Saturday, May 3, 2008
Skyscraper Safety in NYC Post-9/11
Clash of Past, Present and Future Offers Context
Glenn Corbett speaking in front of a class at NYU's Department of JournalismPhoto by Mike Weiss
By Jonathan Starkey
New York, May 2 - Glenn Corbett was driving north on the New Jersey turnpike just before 9 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001.
A professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, Corbett was taking his normal route toward the park-and-ride in North Bergen, N.J., to catch a Manhattan-bound bus when he saw smoke billowing from a building Downtown. The A.M. radio station Corbett checked for news was ominously silent. Once parked, Corbett boarded the bus and traveled about a mile east before the bus was stopped by officers blocking the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel. Another park-and-ride bus had just made it through to New Jersey. Then, no traffic was allowed in or out of Manhattan. The city had been cordoned off by the officers. Corbett boarded the outbound bus that had stopped to pick up passengers, knowing nothing except that there was a major fire Downtown."I just went back to my firehouse because I didn't know what we would be doing," said Corbett, also a volunteer firefighter in Waldwick, N.J. "Some of the firefighters knew it immediately it was a terrorist attack."
This story, relying heavily on a 2005 report issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology about the events of Sept. 11, 2001, is meant to serve as a baseline for others that follow on this site. It is, simply, an introduction to issues investigated for this group of stories about skyscraper safety in New York City in the post-9/11 era.
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In 1962, the Port of New York Authority awarded a contract to Yamasaki and Associates, a Troy, Mich.-based architectural firm led by Monoru Yamasaki, to design the World Trade Center. The centerpiece of the design would be two towers, envisioned as the flagship buildings of Lower Manhattan and, at 110 stories and about 1,350 feet tall each, the tallest buildings in the world.
In 1966, officials broke ground at the site. Construction would begin in 1968. On Dec. 6, 1968, New York City adopted new building codes that relaxed regulations related, among others, to stairwells and fireproofing, some of which had been in place since the adoption of codes after the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in Greenwich Village. Locked doors, a lack of stairwells, faulty fire escapes and doors that opened in instead of out had trapped factory workers in the building, leading many to leap to their deaths below. Others died after a fire escape collapsed. In all, 146 factory workers died. The fire led to the first movement to make high-rise buildings safer, not just in New York City, but countrywide. Buildings with more than 2,500 square feet were required to have two staircases, for example, under the new codes. Another staircase was required for each additional floor of 5,000 square feet.
"Less restrictive" is how the NIST report described the 1968 codes, written largely to ease the costs of building Manhattan high-rises. Also, the loss of even a hundred square feet could mean the loss of thousands in annual rent in a high-rise office building. So developers petitioned New York City to relax the codes which they believed, according the NIST report, had not been revised to reflect technological advances. "The developers were arguing you were building bunkers and you've got way more safety than you need and its driving up costs," said Gregory Stein, a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and native of Long Island who recently studied the codes for a review published in November of last year. "They may have been right."
The answers included changing requirements for stairwells, requiring only three stairwells instead of six in New York buildings 10 stories and taller. Fire towers, stairwells with additional protection, were no longer required. Doors leading to stairwells were reduced in size to 36 inches, instead of 48 inches in the code that had been comprehensively revised last in 1938. Stairwell width requirements were 44 inches, 22 inches "per unit," unit meaning person, according to the code. Fireproofing standards were also relaxed and spray-on fireproofing was allowed. Structural columns were only required to last 3 hours instead of 4 hours, and floor framing, 2 hours instead of 3 hours.
Under normal circumstances in the city, though, the new code would not have affected the building for World Trade Center. Its plans had been submitted, and construction had begun, before the codes were adopted on Dec. 6. But the land was owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which existed outside the jurisdiction of the city and the state. Officials there, recognizing the "less restrictive" requirements in the 1968 code, told its consultants to make that the basis for the construction of the new World Trade Center.
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The Twin Towers had stood for about 28 years on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. At 8:48 a.m. that morning, a Boeing 767 – American Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston destined for Los Angeles –crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. When another jet - United Airlines Flight 175 with the same departure point and destination – crashed into the south tower 18 minutes later, an accident was all but ruled out. Tragedy played out for most Americans, including Corbett, on network news stations. Workers leaped from windows to escape the fire, and death by entrapment. Horrified onlookers screamed on the street below and told of the horror on network interviews. At 9:50 a.m., the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed, like its feet had been swept out from under it. Networks broadcast the collapse. Thirty-nine minutes later, the north tower came down in a sea of ash that spread like a wave through Lower Manhattan, blanketing it in soot. Countless were dead, to be sure. Others were trapped. Firefighters who had entered the burning building to save those inside were among them. Ultimately, almost 3,000 people were killed, including 343 firefighters and paramedics and 60 police officers.
Corbett said it was a “few weeks” after the attacks on Sept. 11 when he understood the need for an investigation of the collapses. “With the large number of firefighter fatalities, we needed to understand how that happened,” he said.
Just days into October, 2001, Corbett was in his office at John Jay in Manhattan when he received a call from Joe Calderone, the Daily News' chief of investigations. Calderone later wrote an article titled "2 Seek Probe of Collapse," which the Daily News published on Oct. 30. Corbett and Charles Jennings, another professor at John Jay, were the first to call for a private investigation of the collapse. "There are fundamental building and fire safety issues" that need to be investigated, Corbett told the Daily News. "This cuts to the heart of the way buildings are built and how we evacuate them." Corbett later teamed with Sally Regenhard, the mother of a fallen firefighter, as a consultant in her Skyscraper Safety Campaign. The campaign, among other issues, calls for safe development of Port Authority land and more firefighter participation in authoring codes. Corbett and Regenhard helped lobby for the bill that prompted the NIST investigation.
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A report issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in September of 2005 told of how the fireproofing had been knocked off of the steel foundation when the jets crashed into both buildings and the fire, fueled by thousands of gallons of jet fuel, caused the floors to sag. The report did not place blame on the codes.
The destruction caused by the planes had rendered useless five of the six stairwells in the buildings. The NIST report said that the separation of the stairwells reduced their ability to evacuate people on higher floors because of the visibility loss related to fire. Deaths were lessened only, the NIST report noted, because the buildings were only one-third to one-half full at the time of the attacks. If the towers had been full, 40,000 people would have been spread throughout both buildings, and up to 14,000 would have been killed. It would have taken three hours to evacuate everyone from the buildings, even without the stairwells destroyed. Of the about 17,400 people spread throughout the buildings at the time of the attack, 87 percent survived, according to the report. Many of the survivors interviewed by NIST investigators cited previous evacuation drills as helpful. Most who survived were below the crash sites at the time of the attacks. Most who were above the crash sites – workers, diners at Windows on the World on floors 106 and 107 of the north tower – were trapped and perished.
