Anger in Aftermath of Building Blaze

By Nick Pinto
POSTED SEPTEMBER 1, 2007

Looking out the window of her 11th-floor apartment, Mary Dierickx is face to face with the black-shrouded hulk of the former Deutsche Bank building. Its burned-out windows gape at her. Its smoke-singed scaffolding planks clatter in the breeze.

On the afternoon of Aug. 18, Dierickx recalled, she and her husband Edward Serrapede were enjoying a quiet weekend afternoon in their 125 Cedar St. apartment when they heard a strange noise. “Ed said it sounded like a waterfall,” Dierickx said. “It wasn’t a roar, but it was the sort of sound that captures your attention.”

The couple saw smoke pouring from several floors of the Deutsche Bank building across the street. They realized that what they were hearing was shattering windows and the tinkling of glass as it fell through scaffolding.

The sight brought back disturbing memories.

“This time we had to leave,” Dierickx said, recalling Sept. 11, 2001, when the couple holed up in their apartment as the nearby trade towers burned and the first tower fell. “It brought everything back. It was so disturbing.”

The fire that investigators say started with a lit cigarette, spreading to 13 floors and killing two firemen, confirmed long-held fears and strongly voiced warnings by a Downtown community still unsettled by the events of Sept. 11.

Ever since the Deutsche Bank building was damaged beyond repair by one of the falling World Trade Center towers and abandoned as unsafe, neighbors had raised alarms about its safety. They feared that the toxic dust and mold inside the building could once again contaminate Downtown air. As work to demolish the building began this year they worried that it was not being conducted safely.

“I am so angry and so sad for the firefighters who died, and for their families,” said Kathleen Moore, another resident of 125 Cedar Street. “The worst part of it is that this didn’t have to happen.”
In a 2006 letter to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Community Board 1 voiced its objections to the hiring of the John Galt Corporation as a subcontractor on the building demolition, noting the company’s poor safety record, questionable qualifications, and reported mob ties. Galt was hired anyway. The board sent a letter in October 2005 asking for a community notification plan. The letter was never answered and the notification plan never materialized, said CB1 chairwoman Julie Menin.

Following revelations that a broken standpipe and unsafe working conditions exacerbated the fire, LMDC, its contractors, and officials from every regulatory agency with responsibility for the site faced tough questioning from elected officials and residents at emergency community meetings held last month.

“Your corporation is ultimately responsible for anything that goes on at the site,” CB1 member Allan Tannenbaum told Avi Schick, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, at an Aug. 21 meeting in a packed State Assembly hearing room. “The deaths of the two firefighters are your responsibility. A community that is totally freaked out is your responsibility.”

Schick conceded the point. “Who is ultimately responsible is the LMDC,” Schick said. “As chairman I make decisions and as [LMDC] president David Emil helps implement them.”

Schick insisted that his agency had multiple layers of precautions in place, including stringent provisions in the contract with lead contractor Bovis Lend Lease, multiple firms hired to oversee the contractor’s safety compliance, and city, state and federal regulators monitoring the site daily. “This was not self-certification,” Schick said.

The building is structurally sound and tests so far show the air quality safe, said Schick. (For air quality updates, go to lowermanhattan.info.)

A week later, two Bovis executives got their turn to answer questions.

“How much more suffering, how much more fear and trepidation is this community going to be asked to take?” Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver asked the two men seated in front of him.
In a hearing room again crowded with press and angry residents, questions about the company’s actions leading up to the fire went unanswered. Provoking jeers from the crowd, Bovis vice president Mark Melson declared that “Bovis is a good corporate citizen,” but refused to comment on the fire or the circumstances preceding it.

Sally Regenhard, chairwoman of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, said she had brought the parents of one of the deceased firefighters to the meeting.
“Your reputation has been sullied, gentlemen,” she told the executives. “That happened by the blood of the people in this building.”

Jennifer Rosenberg, who lives on Maiden Lane, downwind of the site, said her apartment filled with smoke from the fire. “I want to know if you will pay for indoor air quality testing,” she asked.
Melson didn’t answer Rosenberg’s question, but he promised to regain the community’s trust with improved safety at the site. He declined to offer specifics, however, until a new safety plan for the site has been agreed upon by the LMDC and regulators.

Melson assured the audience that Galt would no longer work on the job, but refused to characterize the quality of the subcontractor’s work.

On Aug. 23, just a day after Galt was fired, a pallet jack hurtled from the 23rd floor as its men removed equipment from the site. Two firemen were hurt.

But it was hardly the first time debris had fallen from the building. Neighbors this year have reported concrete, glass and other objects coming off the structure as well. In May, a 15-foot pipe fell like a javelin from the 35th floor, punching through the roof and into a stairwell of the the firehouse next door. And just a few hours before the fire broke out Aug. 18, an aluminum panel crashed into the stack vent of 125 Cedar Street, according the Mark Scherzer, the penthouse tenant. (For a timeline of violations on the site, click here.)

Following the fire, the Office of Emergency Management established a temporary “frozen zone” around the building, closing off streets until the site could be made safe.

A review released by the Mayor’s Office showed the Buildings Department issued contractors 18 citations for unsafe conditions on the site. (See sidebar.)
Late last month, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta announced the Fire Department had failed to make required inspections at the site, and had no pre-fire plan. Three fire officials were relieved of their commands pending further investigations. In addition to the Fire Department’s own review, the fire is now the subject of separate inquiries by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Some living in the shadow of the building remain skeptical that the increased scrutiny will improve the safety of the deconstruction site.

“They say this is the building with the most oversight in history,” Kathleen Moore said bitterly. “Look what it’s brought us.”

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