High Winds Bring Debris Down from Beekman Tower
By Matt Dunning
Sustained winds of up to 45 mphand gusts approaching 100 mph began blowing small pieces of wood and metal from the upper floors of Forest City Ratner’s unfinished 77-story tower around 8 a.m. this morning, according to Joseph Bruno, Commissioner of the city’s Office of Emergency Management. The morning-long wind and rainstorm carried debris as far as 700 feet from the tower into City Hall Park, according to Bruno.
“It’s been an unusual event, but one that I think we’ve handled quite well,” Bruno said at a press conference this afternoon.
No injuries were reported as of 5 p.m. Department of Buildings investigators have stopped all work on the tower, city Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri said, but have not been able to complete an inspection of the building because of high winds.
“This is a dangerous thing that happened today,” LiMandri said. The Buildings Department had issued a wind advisory on Sunday, warning contractors all over the city to secure their sites in advance of this morning’s storm. LiMandri said investigators have not yet determined whether Kreisler Borg Florman, the general contractor on the Beekman Tower, had heeded the warning. On the upper levels of the tower, orange safety netting dangled in tatters over the edges of concrete floors.
“Today we were lucky,” LiMandri said, “and I’m telling you that contractors need to make sure that when they see a wind advisory, they need to watch the weather alerts, get out there and secure their sites. I don’t care how big or small your site is.”
Calls to Forest City Ratner and Kreisler Borg Florman were not returned as of Monday evening. Thus far, the Buildings Department has issued two violations in connection with the falling debris—one for failure to safeguard the property and one for storing materials at the edge.
“One thing’s for sure, they’re not going back to work tomorrow,” LiMandri said.
The dangerous condition crippled pedestrian and vehicular traffic Downtown. With the outbound lanes of the Brooklyn Bridge effectively shut down, traffic was snarled at virtually every major intersection in the northeast section of Lower Manhattan. With at least one more storm system expected to move through the city from 5 p.m. until around 6:30 p.m., NYPD Transportation Chief Jim Tuller said police would likely maintain a “frozen zone” (see map) of restricted pedestrian and vehicular access in the area bounded by Chambers, Ann, Vesey, Church, Gold and Centre Streets until midnight. Several streets east and west of Broadway would remain closed to vehicular traffic.
UPDATE: By midnight, the frozen zone had been reduced to one square block surrounding Spruce Street.
“Keeping safety in mind, we’re going to do everything possible to assist people coming into the buildings [inside the frozen zone],” Tuller said. “If we can safely escort someone to their residence, we will be doing that. We don’t want anybody to get hurt.”
There were few reports of damage caused by the falling debris. A Pace University press officer confirmed that at least one window on the sixth floor of a school-owned building at 163 William Street had been shattered. The incident also forced nearby City Hall to postpone several press events scheduled throughout the day, and caused Pace to cancel all day and evening classes.
When the tower is complete, it will house more than 900 rental apartments, as well as a four story, 100,000-square-foot elementary school at its base. Both the school and the first batch of apartments are scheduled to open in 2011.
Most of the street closures were lifted around 9:45 p.m., Monday night. The following morning, only Spruce Street remained closed near the tower.