By Julie Shapiro
In the years before the fatal fire at 130 Liberty St., Lower Manhattan residents asked one question over and over: What would it take to get the government to listen to warnings about the toxic skyscraper?
On Aug. 18, 2007, the residents got their answer.
A fire tore through the former Deutsche Bank building that day, killing two firefighters. The community was left with their own warnings ringing in their ears, knowing the deaths could have been prevented.
“Our worst fears were realized,” said Catherine McVay Hughes, chairperson of Community Board 1’s W.T.C. Redevelopment Committee. “The public had tried to do everything to prevent such a tragedy from happening. Are they listening to us more now? Tragically, yes.”
For Rob Spencer, director of media services at the Organization of Staff Analysts union, the events of Aug. 18 played out almost in slow motion, as the horror the community had predicted came to fruition. The feeling of large-scale tragedy recalled 9/11, he said.
In the months that followed the fire, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which owns the building, slowly started implementing the safety suggestions the community made years earlier. The L.M.D.C. fired subcontractor John Galt Corp., a company with little experience and reported mob ties (though John Galt caused yet another accident on the site five days after the fire, sending a pallet jack over the edge of the building and injuring two firefighters, one seriously). Six months after the fire, the L.M.D.C. finally agreed to finish decontaminating the building before resuming demolition.
“Sadly, people have to die for things to get better,” said Esther Regelson, who lives several blocks from 130 Liberty St. “That’s horrendous…. You can yell and scream up the wazoo that this is unsafe [but] they don’t listen until someone really is gone for good.”
Spencer agreed that the L.M.D.C. is listening to the community “a little bit more,” but he pointed out that L.M.D.C. officials still sometimes broadcast the “blame the community” message.
One of the biggest things the community pushed for both before and after the fire was an emergency notification system.
The confusion on the day of the fire — residents didn’t know whether to stay in their homes or evacuate — reminded Pat Moore, a resident of 125 Cedar St., of 9/11.
“No one knew anything,” Moore said of the fire’s aftermath. “No one was told where to go…. We had to go on our own instinct.”
After the fire and Moore and other activists’ renewed pleas, the city launched Notify NYC, a pilot notification program that sends e-mails and text messages to people in Lower Manhattan and several other neighborhoods. So far, 6,126 people have signed up for the Lower Manhattan notifications, said Jason Post, spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office. The city plans to announce the results of the pilot program and possible next steps by the end of the year, Post said.
“It happened because we raised a ruckus about it,” said Julie Menin, chairperson of C.B. 1.
Menin said the community has a larger voice on the Deutsche Bank project now, since she was appointed to the L.M.D.C. board last year before the fire. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver also holds periodic meetings with the L.M.D.C. and local residents for project updates, and the L.M.D.C. sends representatives to the community board every month.
Silver opened his Community Advisory Committee meeting Aug. 13 with a moment of silence in honor of the one-year anniversary of the fire. Silver then said that the task force’s work was far from over, as the project still needs oversight, said C.B. 1’s Hughes, who attended.
Kimberly Flynn, head of 9/11 Environmental Action, wants to see “preventative accountability,” meaning that the L.M.D.C. and its contractors would be held accountable for problems before someone gets hurt, not after. The inspections and violations should be more public and transparent, so the community can have a larger role, Flynn said.
Flynn wants the L.M.D.C. to host the government regulators at a public meeting to present their inspection schedules, but Mike Murphy, L.M.D.C. spokesperson, said the L.M.D.C. cannot force the regulators to attend. Murphy said the L.M.D.C.’s next public meeting on 130 Liberty St., sometime this fall, will focus on a draft of the demolition plan.
Like Flynn, many local residents and activists were keeping a vigilant watch on the project before the fire, and while they see improvements, they have not let down their guard.
Moore had an uncomfortably close view of the accidents that preceded the fire from her apartment next-door to the Deutsche Bank building. A 15-foot steel pipe crashed through the roof of the 10/10 firehouse in May 2007, injuring two firefighters. The pipe fell just feet from Moore’s bedroom window.
Now, Moore said she feels fairly safe living next to 130 Liberty St. because the government agencies seem more aware of the potential dangers.
Still, she said, “Any of us in this area could fall victim to any accident.”
No one is keeping closer tabs on the continuing violations at 130 Liberty St. than Spencer, from the Organization of Staff Analysts union, which has members working near the building. He checks the Buildings Department Web site regularly and finds problems ranging from a falling steel disc to the accumulation of flammable material. Since work on the building resumed, the Department of Buildings has issued a handful of stop-work orders for the violations, but they never lasted long. While Spencer called the violations “concerning,” he is hopeful that the increased oversight on the project means that it is safer.
“We’ve made progress, but I’m leery of being too happy,” Spencer said. “You never know. You just never know.”
The one-year anniversary of the 130 Liberty St. fire is another date for Downtown residents to add to the list of tragedies that are commemorated yearly. Andy Jurinko, Pat Moore’s husband, said he is growing weary of the growing list: The 1993 W.T.C. bombing, 9/11 and now Aug. 18, 2007.
“I try to ignore them as much as possible, to be honest,” Jurinko said from his home of 31 years across from ground zero. “Enough is enough.”
Of the triad of anniversaries, Aug. 18 is the bitterest, Jurinko said, because terrorists didn’t cause it.
“It was a kind of self-inflicted wound,” Jurinko said. “It was two guys dying over a derelict building that should have been taken down four years earlier, or five…. It’s just a nightmare.”
Adding to the nightmare is the fact that Jurinko doesn’t know whom to blame.
“It’s hard to narrow it down as to who is the criminal,” Jurinko said. “When everybody’s guilty, I guess nobody’s guilty, really. It’s diffused, it’s nebulous, it’s all over the goddamn place. It’s a tangled web of responsibility.”
Julie@DowntownExpress.com
