the year. The 41-story building was demolished down to 26 stories and decontaminated to the 20th floor at the time of the fire.
Once the building is clean, the L.M.D.C. will demolish it, which will take until June 2009, Murphy said. The L.M.D.C. is working on the demolition plan internally, and they have not yet submitted it to the regulators for approval.
The L.M.D.C. has allocated about $275 million to 130 Liberty St. to buy, insure, decontaminate and demolish the building. That figure includes about $3 million in legal fees related to the district attorney’s criminal investigation. The L.M.D.C. will try to recover some of the $275 million from the building’s prior insurers, who agreed to pay for a percentage of the costs over $45 million.
The 130 Liberty St. fire had an immediate effect on Fiterman Hall, a City University of New York classroom building just north of the World Trade Center site that was also heavily damaged and contaminated on 9/11.
Benn Lewis, vice president of Airtek Environmental Corp., the Fiterman project’s environmental consultant, said one of his colleagues perfectly summed up the sadness and awareness of danger they felt on the day of the fire: “There but for the grace of God go we,” the colleague told Lewis.
After the Deutsche Bank fire, the Fire Department requested a slew of fire safety improvements at Fiterman Hall. Workers removed truckloads of flammable material from the building, encased the interior decontamination units with sheetrock to fireproof them and added self-closing doors that are triggered by smoke detectors. They also added an electronic system that detects whether fire watch inspectors are actually making their rounds.
Since the fire, Lewis started giving presentations to Con Edison, construction contractors and industrial hygienists to share the lessons he’s learned from the Fire Department. Advice can be as simple as using a non-flammable material over a flammable one whenever there is a choice.
The industry is particularly receptive to Lewis’s suggestions right now because of last summer’s fire and the recent spate of construction accidents across the city, but Lewis said making sites safer is a slow process.
“Is [construction] safer across board now? Probably not,” Lewis said. “It takes time for the industry to implement and become comfortable with new procedures, and to figure out how to do it better. There have been improvements, but there are more to come. The best thing is that people are talking about it.”
With reporting
