What led to Deutsche deaths?

Editorial

Firefighters Robert Beddia, 53, left, and Joseph Graffagnino, 33, were both killed Saturday.

See our top story:
Community raised warnings at Deutsche

What led to Deutsche deaths?
Independent review needed

The most heartbreaking thing about the loss of firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino in Saturday’s 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 again in 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, but luckily no one was injured. There have been repeated fire and safety violations and Community Board 1 warned officials about the contractor’s safety record over a year ago. On Aug. 1, the city issued a stop work order because workers were so careless using blow torches that sparks were landing near combustible materials – luckily no one was hurt or killed.

Some of the Downtown Express headlines on the Deutsche project. All have been reduced from their original size except last week’s on the new Dept. of Buildings violations.

Our luck ran out Saturday.

A building that was badly damaged on Sept. 11, 2001, took two more of the city’s Bravest away.
Each time residents, Downtown elected leaders and we raised questions about Deutsche, officials with two agencies effectively under the control of the governor — the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., 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 — or to put it another way, we can’t risk any more whitewashes. A full, independent inquiry, perhaps from an inspector general, is essential.

The district attorney’s criminal investigation into the contractors is necessary and the assistance offered by the state Attorney General is welcome, but these offices may not be the appropriate ones to look into the entire problem and they don’t seem to want to anyway.

After the pipe narrowly missed killing a few more of New York’s Bravest, we called for an independent review of the project in a May 25 editorial, “Deutsche’s oversight needs oversight.” Our suggestion was ignored as were the repeated calls C. B. 1 made for an evacuation plan. We will never know for sure if there was anything that could have saved the lives of Beddia and Graffagnino, but there was certainly a lot more that could have been done to make their deaths less likely.

Charles Maikish, who until recently ran the Construction Command Center, said in June that the pipe crash 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, chairperson of the L.M.D.C. and Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s top economic development advisor, called the fatal fire a “perfect storm.”

The thing about storms is they come every few months. If you don’t fix the holes in the roof, each one seems “perfect.”

Clearly Spitzer and Schick inherited a long-delayed project with contractors not up to the task when the pair took over from the Pataki administration in January. The city bears a good deal of responsibility, too, as does the federal government. The city has substantial influence over the L.M.D.C., but even more importantly, it is running the fire investigations. The fire department had not inspected the standpipe for over one year and the broken pipe was a major reason for the deaths.
The actions of the contractors, John Galt and Bovis Lend Lease, are shocking but we can’t stop once we have nailed the most culpable scapegoats. The city Dept. of Buildings continued to dutifully issue violations and fines for serious violations. But no one in power seemed to recognize there were piles of evidence showing that we were heading for a disaster, and that fundamental change was needed.
This isn’t a blame game, but an effort to protect lives. There are still 26 stories of Deutsche that need to be dismantled safely. The demolition of Fiterman Hall, which was also damaged on 9/11, has not yet begun. Learning from the tragic mistakes will not lessen the loss of life but it could be a precious gift nonetheless.

On the communications front, while Schick has worked well with C.B. 1 before, during and after the fire, there were still no official messages from the state or city to the residents living right near the building.

The L.M.D.C. paid to expand the Battery Park City Community Emergency Response team specifically because of the Deutsche project, but the city’s emergency responders made no effort to contact any of the citizen volunteers. CERT members living near Deutsche did not know how best to help their neighbors and themselves.

Improvements to the notification system — if it can be called that in its current state — must begin to be made immediately. There needs to be open discussions about evacuation as it relates specifically to this complicated and dangerous project. Just because you can’t write a plan covering every possible scenario, does not mean it is acceptable to leave things at: “Just follow directions in an emergency.”
Most of the toxic contaminants have been removed from the building and we are relieved that the nearby air monitors have not shown asbestos or abnormal levels of particulate matter. We hope that good news continues when the tests for metals are completed soon. The building is no longer sealed so there is still a possibility of toxic chemicals being released. The fire investigation is the top priority, but the building must be resealed as quickly as possible. If this can’t be done in a few days, then the Environmental Protection Agency needs to deliver much more information to the public about the emergency plans.

Even though the environmental protections in the building probably made the situation more hazardous for the firefighters, they are necessary precautions which should not be a problem if monitors do things like prevent smoking in buildings with combustible materials, see that blow torches are used carefully and regularly check the standpipe system, to name just a few.

It is devastating to lose two more lives at the World Trade Center. But if we do not learn from this tragedy, we are inviting others.