OCTOBER

• FIRED-FIRM CEO STILL RUNS SITE'S SCAFFOLDS: TOP EXEC BLAMED FOR DEUTSCHE BANK FIRE ... The top executive of a subcontracting company being blamed for the deadly Deutsche Bank blaze will continue to play a key role in the demolition of the building, although his company was fired from the project. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp., owner of the black-shrouded building at 130 Liberty St., continues to retain the services of Regional Scaffolding & Hoisting on the site - a company run by the same man who heads the John Galt Corp. Officials with the LMDC declined to comment on the relationship between the two companies and refused to provide details on the kind of services Regional Scaffolding will continue to provide nor the value of its contract. Greg Blinn, CEO of the John Galt Corp. and vice president of Regional Scaffolding, said his contract with the LMDC forbids him from speaking to the press. His two companies operate out of the same offices at 3900 Webster Ave. in The Bronx. Last week, the LMDC and the main contractor for the demolition project, Bovis Lend Lease Corp., fired John Galt as the asbestos-removal subcontractor in the wake of the Aug. 18 blaze that killed two firefighters. Five days after the deadly fire, a John Galt employee dropped a 300-pound pallet jack from the 23rd floor of the building injuring two more firefighters. Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday that that fire was most likely started by careless smoking on the 17th floor. Employees of John Galt have said basic safety practices were ignored and, despite specific rules forbidding it, on-site smoking was routine. The John Galt Corp. was also slapped with 12 violations from the Department of Buildings and 20 federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration violations for work at the building near Ground Zero. (NYPost, by Chuck Bennet, August 28, 2007)
• You tell ‘em ... Speaking of Julie Menin, she may not win the Ms. Congeniality contest at the next Lower Manhattan Development Corporation board meeting. Menin told fellow Community Board 1 members last week that she was angry that the L.M.D.C. seemed to be trying to pawn off its community notification responsibilities on the community board. The L.M.D.C. has offered the board a grant to hire a staffer to interface with government agencies and do outreach, Menin said, but in the wake of the fatal Deutsche Bank fire, she thinks the buck should stop at the corporation. “They cannot put that onus on us,” she said. “We cannot be co-opted by them.”(Downtown Express, Oct. 26 - Nov.1, 2007)
  
• Smearing a hero of 9/11 ... There is mounting evidence that the city's chief medical examiner libeled the memory of Detective James Zadroga by ruling that the cop's long, arduous service at Ground Zero had nothing to do with his tragic death. Dr. Charles Hirsch appears to have committed a gross injustice that no apology can ever set right. ... (NYDailyNews, Oct. 26, 2007)
• City Says Prescription Misuse Caused Death of Detective Who Worked at 9/11 Site ... New York City’s medical examiner has concluded that it was the misuse of prescription drugs, and not toxic ground zero dust, that killed James Zadroga, a retired detective, but other experts strongly disagree. Detective Zadroga’s parents revealed the medical examiner’s opinion yesterday, several days after he had sent a letter to them stating “with certainty beyond doubt” that their son had not died as a result of inhaling dust during the more than 400 hours he worked at ground zero. After reviewing medical evidence, Charles S. Hirsch, the city’s chief medical examiner, concluded that Detective Zadroga had crushed pills and made them into a solution that was injected intravenously into his bloodstream. Traces of nonsoluble fillers, or binders, in the pills accumulated in his lungs, leading to respiratory illness that caused his death in January 2006, at the age of 34, according to the medical examiner’s office. Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office, said the material in Detective Zadroga’s lungs had passed through his bloodstream. “Our findings were that his lung disease was not caused by anything he inhaled,” she said. “The crystals we saw under the microscope could only have been caused by foreign body granulomas in the blood vessels.” Medical experts have been aware for more than two decades that drug abusers who crush tablets — including the painkiller OxyContin — and inject them directly into their veins can develop serious respiratory problems. Powdery materials used to bind tablets, including talc and cellulose, can lodge in the lung capillaries. The body reacts by forming nodules called granulomas, which can eventually reduce lung capacity. ... In addition, Dr. Baden said that when he examined slides he found large glass fibers and other particles that could not have come from pills. He also said that injecting ground-up pills causes scarring at the injection site, but that no scars were found on Detective Zadroga’s body. ... (NYTimes, by Anthony DePalma, Oct. 26, 2007)
  
• CHEST: Steroids Prevented Lung Damage After 9/11 ... The differences were both "clinically and statistically significant," Dr. Prezant said at CHEST 2007, the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians. But he cautioned that the study is "preliminary and hypothesis-generating" because many of the approximately 2,700 firefighters who originally signed up for the study dropped out almost immediately. Reasons for dropping out included fear of steroid side effects and lack of immediate benefit, Dr. Prezant said. "We had hoped we would be following these 2,700 firefighters," Dr. Prezant said, but most only took the medication for a few days. Only 158 were treated for the full four weeks that was suggested, he added. ... (Medpage, Oct. 25, 2007)
  
• Family of Ground Zero cop seeking 3rd opinion on death ... The family of an NYPD detective who died after being exposed to deadly toxins at Ground Zero is seeking a third medical opinion on the cause of his death, sources close to the family said Wednesday. ... (NYDaily News, by Melissa Grace, Oct. 25, 2007)
  
• Inhalers’ Use Found to Help 9/11 Workers ... New York City firefighters who used steroid inhalers while they worked at ground zero during the early days of the rescue and recovery operations in 2001 suffered less severe respiratory problems than others, even though they were not wearing protective gear, according to a new study released yesterday. Aerosol inhalers, or puffers, are commonly prescribed for people with asthma. The study, which was presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians in Chicago, suggests that they may also help prevent respiratory illness in emergency workers exposed to hazardous conditions. ... (NYTimes, by Anthony DePalma, Oct. 25, 2007)
• Senate votes to extend 9/11 health aid ... The Senate has approved a $55 million fund to help care for people exposed to toxins from the Sept. 11 attacks. The funding would extend monitoring and treatment from first responders and emergency personnel to residents, workers and others who breathed the contaminated air in lower Manhattan. "Passage of this bill by the Senate is great news for those who still suffer from the lingering effects of the 9/11 attacks," Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday. The bill, approved Tuesday night, comes as an addition to the $50 million already allocated in the 2008 fiscal year. The measure encourages the development of long-term solutions to screen and treat everyone affected by the post-9/11 risks. Health problems suffered by the thousands who were affected range from asthma to posttraumatic stress. "The message of this vote is clear," said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). "America is here for you in your time of need." The bill will now go to the House. (NYDailyNews, by Oren Yaniv, Oct. 25, 2007)
• US Senate approves $55 million to expand health coverage for 9/11 emergency responders ... Washington – The full Senate has approved an additional $55 million in federal funding to address the mounting health needs of those individuals who were exposed to the environmental hazards released as a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks upon the World Trade Center. The funding, which comes in addition to the $50 million that was provided in the recent Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill, was included in the Fiscal Year 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations Bill by the Senate Labor, HHS, Education and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee. The bill will now proceed to the conference with the House as the next step in the appropriations process. Specifically, the $55 million will go towards screening, monitoring and treatment activities administered by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to help those individuals who were exposed to the environmental hazards released on and after 9/11. The bill also includes language requiring the Department of Health and Human Services, through NIOSH, to expand the program beyond responders and rescue workers to entities that would provide services to residents, office and commercial workers, students, and other individuals who were exposed. Existing programs to serve those who were impacted include the centers in the Mt Sinai Consortium and the program run by the New York City Fire Department. Finally, the bill, which was given full Senate approval, encourages the development of a long-term, comprehensive solution to screen and monitor all individuals who were exposed to environmental hazards from the World Trade Center collapse and encourages the provision of long-term comprehensive medical services for those experiencing illnesses or injuries as a result of these exposures. (Empire State News, Oct. 25, 2007)
  
• ME Claims 9/11 Cop Died From Drug Misuse ... In a private meeting, Hirsch later told the family he believed Zadroga died of drug misuse - most likely by grinding up his medication and injecting it intravenously. There was no claim of any illegal drug abuse. Zadroga was taking 14 medications, including two intravenously, at the time of his death, but all were administered by family, according to his father. Later Thursday, Hirsch's office confirmed Zadroga got the lung disease that killed him by injecting ground-up pills, the coroner's spokeswoman confirmed. Hirsch apparently cited the talc and cellulose present in Zadroga's lungs as evidence of such misuse. But Baden, who reviewed Zadroga's tissue slides, autopsy report and medical records, dismissed this claim. "Talc and cellulose are ubiquitous," he said, noting such materials could have come from furniture at the World Trade Center. He also said there was no evidence of the scarring that would have accompanied repeated injections. ... Baden said the lack of scars or needle tracks - and Zadroga's clean bill of health prior to Sept. 11 2001 - further undermine Hirsch's ruling. But Hirsch maintains that the foreign matter in the cop's lungs "entered his body via the bloodstream and not via the airways,'' his spokeswoman told the AP. "I suspect that there may not be a 100 percent definitive answer here," said Dr. Stephen D. Cohle, chief medical examiner of Kent County (Grand Rapids) Michigan. Cohle, who knows both Dr. Hirsch and Dr. Baden but is not involved in this case, said that foreign materials that are mixed with injected drugs display a very specific appearance - and likely wouldn't be mistaken by someone as experienced as Hirsch. However, Cohle noted that it's unusual for chronic IV abuse to cause fatal lung disease. Cohle also said Zadroga's heart condition can offer clues. According to the autopsy report, the right side of Zadroga's heart had swelled to twice its normal size - a condition known as right ventricular enlargement. "Right ventricular enlargement is much more common with exposure to dusts and other occupational exposure," Cohle said. Earlier this year, Hirsch ruled that an attorney who died of a lung disease after being caught in the World Trade Center collapse could be added to the victims list - the first time a person who died from a 9/11-linked illness was included in the official tally. (CBS, Oct. 25, 2007)
• Debris Removal Underway at 130 Liberty ... Preparations are now underway to remove debris and waste from 130 Liberty Street. In coming days, vehicular activity around the site will increase as trucks begin to transport the material to approved landfills. All materials have been carefully sealed in boxes for transport. Environmental regulators will oversee the operation, which is expected to take place over the next two weeks. (LowerManhattan.info, Oct. 24, 2007)
• Inhaled steroids protected 9/11 firefighters: study ... As New York City firefighters struggled to find survivors in the haze and rubble of the World Trade Center collapse, the fire department's chief doctor was thinking about how to keep them safe from toxins in the air. Dr. David Prezant devised a plan to offer inhaled corticosteroids -- the kind used to prevent asthma attacks -- to the city's firefighters in the hopes they might prevent lung damage. The effort appears to have paid off, said Prezant, a lung specialist who presented his findings on Wednesday to a meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians in Chicago. Prezant knew the best defense against respiratory disease would be to use respirators, but he also knew exposure was inevitable, and many rescue workers had already breathed in potentially toxic particles. "These people were going to rescue their buddies and recover their buddies no matter what. It was our plan to mitigate their exposure," Prezant told Reuters. The strategy was unproven. No studies had shown inhaled steroids could protect against long-term lung damage. Prezant, who had been trapped at the World Trade Center himself and was taking inhaled steroids to protect his own lungs, decided to offer the same treatment to firefighters. "We thought about this on day two," said Prezant, co-director of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Programs. He asked a friend at Montefiore Medical Center to contact a sales representative for AstraZeneca, maker of the inhaler known as Pulmicort or budesonide. "I knew there would never be any side-effects. That is why I knew it was worth doing even if there was no evidence it would help," he said. Within days of the September 11 attack, AstraZeneca had trucks loaded with 10,000 donated inhalers headed for the city. FEARS OF SIDE-EFFECTS: Prezant had to satisfy the company's lawyer that the medication, which is not labeled for preventive use, would be given by medical personnel and that firefighters would be fully informed -- which he did. Some 2,700 out of 10,000 firefighters initially agreed to participate, but only 158 actually completed treatment. Many feared the effects of steroid use or saw no immediate benefit. Just 64 participated in the follow-up. But two years after the attack, those who did complete treatment had significant reductions in respiratory symptoms and better quality of life compared with untreated firefighters, according to Prezant's study. Treated firefighters, who started out with more symptoms than those with similar exposure who got no treatment, had about 10 times greater improvement in lung function compared with the untreated group. The results are enough to suggest this approach might be worth another try, he said. ... (Reuters, by Julie Steenhuysen, Oct. 24, 2007)
  
• AP Analysis: Could debate about officer's death hurt 9/11 bill? ... They say that a key determining factor will be whether the materials were found in Zadroga's blood vessels or the upper airways. Material found in vessels often come from injections, while substances in the airways are usually inhaled, experts say. "If you're looking for the source and how a particular substance got in the body, you look at the type of particles, the size of the particles, how the body reacted to those particles, and where those particles were found in the lungs," said Michael Graham, the chief medical examiner in St. Louis. .... (NYNewsday, Oct. 24, 2007)
  
• 9/11 Advocates Rip ME Finding On Cop's Death; Question Basis For Ruling It's Not WTC-Related ... Advocates for 9/11 first-responders Oct. 19 blasted the Chief Medical Examiner's determination that the death of an NYPD Detective who toiled at Ground Zero was not related to his 9/11 recovery work.... (Chief-Leader, by AAri Pual, Oct. 26, 2007)
  
• Pension Ruling Reversed: 2 Firemen Granted WTC Disability Pay ...The Fire Department Pension Fund Medical Board has reversed a decision denying disability pensions to two firefighters who retired due to 9/11-related illnesses. The FDNY Medical Committee ruled in 2003 that two firefighters, Lawrence J. Marley and Gerard Ledwith, had suffered from clinical asthma with airway hyperactivity, but overruled those findings two years later, claiming that their illnesses did not prevent them from performing their duties. But Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Jack M. Battaglia remanded the case this spring, noting that the Medical Board finding contradicted the conclusion of the Medical Committee. (Chief-Leader, by AAri Pual, Oct. 26, 2007)
  