Many remain convinced that stricter standards for stairwells and fireproofing could have saved lives. Still others say that preventing an attack of such proportions may be impossible. David A. Lucht was the director of Fire Safety Studies at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts at the time of the attacks. He is now retired. Lucht said most buildings cannot be protected against jets, especially those bound for cross-country trips full of fuel.
"If it weren't for the building being impacted by an airplane, I can't imagine a fire that would have taken it down," Lucht said. "I can't imagine anyone designing a building that would withstand against that. You'd have to stop building them that tall.”
Jonathan Starkey is a graduate student in New York University's department of journalism. He is a member in the first class of the Reporting the Nation Program. Starkey enrolled at NYU after three years as a reporter at two weekly papers and a small daily in Delaware, where he grew up and lived with his wife, Meghan, before moving to New York. His work has appeared in Newsday.
United Nation Headquarters : Safety Hazard?
New York, May 2 -- The buildings of the World Trade Center were exempt from local codes. If this had not been so, more lives may have been saved when the buildings fell down. Seven years after the tragedy, another prominent and iconic building is exempt from the same safety codes : the United Nations Headquarters.Last year, New York City officials were concerned enough that Mayor Michael Bloomberg sent a letter to the U.N., followed by an inspection by the New York Fire Department. It took nine months for the U.N. to allow this inspection. Once inside, the city discovered more than 866 fire code violations.
Because of concerns about possible terrorist attacks, neither the city nor the U.N. would disclose specifics about the violations. Required improvements included certifying a number of U.N. security personnel as fire directors, filing updated plans to address the remaining fire-code violations, and establishing a link with the city in case of fire.
In Mayor Bloomberg's letter to the U.N., he said that if the United Nations did not make improvements by early 2008, the city would ban all public school visits to the United Nations.
The United Nations building is a distinctive complex in New York City that has served as the headquarters of the U.N. since its completion in 1950. More than 4,500 employees work in the building. Located on an 18-acre site on the east side of Manhattan, it is an international zone belonging to all member states. Because the U.N. compound is technically international territory, it was exempt from state and federal regulations on worker and environmental safety, even with respect to smoking, until last year's inspection by the NYFD.
Since then, the U.N. has announced that they would cooperate with the city to adhere to the new standards.
"We don't have to follow the U.S law here," said Werner Schmidt, public information officer at the United Nations. "It was on a voluntary basis that we let the NYFD inspect our buildings, and since then we have fixed things."
But even with the inspections and the progress made by the U.N., the building is still far from being safe, employees said, as it lacks basic fire detectors, sprinklers on many floors, and safety training. According to employees, the conditions remain bad enough to make both employees and visitors feel insecure about where they are, especially having witnessed the 9/11 tragedy.
"I saw a couple of guys walking around to install some sprinklers and stuff after the inspection last year," said one uniformed security guard, "but the building is really old, inside particularly. Even though they fixed some of the things, the changes weren't very comprehensive."
"After 9/11, I'm not sure whether there have been any physical changes, but definitely there has been a mental one, which is, I feel, concern about working in that building in particular,” said Paul Zachary, who works in the 36th floor office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). “It's such an iconic building, like the WTC, but I'm not sure if it's safe enough."
He added that people are able to smoke in the building "without any problem." His tone of voice implied this is not a good thing to do - cigarettes that end up trash cans, for instance, can start fire.
According to Schmidt, the U.N. public information officer, there are three areas in which the UN is addressing the violations that were issued by the FDNY in 2007. They have installed hundreds of smoke detectors; they are training a number of safety and security officers as FDNY-certified fire directors. And finally, by July, they will complete compartmentalization of the ventilation between parts of the buildings, so that in the case of an incident, the affected area can be isolated from other areas and smoke does not get transported throughout the complex.
In addition, the U.N. recently set up a new renovation plan, the Capital Master Plan. According to a UN report, it will focus on aspects of security, environmental and safety issues. They plan to also achieve a silver rating in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design(LEED), which is focused on energy efficiency moreso than on safety. But the U.N. has struggled for years to persuade the United States and the other 191 member nations to finance this multibillion-dollar renovation project. The Capital Master Plan has finally received funding but is not scheduled for completion until the end of 2014.
But the new renovation plan has yet to comfort many people in the building.
"It has been more than five years that they talked about the renovation plan, but I have no idea what would happen if we have a fire or something right now," said Tom, a worker for UNESCO who witheld his last name. "I'm not sure we have enough fire extinguishers on my floor, or if the stairs are wide enough to let all of the people get out quickly. It seems like it's so disturbing that we don't even think about it, and it is a real problem."
Many pointed out that in addition to fixing the building, the U.N. should have more safety training for the people working in the building. Employees stated that they are unaware of any organized plan or handbook for emergency evacuations, except for an email alert.
"I don't know how the fire alarm sounds. I'm not even sure we even actually have them," said Zachary, the man who works for the UNHCR on 36th floor. "I wouldn't say I noticed anything except the installation of fire sprinklers. Every thing is done piece by piece. But maybe they haven't gotten to my floor yet. I'd love to see that."
Sooyeon Kim was born in South Korea. While she attended Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul she volunteered as a math teacher in a poor community. She was also a reporter for a South East Asian migrant worker publication. As an exchange student at Western Washington University, she studied communication and the spicy taste of Indian curry. Kim interned at the Social Service Employees Union in New York City. She is currently a graduate journalism student at New York University, focusing on urban issues.City's Trust in Cranes Dwindles in Wake of Recent Accidents
By Kathryn CarlsonNew York, April 25 -- Sissy Siganoff panicked when she heard of the March 15 crane collapse that killed seven people and injured 24 others on Manhattan's Upper East Side. She was taken back to nearly two years ago when a 14-foot piece of crane pancaked the taxi she was riding in near Union Square.
Immediately after the recent crane collapse, a rattled Siganoff phoned her attorney, Howard Raphaelson. "She called feeling great anxiety and distress that the city could allow this type of disaster to occur again," said Raphaelson. "New York City is allowing construction disasters to occur one after another. Unfortunately for the families of the deceased in this recent disaster, Ms. Siganoff's warning was not enough. As is usually the case, the only proof that the City will react to is death."
According to Raphaelson, Siganoff has developed a severe fear of construction sites and overhead sidewalk bridges, forcing her to spend much of her time confined to her home. The crushed taxi now sits in the driver's brother's garage, reminding cabbie Chrislorm Paul of his brush with an 8,000-pound metal chunk that plunged within inches of his seat.
While Paul has gone back to driving taxis, the pair are in the midst of suing three of the companies involved in the maintenance and operation of the crane -- all of which are claiming they are "not at fault" because they were in compliance with the City's Building Code regulations.
