FINES AND HEADACHES CONTINUE TO PILE UP FOR the contractors who were dismantling the former Deutsche Bank building in Manhattan.

Bovis Lend Lease and its sub-contractor John Gault Corporation were performing the asbestos removal and dismantling of the building when a fire broke out last August  that killed two FDNY firefighters.

On Tuesday OSHA announced that they are proposing a fine of $464,600 against the contractors for 44 safety violations including:

A missing section of standpipe, insufficient water supply and water pressure,  blocked and unmarked exits, a lack of fire extinguishers, and allowing smoking — which fire investigators have said was the likely cause of the blaze. The contractors exposed workers “to death or serious injury from falls, falling objects, electrocution and the inability to exit the tower swiftly and safely” in the event of a fire, the agency said.   (New York Times)

The New York Times is also reporting that:
The office of the Manhattan district attorney is conducting a broad criminal investigation into the deaths and the entire project, which was mired in delays, multimillion-dollar cost overruns and regulatory red tape long before the fire halted the deconstruction of the tower. The criminal inquiry is focused in part on failures by the city, including the Fire and the Buildings Departments, and prosecutors in (the district attorney’s) office have begun presenting evidence to a grand jury.

They are also examining how the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and Bovis selected Galt, a company that had never before performed such work. City investigators had cautioned development officials against hiring Galt; the company was an arranged marriage of sorts between a scaffolding company with no demolition experience and executives from a company called Safeway Environmental, which city officials suspected of having ties to organized crime.

Last week the family of one of the firefighters filed a lawsuit against the contractors and some city agencies (see The Gothamist HERE.) and the relatives of the other FF are expected to file also.

IN THE WAKE OF MONDAY’S press release from the FDNY covering new procedures for building inspections (reported by Firegeezer HERE), the New York Post isn’t buying the sales pitch either.

In an editorial yesterday titled The FDNY’s Paralysis, the Post wrote:

… Scoppetta has zero credibility these days.

The Deutsche Bank tragedy was a command failure - a Scoppetta failure - of monumental proportion: Inspections were skipped, warnings about the building went ignored and the required pre-plan for fighting a fire in the building had never been written.

Yet neither he nor any other top-rank official has been held to account.

The inspections were skipped because the FF’s were forbidden to do them.  The need for a pre-plan was sent up to HQ from the field in December, 2004.  The pre-plan was finally done after the D-B fire and just lately the borough commander has been working on a regulation that will make it legal to do inspections in state-owned building.

Everything’s being done after the fact, including holding three scapegoats from the field in limbo.  Somebody is going to have to own up.

Read Firegeezer’s previous postings on the cover-up HERE, HERE and HERE.

ONE OF THE POLITICAL TRICKS-OF-THE-TRADE is to dance away from difficult questions by answering or talking about something completely different.

FDNY Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta is using a variation of that two-step to avoid talking about his embarrassing gaffe of scapegoating three innocent field officers to cover up a scandal in HQ.  With a rising public outcry and growing pressure to restore them to their regular assignments, the Commissioner continues to stonewall it.

Commissioner Scoppetta

Yesterday he held a press event where “quotes from officials” and a press release were issued.  The announcement was concerned with a revision of field inspections of buildings under construction and demolition, and is centered around the increased amount of time street companies will be spending on the inspections.

You can read the news accounts of yesterday’s presser in this morning’s New York Times HERE, and Newsday HERE, as well as TV channel NY1 HERE.  They keep touting the claim that now firefighters will be more likely to have been inside these buildings getting familiar with them and identifying fire hazards.

But nowhere - nowhere - in the press release does it say anything about the state-owned buildings which are off-limits to the fire department.  That is because they are still off-limits.  And yet three good men are being punished for not violating the department’s rules and checking out 130 Liberty, the former Deutsche Bank building.  But the sideshow barker points the crowd away from that and talks about things other than the fact that stations still have lack the authority, training and safety gear to inspect toxic buildings.  And the “Manhattan Three” continue to languish in Brooklyn.

Read the press release for yourself HERE.

WHILE THREE FDNY FIRE OFFICERS ARE STILL being disciplined for violating rules that don’t exist, the department administration continues to paper over their culpability in allowing the conditions to exist in the D-B building that led to the deaths of two FF’s in August.

A department memo written less than a month ago further illustrates that the FDNY knowingly has no authority to conduct fire safety inspections in the Deutsche Bank building, or any other state-owned facilities.

