LMDC: Drinking, Smoking at Deutsche Bank Site ‘Disgraceful’

By Matt Dunning
POSTED SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Following the discovery of evidence that workers have been drinking beer and smoking cigarettes inside the Deutsche Bank tower in Lower Manhattan, the agency responsible for the deconstruction of the building, where two firefighters died in a blaze a year ago, told Community Board 1 members Sept. 8 that it did no know how such activities could have gone on in the supposedly secure site.

Two weeks earlier, inspectors hired by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which owns the Deutsche Bank site, found two empty packs of cigarettes, one pack with seven left, an empty beer can and a full beer can on the third floor of the building.

Last month investigators said they believed lit cigarettes may have sparked the fire. Days after the LMDC discovered cigarettes and beer on the third floor, the city’s Fire Department found two more packs of cigarettes on the first and sixth floors.

“We’ve made it clear to the contractors and sub-contractors that it’s unacceptable, completely unacceptable,” LMDC press secretary Mike Murphy told CB1 members on Sept. 8. “It was disgraceful.”

On  Aug. 18 of last year, Lt. Joseph Graffagnino and Firefighter Robert Beddia were killed battling a 7-alarm blaze at the former Deutsche Bank tower at 130 Liberty Street, just south of the World Trade Center site.

Murphy said the Fire Department is still investigating how workers might have been able to sneak beer cans and packs of cigarettes past security checkpoints at the site’s entry gates put in place after the 2007 fire to keep out unsafe materials.

“At this point, we don’t know how they got [the beer and cigarettes] on to the site,” Murphy said. “It’s one of the things we’re looking into. We’re happy that the Fire Department is investigating, and we’re happy that [FDNY is] taking this seriously, as are we.”

The Fire Department has yet to release the results of its latest investigation.

Murphy said  the department is expected to complete its probe later this month.

 “They’re going to make a number of recommendations to us, and we’ll follow them completely,” Murphy said.

Though no work is currently being done on the lower levels of the building, Murphy said workers do have access to most of the floors.

A report in the New York Daily News on Sept. 9 said three workers at the Deutsche Bank site had been arrested on drinking-related charges, but were not believed to be connected to the beer cans found in the building.

Despite a five-month shutdown of the site’s decontamination, LMDC officials believe the building will be fully taken down by the end of next summer. Murphy said decontamination crews will start work on the building’s 14th and 15th floors, and should have the site fully decontaminated by the end of the year.

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