Within days of the latest accident, city officials released a report describing the collapse stating that the crane was in the process of being "jumped" -- a technique where sections are added to the structure to raise it -- when a piece of a steel collar fell off the bracing and severed a lower portion of the crane, knocking out a set of braces and toppling the entire crane from the 18th floor of an East Manhattan residential building.
As reported by The New York Times, the number of crane-related accidents across the five boroughs increased from 2006 to 2007. There were eight accidents involving fatalities or injuries in 2007, up from five in 2006, and 21 incidents not involving fatalities or injuries, up from 14. The number of safety violations at high-rise construction sites has nearly doubled over the same period, according to a City report quoted in the New York Sun.
New York indeed stands tall, stretching lengthwise with its high-rise residential buildings and skyscrapers, peppered with the towering steel cranes that allow for upward development. But after the March 15 accident, cranes were no longer simply regarded as unaffecting machines -- and Siganoff was suddenly not so alone in her fears.
The crane collapse breached the public's trust in the stability of the more than 250 cranes that graze the city's skyline cranes. This accident and others -- including a December 2007 incident when seven tons of steel fell onto Murray Street and injured an architect, and a January 2008 accident when a construction worker fell 42 stories from a hotel on Spring Street -- has especially soured the relationship between cranes, and construction workers. Just as it's no longer unusual to see passersby avoiding the stigmatized structures, some construction workers are more wary about their close existence with cranes.
A crane operator of 22 years, who requested to be identified as J.M., was present at the site when Siganoff's taxi was flattened. "After seeing that accident, it was definitely a bit shaky for me," J.M. said, as he looked up at the crane on the site where he's now working at the corner of Bowery and Great Jones. "You just have to push past it. But after accidents like that and the recent one, there are guys now who don't want to go up in the towers anymore. It's more common than you'd think."
Another worker said he's also worried. "Right now I don't trust that everything's okay all the time," said Fernando Arajjo, a roofer with Roofers' Union Local No. 8. "You have to look out for your own safety, now I look for loose posts and screws. Because of the accidents, I feel like I have to be more careful."
Dr. Alberto Goldwaser, a psychiatrist with Forensic Psychiatric Associates, said this sort of reaction is not uncommon. "Even if a person was not there to experience a particular incident, a person is left with their own mind and imagination," Goldwaser said.
J.M. said trust among crewmembers is important in his line of work, adding that there's a small circle of crane operators and that it's an industry where everyone knows everyone. "A lot of guys won't work with the person who was in charge of the site for the recent accident," he said. "I'll only work with certain people. We're the ones up there. Everyday, people go up and down. These guys have families."
While it's largely the lead engineer's responsibility to make sure the crane is secure, J.M. said the crew looks out for each other and works together to ensure that the site is safe.
Following the March 15 collapse, the Buildings Department ordered some changes to the way the City inspects and regulates tower cranes. A City inspector must now be present every time a crane is erected, jumped, or dismantled, a project engineer must submit a written protocol for each jump, and nylon slings -- the tearing of which was thought to be involved in the most recent accident -- can only be used if they are specifically recommended by the crane manufacturer.
Some within the industry are already questioning the effectiveness of the new regulations. "When it comes to the new regulations, they're just assigning people to do things that they don't really have a clue about," J.M said. "What's more is that the people who are going to be on the hurting end of the new rules are the contractors, because they have a schedule to keep. We just did a jump on 57th Street and the City was late so there were 20 guys standing around waiting."
City Councilmember Tony Avella says these regulations are too little, too late, and points to the fact that no sweeping changes were made to crane-related building codes in the wake of the rise in accidents. "It's like the agency not only doesn't keep up with new industry practices, it's also doing no enforcement of the regulations that are already on the books," said Avella, who is a member of the Buildings and Housing Committee.
Avella said he became so frustrated with Building Commissioner Patricia Lancaster's inaction that he began calling for her resignation immediately after the most recent collapse. "This is not personal, but Commissioner Lancaster doesn't have the leadership capabilities or the political willpower to make changes. Enough is enough. She has to go."
After admitting to a City Council hearing that her department had incorrectly issued permits at the March 15 collapse site, Lancaster -- who held the position since 2002 -- stepped down April 23. While neither Mayor Michael Bloomberg nor Lancaster offered details of the resignation, both expressed confidence in Lancaster's deputy, Robert LiMandri, who will serve as interim commissioner.
The City Council's Buildings and Housing Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on April 29 to look further into the cause of the recent collapse and discuss the future of the city's cranes.
Kathryn Blaze Carlson is a graduate journalism student in the Reporting the Nation program at New York University. Prior to moving to the Big Apple, Kathryn worked as a correspondence writer in Canada's Prime Minister's Office. She earned an undergraduate degree in journalism with a minor in political science at Carleton University in Ottawa Canada, in conjunction with City University in London, England. Kathryn, a National Press Foundation Fellow, grew up on the Canadian prairies and has worked for publications ranging from a national magazine to a community newspaper to an online news outlet.
Friday, May 2, 2008
The Problem with High-Rise Residences
New York, May 2 -- Residents of high-rise apartment buildings in New York should be prepared to save themselves in case of an emergency – because high-rise residential buildings are not required to provide residents with a comprehensive evacuation procedure.“The best thing to do is to shut your door and pray,” said one New York fire fighter, who asked to remain anonymous. “We’ll be there as soon as we can, but until then, you want to keep the fire contained. So just keep your doors shut.”
Indeed, the Office of Emergency Management Web site instructs residents to do just that.
“If you live in a high-rise residential building, and the fire is not in your apartment, stay inside rather than entering smoke-filled hallways,” the Web site says. “Keep your windows closed, especially if the fire is in the apartment below.”
A fire two floors above her had set off the building’s sprinkler system, which was causing a flood in the apartment above hers. Soon, the water was coming through the ceiling into her apartment as well.
“I didn’t know there was a fire in the building until water started pouring from the ceiling,” she said. When she ran into the hall to notify the building manager, she finally heard the fire alarms going off in the stair well.
Fortunately for Liz (and the other residents of The Crest on Wall Street), the building is equipped with a sprinkler system. Without the sprinklers, McNamara could have been dealing with much more serious problems than her soaking wet furniture.
Jennings suggested that residential buildings should be required to be outfitted with two-way communication capability – like that which is currently required in office buildings.
A representative from the Office of Emergency Management for New York City made a simple, somewhat frightening conclusion for those who seek an evacuation procedure for high-rise residences: “There’s nothing in terms of a wide-scale one for apartment buildings – individuals need to be prepare themselves for evacuation.”