• 9/11 Worker's Kin Rejects Death Ruling ... Hirsch agreed with a New Jersey medical examiner's finding that there was foreign matter in Zadroga's lungs. The New Jersey medical examiner had said the granular material in his lungs was consistent with dust, but Hirsch emphatically ruled out environmental exposure as the cause. Experts say that one alternate medical theory for foreign granular matter in the lungs is a history of intravenous drug injections. In 1981, Hirsch co-wrote a key medical paper on the subject. Zadroga was taking intravenous painkillers and had taken steroids, all prescribed by doctors for his respiratory problems, before his death, Barasch said Friday. He never took drugs that were not prescribed for him, he added. "If the drugs contributed to his death, it makes no difference as far as what our perspective is. He was taking all the medication for all the toxins he inhaled," Barasch said. "This was a squeaky clean New York City detective who was in tip-top shape." ... Gerard Breton, the New Jersey pathologist who performed Zadroga's autopsy, said that Zadroga had inflamed lung tissue, an enlarged heart and material that appeared to be dust in his lungs. ... (AP, by Amy Westfeldt, Oct. 21, 2007)
  
• PA HOLDING TIGHT TO $650M IN 9/11 WAR .. . The Port Authority is sitting on $650 million in liability insurance that can help settle the claims of sick World Trade Center recovery workers, The Post has learned. The agency's coverage, which officials confirmed last week, would be added to the city's $1 billion insurance fund available to compensate firefighters, cops, construction workers and others who prove they have toxic injuries from Ground Zero. Mayor Bloomberg said last week he's willing to begin settlement talks to end the city's legal war with the 9/11 responders. The Port Authority's release of the insurance money could speed a settlement. "That would go a long way toward helping to resolve this litigation," said Marc Bern, a lawyer for 9,000 city employees and other WTC workers. Lawyers for sick workers blame the city and the Port Authority, which owned the WTC, for alleged safety violations during the cleanup. Labor laws say a landlord must provide a safe place to work. The agency declined to comment, but has argued in court that it did not control the cleanup, which was run by the city's Department of Design and Construction. After 9/11, Congress passed a law capping the Port Authority's liability for damages stemming from the terror attacks at $650 million, its maximum insurance coverage. ... The law capped the city's liability at $350 million, a sum the lawyers contend would also add to the pot. .... (NYPost, by Susan Edelman, Oct. 21, 2007)
  
• Editorial: Hirsch must explain ... Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Hirsch has rendered a stunning opinion - an opinion that demands detailed explanation - that Detective James Zadroga's death had nothing to do with his service at Ground Zero. Hirsch delivered his finding to Zadroga's family this week in a terse letter whose clinical nature was unnecessarily brutal. He met with the distraught parents yesterday, and all agreed not to discuss it in public. The ME and collaborator Dr. Michele Slone could not have been more emphatic in concluding that Zadroga's lungs were destroyed not by toxins he inhaled working on The Pile, but by another cause: "It is our unequivocal opinion, with certainty beyond doubt, that the foreign material in your son's lungs did not get there as the result of inhaling dust at the World Trade Center or elsewhere." The Zadrogas' lawyer said only that the family rejects Hirsch's opinion as unfounded. So the question becomes: Is he backed by science or by quackery? Full documentation must be opened to inspection so experts can judge the ME's credibility. The historical record deserves nothing less. Zadroga has been the embodiment of the severe respiratory illnesses suffered by rescue and recovery workers who labored at the World Trade Center site. A healthy nonsmoker in his early 30s, he worked for more than 450 hours on The Pile, developing a persistent cough within just a few weeks. Over the next few months, he became short of breath, coughed incessantly and was unable to walk more than 100 feet without gasping. ... "It is with a reasonable degree of medical certainty," wrote the pathologist, Dr. Gerard Breton, "that the cause of death in this case was directly related to the 9/11 incident." An analysis of material in Zadroga's lungs by the Defense Department's Armed Forces Institute of Pathology found talc, cellulose (wood), plastic, carbon, silica and calcium phosphate, which is found in concrete - substances that without question were in the air at Ground Zero. No matter. Hirsch says something else is at work. What that might be will be a matter of unseemly speculation until he explains himself. The Associated Press reported that in 1981 Hirsch wrote a paper linking intravenous drug injections to lung damage. Is that the ME's theory of what killed a hero cop who has no known history of drug abuse? Or might he think prescription medications did Zadroga in? Out with it, Dr. Hirsch. (NYDaily News, Oct, 20, 2007)
  
• Family in 9/11 Dust Case Visits Medical Examiner ... The family of a New York City police detective who died years after working at ground zero met for several hours yesterday with New York City medical examiners who had concluded that the detective’s death could not be linked to the toxic dust there. Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, the chief medical examiner, sent a letter on Tuesday to Detective James Zadroga’s father, Joseph Zadroga of Little Egg Harbor, N.J., stating “with certainty beyond doubt” that the material found in Detective Zadroga’s lungs “did not get there as the result of inhaling dust at the World Trade Center or elsewhere.” After the meeting, Mr. Zadroga slipped out a side door and drove off without saying anything. The family’s lawyer, Michael Barasch, refused to give any details about the meeting or why the medical examiner had contradicted a New Jersey pathologist who concluded last year that Detective Zadroga’s death was caused by respiratory failure “directly related” to ground zero dust. “Two rational men can disagree,” Mr. Barasch said. “So the family will leave it to the court of public opinion and let the public decide what makes the most sense here.” Ellen Borakove, spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office, said that Detective Zadroga’s family had asked Dr. Hirsch a few months ago to examine the autopsy report because they wanted Detective Zadroga’s name to be added to the official list of victims of the attack. “Dr. Hirsch gave his personal assurance to the family that he would keep the details of the meeting private and confidential,” Ms. Borakove said. Ms. Borakove said the medical examiner had also done re-examinations for three or four other families of people whose deaths were suspected to be linked to ground zero work, and had rejected such a conclusion for all of them. She said that one other review, still pending, was for Cesar A. Borja, a police officer who died in January of pulmonary fibrosis. His family claimed he had become ill after rushing to ground zero and spending many hours there. But records indicated his exposure to the dust was far more limited. Dr. Gerard Breton, the New Jersey pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Detective Zadroga, said in an interview yesterday that he was not changing his opinion that the detective’s death was linked to his exposure to ground zero dust. Dr. Breton said that after completing the autopsy last year, he did not have access to the sophisticated equipment needed to analyze the tissue samples and sent them to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Dr. Breton said that the institute identified the foreign material from Detective Zadroga’s lungs, and that he concluded the material was consistent with ground zero dust. (NYTimes, by Anthony DePalma, Oct. 20, 2007)
  
• Editorial: 9/11 should be campaign material .... The Sept. 11 attack was the most significant single event in over half a century and the candidates’ views or record in regard to 9/11 should be central to any national campaign. Giuliani and Clinton played key roles after the attack and any unwritten rule discouraging them from using images to highlight their record is absurd. Clinton’s ad has subdued pictures of her meeting with ground zero workers at the site and points out correctly that she has led the fight for health care for workers suffering from ailments due to their work at the World Trade Center. Clinton has been a strong advocate for Lower Manhattan residents who very well may be suffering health problems as well. Giuliani, as we have said before, has a mixed record on 9/11 issues — he ignored residential concerns as mayor and did not pay enough attention to the environmental questions — but he certainly should point to the leadership he showed guiding the city through one of its most difficult periods. We would like to see all of the candidates talking about where they stand now because of what happened in 2001. (Downtown Express, October 19 - 25, 2007)
  
• Sue City For Job-Related Injury Data ... The New York Committee of Occupational Safety and Health is suing the Bloomberg administration for an alleged failure to comply with a Freedom of Information Law request concerning public employee work-related injury and illness data. "A law passed by the City Council two years ago requires all of the agencies to forward information to the Mayor's Office [which] must use part of the information for a public report," said Larry Cary, a NYCOSH attorney, in an e-mail. "NYCOSH sought release of the information not included in the report to better understand what is happening and be able to advocate for risk reduction programs." Couldn't Get Data: On May 7, NYCOSH Executive Director Joel Shufro sent Mayor Bloomberg a FOIL request for all such data sent to his office in the last year. The Mayor's Office responded with a CD that did not have the information Mr. Shufro had requested, Mr. Cary said. The NYCOSH head appealed, but it was denied on June 5 because, as the complaint stated, the "Mayor's Office did not have the records it was required to." NYCOSH filed another FOIL request on June 14, which was denied. In response to NYCOSH's second appeal, Assistant Corporation Counsel Jeffrey Friedlander formally responded July 31, "this office does not receive or maintain a record that contains all the information listed in the provision of law. FOIL does not require that a government agency, in responding to a request, create a record that does not already exist." According to Mr. Cary, city workers filed 14,000 claims last year. The purpose of forcing the city to retain information on worker injuries is so that it can mitigate injury rates in the future. "Our suspicion is that if they don't have the material, they are not abiding by the law," he said. (Chief-Leader, by Ari Pual, Oct. 19, 2007)
  
• Fiterman leader says we’ve learned from Deutsche ... “I’d like to say that on behalf of all of us involved in the Fiterman Hall project, we were deeply affected by the events in August at Deutsche Bank,” said Iris Weinshall, vice chancellor of planning and construction for the City University of New York, at an Oct. 2 public meeting on the Fiterman project. “The Fiterman Hall project team has taken these events very seriously and has used the information gleaned from the Deutsche Bank building experience as an opportunity to inform our own process.”  ... Once the Fiterman plan is approved, it is expected to take about a year to decontaminate and take down the building.... (Downtown Express, October 19 - 25, 2007)
  
• KIN FIGHT ON IN 9/11 TOXIC WAR ... The parents of fallen NYPD Detective James Zadroga emerged from a meeting with the city's medical examiner yesterday in disagreement with his ruling that their son's death did not stem from his work at Ground Zero, their lawyer said. "We do not agree with the doctor, but there are two medical examiners who have different opinions," said attorney Michael Barasch. The meeting came after Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Hirsch sent the family a letter stating that he did not believe that Zadroga's death from sarcoidosis was "directly related" to his 470 hours of work cleaning up the smoldering pile. The ruling flew in the face of one last year by a New Jersey pathologist. (NYPost, by Matthew Nestel, Oct. 20, 2007)
  
• Editorial: GAMING GROUND ZERO.... Neither Dr. Charles Hirsch, the city's chief medical examiner, nor the fam ily of James Zadroga was talking publicly yesterday about why the M.E. is convinced "beyond certainty of doubt" that the retired NYPD detective's death last year was not related to his post-9/11 rescue work at Ground Zero. But Hirsch's unambigious findings - made at the request of Zadroga's family, it should be noted - only underscore why the city can't automatically presume that any and all illnesses of ex-Ground Zero workers are 9/11-related, no questions asked. Zadroga, recall, was the first rescue worker whose death was officially linked to dust he'd inhaled at Ground Zero. A retired pathologist who'd worked for the Ocean County (N.J.) medical examiner conducted an autopsy and determined "with a reasonable degree of medical certainty" that Zadroa's respiratory failure was "directly related to the 9/11 incident." This assertion unleashed an emotional flood that led federal and city officials to commit to billions in medical care for those claiming 9/11-related illnesses. ... Zadroga's union charged that Hirsch's report was meant to lessen the city's liability in lawsuits. But Zadroga's family has not sued - and the M.E. has certified one case, that of bystander Felicia Dunn-Jones, to have been 9/11-related. But - like the earlier case of Officer Cesar Borja, whose death was blamed in bogus news stories on 9/11 dust he'd inhaled, until it was discovered that he'd only worked near Ground Zero, and then not until well after the plume had cleared - it reinforces the need to scrutinize each and every such claim individually. Neither the city nor the feds can presume that all Ground Zero workers are entitled to benefits and fully subsidized health care whenever any illness develops - on the unproven assumption that it must be 9/11-related. Those who were physically injured on 9/11 and its aftermath - especially the first-responders - deserve all the help that America can offer. But those who hope to game the system - even if they sincerely believe, without proof, that their illness is 9/11-related - cannot be allowed to get away with it. (NYPost, Oct. 20, 2007)
  