This memo written by the Manhattan Borough Commander, Michael Weinlein, states that he is working with the state Dept. of Labor to create a new procedure that will allow FD personnel to conduct on-site fire inspections at 130 Liberty St., the D-B building.

Once again the question is being raised:  Why are three field officers (E-10 Capt., Batt. Chief and District Chief) being publicly flogged for violating rules that never existed?

Firegeezer published on Oct. 27 (HERE) the page from the FDNY Fire Prevention manual that clearly states that the dept. has no jurisdiction in state-owned buildings.  In the same posting we published a memo from the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. that identifies the D-B bldg. as being owned by a state agency.

So why are these three men being disciplined for not performing actions that are clearly not permitted by the dept.’s own regulations and the law?

Another question to ask is why the Borough Commander is working on this  project instead of delegating it to the appropriate Division Chief?  That’s a very high level position to be sitting in on procedural meetings.  Unless they are trying to keep the lid on something.

The stink keeps seeping out.

FOLLOWING THE DEADLY FIRE IN THE FORMER Deutsche Bank building and the revelation that building inspections hadn’t been done by the Fire Department, Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta immediately sought out convenient scapegoats. 

Even though everybody in the field had been told that the FD was to stay out of the building, he relieved three officers of their commands, Eng. 10 Captain Peter Bosco, his Battalion Chief and their District Chief, and transferred them to HQ.  Scoppetta claimed that these three lower-level officers were responsible for the department’s lack of a fire plan for the tower and its failure to inspect the building.

Earlier this month on Oct. 10 Firegeezer published HERE a memo from the officer of Ladder 10 requesting the department establish a pre-plan.  This memo was written 32 months before the fire and the pre-plan was magically produced just hours after the fire.

Now documents have been uncovered that show a disturbing gap in the regulatory framework in place at ground zero governing the construction and deconstruction of WTC contaminated buildings. FDNY has no jurisdiction to enforce the building codes and fire codes at ground zero. By its own rules, FDNY is barred from issuing summons and violations against any of the ground zero buildings including the Deutsche Bank building which sits on what is called the South Site.  The buildings at ground zero are either owned by Port Authority of NY & NJ or by New York State.  Such buildings are exempt from FDNY jurisdiction.

These documents are reproduced below.  Click on the icon to read the documents described.  (click a second time to enlarge them.)

1.  Excerpt from FDNY Fire Prevention Manual, Chap. 4 that states that:  a) the FD has no official jurisdiction in state-owned facilities;  b) any inspections requested are “courtesy inspections” to give recommendations only;  c) uniformed personnel shall NOT issue Notices of Violations or summonses.

2.  Page 1 of the minutes of a Dept. of Bldgs. joint agency meeting following the May accident when the pipe fell off the D-B bldg. and went through the roof of firehouse 10.  It shows that there were 12 FDNY officials in attendance and also states that the demolition project is under the jurisdiction of the Dept. of Buildings.

3.  A June, ‘06 memo summarizing and inspection by the Dept. of Environmental Protection wherein Don Adler of the John Galt Corp. stated that the building isn’t subject to any regulations, so it could not possibly fail any standards.

4.  A press release from the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. (LMDC) which affirms that the D-B building is owned by a state agency.

5.  Pages 1 and 2 of a July, ‘04 LMDC 14-page Request For Proposals wherein it states that the LMDC is a subsidiary of the New York State Urban Development Corp., a political subdivision of the State of New York.

It is evident that nobody in the department can be held accountable for not inspecting the D-B building because the department itself has no authority to require it.  Firegeezer believes that these three field officers, whose integrity has never been questioned, are being used as a shield to hide the culpability of somebody in the FD administration.

So, come Monday morning we can expect to see them restored to their original assignments, right?  Sure.

To read the past postings on Firegeezer about the D-B building fire, type in “deutsche” in the search engine box on the right sidebar.

IN OUR POSTING BELOW ABOUT THE New York firefighters and officers unions coming out publicly yesterday, there is mention of a memo written by the Ladder 10 officer advising HQ of the necessity for a definite fire plan for the Deutsche Bank building. 

Firegeezer has obtained a copy of that memo, along with the Department’s belated fire plan which was issued 32 months later….after the fire.

DEMOLITION OF A WTC BUILDING CAUSED A SECTION OF STEEL water pipe to plunge 35 stories through the roof of a neighboring firehouse.  It is the quarters of Engine 10/Truck 10, just across the street from the twin towers site.  Channel 2 has the full story and a good video.