Protecting Yourself in Case of a Fire: Tips from the FDNY
1. Have a Fire Escape Plan
Things Fall Apart: Workers' Safety
New York, May 1 – A collapsed crane, a failed safety strap, a broken scaffold; we're only four months into 2008 and already 13 construction workers have died on New York City job-sites.
In spite of this string of worker deaths, pro-business groups are lobbying to gut what many deem essential labor protection: Section 240 of the New York State Labor Law. Commonly known as "the Scaffold Law," it requires that employers provide the proper safety equipment, and ensures injured workers the right to sue when that equipment is not provided.
In early April, at the intersection of Livingston and Schermerhorn - a downtown Brooklyn jobsite - worker Miguel Lagos, 32, was taking a smoke break. He wore his hardhat and protective eyeglasses on, still clipped into the harness he uses when he’s eight-stories up.
“If there is a law that can help make less-dangerous workplaces, why would anyone want to take that away?” he asked. Without skipping a beat he answered his own question – “money. It’s gotta be about the money.”
Mike Elmendorf, the New York State Director of the National Federation of Independent Business, lobbies Albany for the repeal of the Scaffold Law, and acknowledges that money is the motivating factor. But “this isn’t about trying to erode protection for workers,” he said. “it’s about fairness. It’s about an antiquated statute that’s been perverted into a cash machine for trial lawyers.”
Elmendorf and like-minded advocates believe that Section 240 holds business owners liable for any accident, regardless of the circumstances. “Under this statute,” said Elmendorf, “you could show up to work drunk, go up on a beam, dance a polka, swan dive into the ground, and it isn’t your fault.”
Paul Fernandes, the Chief of Staff at the Building and Construction Trades Council, said that isn’t the case.
“The Scaffold law simply says the contractor is absolutely responsible for providing a safe workplace,” said Fernandes. “If you remove that responsibility from the contractor, that gives them a crack that allows them to open the door to unsafe job sites. We have a hard enough time getting compliance as it is.”
The case history of Section 240 isn't so black and white.
In 2001, Sergeant v. Murphy Family Trust, Kevin Sergeant won a lawsuit for a work-site accident. As the court overview states, “plaintiff [Sergeant] stepped onto yellow insulation where a roof panel had been removed. The insulation had no underlying support, and plaintiff fell at least 21 feet to the floor below. At the emergency room, a blood test revealed that plaintiff’s blood alcohol level was .27.”
While a .27 blood alcohol level is enough to warrant a DUI arrest, it did not prevent Sergeant from winning his case. Because the proper safety devices were not provided, he was entitled to damages regardless of his intoxication.
A 2003 case, Blake v. Neighborhood Housing Services of New York, offers another perspective; a sober worker, Rupert Blake, was injured while scraping rust from a window. The jury found that all proper safety equipment had been provided in working order, and Blake had only personal negligence to blame. Neighborhood Housing Services was not held liable.
Other case law reinforces these two examples; if the proper safety equipment is provided, negligent workers have no case. If it’s not, all bets are off.
But those working to gut Section 240 are also concerned with inflated insurance prices, perhaps more so than potential lawsuits.
“The Scaffold Law is driving up the cost of liability insurance and in some cases making it impossible to even secure liability coverage [in New York City],” said Elmendorf. “By some estimates, it adds $10,000 to the cost of building a house in upstate New York.”
Ari Gross, of Gross & Co. Insurance, agreed that premiums for liability insurance can be prohibitively expensive.
“I’ve tried to get quotes,” he said, “and the replies were ‘the minimum insurance premium is $50,000’.” That is in contrast to, say, painter’s insurance, which Gross said was, "typically around $3,500."
Although Gross acknowledged that “one claim under the Scaffold Law can be disastrous for an insurance company,” he had no proof that the Scaffold Law was directly responsible for the high costs.
Paul Fernandes of the Building and Construction Trades Council has been contacting insurance providers for years, requesting that proof. He said he has yet to receive any.
“We’ve waited five to seven years for the insurance industry to provide it,” said Fernandes, “and they can’t provide a single shred.”
So far, Albany is staying out of the fight, seemingly content with leaving the law as is.
“They’d be crazy to take away that law,” said Lagos, the Brooklyn construction worker. “This city wants to build and build, and that's fine, but they've got to take care of us [the workers].”
(Click on image for a brief history of Section 240(1) of New York State Labor Law)
(Click play for a supplemental piece on workers' safety in NYC)
Lance Steagall is a student in New York University's Global and Joint Studies Program, with concentrations in Journalism and Latin American Studies. After graduating from Northwestern University in 2005, he moved to Concepcion, Chile, where he worked as an English professor at a private language institute. Since 2004 he has been actively involved in a political website he started with three other Northwestern alumni, www.theseminal.com
Tall Buildings, Skinny Stairs?
How wide are you?
I just the measured the widest part of me (my shoulders) and I’m 16 inches across. Add a couple inches on each side for normal movement, and I need at least 20 inches of width to walk down an office hallway or stairwell. But I’m a good bit smaller than the average
So if this suit-wearing average guy and I wanted to walk down a stairwell at the same time – if there was a fire in a high-rise, for instance, and we were trying to get out – we’d need 47 stairwell inches. Two people closer to his size would need 54 inches. But what if, instead of people filing downstairs side-by-side, there were also firefighters coming up? Firefighters wear big suits and carry a lot of gear, so they take up more room. How wide would that stairwell need to be?
That question is at the heart of a dispute about
The
The largest building evacuation in
John Labriola, a WTC survivor who used the stairs to escape from the 71st floor of the north tower, contributed his recollections of that day to the
Labriola also took photographs during the evacuation. One of the most famous, taken within the stairwell, shows civilians flattened against the wall as firefighters pass. The stairwells in the north tower were 44 inches wide.
Glenn Corbett, a fire sciences professor at
National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) analyzed the WTC collapse and made 30 recommendations about how high-rise buildings might be stronger, safer, and easier to get out of. NIST investigators cited Labriola’s photographs and testimony from other survivors in advising that high-rise buildings use wider stairwells. They found that WTC evacuees moved twice as slowly as had been estimated and concluded that if the towers, which were less than half full on September 11, had been fully occupied, 14,000 people would have died. “To achieve a significantly faster total evacuation at full capacity would have required increases in egress capacity – the number and width of exits and stairways,” said lead NIST investigator Dr. S. Shyam Sunder in 2005.
That was not the first such proposal. Jake Pauls, a fire safety specialist from
Based on his studies, Pauls proposed a new standard minimum of 56 inches. As Corbett explained, "56 inches gives you the ability for counterflow, the ability for people to pass. It's an obvious solution. Any four-year-old can figure that out."
The New York Buildings Department agreed – for a while. As late as May 2007, proposed code revisions included wider stairwells, but the version due to go into effect this year returned to the old standard. What happened? This is where the numbers change from inches and people to square footage and cash.