• WTC DUST DIDN'T KILL HERO: M.E. ... In a shocking conclusion, the city medical examiner yesterday said the death of a 34-year-old police detective from lung disease was not related to his weeks of work at Ground Zero. This despite the fact that an Ocean County, N.J. medical examiner had already ruled that Detective James Zadroga's untimely death from sarcoidosis in January 2006 was "directly related" to his 470 hours of work cleaning up the World Trade Center site. The conclusion of the autopsy conducted in New Jersey marked the first time that Ground Zero clean-up work had officially been linked to a death But in a letter to Zadroga's parents, New York City Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch wrote, "It is our unequivocal opinion, with certainty beyond doubt, that the foreign material in your son's lungs did not get there as the result of inhaling dust at the World Trade Center or elsewhere." Joseph Zadroga said he was stunned at the letter's callousness - but not surprised at the new finding. "We were always leery to send anything to New York because this is exactly what we thought they would say," Zadroga told The Post. "[The city] never really admitted that he died from the World Trade Center. They gave him such a hard time about his illness - they gave his wife such a hard time, she died of the stress." James Zadroga's wife, Ronda, 29, died of a heart ailment in 2004 while in Florida, forcing him to move in with his parents, since he was too sick to take care of his daughter, who is now 5. Joseph Zadroga said, "I am mad, not just for myself, but for this little girl. Almost every day, she asks me, 'Why did my mommy and daddy have to die? Why did my daddy have to go there?' We tell her because he's a hero, but here we have the City of New York saying he didn't die because of that." Earlier this year, at the encouragement of U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, James Zadroga's parents sent the city tissue samples and records from the New Jersey autopsy in an attempt to get him put on the official list of Sept. 11 victims. The latest finding enraged NYPD detectives' union President Michael Palladino, who pointed out that the city is facing a class-action lawsuit from about 10,000 Ground Zero workers who have similar lung illnesses. "I think this is a mean-spirited attempt to get another bite of the apple, and out from under their obligation, right as these lawsuits are pending," Palladino said. The Zadrogas are set to meet with the medical examiner today for more details. (NYPost, by Hasani Gitten, Oct. 19, 2007)
• Medical examiner rules 9/11 cop did not die from WTC exposure ... Mayor Michael Bloomberg distanced himself from Hirsch's office in a statement Thursday, saying the independent agency made its own decisions. The city is defending itself in a lawsuit filed by thousands of workers who say they were not properly protected from the dust. Bloomberg has also lobbied the federal government for millions of dollars to treat and monitor the ailing workers. The medical examiner's "determination in this case does nothing to change New York City's commitment to make sure that all who were affected by 9/11 get the health care they need," Bloomberg said. Michael Palladino, president of Zadroga's union, suggested the ruling was related to the ongoing lawsuits against the city. "I'm shocked and appalled that the medical examiner's office would send a letter to Mr. Zadroga, and stating that their unequivocal opinion, with certainty, beyond doubt, is that he didn't die from the World Trade Center, when in fact they can't tell me what he died from," he said. "I don't trust it."... (CNN, Oct. 19, 2007)
• Rejecting ’06 Finding, Report Says Detective Didn’t Die From 9/11 Dust ... The father said his family wanted no money from the city, only a recognition he had died of sarcoidosis — a lung-scarring disease — caused by ground zero dust.He added, however, that the city’s finding had not been unexpected. “We knew the city was going to say this,” Mr. Zadroga said. “They’ve been lying since Jimmy got sick. They’ve been lying about all these W.T.C. people getting sick. They would never admit that Jimmy got sick. They treated him like a dog all those years.” Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, of Manhattan and Queens, said in a statement that if Dr. Hirsch was certain that the material in the detective’s lungs was not caused by trade center dust “then it’s incumbent upon the M.E. to tell Mr. Zadroga’s family where he thinks it did come from, and why he thinks that Mr. Zadroga’s W.T.C. exposures did not contribute to his death.” Mayor Bloomberg said the medical examiner’s finding “does nothing to change New York City’s commitment to make sure that all who were affected by 9/11 get the health care they need.” The Associated Press reported on the medical examiner’s letter yesterday. The highly decorated detective, who died in January 2006 at the age of 34, did not smoke and had no history of asthma, and his family has long believed that his 450 grueling hours of work at ground zero had left his lungs fatally scarred with toxic chemicals, fiberglass and pulverized concrete. ... (NYTims, by Robert D. McFadden, Oct. 19, 2007)
• The Stafford Act: Priorities for Reform ... The report examines how the Stafford Act, the key legislation that dictates the federal government’s response to disasters, actually functions following federally declared disaster events and calls for reform around many of the key tenants of the Act. .... (NYU Center for Catastophe Preparedness & Response, Oct. 28, 2007)
• WTC workers: Payout won't solve health care needs ... In 2004, Congress appropriated $1 billion to establish the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Co. for claims arising from debris removal. Not a victims' compensation fund, the insurance company provides the city, agencies and contractors with an insurance policy against lawsuits. However, almost none of the money has been paid out. Glen Klein of Centereach, a former New York Police Department officer who did rescue and recovery work at the World Trade Center site and now suffers from respiratory and stomach problems, said he would welcome any money, but added that it would not take the place of continuing medical treatment. "There's no amount of money that's going to make me say 'I'm happy. I'll take care of myself,'" he said. "We took care of the city and now it needs to take care of us." Anne Marie Baumann of Lindenhurst, whose husband is a former NYPD officer who now has respiratory and heart problems, agreed. "It's great, it's wonderful, but they really need medical attention. It's not going away," she said. John Feal, a first responder and head of FealGood Foundation, which advocates for World Trade Center responders and workers, said he was worried some might be too eager to accept any offer. "A lot of these guys haven't worked in six years," he said. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan) said she has long held that the $1 billion should be made available. But she said a bill she introduced last month to reopen the Victims Compensation Fund should be passed. Eric Bederman, a spokesman for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), called the talks "a sign of moving closer" to giving workers the help they need. (NYNewsday, by Ridgely Ochs & Matthew Chayes, Oct. 17, 2007)
  
• Heroes need better deal ... But, as predicted, the numbers are obscene. The city has $1 billion to pay settlements, money allocated by Congress. It sounds like plenty, but it's not. The lawyers are claiming 40% of the pot - an astonishing $400 million - leaving $600 million to be divided among everyone else. With about 9,000 claimants, the average payout would be some $66,000 per worker, not nearly enough to cover medical bills and lost wages, particularly in the case of deaths. Nothing more starkly proves the point than the large payments issued by the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, an entity that went out of business before most of the Forgotten Victims of 9/11 realized they were sick. The fund made an average payment of more than $2 million to survivors of people killed in the attack, and an average payment of almost $400,000 to the injured or sick. Lawyers representing responders and city attorneys have been locked in pretrial skirmishing, the city attempting to establish immunity from damages for injuries suffered in an emergency. But the courts have shown little patience for that claim, signaling that it behooves everyone to pay out the $1 billion before, as one judge put it, more people are dead. So the lawyers have begun circling a settlement. This would require approval from most of the 9,000 people in the suits. They may think settling makes more sense than years of litigation whose only certainty is higher legal fees. That's purely their decision. But it still stinks. After 9/11, the city estimated damage claims could run to $2 billion. But no one put up that much cash; the city's own liability was capped by Congress, and even the responders' lawyers now seem to believe that pursuing the contractors would only drive upstanding businesses into bankruptcy. .... (NYDaily News Editorial, Oct. 17, 2007)
  
• City talking billion-dollar settlement with sick 9/11 workers ... The city wants to cut a billion-dollar deal with 9,000 Ground Zero workers who blame their lingering illnesses on toxins they inhaled at The Pile, the Daily News has learned. Thousands who've signed on to a federal class-action suit received a six-page letter from their lawyer last week, asking permission to negotiate with the city on the terms of an expected payout. "The City of New York and the contractors have indicated that they want to negotiate a global or aggregate settlement on behalf of all our WTC clients," reads the letter from lawyer Marc Bern. The letter lays out the pros and cons of signing a deal, including taking a lesser payout now to avoid a decades-long legal battle. Previously, the city has shown little interest in talking settlement and has attacked the plaintiffs' claims in Federal Court. The city and its contractors have been unsuccessful in trying to get a federal judge to toss out the claims before they go to trial. Yesterday, both sides declined to discuss the letter, citing a confidentiality order. Bern's clients have until the end of the month to decide whether to give him permission to begin settlement talks for them. Those who don't can continue their own litigation, but there's a good chance that Bern's firm won't handle their case. "If we receive an aggregate settlement offer from the defendants, it will be up to you and our other clients to accept or reject the offer and, if you accept it, to agree on how the [money] would be divided," Bern wrote. "The defendants would have nothing to do with that decision." Victim advocates are skeptical the $1 billion in federal insurance will be enough to cover care for the long-term respiratory illnesses of thousands of people, not to mention compensate the families of more than 150 who blame their loved ones' deaths on work at Ground Zero. "If you do the math, it's not that handsome a settlement for the 9/11 responders," said John Feal, a responder and Ground Zero activist. Feal said he has talked to 25 people who've signed on to the suit and 22 who say they will give Bern's firm permission to talk settlement. Their only other option would be to go on their own for a settlement that could take decades, Feal added. Many suffer from respiratory ailments they link to arsenic, asbestos and other toxins released into the air after the towers fell Sept. 11, 2001. Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer who administered the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund, has pegged the cost of settling the suit at $1.5 billion. Feinberg's fund shut down after doling out $7 billion to compensate the families of those who were killed or those injured in the attacks.He recently voiced support for reopening the fund to sick workers shut out because their illnesses had yet to manifest themselves. (NYDaily News, by Thomas Zambit, Oct. 16, 2007)
  
• City To Talk With Sick World Trade Center Workers ... Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday that the city is ready sit down and talk with the 9,000 workers who have filed a class action suit claiming they became sick because of toxic dust at the World Trade Center site. In the past, the city had unsuccessfully tried to get the class action suit thrown out, but Tuesday, there was a report that a letter was sent to the plaintiffs regarding negotiations. The mayor confirmed that but said not to read to much into it. "We are not making any offers. I can only tell you this: every time you get sued you always take a look and see whether there is a way to come to a settlement which would be in everybody's interest,” said Bloomberg.(NY1, Oct. 16, 2007)
  
• DEUTSCHE DEMOLITION DERBY ... Six companies are vying for the contract to finish demolishing the former Deutsche Bank building, allaying fears that no company would want to touch the seemingly cursed project, The Post has learned. Among the bidders is Gramercy Wrecking and Environmental, a Westbury, L.I., company that's been doing repairs on the problem-plagued tower since an Aug. 18 inferno there killed two firefighters. Other likely bidders, sources say, include LVI Environmental, which had previously bid on the project, and a joint venture between Pinnacle Environmental and P.A.L. Environmental Safety, which is demolishing nearby Fiterman Hall. The Massachusetts-based Testa Corp. is also in the running. On Aug. 21, Mayor Bloomberg said, "When we went out for contractors to perform this work, there was only one willing to take [it] on." Actually, 14 firms had expressed interest in the project to the general contractor, Bovis Lend Lease, in early 2006. But 13 dropped out or were rejected, leaving the relatively inexperienced John Galt Corp. with the $60 million job. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the state agency that owns the site, wants to resume demolition next month. (NYPost, by Chuck Bennett, Oct. 16. 2007)
  
• Mayor Bloomberg: No deal making for sickened 9/11 workers ... Mayor Bloomberg warned on Tuesday that "we aren't making any deals" with Ground Zero workers who blame their sickness on toxins they inhaled at The Pile - yet. "Any time you get sued, you always take a look at whether there is a way to come to a settlement which would be in everybody's interest," he said. "There is no reason to think that we can come to a settlement or reason to believe we can't come to a settlement. ...We are just going to talk and explore." The Daily News reported yesterday that thousands of sick 9/11 responders who joined a federal suit received a letter from their lawyer asking for permission to negotiate a payout. Settlement talk is an about-face for the administration, which repeatedly tried to get the case tossed out. The cost of settling the suit could hit $1.5 billion, said Kenneth Feinberg, who oversaw the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund. Marvin Bethea, a paramedic who suffers from respiratory illnesses he attributes to his work, said: "I guarantee you that this money is going to go in one hand and out the other because so many of these people are already in debt."Meanwhile, Bloomberg vowed to keep pressuring Washington to come up with cash to aid ailing Sept. 11 responders. "We need federal moneys to take care of an obligation that the city really cannot handle, and we need that money now," he said. (NYDaily News, Oct. 16, 2007)
  
• BUILDING BIG EYED IN DEUTSCHE BLAZE ... Criminal investigators probing the deadly Deutsche Bank fire are taking a hard look at a former top downtown development official, The Post has learned. Law-enforcement sources say Charlie Maikish, the former chief of the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, is the man who can answer many questions about what went wrong during the demolition of the 9/11-scarred tower. Two firefighters were killed trying to put out an August 18 blaze in hellish conditions complicated by numerous safety violations, such as blocked stairwells and a dismantled standpipe that was supposed to bring water to their hoses. "He has responsibility for being the guy in charge," a law-enforcement source said of Maikish. "The LMCCC should have been on top of this." The Manhattan district attorney has launched a criminal investigation into the fire and has subpoenaed documents from the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., contractors Bovis Lend Lease and the John Galt Corp., and the FDNY, among others. Maikish, a former director of the World Trade Center, was appointed by then-Gov. Pataki in 2005 to lead the newly formed LMCCC to coordinate the 60 ongoing construction projects downtown. Then, late in 2006, day-to-day management of the Deutsche Bank demo job was handed to Maikish. A Maikish spokesman says he has not been asked to speak to the DA's office. He protested that he was too understaffed to "safely or efficiently" manage the project and that his team members "have been repeatedly denied resources" in a May 25 internal memo sent to Avi Schick, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. Schick has denied receiving the memo although Maikish insists it was hand-delivered. "He doesn't want to be blamed," the law-enforcement source said of Maikish. Investigators are also hoping to find out if Maikish decided against first decontaminating the building and then demolishing it in favor of doing both simultaneously. "It was totally Maikish's decision to go five floors at a time," said a source involved with the demolition project who added there was a lot of debate on how to tear down the building. "He was the czar. He was all-powerful." That decision was made sometime in the fall of 2005, soon after Bovis Lend Lease took over the demolition, the source said. The previous contractor, Gilbane Building Co., which also proposed simultaneous deconstruction and demolition, had dropped out of the project because of its complexity. "The means and methods to take down the buildings were determined by the LMDC long before Mr. Maikish got involved. It was LMDC's call," said Maikish's spokesman, Ken Frydman. "Mr. Maikish had no say in the matter. The LMDC dealt with regulators and planned the job." By contrast, the 15-story Fiterman Hall on 30 West Broadway, which was also severely damaged on 9/11, will first be decontaminated and then deconstructed. (NYPost, by Dareh Gregorian & Chuck Bennett, Oct. 15, 2007)
  
