fire & investigations firegeezer on 21 Aug 2007 05:41 pm
Criminal Probe Opened In Deutsche Bank Bldg. Fire
LATE TUESDAY AFTERNOON THE MANHATTAN District Attorney announced that a criminal investigation will be held on the fire that claimed the lives of two FDNY firefighters.
This is normal procedure for an event of this severity and was expected. The New York Post quoted an unidentified law enforcement official as saying: “We know the water didn’t work. So you have to figure out whether they (the contractors) were negligent. If they are, they could possibly face under the law a form of criminally negligent homicide.”
CBS reports:
Investigators said Monday that a piece of the standpipe system, which connects fire hoses from the outside to a water supply line for the building, was found unattached and lying on the basement floor.
As details emerged about the flaws in the system, fire safety experts questioned why more thorough tests weren’t conducted, and one person involved in the project says the problem may have existed for more than a year.
City Department of Buildings officials said they had manually tested the standpipe on each floor of the building — originally a 41-story tower that had been demolished to the 26th floor — before taking it down.
But it wasn’t clear if or when officials had filled the dry system with water to test the pressure of the complete system.
Fire safety expert Glenn Corbett said that would have been the “only way to test the integrity of the system” and that more testing should have been done.
Earlier in the day Millionairemayor Bloomberg stated “…at this point, there’s no reason for anybody to think in terms of criminal charges or anything else.”