In
When the Buildings Department was drafting the new building code, it “requested NIST’s input and expertise in five specific areas,” including stair widths, according to a 2005 press release. But the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA), whose members own 80 percent of North American office space, “blocked every attempt” to implement NIST’s suggestion, according to Corbett. An advocacy memo from BOMA to its members asked them to work “at the state and local level to ensure that the NIST recommendations are not used as justification for introducing unnecessary new requirements in state and local building codes.”
Representatives of BOMA and the Real Estate Board of New York volunteered on the city committee to decide egress requirements for the new building code, where they successfully fought to keep the old width rather than give up floor space for stairs.
Woody Pascal, chief of staff to Councilman Erik Martin Dilan, who chairs the City Council’s Housing and Buildings Committee, recalls the debate. “There was an issue with the stairs, yes. Basically, if the stairs were wider, the rooms would be smaller.”
The Buildings Department notes that the codes specify a minimum only and says developers can always build wider stairs, as the Durst Organization is doing with the new Bank of America building in Midtown. But few are willing to forgo potential profits in the current market, where luxury offices on Wall Street can rent for several hundred thousand dollars per square foot per year.
Frederic Schwarz, a Manhattan-based architect, has worked on a number of high-rise projects in recent years. He said developers “want to do the right things, but only to a point." He was a leader in the early efforts to redesign the WTC site and thinks a lot about building safety. But he doesn’t even try to design wider stairs for commercial clients. “Forget it,” he said, “That’s not even a conversation. You’re fighting for every inch.”
And so, the 2008 New York City Building Codes will go into effect on July 1. The required minimum width for exit stairwells in high-rises will be: 44 inches.
Andrea Galyean is a graduate journalism student at NYU. She holds a B.A. in theatre from the University of Maine and has a complicated job history. She was, most recently, the Outreach Manager for Phoenix Public Art. Her work has appeared in the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Arts. She takes the stairs.Safety: "Forced Down People's Throats"
New York, May 2--When a plane hit One World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Greg Trevor was staring out the window at the Statue of Liberty. The impact of the airliner that crashed 20 floors above him almost knocked him to the floor and he felt the building swaying.
Because Trevor was the senior information officer for Port Authority, news stations immediately started to call him for comments about the incident. Trevor hung up on the reporters. He had a job to do: he was thoroughly trained to deal with all emergency situations and needed to put his preparation techniques into action.
“Within a few minutes, we gathered the staff, threw files and notepads into our bags, and prepared to evacuate the floor. It began to fill with grainy smoke,” Trevor wrote in his account of the tragic event later that afternoon.
Everyone on Trevor’s floor, the 68th, got out of the World Trade Center alive that day. “I know people that were on the 65th, 72nd, 73rd, all different floors where they had to get some people stuck in elevators on their floor out first before they started to evacuate,” Trevor remembered during an interview seven years later.
“People in wheel chairs were carried down and people who were visually impaired made it out too. A lot of people knew what they needed to do and they got out safely.”
The people who “knew what they needed to do,” were those who had been trained or were led by people like Trevor who had regularly participated in training exercises, classes, and emergency drills.
One month prior to 9/11 Trevor had participated in a table top exercise – a hypothetical situation was given to him and other company appointed fire marshals on his floor, and they were to talk through each step required to ensure every employee’s safety and well being. That exercise had nothing to do with a terrorist attack, but past table top exercises he’d participated in contributed to saving Trevor and thousands of others the day the planes destroyed the twin towers.
As dull as “emergency preparedness” may sound, and as irksome a fire drill can be on a typical work day, people who are well prepared for emergencies have a better chance of making it out alive on tragic days like 9/11, or out of any unexpected dangerous situation.
Sadly, there were thousands who lost their lives on 9/11, whether they were well-trained or not, but New York City realized that regular citizens were well-trained heroes that day. Many survived because they or their leaders were prepared for something as unexpected and catastrophic as a fatal terrorist attack.
In 2004, in response to 9/11, New York State enacted a law called local law 26 (L.L.26) which requires all high rise buildings to institute Emergency Action Plans (EAPs). EAPs are detailed response plans for any type of emergency besides a fire (fire safety plans have been in effect for decades). Terrorist attacks, chemical spills, threats to air quality, and natural disasters, are a few examples of emergencies covered under L.L.26.
Of the approximately 1,800 buildings in the city that now require EAPs, about 900 have filed their plans with the New York Fire Department, but only about 370 have been accepted by the department, according to an official from the bureau of fire prevention who wished to remain anonymous.
The reasons for a rather low number of accepted EAPs vary; law makers and building owners hope that EAPs will never have to be used, so the time and money spent on their implementations is hard for some buildings to commit to. EAPs are inherently difficult to create so building owners and managers often turn to expensive outside consultants to help with plans, which raises costs. The fire official from the bureau of fire prevention said that EAPs created by outside consultants are often the best submitted to FDNY. However, the fire department has rejected many, some created by private consultants, and some created by building managers themselves. Buildings that require, but have failed to create an EAP, will eventually be issued a violation and probably be fined “a couple hundred dollars or so,” said the fire official. But the cost of creating an EAP is much higher.
“There was a huge paradigm shift after 9/11,” said Ira Tenebaum, coordinator of the public private initiative at the New York Office of Emergency Management. “It changed the way anyone looked at emergency management (and they realized) staff and personnel was more important than computers and information.”
Some building owners and managers seem to have come to this realization, but most have not; most just comply with the law and do not take any further precautions to ensure their tenants safety, according to experts in the emergency preparedness field.
“No one wants to make an investment in safety, they only want to do the minimum safety requirements, because it is not something that they make a priority of unfortunately,” said Evan Lipstein, president of Hyline Safety, an emergency preparedness consultant company. “EAPs are forced down people’s throats,” said Lipstein. “Otherwise they don’t give a rat’s ass about safety, they just care about putting money in their pockets.”
Bob Pecora of Quality Fire, an emergency consultant company, said most of the buildings that use Quality “stick to the minimum requirements, because of the cost factor.” But he added that some of the bigger properties, like Boston Properties, have asked for additional training. “I guess they are concerned for safety. They have a lot of large properties in NYC and they asked for extra seminars, extra drills.”
Depending on a building’s size, the number of people who are involved with training varies. EAP and fire safety laws require each floor to have a fire marshal who communicates with the fire (and now EAP) director, who is most familiar with the building, and often also the security guard.
The safety directors receive 20 hours of training, and three tests; two written tests and one “on-site” test. During the on-site test, the fire department goes to a site and tests the fire safety director by creating an emergency scenario in which the director will need to prove his or her knowledge of the building and the correct steps that will need to be taken to ensure the tenants’ safety. Their job is critical: They are the liaison between the fire department and the people in the building.