• GROUND ZERO COLLEGE HALL TO FINALLY COME DOWN ... nother ugly reminder of 9/11 is about to come down, officials said. State officials are finalizing plans to tear down Fiterman Hall, a 15-story Borough of Manhattan Community College classroom complex on 30 West Broadway that was irreparably damaged by debris and toxic dust in the collapse of 7 World Trade Center. Although a timetable has not been announced, the state Dormitory Authority, which is managing the project, should finalize a demolition plan by the end of the month, officials say. All that is left is approval by the Environmental Protection Agency. In the wake of the Aug. 18 Deutsche Bank blaze, safety is top priority, said Marc Violette, a Dormitory Authority spokesman. Inspectors from the FDNY have already made 21 visits to the site. The Long Island City-based PAL Environmental Safety Corp. received the $16.3 million contract to decontaminate the building and deconstruct it. It previously cleaned and demolished 4 Albany Street, a four-story building that was contaminated by toxic dust. The company has come under the scrutiny of regulators. In 2005, it paid a $10,000 fine for illegally dumping toxic debris removed from the Deutsche Bank building. Sal DiLorenzo, president of PAL Environmental, did not return calls for comment. ... (NYPost, by Chuck Bennett, Oct. 15, 2007)
• CONTRACTOR IN TRAGIC DEUTSCHE BOTCH: GIVE US $19M ... The scandal-scarred subcontractor fired from the Deutsche Bank demolition job after two firefighters died in an August fire is demanding to be paid $19.6 million for the work, according to a new lawsuit. The John Galt Corp. filed suit in Manhattan Supreme Court last week against the bond companies for the general contractor overseeing the demolition, Bovis Lend Lease. "John Galt fully performed all the work and furnished all of the labor, material, and equipment requested by Bovis," according to the suit. On Aug. 18, Firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino died on the 14th floor of the bank building after they ran low on air and became overwhelmed in the thick smoke. Fire investigators found that Galt workers had cut a standpipe critical to the building's sprinkler system, preventing water from reaching the fire. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has launched a wide-ranging criminal probe and has executed search warrants at the office of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., Bovis and Galt. Questions have also arisen as to why Galt was given the job. The company had little demolition experience and close ties to Safeway Environmental, which is run by an alleged Gambino family associate. And despite specific rules forbidding it, on-site smoking - the cause of the deadly blaze - was said to be routine. In addition, five days after the inferno, two more of New York's bravest were injured when a Galt employee dropped a 300-pound pallet jack from the building's 23rd floor. The company claims the value of the work was about $74 million. Bovis and its bond company refused to comment on the litigation. (NYPost, by Janon Fisher, Oct. 14, 2007)
• Manhattan: Bank Dismantling to Resume ... (NYTimes/AP, Oct. 12, 2007)
• 'DEUTSCHE' DOOM NEAR ... The embattled head of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. said yesterday he expects demolition of the ill-fated Deutsche Bank building to resume next month. "We hope the deconstruction will resume at the beginning of November," Avi Schick, chairman of the state agency tasked with overseeing the complex project, said after speaking at a Crain's New York breakfast forum. "We will remove this last ugly vestige and reminder of Sept. 11th." All abatement and demolition at the dust-contaminated building has been on hold since an Aug. 18 blaze there killed firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino. Before any work can resume on the high-rise at 130 Liberty St., Bovis Lend Lease, which remains the lead contractor, has to pick a new subcontractor. A source close to the project said there are two or three finalists, but those companies still must be vetted by the city's Department of Investigation. Then an attack plan has to be finalized on how to bring down the remaining 26 floors of the tower. Before the fire, Bovis was simultaneously decontaminating and deconstructing the tower. The company may now opt to first decontaminate the entire building, then tear it down, which will require a new round of approvals by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, among other agencies. Delays in tearing down the blighted building, which was supposed to have been demolished by the end of this year, are impacting the timelines of other redevelopment projects. .... The Manhattan district attorney has launched a wide-ranging criminal probe and has executed search warrants at the offices of the LMDC, Bovis and John Galt. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration did a surprise inspection at the site on Aug. 24, and found no violations, records show. (NYPost, by Chuck Bennett, Oct. 12, 2007)
  
• KICKING ASH SINCE DEUTSCHE ... The unprecedented sweep by fire marshals and the city's Department of Investigation netted 35 business owners, building owners and employees. "Business and building owners who think they can ignore fire safety rules had better think twice, because we will hold them accountable under the law," said Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta. Scoppetta has been a focal point of criticism in the wake of the Deutsche Bank blaze. The high-rise, which was under demolition, had a litany of serious fire-code violations but was never properly inspected by the FDNY. But officials yesterday said the code-violation sweep began before the fire near Ground Zero, which killed two firefighters on Aug. 18. In July, fire marshals and city inspectors began arresting people on bench warrants. To date, 12 people have been fined $9,850 for a slew of violations ranging from broken fire alarms, broken sprinklers and blocked exits to operating businesses without proper permits, according to the Department of Investigation. Individual fines range from $100 to $3,500. The FDNY also said there are hundreds of additional people in the city who have ignored summonses related to fire-code violations. These scofflaws may be picked up at any time - at work or at home - to answer before a judge why they never answered a summons for the violations. Separate from the sweep, the Fire Department has also engaged in a blitz of inspections at construction sites throughout the city since the Deutsche Bank fire. Nearly 500 sites were inspected, resulting in 122 violations as of last week. That is almost double the typical rate. All buildings under construction or demolition are supposed to be inspected every 15 days. And the Department of Buildings has issued 27 stop-work orders between the Deutsche Bank fire and last week. By comparison, 67 such orders were issued between January and the Deutsche fire. (NYPost, Oct. 11, 2007)
  
• Dad: We'll Get Culprits ... The father of a firefighter killed in the Deutsche Bank blaze near Ground Zero says investigators have not yet found who's responsible for his son's death, but he's confident they'll determine who's to blame for failing to enforce safety rules. "There are so many errors that took place that nobody's being held responsible for," said Joseph Graffagnino Sr., whose namesake son was one of two firefighters killed in the Aug. 18 blaze. "I think it's going to come out, but it's going to take time," he added. "It's difficult because it's such a many-fronted investigation . . . (NYPost, Oct. 11, 2007)
• Dismantling of WTC tower in deadly fire planned to resume in Nov. ... Schick said the multiple investigations by Manhattan prosecutors and others looking into the cause of the fire and the oversight of the building wouldn't slow down plans to take down the tower. .... (NYNewsday/AP, Oct. 11, 2007)
  
• Every little bit hurts... In 1976, W.R. Grace & Co. convinced the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to consider products containing less than one percent asbestos as non-asbestos containing products. What became known as the “Grace rule” allowed the company to continue selling Monokote, a fireproofing spray used in the construction of many U.S. buildings, including the World Trade Center. It also promulgated the asbestos industry assertion that asbestos is dangerous only in high quantities, even as some branches of the EPA declared it unsafe at any level. But now, according to a story in New Jersey-based newspaper The Times of Trenton, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report being released later this week will declare the Grace rule is based on an “arbitrary number” and that even low concentrations of asbestos can be harmful. When EPA first began cleaning up the asbestos left in Libby by W.R. Grace vermiculite mining, it adopted the stance that asbestos was unsafe at any level. But, when the World Trade Center buildings fell shortly after the Libby cleanup began, the Grace rule was embraced by the EPA as the standard for safe levels of exposure in Manhattan. W.R. Grace seized on the discrepancy between the Libby and Manhattan cleanups to argue that the one percent rule, if it was good enough in Manhattan, should be good enough in Libby. Grace’s argument seemed to work. The company sent letters to former EPA Chief Christine Todd Whitman pointing out the discrepancy. And, according Libby resident Gordon Sullivan, who once served as a liaison between the EPA and the town, the cleanup plan there went from the EPA removing all asbestos to “You clean it up.” The EPA distributed brochures to all mailboxes in Libby telling residents that it was okay to clean up asbestos with a HEPA vacuum cleaner and a wet rag, which is exactly what the agency was telling Manhattan residents to do. The EPA eventually withdrew the brochures in Libby after citizen complaints, but never backed off the Grace rule in Manhattan. The GAO report will likely provide ammunition to activists in Manhattan, and other places where Libby asbestos was sent, to demand stringent cleanup standards. (Missoulanews, by Paul Peters, 10/11/07)
• Ground Zero fire, deaths, spur questions ... Another factor contributing to the tragedy may have been subcontracting the demolition “on the cheap” to the John Galt Corp., an entity made up of executives of Safeway Environmental, a company criticized by New York City investigators because of ties to organized crime. The John Galt Corp. also has ties to Bloomberg’s administration. Another subcontractor, North American Site Developers, Inc., indicated that it withdrew from the project after its president got an anonymous telephone threat. The New York Daily News reports that state officials knew all along that yet another company, Rapid Demolition, with a history of worksite fires, was actually working on the demolition under subcontract to Safeway Environmental. John Galt Corp. has since been fired. Although the fire released toxic contaminants into the air of lower Manhattan, Bloomberg and city officials quickly gave an all-clear on air safety. ... Many say the main driving motive in this continuing drama has been the profits to be made from some of the world’s most valuable real estate. The scramble to get at least some part of the profits and the uncertainties of the real estate market, with the threat of a big downturn in the near future, has produced both an unseemly haste to move forward (running roughshod over sensibilities of victims’ families) and protracted struggles for control among city, state and federal agencies and developers (which have slowed down the rebuilding process considerably). .... (PWW, by Bill Davis, Oct. 11, 2007)
  
• Work on former Deutsche Bank tower to resume next month ... The owner of a condemned ground zero skyscraper says work to take down the building will resume next month. Avi Schick, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, says workers should finish resealing the former Deutsche bank tower later this month. Deconstruction stopped after the Aug. 18 fire that killed two city firefighters. Before the fire, officials had said the building would be taken down by the end of this year. Schick gave no estimate of when it would be finished. Twenty-six floors of the former 40-story building has been taken down. (NYNewsday/AP, Oct. 11, 2007)
  
• SIX YEARS LATER, DOUBTS HANG IN THE AIR RECENT DEVELOPMENTS STOKE ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS; INCIDENCE OF SOME DISEASES JUMPS BETWEEN 12 AND 20 TIMES NORMAL RATES Does the Danger Stop at the Fence? ... “The air is safe to breathe,” then-Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman told residents of Lower Manhattan one week after September 11, 2001. In the years since, lingering doubts about those words have come to haunt people who labored at Ground Zero as well as those who live and work just outside the fence that still partitions the World Trade Center site from the surrounding streets. Recent developments have served to stoke these fears. In May, the City Medical Examiner ruled that the death of 42-year-old lawyer Felicia Dunn-Jones was directly related to Trade Center toxins. (Ms. Dunn-Jones died five months after 9/11 from sarcoidosis, a disease often associated with exposure to toxic substances.) Her office was a block away from the Trade Center and her only exposure occurred when she ran through the dust cloud generated by the collapsing towers. ...  In July, the Uniformed Firefighters Association revealed that more than 100 active or retired firefighters who worked at Ground Zero have developed some kind of cancer since 9/11. Eight have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, a disease that primarily strikes women. In August, the City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released data from the the World Trade Center Health Registry showing that Ground Zero workers are developing asthma at a rate 12 times higher than the rest of the population. Also in August, the New York Post reported that the federally funded, City-run World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company, which holds more than $1 billion in government funds, paid out over $80 million in legal and administrative fees but disbursed less than $300,000 to Ground Zero workers. Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy and ranking member Arlen Specter have called for hearings to investigate the company’s workings. More than a dozen private insurance companies have announced that they will not honor claims made by sick Ground Zero workers because, they allege, the Captive Insurance Company failed to pass along notification of these claims by the required deadline.(BPC Broadsheet, By Matthew Fenton, Oct. 11 -26, 2007)
• Stress Caused By September 11 Disaster Linked To Low Birth Weights ... She said it was difficult to explain why these later peaks occurred. “It might be directly related to the disaster having occurred early in gestation, perhaps when the foetus was more susceptible to the effects of stress. Another hypothesis is that the Christmas and New Year holiday was a particularly emotional time after the disaster. The increase in very low birth weights (less than 1,500g) 33-36 weeks after September 11th suggests that exposure around the time of conception may also impact birth outcomes, although the exact mechanisms remain unknown.” .... (Science Daily, Oct. 11, 2007)
• Low birthweights linked to 9/11 ... The journal Human Reproduction reported a two-thirds increase in the risk of giving birth to a slightly underweight baby in the week after 9/11. The University of California at Berkeley researchers found it was higher even months later. However, a UK expert said other factors could have played a role. .... The New York study looked at information from more than 1.6 million birth certificates for babies born in the city between 1996 and 2002. They divided the babies into groups depending on how close to Ground Zero their families lived. Months later: Compared to the week leading up to 9/11, the following seven days say a higher risk of babies being born weighing less than 2kg. Normal birthweight is based on a figure of 2.5kg. There was a 67% increase in the risk of a baby weighing between 1.5 and 2kg, and a 44% increase in the chance of a baby weighing less than 1.5kg. In December 2001, the risk of a baby weighing less than 1.5kg was 36% higher than normal, and in January the risk was still 22% higher. The effect was not just confined to the immediate New York City area - in the surrounding areas, or "upstate" New York, the risk of a low birthweight baby was increased by 46% in January 2002. Different stresses: The researchers said that the initial shock of the attacks may have triggered early labour in some women close to the Twin Towers - while longer-term stresses for women across the whole of New York State may also have interfered with the pregnancy. Professor Brenda Eskenazi, who led the study, said: "We think the increased incidence in low birth weights is mainly due to stress-initiated early deliveries. "We observed immediate effects in New York City, but long-term effects both in the city and upstate. "This may indicate that higher levels of stress are necessary to induce acute effects on birth outcome, but that, in the longer term, women in both locations suffered stress as a result of the disaster and this is reflected in the later peaks in low birth weights." Dr Virginia Beckett, a spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, described the study as "interesting." But she said it was hard to draw any firm conclusions without knowing the week in pregnancy each baby was born - and whether they had been born naturally, induced, or by caesarean section. She said: "I don't think we fully understand the effects of stress on pregnancy - although we know that babies can respond to levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the mother's bloodstream." Professor Andrew Shennan, a consultant obstetrician with the charity Tommy's , said that stress might not be having a direct effect on the foetus or the mother. He said: "It's possible that some of these early births are due to decisions by doctors to deliver early. They may be intervening because of anxieties on the part of the mother. "It's difficult to determine the precise effect of stress on the pregnancy." (BBC, Oct. 10, 2007)
• Unions Accuse Fire Officials of Hindering Deutsche Bank Inquiry ... The dispute over responsibility for the Aug. 18 fire and the circumstances that led to the deaths of the firefighters, Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino, involves a diverse group of entities. The subcontractor hired for the demolition was an organization made up of executives from one company without the requisite experience and two officials from another company under scrutiny by city investigators. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which owns the building, allowed its construction manager, Bovis Lend Lease, to hire the subcontractor, the John Galt Corporation. Fire Department officials say the development corporation did not share a plan for emergency escape from the bank building with fire officials. Even within the Fire Department there have been bitter recriminations between the fire commanders, who the Bloomberg administration has said failed to inspect the bank building properly, as required, and the department’s top brass, who the fire unions have maintained should have been aware that the building was not being inspected. ... (NYTimes, by Al Baker, October 10, 2007)
  
• WTC's Toxic Dust Still Raising Health Concerns in NYC ... Today NYC offers a few programs for victims of the aftermath. They can either consult with one of the member centers of the New York State Occupational Health Clinic Network or contact the World Trade Center Health Effects Treatment Program. The programs offer medical testing and treatments, along with counseling to the workers and volunteers who suffer health problems as a result of their work at the WTC. The treatments are provided free of charge if the patient can prove their health issues correlate directly to the WTC site. However, not all of the WTC symptoms have not been discovered by health officials. Names like "World Trade Center cough" has been used around within the city and in hospitals. (PACE by Valeriya Ivanova, News Release, 10/10/07)
  
• COMMISSIONER FOR LIFE ... Mayor Bloomberg yesterday granted Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta permanent tenure. "You can rest assured that Nick Scoppetta will be our fire commissioner from now for the next 812-odd days," Bloomberg vowed. Fine. Mike's mayor; that's his right. ... (NYPost, Oct. 10, 2007)
  