“I am responsible for any alarm activations, plus I’m familiar with the building, first responders are not,” said Ray Rosario, a fire safety director who has been in the business for 27 years. “I know where the stairwells are and what kind of facilities we have, how to use elevators in fire recall, how to evacuate handicapped people. But people do not take fire drills seriously,” he said. “It’s frustrating because we will have a drill and they don’t want to get up and do it.”
Fire fighter Joe Cunningham leads a fire safety director certification course twice a week for Hyline to teach future directors everything they need to know to pass the tests and discuss how best to deal with tenants who are reluctant to take orders. On one recent Thursday night his students patiently sat through a four hour class, occasionally murmuring complaints about how people fail to perform their daily duties as fire marshals, like signing in at the front desk everyday.
Despite their complaints about others who do not take safety seriously, the class of mostly building personnel were quick to proclaim how importantly they view their ability to deal with emergencies, and general safety.
“This ain’t no joke,” said Ernesto Baez, 44. “This is people’s lives.”
Elizabeth Giegerich, a graduate student at New York University, focuses on metro reporting, and has covered political, environmental and community issues. An intern at the New York Daily News, she’s also written for Voice of America and ACORN’s Social Policy Magazine.
Public Place: High Rise or High Risk?
Photographs by David Giambusso. Music by John Delore.
Gowanus development promises affordable housing, but at what cost to public health?
By David Giambusso
Brooklyn, NY, May2
As Balan points out, exposure to these elements is not what most people likely bargain for in buying or renting a new home. “Would you want barges and trucks carting stinky and heavily contaminated sediment passing beneath your million dollar condo's window and front door?” asks Balan, saying also, “As a consequence, average citizens rich and poor [are] heavily and consistently lured to pay highest value to live on contaminated land, contaminated water and bad air quality, on a high risk flood zone waterfront. A small minority of developers get rich and thousands of families are left to hold a dirty bag, with a high mortgage and immense debts.”
The State’s Response
Yet plans to cleanup
David Giambusso is a master's candidate in NYU's Reporting the Nation program and has worked as a freelance journalist for several years, covering local news in New York City and Westchester. He currently splits his time between journalism and music, performing and recording with the rock and roll sensation, Ann Courtney & The Late Bloomers. He would like to thank Andrew Garib for his extraordinary intellect, without which none of this would be possible.Over and Out
The FDNY’s radios have not changed since September 11. “Firefighter radios still are not able to transmit messages in high-rise buildings, subways, and tunnels,” retired FDNY Deputy Chief Vincent Dunn wrote in his report titled, Three Years Later: What has Changed Since 9/11. “Battalion chiefs may carry portable booster radios (each weighing 22 pounds) that enhance communications between the fire ground commanders and firefighters’ portable radios,” Dunn wrote, “This so-called ‘quick fix’ is nowhere near complying with the recommendation of the McKinsey and Co. consulting report.”
The McKinsey report, "Increasing FDNY’s Preparedness," detailed New York City building owners’ responsibility by recommending that they “install and maintain permanent equipment (an in-building repeater) that picks up and amplifies walkie-talkie signals.”
Retired FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches recalls his experience with Motorola radios on September 11, 2001. “Motorola radios were ineffective on 9/11,” Riches said, “and many firefighters in the north tower never heard the call to evacuate after the south tower had collapsed. They had two evacuation calls one full hour and one half hour before the north tower collapsed.” Newly retired Riches was a firefighter for 30 years.
Motorola company officials stood by their radios and blamed the problem on the overloaded communications network on September 11, 2001. “If you have 400 or 500 people trying to talk at once, it’s a wonder anyone heard the transmissions,” said John McFadden, a company spokesman.
In March 2001, Motorola sold FDNY radios with a no bid contract. “Motorola is a very sore subject,” NYPD firefighter William G. Dennis said, “I remember the day the FDNY gave us the new Motorola radios. We were never trained on them.” Dennis went on to say that with the FDNY’s old radios, “as soon as you pushed the button your transmission would start immediately. These new radios had some sort of repeater in them so you had to wait two seconds before you could transmit. Messages were being cut short.” Dennis’ friend, firefighter Luke Healy, became lost in the basement of a house fire in Richmond Hill Queens. This was the reason why the radios were taken out of service after just one day. “He gave a mayday and not one of the units in the fire building heard it,” Dennis said, “Yet units responding from a mile away heard it on their radios. They issued the new radios to us without field testing them.”
Moreover, “Motorola got this as a no bid contract,” Dennis said. This means that there was no competition for Motorola’s agreement with the FDNY. “The then fire commissioner Thomas Von Essen was given a loan by Motorola in excess of $60,000,” Dennis said.
“Motorola and Commissioner Tom Von Essen of the FDNY made a critical mistake and cost many firefighters their lives at the World Trade Center,” FDNY firefighter Steven Mormino said, “The new radios was released to the field units without being tested and failed. Many Firefighters who were killed at the World Trade Center never heard the order to withdraw due to a lack of repeaters. This was known before the radios were issued but were pushed into service.” Mormino has been a career FDNY firefighter for 20 years.
FDNY firefighter Vincent Anzelone is baffled by what he feels is Motorola’s incompetence. “They do try to innovate for us,” Anzelone said, “but it is hard to believe we can have cell phones and GPS systems with pinpoint accuracy and clarity and all we get is static.” Anzelone will retire this year due to respiratory illness from 9/11. By January 2002, 300 firefighters went on leave for repertory problems. From January 2001 to July 2001, there were 274 FDNY retirements; compared to 661 FDNY retirements from January 2002 to July 2002.
Motorola’s digital radios failed within one week of operation. The 20-year-old radios were then redistributed to the firefighters which were used on September 11 and failed the fire fighters. “The city of New York and Motorola have had a very friendly and questionable relationship,” Riches said, “No contract, no field test and lies that other cities, Boston and Chicago, had ordered them and used them.”
Motorola’s relationship with the New York City government angers some firefighters. Firefighter Anzelone said that when it comes to the New York City government, “it is all about cost. The government cares nothing about human life.”
Retired FDNY firefighter John T. Vigiano blames the government over the company. “Remember, the city always set the standard and always went with the low bid,” Vigiano said, “I am sure if the city paid more, they would have gotten a better radio.”
Retired firefighter Nicholas C. Gaudiosi said the “government can provide the funds to research new technology and purchase equipment. Firefighters should decide what is necessary to do the job.” Gaudiosi is Vice President Director of Life Safety at Lehman Brothers global investment bank and former FDNY firefighter who retired in 2003 as Captain of Ladder 7.
The government “sometimes red tape at city level will lead to bad purchases,” Riches said.