• UNION CRIES DEUTSCHE COVERUP ... FDNY officials are trying to thwart the investigation into the deadly Deutsche Bank building blaze by telling chiefs to stop sending e-mails about the high-rise blaze, union officials charged yesterday. "They have participated in a coverup of the facts," said Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy. "The New York City Fire Department leadership, Chief Cassano, and others have made it clear they do not want the truth to come out." Cassidy said FDNY officials have told chiefs to communicate only verbally to avoid any paper trail that could implicate the department in the chain of events leading up to the Aug. 18 high-rise inferno in which two firefighters died near Ground Zero. Department officials denied the accusation. ... (NYPost, by Patrick Gallhue and Chuck Bennett, Oct. 10, 2007)
  
• City's Fire Unions Accuse FDNY Of Cover-Up At Deutsche Bank Building ... The Fire Commissioner says allegations that the FDNY is hindering the investigation of the fire at the former Deutsche Bank Building are just not true. The unions for firefighters and officers claim Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta and his staff have given specific orders about what to look into – and what to avoid. Union officials also say MetroTech is covering up anything that proves it was aware of the building's violations. They also say the three officers who have been re-assigned are scapegoats for the administration. .... (NY1, Oct. 9, 2007)
  
• Can't Get Expenses Paid: 'Face' of 9/11 Ills Goes Unrecognized ... A lot of New Yorkers recognize Ivonne Sanchez's face, as it appears on Spanish-language posters in subway cars encouraging 9/11 first-responders to file for Workers' Compensation. Ironically, the retired Emergency Medical Technician who toiled at Ground Zero is having trouble getting the Law Department to pay for her own medical expenses. ... Ms. Sanchez is just one of many past and present Emergency Medical Service workers who find that their doctors don't get the bills paid by the Law Department or can't get medical authorization in a speedy fashion. Tony Vanaria, a retired Paramedic who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of working in a morgue after 9/11, has faced similar frustrations. "[He] is having a problem whereas the medical bills the Judge ordered paid, the NYC Law Department is refusing to pay," Marianne Pizzitola, president of the Uniformed FDNY EMS Retirees Association, said in an e-mail. "Tony gave the Judge a printout of all his medication. The Law Department told him they will not accept that as he could have printed it out himself." Law Department officials noted that many doctors' bills go unpaid for legitimate reasons, and doctors may take the department to arbitration. Claims Overcharges: "Doctors submit a bill and we respond by either paying it or objecting to it," said John Sweeney, the Chief of the Law Department's Workers' Compensation Division. "It's not uncommon to bill in excess, because it's not consistent with the fee schedule." Ms. Pizzitola and Thomas Eppinger, the president of Local 3621 of District Council 37, which represents EMS officers, testified Sept. 24 about these problems to the City Council's Health and Civil Service and Labor Committees. "EMS always fell through the cracks in my opinion," said Joseph Addabbo, the Civil Service and Labor Committee Chairman. "The bottom line is, it seems like although they're under the auspices of FDNY, in practice, when it comes to this issue of treating workers for 9/11, they seem to not be considered FDNY, and that obviously concerns me." ... (The Cheif-Leader, by Ari Paul, Oct. 12, 2007)
  
• THE MEANING OF 9/11 ... With a more than 30-point lead among Democrats, Clinton seems ever more likely to win her party's nomination. Giuliani's fate is less clear, though he remains a leader among GOP contenders. .... (NYPost Editorial, Oct. 8, 2007)
  
• Morgy’s Deutsche probe will not stop at crimes ... Any officials guilty of wrongdoing, but not crimes, in the deadly Aug. 18 Deutsche Bank fire, will be rebuked by District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, a source briefed on the investigation said. Morgenthau’s prosecutors are focused on possible crimes committed by contractors and government officials involved with the Deutsche demolition and fire, but the D.A. also plans to issue a public report outlining any other misdeeds, the source told Downtown Express. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.“No stone will go unturned,” he said, adding that the city’s efforts to talk to witnesses first has raised prosecutors’ ire, but it will not block their investigation. The report will be akin to D.A. reports on police shootings, he added. It likely will be some time before it is released because it will follow the criminal probe. Fire investigators have concluded the blaze was started by a cigarette and that smoking was not uncommon in the building, even though it contained combustible materials and there was a no smoking rule. The building’s standpipe was broken and had not been tested in over a decade, leaving firefighters without a source of water. Numerous federal, state and city agencies were responsible for overseeing the demolition and it is owned by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., a federally-funded public authority that is under the effective control of the governor. .... Prior to the fire, L.M.D.C. officials had repeatedly assured residents the demolition would proceed safely. Over the years, Community Board 1, environmental activists and local politicians raised concerns over many aspects of the project including the L.M.D.C.’s hiring of a contractor with alleged mob ties, John Galt Corp.; falling debris from the building; and fire safety violations. At the end of last year, the L.M.D.C. passed direct supervision of the Deutsche building to its subsidiary, the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center and it has taken it back since the fire. Last week, it was revealed that Charles Maikish, the former executive director of the Construction Center, wrote a memo in May warning L.M.D.C. Chairperson Avi Schick that Maikish did not have enough staff to properly supervise the project. The memo was written soon after a 15-foot pipe fell off the building and crashed through the next-door firehouse, injuring two firefighters slightly. Errol Cockfield, Schick’s spokesperson, said the L.M.D.C. has no record that anyone ever received Maikish’s memo. But Maikish’s concerns about the project were not confined to a private memo. In June, he told C.B. 1 members that the push to speed up the demolition led to the pipe crash. “When you change the routine, that’s when things can go awry,” he said then. Downtown Express published a page 1 article about the meeting headlined “Deutsche rush led to mishap, official admits.” Maikish left the center and his spokesperson declined to comment. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Galt prepared a fire emergency plan, that was given to the L.M.D.C., but the development corporation never passed on the information to the fire department. Because of the building’s toxic chemicals in the building, the stairways were blocked with plywood and the emergency trap doors were unsafe for firefighters, the Times reported. Cockfield, the L.M.D.C., spokesperson, declined to comment on why the fire safety plan was never given to the fire department. (Downtown Express, By Josh Rogers, October 5 - 11 2007)
  
• Reporter's Notebook: City hires 9/11 pediatrician; W.T.C. work hours expand .... Community Board 1’s monthly World Trade Center Committee meeting once again highlighted a mix of problems and progress in the rebuilding effort. On the positive side, the city’s new W.T.C. Health “czar,” Jeffrey Hon, announced that the city has just hired a pediatrician to focus on 9/11 health issues and will soon be funding more studies on residents’ post-9/11 health. ... Following the announcement that the city would contribute additional funding to expand the free Bellevue Hospital W.T.C. health clinic, Hon met with the board Monday night to discuss the city’s health initiatives. He announced that a pediatrician is about to join the Bellevue clinic staff — something the community has long asked for. In addition, he said, the city’s W.T.C. Medical Working Group is preparing a set of guidelines for treating children who may have 9/11-related health problems. The group is also revising the current adult treatment guidelines and both guides are scheduled to be released in the first half of 2008. With the news that a pediatrician and medical guidelines are on the way, board member Tom Goodkind urged Hon to begin reaching out to the parents of affected children. “It would be nice just to get that ball rolling somehow,” Goodkind said. Hon balked at the suggestion, saying that the city needs to roll out its pediatric services slowly and quietly, otherwise the Bellevue program will not be able to handle the demand. The goal, he said, is to create clear medical guidelines so that children can be treated by their own doctors. After some discussion, Hon agreed to begin contacting local parent organizations and compiling lists of affected children, so the city can do outreach at the proper time. “It will be my responsibility to conduct outreach, but we have to make sure we have all our ducks in a row before we can do that,” Hon said. To seek treatment for a 9/11-related illness, residents and parents can call the Bellevue program at 877-982-0107. .... The money is part of a $100 million pot that also includes $45.9 million for Bellevue and two satellite clinics, $33.5 million for free 9/11-related mental health and substance abuse treatment, and $3.5 million in administrative costs. Ultimately, the city hopes that the federal government will step in to fund treatment, research and victims’ compensation, since 9/11 was, in Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s words, “an attack on America.” The city is also hoping to make the registry data more useful in the future by initiating yet another push for the 71,437 registry members to fill out their follow-up surveys. The follow-ups were released in 2006 and the deadline for responses has been extended several times. So far, roughly 60 percent of registry members have done the follow-up and the deadline is currently set at mid-December. ... (Downtown Express, By Skye H. McFarlane, October 5 - 11 2007)
  
• FIRE UNIT URGED A TOXIC-TOWER STRATEGY IN '04 ... Firefighters at Ladder Co. 10 were asking FDNY officials to draw up firefighting plans for the toxic Deutsche Bank building nearly three years before the fatal fire that swept through it this summer, The Post has learned. In a Dec. 4, 2004, memo, Ladder 10 Capt. Thomas Engel asked his division commanders to issue "standard operating procedures" for the Ground Zero building at 130 Liberty St. He noted that firefighters were twice called upon to enter the poison-filled structure for emergencies before hazardous-materials units could arrive on the scene. "This SOP should . . . address specific issues as it relates to operations within the building by first-due units prior to the arrival of Haz-Mat," Engel wrote. The memo is one of several sensitive documents that have surfaced since the Aug. 18 deaths of firefighters Joseph Graffagnino and Thomas Beddia at the building. The city recently sent the private lawyer it hired to the Ladder 10 house to make copies of all computer hard drives - even as Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau conducts a criminal investigation into the blaze. Lawyer Gary Naftalis, accompanied by an FDNY chief, also had an officer at the firehouse generate a report stating all relevant paperwork had been turned over to the city. A Law Department spokeswoman said the move didn't infringe upon the DA's criminal probe. "Counsel for the city was gathering documents that the DA has requested - and is cooperating with the DA's inquiry," she said. An FDNY source said Engel's memo came before the building had been cleared for demolition work, so any procedures would have been outdated by the time the razing began earlier this year. But even after getting Engel's memo - and several others in 2005 from officers in requesting guidelines for the toxic trap - the FDNY didn't issue a standard operating procedure for the building until Aug. 23. That was just a week after the fire, and six years after the 9/11 attacks filled the building with asbestos and other hazardous material. (NYPost, by Ginger Adams Otis, Oct. 7, 2007)
  
• 9/11 Labor rally: Mourning the dead and fighting for the living .... Standing in the shadow of the re-built 7 World Trade Center, hundreds of unionists rallied Sept. 8 in memory of the 9/11 dead and on behalf of the living. On that hot, sunny Saturday, next to the 16-acre construction site where the Twin Towers once stood, a two-hour procession of workers and labor leaders stepped up to the podium. They cast a harsh light on the treatment of the rescue and recovery workers since the attack six years ago. Politicians lent their voices to the ongoing campaign to win compensation, medical monitoring, and health care for those who are sick as a result of their selfless service. This year, in lieu of a Labor Day parade, the New York City Central Labor Council, the Building Trades Council, and the New York StateAFL-CIO used the 9/11 anniversary to call for the critical attention that must be paid to the living — those who are sick and in need of care. DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts addressed the assembled union members and spoke about the mounting toll of injured, ill and dying workers: “I am so proud of the many dedicated DC 37 members who worked at Ground Zero for weeks and months as part of the valiant rescue and recovery effort. Sadly, many now suffer the effects of being exposed to toxins in the air. We now must fear that this could be the beginning of the worst catastrophe of environmental poisoning in our city’s history.”(DC37, by Jane LaTour, October 2007)
  
• Appeals Court Lets Sept. 11 Suits Resume ... A federal appeals panel on Friday agreed that lawyers can resume their work on behalf of thousands of workers who say they were not properly protected as they cleaned up the World Trade Center site after the 2001 terrorist attacks. The legal work had temporarily stopped while lawyers for New York City and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey asked the court to give them immunity from nearly 8,000 workers' claims. A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it had not yet decided the immunity issue, but lawyers could resume gathering evidence for trials that might be years away. .... Lawyers said it appeared it could take three to four more years for the lawsuits to reach trial. .... (AP, by Larry Neumeister, Oct. 6, 2007)
  
• Call Him '9/11 Profiteer': Fire Families Torch Giuliani .... (The Chief, by Ari Paul, Oct. 5, 2007)
• Fiterman Hall Remediation Coming Soon ...With new scaffolding and netting erected this month, Fiterman Hall's remediation is expected to begin soon pending approval by environmental regulators. The update was shared by project officials on October 2^nd at a public meeting hosted by the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC). Representatives from the City University of New York (CUNY) and the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY), which own Fiterman Hall, spoke to community members alongside consultants from Airtek Environmental and Tishman Construction. CUNY Vice Chancellor Iris Weinshall began the meeting by stating that the Signature Theater would not be part of the new Fiterman Hall. She said that CUNY and other city officials determined that the tower will not be large enough to accommodate the three distinct performing-arts spaces the Signature requires. Weinshall also explained that CUNY expects approval for the year-long project soon from regulators from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), state Department of Labor, and other agencies. Meanwhile, air monitoring around the building began in April 2007 and continues, using lessons learned from the 130 Liberty Street project to "inform the Fiterman Hall deconstruction process," she said Airtek Vice President Benn Lewis added that the team may add switches at ground level to instantly shut off the negative air pressure system in the event of a fire or other emergency. Fire-retardant plastic, plywood, and sheetrock also will be used as necessary to seal the building and partition off cleaned areas. Andy Bachman from Tishman Construction said that the building has been made ready for remediation and deconstruction, including use of temporary lighting and signage within the building, as well as marked pathways for clear egress. Unused electrical circuits and wiring have been removed, and elevators are cleaned and operational for use during the cleaning. There are full-time site-safety managers on duty at Fiterman Hall, as well as 24-hour security teams and controlled site access. Independent environmental inspections are regular, as are site-specific worker training sessions and daily safety meetings. The project will be part of the city's pilot program for emergency community notification. The city Office of Emergency Management, also at the meeting, said that notification program planning is underway and should be rolled out soon. Stakeholders will be able to opt-in using their street address, email address, and phone numbers as contact information. Local Community Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) will be integral to the program. .... . (LowerManhattan.info, Oct. 4, 2007)
• Deutsche Bank Fire: Answers Still Elusive ... Ever since the Deutsche Bank building caught fire Aug. 18, burning out of control and killing two firemen, Downtown residents, among others, have demanded to know how the disaster was allowed to happen. But few answers have been forthcoming. The tangle of regulatory agencies, public development corporations and multiple layers of private contractors make those answers hard to come by, and those living near the building are yet to be reassured that the building site will be safer in the future. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation—which owns the building and is responsible for its deconstruction—announced on Sept. 18 that work to seal the building was finally beginning, one month after the fire, and would likely take three weeks to complete. It also made a “tentative commitment” to first decontaminate the building before taking the rest of it down. The struggle to get this far illustrates the interagency gridlock that has frustrated residents eager to improve the safety of the building. On August 29, EPA Regional Administrator Alan Steinberg wrote a letter to LMDC Chairman Avi Schick, expressing dismay that 11 days after the fire, the building remained unsealed and open to the elements. Steinberg received no formal response to his letter, and wrote again on Sept. 7 to reiterate his concerns, particularly since he had learned that work had begun on the site without it being sealed and without prior notice to regulators. “I am concerned that these work activities and the implementation methods utilized by the LMDC in this breached building may cause a release of contaminated dust and debris,” Steinberg wrote. As evidence that recommencing work on the building without first resealing it could be risky, Steinberg pointed out that on Aug. 27 and 28, an air monitor mounted on the scaffolding surrounding the building recorded elevated levels of dioxin. The dioxin levels did not exceed the target level (the concentration thought to be dangerous to humans over 30 years of continuous exposure) and was not at all elevated at test sites farther from the building. But Steinberg said the readings showed that working in the Deutsche Bank building without sealing it can lead to the release of dangerous materials. .... On Sept. 18, Community Board 1 issued its formal response to the fire and its aftermath, voting unanimously to adopt an eight-page, 27-item resolution demanding transparency and responsiveness from the LMDC as it hires a new contractor and proceeds with the deconstruction. The resolution also calls for an Emergency Notification and Evacuation Plan to be put in place before demolition proceeds. Recent developments suggest that while progress can be made on the site, the politics that surround it are nearly as labyrinthine as the building itself, and potentially as toxic. The contractor responsible for the work has been fired, but the selection process for its replacement remains mysterious. The dismantled standpipe has been repaired, tested and approved, but details of a fire plan remain sketchy. Following the reassignment of three mid-ranking Fire Department officials pending investigations, the Firefighters Union called the suspended fire officials scapegoats. Real responsibility for the blaze, it said, lies at the top of the department. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and U.S. District Attorney Robert Morgenthau have launched investigations into the cause of the blaze, prompting City Hall to hire a top-notch defense lawyer and urge firefighters to confer with his team before answering Morgenthau’s questions. ... (Tribeca Trib, by Nick Pinto, Oct. 1, 2007)
  
• 9/11 Cleaning Workers Battle Illness .... While recovery workers took on the monumental cleanup of the World Trade Center site, Lucelly Gil and thousands like her labored nearby, also helping to make Lower Manhattan habitable again. Gil, a Colombian immigrant, worked 12- and 14-hour shifts for $60 a day, sweeping away heaps of dust by hand in apartments, offices, restaurants and schools, protected by nothing more than a thin paper mask. Six years later, she has asthma, chronic pain in her nose, ears, head and chest, and painfully itchy skin. She says she is unable to work more than one day a week, and is surviving largely on the generosity of friends. “It's a terrible situation,” Gil said. “Everyone I know who did this work is sick. Everyone I know has to take medicine.” But even as public attention has focused on the plight of sick firefighters and other first responders, little mention is made of the thousands of cleaning workers like Gil who also were injured and enfeebled by their work. .... In the five years since the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program was instituted, it has examined about 22,000 people. The most common symptoms exhibited by those screened by the program are psychological and respiratory, Landrigan said. Diminished lung function caused by pulmonary fibrosis is especially common, as is new-onset asthma and a hypersensitivity to odors, air pollution and allergens, called reactive airways disease. ...(Tribeca Trib, by Nick Pinto, Oct. 1, 2007)
  
• EMS Union Raps City: Flaws Remain In 9/11 Worker Aid .... Two City Council committees heard testimony Sept. 24 about alleged obstacles city agencies have presented to the medical treatment of 9/11 recovery workers and a Deputy Mayor's admission that some agencies need greater guidance on the issue. The Health and Civil Service and Labor committees held their third hearing in a series on the issue. Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Linda Gibbs and World Trade Center Health Coordinator Jeffrey Hon testified on behalf of the city.... (The Chief, by Ari Paul, Oct. 5, 2007)
  
• City shuts down work sites with Deutsche Bank-like hazards ... The number of FDNY inspections at construction sites has soared since the deadly Deutsche Bank fire and officials have stopped work at more than two dozen unsafe jobs, records show. The preliminary investigation into the Aug. 18 blaze that killed two firefighters revealed that the FDNY had, in large part, not been doing mandatory 15-day inspections at buildings being built or demolished, including the doomed bank building that overlooks Ground Zero. As part of a shakeup at the FDNY that resulted in the reassignment of three officers responsible for the inspections, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta ordered the FDNY to find every construction site in the city and look for fire safety hazards. "It was a thorough review," an FDNY spokesman. "These inspections are now going to be permanent." After visiting 485 sites, FDNY inspectors found 122 unsafe conditions and relayed their findings to the Department of Buildings, a Fire Department spokesman said. Another 200 inspections were prompted by calls to the city's 311 phone system, the spokesman said. In the six-week period after the Aug. 18 fire, the DOB issued 27 stop-work orders that shut down construction sites across the city, records show. Before the fire, 67 stop-work orders had been issued in all of 2007. The FDNY will also soon begin inspecting the buildings under construction at the site of the former Trade Center, a construction area that was not previously being checked because it is not city-owned property. The Port Authority, which owns the site, has agreed to stop work if ordered to do so by the FDNY, a spokesman said. (NDaily News, by Jonathan Lemire, Oct. 4, 2007)
  
• Inspections after WTC fire uncover 120 plus violations ... A building being renovated into condominiums just blocks from ground zero was shut down after "accumulation of combustible debris resulted in fire on the first floor, which spread to the third floor," another report read. ... (Newsday, Oct. 4, 2007)
  
• Former Giant Takes Fight For 9/11 Workers To Nation's Capitol ... Martin's walk is expected to raise more than $10 million for 9/11 workers, and 44 house members have now co-sponsored the new legislation. ... (NY1, Oct. 4, 2007)
  
• An Escape Plan Stayed Hidden at a Fatal Fire ... Contractors demolishing the former Deutsche Bank building made a special plan to allow emergency use of the sealed stairs, but firefighters who responded to the fire on Aug. 18 did not know of the plan, according to official documents and interviews. The stairwells were sealed with heavy plywood and plastic to prevent toxic materials from escaping and hinged trap doors were put in the plywood slabs, yet the escape plan was never brought to the attention of firefighters assigned to respond to a fire in the building, fire officials say. Two firefighters were killed in the blaze. “The Fire Department was not involved in creating this plan, specifically — and most importantly — with regard to the sealed staircases,” said Francis X. Gribbon, the department’s chief spokesman. “We were not notified about it. We were not consulted about it.” ... Firefighters on other floors where the stairwells were also sealed resorted to using power saws to cut through the plywood because they did not know about the trap doors, according to fire commanders, who said they felt the trap doors were too narrow to be effective. The emergency escape plan was developed last year by the John Galt Corporation, the contractor hired to demolish the building at ground zero, which was damaged in the 9/11 terrorist attack and contaminated with toxic dust blown in by the collapse of the twin towers. The point of sealing the stairwells was to meet the standards set by environmental regulators who feared that decontamination efforts could create dangerous pollution in Lower Manhattan. The general contractor on the job, Bovis Lend Lease, had sent a copy of its escape plans to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the owners of the building. The plan was posted on the agency’s Web site, but it is unclear who else was officially notified of the emergency arrangement. A spokesman for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Errol Cockfield, was asked over a period of days if the memo or any other notice of the plan had been forwarded to the Fire Department, but declined to comment, citing the criminal investigation under way. The emergency plan described on the Web site was eventually revised, but fire officials said they were not alerted to any version prior to the fire and would have objected to both because of the risks involved. ... Under the emergency escape plan for the bank dated March 1, 2007, and posted on the development corporation Web site, Galt officials envisioned sealed stairwells on select floors where decontamination work was under way. Each of the seals would be outfitted with “kick-out panels.” The panels, with their plywood and plastic overlay, were designed to act as a membrane to keep in toxins, such as asbestos. The panels would have a weak point — carved or cut into the plywood — to let a firefighter easily kick through to escape, according to abatement industry experts. The panels, as built, did not conform to that design. Instead of scoring the kick-out panels, the contractors cut small doors with hinges into the plywood, and covered the entire mechanism with two layers of heavy polyethylene sealed with duct tape, fire officials said. To use the doors, emergency workers were supposed to cut through the coverings using carpet knives left nearby. Fire officials said they would have objected to either plan had they been consulted. The trap doors, they said, were too narrow and the procedure of cutting through the coverings too complicated to be done by firefighters in the dark confusion of a smoky fire. “Going forward, we are insisting that at least one of the stairways, if not both of them, remain clear and unobstructed and remain an area of refuge,” Mr. Gribbon said. ... (NYTimes, by Al Baker, Oct. 3, 2007)
• The sick can't wait .... A Manhattan federal appeals judge zeroed in Monday on the injustice of forcing thousands of sick World Trade Center rescue and recovery workers to wage long court battles for compensation. Noting that Congress had established a $1 billion fund to cover liability claims, Judge Jon Newman said: "It's a rare case where they have $1 billion just waiting on the table. It just cries out, with a case of $1 billion sitting there, to distribute it to the people who are dying." Newman was right, but unfortunately there's more to the case. Even at $1 billion, the fund will not be large enough to pay all claims. That's a primary reason Congress should reopen the separate Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, which paid out $7 billion to terror attack victims before going out of business in 2003, before most Ground Zero workers realized they were sick. Newman and two colleagues are now charged with issuing a pivotal ruling in suits filed by the workers against the city and construction contractors who dismantled The Pile. The issue is whether they should be immune from liability because they were responding to an emergency. A decision that upholds immunity would all but certainly deprive workers who arrived at Ground Zero soon after the terror attack of grounds for seeking compensation. Perversely, those are the sickest workers. On the other hand, a decision that voids immunity would expose the contractors to bankruptcy and discourage anyone from responding in the event of another attack. ... (NYDaily News Editorial, Oct. 3, 2007)
• NYC Seeks Immunity From Sept. 11 Suits ... A federal appeals court panel suggested Monday that the city is not immune from liability in 8,000 cases accusing it and others of failing to properly protect workers cleaning up the World Trade Center site after the 2001 terrorist attacks. The city's lawyer, James Tyrrell, argued that his client, contractors and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, are not liable for respiratory illnesses and other injuries suffered by thousands of people who cleaned up the site. He cited a 1951 state law protecting municipalities from lawsuits for actions they take responding to attacks. Tyrrell said the ultimate decision of what is owed ''the heroes of 9/11 is a congressional decision, not a judicial one.'' The three-judge panel, however, repeatedly suggested it believed the defendants are not entirely immune from lawsuits and questioned whether the city even had a right to appeal the issue at this stage of the litigation. Lawyers said it appeared it could take three to four more years for the lawsuits to reach trial. The appeals court in Manhattan reserved decision after hearing nearly two hours of arguments. Last year, U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein in Manhattan ruled that the defendants were immune for actions taken immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks but that the immunity did not extend for the entire nine months of the cleanup. Judge Jon Newman said he believed the lawyers should try to reach a resolution in the cases because $1 billion set aside by Congress to handle claims by injured workers was not getting ''to the people who need it before they die waiting for the distribution.'' Port Authority lawyer Richard Williamson urged the appeals court ''to grant the dismissal of these cases and let Congress consider whether it wants to consider a second victims' compensation fund.'' A victims' compensation fund established by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks has paid $6 billion to 2,880 families of those who died in the attacks and more than $1 billion to 2,680 injured victims. (NYTimes/AP, Oct. 2, 2007)
  
• Judges Weigh City's Liability for Ground Zero Suits ... (NYSun, by Sarah Portlock, Oct. 2, 2007)
  
• Firefighters to Protest Giuliani ... A spokesman for the International Association of Fire Fighters said this morning that about 100 firefighters from New Jersey and New York were set to protest GOP presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's appearance this afternoon at a New Jersey "Tribute to Heroes." The tribute is one in a series of national events designed to commemorate the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Giuliani, whose campaign took heat last week for a California fundraiser during which volunteers asked that donors contribute $9.11, is scheduled to speak at 4 p.m. at Congress Hall in Cape May. The demonstration, said union spokesman Jeff Zack, is part of the organization's nationwide effort to question Giuliani's 9/11 "hero" credentials, which form the backbone of his campaign. "We'll continue to focus on high-profile events where it is relevant for our members to go and say their personal opinion of Giuliani," Zack said. "Anytime an event has something to do with either 9/11, or first responders, or anytime he's in New York City, we'll be there." ... (USNews, by Liz Halloran, Oct. 1, 2007, )
  
• Report: Officials Knew Of Issues With Deutsche Bank Building Contractor ... State officials reportedly knew that the contractor they hired to tear down the former Deutsche Bank building, where two firefighters died in a fire last month, was connected to a company that caused other fires. That company, called Rapid Demolition, was shut out of bidding on city contracts five years ago after a series of fires at its work sites. But according to a Daily News article Sunday, at the time of the Deutsche Bank fire, the son of Rapid's owner was on the payroll of Safeway Environmental. Safeway was originally hired to do the demolition work on Deutsche Bank. It was replaced by the John Galt Corporation, but the paper says Safeway was still pulling the strings. The paper says city investigators warned the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation about the connection. The John Galt Corporation has since been fired from the Deutsche Bank job, but the Manhattan district attorney is trying to figure out why it was ever hired at all. (NY1, Oct. 1, 2007)
  