While the issue of radios has continued to simmer among firefighters, other innovations have been accomplished. After September 11, 2001, there have been advances in firefighter safety technology include. Personal safety harnesses and communications units have advanced since 9/11, according to Anzelone. For second alarm fires or more, according to Anzelone, require better radios to hear fellow firefighters and a television to see inside the building. Safety Director Gaudiosi said that since 9/11 there has been “more accountability” and “a better plan of action to reduce the number of men directly involved, moving the command outside the immediate impact area.”
High-rise fires have their own challenges that must be met with new tools to conquer them. “High-rise fires are very hot and difficult fires,” Riches said, “Water is a necessity, blankets, thermal, over windows to prevent wind driven fire.” Riches also stressed the need for “radios to communicate any pertinent information” and “fans to pressurize stairs.”
“High rise fires have been around for years, and the FDNY has been battling them the entire time, usually with success,” Vigiano, “The entire world is nearly plastic and in an office building is nearly everything has a plastic base. Polymers break down and melt, giving off noxious fumes when at a certain temperature ignite into a fire ball.” Vigiano was a firefighter for 36 years.
Lehman Brothers Director of Life Safety Gaudiosi said other tools needed in a high-rise fire are thermal imaging, cameras, search ropes, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), personal removal device, and radios with a repeater system, SCBA, and rabbit tool. Anzelone also outlined the need for quality radios as well as “knowledge of the building, and working standpipes.”
Firefighter Mormino emphasizes the importance of “larger SCBA breathing bottles, improved radio communications, thermal imaging cameras, Haz Mat suits, decontamination trailersRadio repeaters handi talkie recorders” for FDNY firefighters.
“Firefighters adjust to anything,” Gaudiosi said.
Riches agrees with Gaudiosi. “Firefighters are more than willing to adapt to any new technology.”Not all firefighters believe that the transition is that effortless. FDNY firefighter Anzelone said the transition to new technology is going “slowly. We like to test things out before we go in to battle with them.”
“From my own experience and listening to firefighters,” retired firefighter Vigiano said, “I do not think this generation is adequately adjusting to some of the innovations that were introduced prior to 9/11.”
FDNY firefighter Mormino said that firefighters adapt to new technology “very well as long as there is sufficient training.”
Some firefighters do not see any progress being made. “Fires in high rise buildings are dangerous,” retired Chief Riches said, “Studies are being conducted to help in fire safety in these buildings, but we are still equally in danger before 9/11 and thereafter.”
Anzelone said there are no positive changes and the “radios still suck.”
Radios are one of the most important devices a firefighter carries with him. Retired Captain Gaudiosi said radios are “Everything, communication of changing situation so that firefighters can adjust strategy and tactics, request for help, etcetera.”
“Radio communication is critical,” Riches concurs with Gaudiosi, “Evacuation orders must be heard, changing situations, location of civilians, wind changes, and ventilation, both planned and unplanned. An order which is not heard can be fatal.”
“Radios are one of the best tools a firefighter has,” Dennis said. Dennis was a firefighter who retired five days before September 11, 2001. “Communication is a major factor in fighting fires,” Dennis said, “I can not tell you how many times over my 20-year career that I have been told to evacuate a building. When you are given an order, you follow it. That’s the way we are trained. You are inside and do not see what the chief sees. There could be something like a gas tank or propane leak or any number of dangers that have to be relayed to one another.”
Radios are so useful that each firefighter should carry one. “I worked in a Rescue Company and each man carried a radio before it was allowed,” Vigiano said, “and when I was promoted to Captain, I made sure each man carried a radio in my ladder company before it was allowed. To me, radios were the most significant tool we had in my career.”
As for lessons people should learn from September 11, 2001, “the best recipe,” former Chief Riches said to prevent tragedy, “is fire drills and planning so that everyone knows what the whistles and orders mean and how to get out.”
Molly Stark Dean is a Reporting the Nation major at New York University. She attended Suffolk University where she received a Bachelor of Science in Communications and minored in Creative Writing and Psychology. She interned at WGBH-TV, WNYT-TV, WHDH-TV, and ABC News Nightline.
Liability or the Deepest Pocket- Will Post 9/11 Suits Help Push Reform?
New York, May 2--Lawsuits are the American way. Even as we vilify them, we can thank lawsuits for seatbelts, fire escapes, even mandatory heating in our apartments.
In the wake of 9/11, government contractors, airlines, the city of New York, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Port Authority, the Federal Aviation Administration and the government of Saudi Arabia have all been litigants in claims brought by victims, their families, and workers. Of the original 95 lawsuits on behalf of 96 victims, 53 cases were settled quickly. Others, including the large class-action suits by first responders and the residents of lower Manhattan against the city and Port Authority, remain unresolved.
These lawsuits claim to be motivated by a desire to help the public gain better access to pertinent information. But, do plaintiffs in 9/11 cases just want their share of large government payouts? Or, will the logic of the law help us carve out where the oversights, assumptions and disorganization that allowed mishandling to occur were located, and thus, help us institute reforms?
For Joel Kupferman, of the Environmental Law and Justice Project, the goal of the suits is noble, not predatory. “I don’t want the head of the EPA lying to us. I don’t want people promoted for leaving a disaster like this. I want medical monitoring and proper clean up for people [who are at risk for dust inhalation,]” he says.
On March 27th, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld an earlier decision by the Federal District Court in Manhattan, which will allow one major case against the city, one that has more than 4,000 plaintiffs, to go forward. The opinion stated that the purpose of the suit was to determine if the city was immune from prosecution because 9/11 was an extraordinary circumstance, and that it would have to determine that on a case by case basis, meaning the case could easily go on for years. On April 22nd, the former head of the EPA was found not personally liable for the “conscience-shocking” assurances she gave to New York City residents, entreating them to return to homes and schools covered in toxic dust.
But Kupferman says toxic tort cases, while vitally important to improving safety, are ineffective in spurring reform because they often carry a gag order. This prevents others whom the toxins might affect from learning about the situation and about the legal and environmental remedies available to them. Both the amount of the payout and the exact details of the case are often kept secret as a condition of settlement.
The city has admitted that the World Trade Center’s destruction sent aloft dust that has made people sick. Last May, Mayor Bloomberg asked that the compensation fund for 9/11 victims be re-opened to allow first responders to be compensated for their suffering caused by the toxic dust that the towers’ demolition spewed into the air. He has not said that residents of lower Manhattan should be compensated. But for the plaintiffs in Kupferman’s case, change, not recompense, is the primary goal. The court that matters most to them is that of public opinion, as the issue of toxic dust has not been widely discussed since the 2006 death of detective James Zadroga, whose status as a first responder was so scrutinized that people now seem reticent to state publicly that their health concerns are directly related to 9/11.