• Court To Hear Ground Zero Liability Case ... A federal appeals court's reading of an obscure Cold War-era law, passed amid fears of a Soviet nuclear attack, will decide whether the thousands who toiled at ground zero can hold the city liable for their exposure to toxins. The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits in Manhattan, will hear oral arguments today on whether the city is immune from lawsuits brought by the thousands of firefighters, police officers, and construction workers who searched for survivors and cleaned up on the site of the World Trade Center. Many of the workers say they now suffer from respiratory ailments linked to arsenic, asbestos, and other toxins found in the air and dust at the site. One estimate, by the lawyer who managed the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund, Kenneth Feinberg, places the cost of settling the suits at more than $1.5 billion. At issue is a U.S. District Court ruling from last year that allows as many as 10,000 of those workers to press forward with suits against the city. The city is asking a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court to overturn that decision, which was handed down by Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who sits in Manhattan. ... A lawyer from the firm of Patton Boggs, James Tyrrell, will argue on behalf of the city. The plaintiffs will be represented today by Kevin Russell of Howe & Russell, P.C., and Brian Shoot of Sullivan Papain Block McGrath & Cannavo, P.C. (NYSun, by Joseph Goldstein, Oct. 1, 2007)
  
• DEATH & ACCOUNTABILITY ... Six weeks after the Deutsche Bank fire - and bureaucratic bungling - led to the seemingly needless deaths of two city firefighters, the blame game is at full throttle. An astonishing memo last week set off the latest round of recriminations. The author was Charlie Maikish, a Pataki holdover who was in charge of the building's demolition until just before the fire. It warned that Maikish's agency, the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, had been denied resources needed to "safely" handle the job. And it was dated just after a pipe fell from the building and crashed through the roof of a nearby firehouse - an astonishing incident in its own right, yet insufficient to arouse the curiosity of anyone in City Hall regarding the structure. But no sooner did the document become public than one purported recipient - Avi Schick, tapped by Gov. Spitzer to head the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the building's owner - denied ever receiving it. The others named as recipients, including Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, refused comment. (Doctoroff, in fact, went into hiding.) ... (NYPost, Oct. 1, 2007)
  

SEPTEMBER

• Misplaced blame ... Letters: Manhattan: Bill Hammond's column "Feds added fuel to the fire" (Sept. 25), which argues that environmental safety guidelines are to blame for the tragic deaths in the Deutsche Bank building, is scapegoating, plain and simple. Negligence was to blame. The FDNY had no fire plan for the building, and the contractors failed to maintain standpipes. Also, the building was contaminated from the World Trade Center collapse. Laws mandating an environmentally safe demolition must be strictly followed to prevent harm to workers inside and to the thousands who live and work nearby. --Rep. Jerrold Nadler; Manhattan: It is wacky to paint the EPA as the chief culprit in the Deutsche Bank fire and deaths. Blame negligent contractors, nonexistent FDNY inspections and poor LMDC and city supervision. Most of all, blame a stupid plan to demolish the building while cleaning it. Haste, not the EPA, made for tragic waste. --Mark Scherzer (NYDaily News, 9/28/07)
  
• ENR editor fired up about "disgraceful" legacy at Ground Zero ... ENR editor fired up about "disgraceful" legacy at Ground Zero. Construction publications generally play it safe and don't often express fiery political opinions, but the September 12 issue of Engineering News Record was an exception.Marking the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, the ENR editor came out with a scathing review of the Bush administration's presence in Iraq, calling it a "self-made morass." The editorial continues: "Even the rebuilding efforts at the World Trade Center site are rife with politics, grandstanding emotional paralysis and junk science relating to building codes and design. Ground Zero continues to claim lives, the latest being two firefighters who died August 18 while fighting a blaze atop the skeleton remains of the 41-story Deutsche Bank building. It's hard to believe the wrecked building is even still standing.... (Canadian Consulting Engineer, 9/24/07)
  
• FDNY'S BLUNDER UNIT BACK AT DEUTSCHE BLAZE SITE ... Firefighters at Engine Co. 10 have resumed regular inspections of the former Deutsche Bank building. Nearly five weeks after a fatal blaze claimed two firefighters' lives, the unit has been ordered inside the toxic trap several times recently, FDNY spokesman Jim Long confirmed, mainly for "surveillance and familiarization" reasons. He said it's not known for how long or how regularly those visits will continue, but noted that a battalion chief will be assigned to the demolition project until its completion. Following the Aug. 18 fire that killed Firefighter Robert Beddia and Firefighter Joseph Graffagnino, Engine Co. 10 was criticized for failing to inspect the condemned Deutsche Bank building every 15 days as city law required. Three senior officers - including Engine Co. 10 Capt. Peter Bosco - were reassigned by the FDNY, an action the officers union has derided as a knee-jerk reaction from Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta. Union officials say the toxic conditions made inspections impossible, since firefighters weren't properly equipped. The recent inspections have been time-consuming because of the complex hazmat gear each firefighter must don before being allowed into the structure, sources said. The building, which was filled with deadly dust after the collapse of the World Trade Center, has never undergone complete toxin abatement. "The firefighters put on two hazmat suits, and then they close the openings around the gloves and the boots with duct tape," said one veteran FDNY officer. "They wear masks and self-contained breathing apparatus as well." And when their inspections are complete, the firefighters and their equipment have to be decontaminated, which means stripping away the top layer of hazmat gear, and spraying down their masks and other items. The whole process can take up to six hours, a firefighter said, although touring the building itself can usually be done in three. (NYPost, by Ginger Adams Otis, Sept. 23, 2007)
  
• Deutsche Bank's steel to be recycled for food cans, car parts ... Contaminated steel beams from the Deutsche Bank building - cleaned, melted and recast - could end up as part of your next can of soup. Since demolition of the troubled tower began in March, its several tons of steel have traveled thousands of miles by truck and ship on a winding journey around the world. ... Steel, the world's most recycled material, is a market-based commodity that was sold for $250 to $300 a ton between March and the middle of last month, when demolition at the site was stopped. Representatives from Sims Metal and Mid Island Scrap Corp. declined to comment on the amount of steel they received or how much they paid. John Galt Corp., which also reaped profits from the scrap, could not be reached for comment. Once prepared, the Deutsche Bank scraps were likely to have been loaded onto a ship bound for Europe, Shinn said. They would then have been taken to steel mills in Turkey, Greece or Italy, where they would be mixed with additives and melted down in furnaces of 3,000 degrees. Experts say the recast steel most likely ended up in manufacturing plants in Europe and the U.S., where it was processed into cans, automobile parts, appliances and building materials sent around the world. The process from the moment a piece of steel leaves the Deutsche Bank site to the point it is transformed could take just a few months, experts say. "Steel has no memory," Heenan said. "At 3,000 degrees, it can be turned into anything, and you'll have no idea where it came from." ... (NYDaily News, by Rich Shapiro, Sept. 23, 2007)
  
• New safety rules enforced at Deutsche Bank tower ... Tough new safety rules will be enforced at the Deutsche Bank tower to ensure there are no repeats of the August blaze that killed two firefighters, officials said yesterday. A fire official will stay onsite while the contaminated building near Ground Zero is demolished in the coming months, and there will be a site safety expert on the job 24hours a day, seven days a week - even when there's no work going on. The new plan was ironed out by Mayor Bloomberg and Avi Schick, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the state agency that owns the building. ... (NYDaily news, by Greg B. Smith, Sept. 22, 2007)
  
• Federal court to hear 9/11 worker lawsuits ... A state appeals court has ruled that nearly 300 workers allegedly sickened by their time at Ground Zero will have their cases heard in federal court. The Appellate Division ruled that all claims tied to injury, death or loss of property from the 9/11 attacks fall under the jurisdiction of Manhattan federal court. The ruling overturns a decision by a Manhattan Supreme Court judge who had allowed the workers' bids for litigation to proceed in state court, even after they filed late notices of claim against the city. The cases will now go before U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein. Close to 9,000 lawsuits by workers whose health has allegedly been affected by their time at Ground Zero already had been filed in Manhattan Federal Court. (NYDaily News, by Jose Martinez, Sept. 22, 2007)
  
• New York City fire chief urges federal safety push ... "But we could have and we should have saved 121 firefighters who couldn't hear evacuation orders because their radios weren't working," he said. "We could have and should have lessened the health impact on responders by providing them with proper respirators and protective gear from Day One. We could have and should have operated under a unified command system." But changes have been slow in coming, he testified to the House Homeland Security Committee. While some improvements have been made to communications and other equipment, "we have yet to focus on how to better protect the individuals who respond to major disasters in a comprehensive way," Visconti said. Witnesses assailed health and safety monitoring in particular. Although an estimated 40,000 to 70,000 people who worked on the pile at Ground Zero were exposed to toxic dust and debris, federal monitoring continues to be "stop and start," said Cynthia Bascetta of the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Tens of thousands of those individuals have yet to be screened at all, she said. "We recommended in July 2007 that the Secretary of Health and Human Services ... ensure that health screening and monitoring services are available to all people who responded to the attack, regardless of who their employer was or where they reside," said Bascetta, the GAO's health care director. "As of September, 2007, the department has not responded to this recommendation." .... (NY Newsdasy, by Carol Eisnberg, Sept. 21, 2007)
  
• Analysis: Bloomberg Vs. Giuliani on 9/11 ...(AP, Sept. 21, 2007)
• NYC, state agree on new safety protocols at WTC building ... The building's owner, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., said Friday it had agreed to the city's safety protocols to improve the working conditions and fire safety in the building. City officials said they expect to complete the upgrades in two to three weeks. They include:
  - putting fireproof doors at every entrance in the stairwells, where handrails and illuminated exits will also be installed and floor numbers will be clearly marked.
  - relocating the asbestos decontamination structure and showers to the basement or ground floor, rather than on the upper floors that are being decontaminated. A special elevator will be used to access that area only.
  -storing any extra decontamination materials, like plastic sheeting and plywood barriers, in a special vault in the basement. Previously, it was stacked and strewn throughout the building, adding to the fire hazard.
  - having a site safety manager on site every day, 24 hours a day. Also on the list is a plan to change the system that creates negative air pressure on some floors as part of the asbestos containment process. Officials believe that negative air pressure caused the fire to behave differently: flames were sucked downward instead of toward the upper floors, which surprised firefighters, who typically set up their base of operations a few floors under the fire. The new requirements say that the negative air pressure system must be able to be switched on and off from one location on the ground level, rather than a piecemeal network with different switches on every sealed floor. After the changes are made, the decontamination and deconstruction processes _ which were halted after the fire _ can begin again, officials said. LMDC Chairman Avi Schick and Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler said in a joint statement that all agencies involved are "working to implement them and to ensure that the decontamination and the deconstruction ... resumes in the safest possible manner." ... (NYNewsday, by Sara Kugler, Sept. 21, 2007)
  
• Crises Show Lack of Planning: Emergencies Not Mike's Forte ... The disaster at the Deutsche Bank building, with allegations of mob-controlled contractors and lack of oversight by the Governor and the Mayor, is eerily reminiscent of the Staten Island Ferry crash that killed 11 people on their way home from work in October 2003: Mayor Bloomberg has decided to blame the workers, not the bosses. In making public spectacles of three fire chiefs by leaving the impression that they were responsible for the deaths of two Firefighters, Bloomberg replicated what he did with the ferry deaths. .... But the larger issue with the fire was this: six years after 9/11, four years after the summer blackout of 2003 and after a similar rainstorm several years ago disrupted the subways, it is now clear to all New Yorkers that the Mayor has no plan - none - for any emergency - terrorism included - that might befall the city. Deaths Avoidable -- The fire deaths might have been prevented if Bloomberg implemented a suggestion made two years ago by a lowly reporter: namely that his technology experts figure out how to get Buildings Department violations - all of which are on line - to the firehouses across the city. If each firehouse had nothing more than a BlackBerry, the brave men who responded would have at least known of some of the perils that awaited them. ...(The Chief-Leader, by Jim Callaghan, 09/21/07)
  
• Editorial: Get out of Morgy’s way and on to the truth ... Tell the truth. That’s the only legal advice the city’s top lawyer, Michael Cardozo, needed to give firefighters and officials being questioned by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau about last month’s deadly fire at the former Deutsche Bank building. The New York Times reported over the weekend that Cardozo and his staff tried to summon firefighters in for “briefings” before the witnesses spoke to prosecutors. This week, the city hired a high-priced criminal defense attorney to monitor the flow of information to Morgenthau. The right to an attorney is a bedrock principle of our legal system, but that does not mean government should pay to defend any crimes that might have been committed on the public’s dime. Let’s be clear. There is overwhelming evidence of government neglect at Deutsche, but it may turn out that none of it amounts to crimes. The contractors, Bovis Lend Lease and John Galt Corp., also may not be guilty of criminal wrongdoing. That’s what Morgenthau’s investigation will determine. Cardozo, the Corporation Counsel, and his boss, Mayor Mike Bloomberg, should want to know if any crimes were committed by city employees. This is not some two-bit D.A. who files phony rape charges to win an election. And this isn’t a politically-motivated fishing expedition either. Morgenthau has more than three decades of prosecutorial experience. He and his team of prosecutors are among the most-respected in the country. If criminal trials are warranted, it could lead to answers to some of the questions that otherwise will not be answered with credibility. For one, why was the demolition allowed to continue despite numerous fire safety violations and several instances of falling debris? Why was John Galt hired? Why did government monitors allow smoking in a building with combustible materials?  Did anyone order the fire department not to inspect the building? Why was the standpipe water supply system rendered useless? We called for an independent investigation into the fire a few weeks ago because the state and city agencies conducting inquiries are the same ones who were responsible for the project originally. Although there has been real progress coming up with a safer plan, there continues to be reason to be distrustful. Less than a week after the deaths and new assurances of future safety, a massive forklift fell off the building, seriously injuring two firefighters. Avi Schick, chairperson of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the building’s owner, scolded an Environmental Protection Agency official for disclosing E.P.A. concerns to the public. We hear that officials continue to berate Community Board 1, after the board passes tough resolutions on Deutsche. If C.B. 1 warnings had been heeded, Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino could be alive today. Activists, local politicians, and we also issued warnings before the fire. The fact that officials in charge are still worrying about whether a community board resolution embarrasses them, shows that Robert Morgenthau’s independent investigation is needed and must not be hindered. (Downtown Express, September 21 - 27, 2007)
  
• Study: Respiratory Problems More Common In Earliest 9/11 Responders ... An average 146 firefighters and fire officers retired each year since 2001 because of lung problems, compared to just 49 in the years prior. Lieutenant Girard Owens has since retired, but he faces an array of medical issues, including respiratory and heart trouble because of the time he spent working at the site. “Well, I feel right now that I'm declining, because I’m feeling weaker and weaker,” said Owens. Owens is one of many who've retired because of his health. (NY1, Sept. 21, 2007)
  