The Environmental Justice Project has launched a civil suit against the EPA, stating that the Fifth Amendment rights of their clients to be free from bodily harm were violated when the government failed to alert residents to the risks of returning to work, school and residence in lower Manhattan. The suit seeks unspecified damages. It differs from a toxic tort case in that it could also result in an injunction that requires some action on the part of the city, rather than a settlement. Kupferman says money is incidental. The real hope is that Christine Todd Whitman, head of the EPA during the disaster, will testify about the mistakes that were made. The litigants in this suit are interested in the city and various federal agencies’ responsibility for the children who were allowed to go back to school two months after the attacks, when the dust had barely settled, and for the city inspectors who visited sites all over downtown without face masks because the city was afraid of causing alarm.
Not everyone feels that residents have strong claims against the city, let alone the federal government, for failing to ensure their safety. The question of whom, if anyone, to sue when a falling building poisons you with asbestos, is difficult to parse. Some think the city, Port Authority, and EPA are not responsible, that common sense about the risks involved ought to have prevailed.
“It’s not as though [they] got black lung,” says Adam McClelland, who lived in Soho during the attacks, and went to the World Trade Center site as the towers fell to hand out coffee to firefighters for days. “It’s just that it was an extraordinary circumstance, and it’s gotten a lot of attention,” he says. McClelland does not recall having any respiratory problems after the attack, but admits that “everyone is different, and we still don’t know what will happen in 15 years.”
Kupferman felt federal jurisdiction was the easiest to go after, and so his suit focuses on the EPA, but, as he says, “there are 3 or 4 different layers of government here” that one could construe as responsible for your safety in an event such as 9/11. “You would think that would help you be safer,” says Kupferman, “but it was the opposite.”
However, are government entities just the deepest pocket in a web of liability surrounding an unprecedented tragedy? Kupferman believes that laziness, incompetence and greed were the real issues, and litigation is the only way to force government to behave differently. He says that internal correspondence at city government shows that economic interests pushed the re-opening of lower Manhattan, and that warnings from the EPA were ignored by the city. He also alleges that hired experts, such as doctors and engineers, were told to not to find the area dangerous by city officials, who hoped to mitigate the disaster’s impact on the city’s economy.
Carrie Crow worked in lower Manhattan shortly after 9/11 and could have been party to a suit, though she is not. “I felt like I was pressured, there was this patriotic campaign that said you should show up to work, you should go out and buy things, you should take your kids to school and resume life as normal,” she says, but now she thinks this was not the best course of action. “I think the EPA and the city, they gave out totally incorrect information, it was a huge mistake. They let their constituencies down,” Crow says. She felt she was assured that it was safe to go to work, and now knows it may affect her respiratory health later in life. “The city lied,” Crow says.
Some questions remain as to the good faith of some post-9/11 litigants, however. Paul DiNapoli, co-counsel in the first-responders’ case, has recently come under scrutiny because of alleged abuse of settlement funds dispersed after he won his first big class-action suit- the “fen-fen” diet pill case. Although the actual numbers are protected by gag order, many believe that suit resulted in a payout of over $1 billion. DiNapoli has said publicly that he wants settlements for his clients in the 9/11 case. Napoli, Bern, and Ripka LLP, his firm, says they need to settle well in order to break even because they have already spent millions on expensive medical research for their 9/11 case.
Michael Eatroff worked on a first responders’ case against the city and the Port Authority. He says his firm “represented different workers from different agencies,” in a class action against the city “for all emergency workers who worked at the site after it fell and within the first two years.” During three and four hour depositions Eatroff saw workers thoroughly questioned about physical symptoms, mental and emotional problems, and respiratory problems. “City attorneys wanted to show that there were other causes of our clients’ respiratory problems,” said Eatroff. His clients claim not only that they suffer from chronic respiratory problems, but that the problems were caused by asbestos, not the mere dust that the city said was, in Rudy Giuliani’s exact words, “just the World Trade Center cough.”
Research physicians, such as Robin Herbert, of Mount Sinai Medical Center, have said that asbestos, dust and fiberglass could still have been an issue for as long as two years in lower Manhattan. Some first responders “continue to have persistent upper and lower respiratory symptomatology — coughs and sinus problems,” Herbert said in an NBC interview in 2003.
And even if all the safety regulations during clean up had been strictly followed, the levels of asbestos and other toxins might still have been too high to be safe or legal, especially for children. However, the private contractors hired to dispose of 9/11 debris did not always follow the regulations, as the contractors themselves have admitted. Representatives of the company would eventually state at a public meeting that they would have needed to have “workers' mothers on site to admonish them to [effectively] comply,” with the regulations the city stipulated.
Students at Stuyvesant High School, located across the street from the World Trade Center, were allowed to return to school in October, although studies have shown that area was still replete with toxins. Independent testing has shown that the material that trucks removing 9/11 debris carried contained levels of asbestos and fiberglass that were unlawful to transport through public streets, according to Kupferman. Responsibility for the procedure is shared by Port Authority, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the City and the EPA.
“The real problem with port authority is that they are being lax right now during reconstruction,” says Kupferman. The Port Authority and LMDC are unique entities: hybrids of the public and private, staffed and funded by both government and private enterprise. This causes unique jurisdictional conflicts and as well as a murky landscape of motives. It is not unreasonable to assume that business interests would be part of the decision-making for the LMDC. Activist Sally Regenhard, of the Skyscraper Safety Coalition, says the clean-up was “a massive failure at the federal, city, state and definitely the Port-Authority level.” “It all comes down to money,” says Regenhard.
All that was decided in the most recent legal episode was that in fact the city’s immunity would have to be decided on a case-by-case basis. How other entities will fare is left to be seen. On Wednesday April 30th, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was found liable for damages incurred in the 1993 World Trade Center attacks, according to The New York Times.
Detective James Zadroga died in 2006 from respiratory failure linked to his work at the World Trade Center site. Mention of him still incites immediate controversy. Many people say it cannot be proven that he died from 9/11 dust, and even if he did, questions remain as to whether certain equipment would necessarily have prevented his death. But are people skeptical because they think his family is in search of the deepest pocket? Or because they are afraid to acknowledge how massive a public safety failure post-9/11 clean up may have been?
Kupferman says the firemen he represents only wanted one thing. “They wanted someone to tell them ‘Don’t wash your clothes with your kids’ clothes,” he says. “What cuts across the left and the right is that people want the government to give the correct information.”
Guelda Voien is a graduate student in journalism at New York University, specializing in reporting on national issues. She has worked as a research associate for a commercial real estate brokerage, as a creative assistant for an Emmy-award winning screenwriter and has interned for the American Civil Liberties Union.