• MTA rethinking deal with firm monitoring Deutsche demolition ... The MTA reversed itself on hiring an engineering firm to inspect area bridges and tunnels yesterday after learning it was the same outfit monitoring the Deutsche Bank demolition. On Wednesday, an MTA committee voted to award URS Corp. a five-year, $800,000 contract to inspect bridges and tunnels throughout the area. The MTA changed course late yesterday after the Daily News told officials URS is one of several contractors under investigation in the deadly Aug. 18 fire at the former Deutsche Bank building. MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin said the authority learned of URS' role at the toxic tower sometime between when The News began asking Wednesday and last night. Soffin emphasized that URS' background check was a multimonth process completed before the fatal fire. "In light of this news, we've reopened the review and will not award the contract until we have a better understanding of what happened," Soffin said. URS spokesman Hugh Burns declined to respond to the MTA's move, stating, "It's the MTA's decision." The MTA Bridges and Tunnels authority committee approved URS' hiring Wednesday, despite a staff document recommending the award, "notwithstanding significant adverse information." Board member Frank Powers asked for details, stating, "I try not to deal with people with adverse records." .... Records reveal URS Corp. has recently been the subject of a number of investigations besides the Deutsche Bank probe. URS inspected the highway bridge in Minneapolis a year before its recent collapse. URS has said it may be the subject of suits because of the disaster. URS also is the subject of a $120 million suit alleging negligence following the collapse of a highway bridge in Tampa. URS called the collapse an "anomaly that couldn't be predicted." In 2004, a URS project manager overseeing construction of the post office in downtown Brooklyn was sentenced to 30 months in prison after admitting he took bribes. URS was not charged in that case. (NYDaily News, by Pete Donohue & Greg B. Smith, Sept. 21, 2007)
• New FDNY report on WTC's aftereffects on responders .... Among the findings in the report, "World Trade Center Health Impacts on FDNY Rescue Workers": Twenty-six new cases of the inflammatory lung disease sarcoidosis in the first five years after 9/11, most of them with asthma. Five or fewer rescuers got sarcoidosis annually before 9/11. Almost none had symptoms; 22% of FDNY rescue workers said they were "feeling as if [their] future will be cut short." ; As many as four years after the attacks, 53% said their mood had changed, with about one-third struggling with concentration and feelings of irritation, anger and anxiety.; The extent of sleep problems among responders barely diminished over the first four years after the attacks. Some 61% had them in the first year; 58% did in the next three.; Two-thirds of responders said their exercise routine changed in the first year after 9/11, but 18% said they had started working out more two to four years later. "Why this report is so important today is that it scientifically shows the connection between 9/11 and illnesses," Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan) said yesterday at the Gouverneur Hospital, a medical center on the lower East Side that will house one of the two new outposts of the Bellevue WTC treatment clinic. "It's very, very important for making the case in Congress." A separate 9/11 health program for downtown residents, workers and students will be able to accommodate up to 20,000 people, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday. The WTC Environmental Health Center at Bellevue Hospital has two new sites - at Gouverneur Health-Care Services in lower Manhattan and Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens. (NYDaily News, by Kirsten Danis & Jordan Lite, Sept. 21, 2007)
• CLINICS ADDED FOR 9/11 WOES ... A program offering free medical services to people experiencing health problems as a result of 9/11 is being expanded from Bellevue Hospital to two additional locations, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday. The new sites, at Gouverneur Healthcare Services in lower Manhattan and Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, would allow up to 20,000 patients to be treated over the next five years. The city allocated $16 million to open the WTC Environmental Health Center in 2006 and has since added $33 million. The number of patients treated for 9/11-related illnesses has nearly tripled from 600 shortly after the attacks to 1,600. City officials are pushing Washington to pick up the tab. (NYPost, by David Seifman, Sept. 21, 2007)
• 42 Feet of Pipe Is Said to Be Missing ... The standpipe that failed to provide water during the fatal Deutsche Bank fire last month was not simply breached or cut — it was taken apart, and a full 42-foot stretch of it was removed from the building’s basement, several people with knowledge of the matter said. Various reports in the days following the Aug. 18 blaze, which left two firefighters dead, had characterized the break in the pipe as a smaller section, one whose disappearance may not have been glaringly apparent to people working in the building. But the people with knowledge of the matter said that indeed two consecutive 21-foot sections of the six-inch diameter cast-iron pipe, which ran horizontally across a section of the basement just beneath the ceiling, were cut or dismantled, leaving a large gap in full view of anyone in that part of the basement. “If anyone had bothered to take a look, they would have known it was not in operable condition,” one of the people said. The failure of the standpipe meant that firefighters lost crucial minutes in their effort to get water on the blaze, and officials are investigating whether the delay caused the deaths of the two firefighters, Joseph Graffagnino, 33, and Robert Beddia, 53. The two 21-foot pipe sections, once joined with couplings and gaskets to each other and to the two sections at the ends of the missing portion, were apparently then removed from the building, the people said. One of the people said that some portions of pipe were found in the basement, but it was unclear whether any of them were part of the two missing 21-foot sections. Prosecutors from the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, who are investigating the fire and the events that led up to it, are still unsure why the long section of pipe was removed and who removed it, according to one person with knowledge of that inquiry, examining not only the deaths of the firefighters, but also the actions of inspectors from the Fire and Buildings Departments. Prosecutors are also looking into why the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which owns the building and is overseeing the demolition, allowed Bovis to hire Galt, a company with little demolition experience and ties to a company under scrutiny by city investigators, for the enormously complex job. The pieces of pipe recovered in the basement after the fire and the remaining portions of the standpipe that were adjacent to the missing sections were sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation lab in Quantico, Va., for analysis. No official findings have yet been provided to prosecutors. The standpipe would have carried water pumped in from a hydrant by a fire truck to the pipe that rises to valves on each floor, where firefighters could connect a hose and draw water. One theory about why the pipe was removed was based on a makeshift hoist that had been built beneath where the missing length of pipe had been. One person who has been briefed on the case said the hoist was set up to lower material into the subbasement. Under the theory, the person said, the section of pipe was removed to make room for the hoist. The size of the missing section makes an early theory about the removal seem less plausible. Investigators had theorized that workers had used the standpipe to run a compressed air hose up from the basement to the upper floors to power heavy equipment, a practice that some construction experts said was not uncommon. Since the fire, various reports have described the missing section of pipe as having been a chunk, a section and in one instance, a 20-foot length, but nothing as long as 42 feet. (NYTimes, by William K. Rashbaum & Al Baker, Sept. 21, 2007)
  
• Work to add stairways, reseal Deutsche may begin ... Preparation work needed to resume dismantling the former Deutsche Bank is expected to begin soon with a general agreement between 11 governmental agencies responsible for the building’s safety. The new interim agreement follows the Aug. 18 blaze that killed two firefighters. The plan was revealed Tuesday at a meeting convened by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. He said the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the building’s owner, has taken major steps toward coming up with a safer plan. “We are a long way there,” Silver said in a telephone interview. Since the fire, the speaker has convened several private meetings with Avi Schick, the L.M.D.C.’s chairperson, but Silver has opened them up to local residents and Community Board 1 members, who had warned the L.M.D.C. repeatedly about the project’s safety over the last few years. The L.M.D.C. has agreed to open two emergency fire stairways in the building, reseal the building within three weeks to prevent toxic contaminants from escaping, and to pay for a “24-7 presence in the building,” Schick’s words to describe the addition of at least one safety expert during off-hours. He said Wednesday he had no idea how much the new safety measures would cost. Similar to the previous private meetings, there were differing interpretations as to what was agreed to Tuesday. Silver and three residents left with the impression that all agencies had signed off on the plan and that it would include ridding the building of toxic materials before any demolition would resume, but both beliefs turned out to be less than entirely true. Schick told reporters the next day that the development corporation was “leaning heavily” toward completing the cleanup before demolition, but “we have not made a final decision.” He said there are safety advantages to doing one thing at a time. Board 1 and environmental activists have favored this approach to reduce the risks of contamination. Dep. Mayor Ed Skyler and the U.S. Dept. of Environmental Protection Agency disputed Schick’s contention that all agencies had signed off on the interim plan. Skyler said E.P.A. officials have not signed off but “are supportive of the plan. They have concerns that we need to work through.” Bonnie Bellow, an E.P.A. spokesperson, said there are unresolved “technical details” which she did not specify, but the L.M.D.C. has the go ahead to begin the interim plan to reseal the building. She said the details can be worked out as the plan proceeds over the next few weeks. ... Kimberly Flynn and other residents said there were many positive developments at this week’s meeting, but it is still unclear why all of the government inspectors on the site will do a better job monitoring the project now than they did before. To that question, Silver said the officials in charge know missteps will not go unnoticed. “Everybody feels they are on the hot seat and they are being watched more closely,” he said. On Wednesday, Skyler outlined how the city will improve its community notification plan for Deutsche and other emergencies around the city. He said that in October, there will be a new email notification system for Deutsche run by the city’s Office of Emergency Management. By the end of the year, the city hopes to have a text message alert system in place. Some time next year the city wants to begin a pilot “reverse 911 system” in one neighborhood, whereby automatic phone messages would be sent to everyone in the area. He said there are limits to both ideas. The city’s phone lines do not have the capacity to make massive amount of calls particularly in an emergency, when phones are in greater use. Text messages are currently sent as a low priority by cell phone carriers so they could take a day to be transmitted in an emergency. The city also wants to utilize existing technology to broadcast cell phone messages in a particular area, but carriers are also resisting that idea, Skyler said. ... (Downtown Express, by Josh Rogers, Sept. 21-27, 2007)
  
• More Able to Get Free Care for 9/11 Illnesses ... The city is expanding its treatment facilities to care for people sickened by ground zero dust in the aftermath of the World Trade Center collapse, city officials said yesterday. The city announced that two new clinics would provide free treatment to people with 9/11-related illnesses. The clinics will be available to anyone who lived, worked or went to school in Lower Manhattan and some areas of Brooklyn, or who helped in the cleanup, officials said. The clinics, in Chinatown and in Queens, will be part of the World Trade Center Environmental Health Center, which the city established at Bellevue Hospital Center last year. The center has treated 1,600 patients, but city officials believe thousands more may be affected. The expansion will allow the center to treat up to 20,000 patients over the next five years, city officials said. The announcement comes as city and state officials are pushing for $150 million a year in federal funds to offset the growing costs of monitoring and treating 9/11-related illnesses. The city has committed $100 million through 2011, including $33 million to further expand treatment at the three sites, officials said. “There is much about World Trade Center health effects that we still don’t know,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said. “But one thing we do know is that 9/11 was an act of war against our entire country, and the federal government must take responsibility for everyone harmed.” ... (NYTimes,by Ray Rivera, Sept. 21, 2007)
  
• Chairman: LMDC Aims To Have Plan For Bank Tower Demolition Soon ... The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation hopes to have a work plan for deconstructing the former Deutsche Bank building near ground zero within the next month, the corporation's chairman, Avi Schick, said yesterday. Mr. Schick would not speculate on when work on the building would resume. If the LMDC and regulators "are able to come to a quick agreement on a plan and a scope of work, then we are pretty confident that the process of identifying the right companies to do that work won't stand in the way of starting quickly," he said. Mr. Schick also said the LMDC is "thinking" it will take a different approach to deconstructing the building when it resumes work, discontinuing the previous practice of deconstructing and decontaminating the building simultaneously. Separating the tasks could minimize risks and lessen the complexity. ... (NYSun, by Grace Rauh, Sept. 20, 2007)
  
• City considering a reverse-911 call system ... The city wants to use high-tech warning methods in the future during emergencies such as the Deutsche Bank fire, including a reverse-911 system that calls affected residents. Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler told a City Council hearing yesterday that a pilot reverse-911 project could be "designed and ready to go sometime in early 2008." City Councilman Alan Gerson (D-Manhattan), who chaired the hearing by the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Committee, said the city failed to contact worried neighborhood residents after the Deutsche Bank fire broke out about 3:30 p.m. on Aug. 18. It wasn't until more than four hours later that Mayor Bloomberg held a news conference assuring residents the air was safe. (NYDaily News, by Frank Lombardi, Sept. 20, 2007)
  
• HIGH-TECH WARNINGS: CITY WILL SEND NYERS CRISIS TEXTS ... In the aftermath of the Deutsche Bank fire and the Midtown steam-pipe explosion, city officials yesterday announced they will begin testing rapid-alert programs to rush text messages to New Yorkers' cellphones. Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler told lawmakers at a City Council hearing that a pilot program using text messages as an early-alert system for communities will be ready to roll out within a few months. "We expect to launch the pilot at the end of this year. At the same time, we are wary of it, because we know that the communications infrastructure isn't as reliable as we would like," he said of brief text messages that would be limited to 60 characters. Skyler said text messaging is a low priority for mobile-phone companies, and that the carriers have yet to commit to ensuring that the messages would be delivered within an hour. "We are skeptical of the technology, but we believe it deserves a try. We haven't picked a neighborhood yet," he said. The Bloomberg administration has its eyes on what could be a more effective alert system that would use mobile-phone networks to send emergency messages to anyone carrying a phone within a specific swath of the city. Called "cell broadcasting," the alert system would require mobile-phone companies to make upgrades to their infrastructure - changes that City Hall is pushing for. "It is not possible for us to use cell broadcasting today, because wireless carriers have resisted investing resources in this emerging technology," Skyler said. But Skyler said the city is working on several fronts, including an e-mail alert program that will be tested next month in lower Manhattan by the Office of Emergency Management. The e-mail alert program will be available to anyone who signs up for it. After the hearing, council Speaker Christine Quinn said the private sector has to step up and help to improve the ability to deliver emergency messages. "We didn't hear government holding us back, we heard the corporate sector holding us back. That was not what I anticipated," said Quinn. "Yes, they are corporate entities, but they have a responsibility in this post-9/11 world." Lower Manhattan residents were furious over what they said was a lack of information and warnings about toxins released into the air following the fire at the Deutsche Bank building last month. ... (NYPost, by Frankie Edozien, Sept. 20, 2007)
  
• State may clean Deutsche Bank tower before demolition ... The state is now "leaning toward" cleaning the contaminated Deutsche Bank tower before demolishing it, a plan it had long rejected as too slow. Avi Schick, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., mentioned the proposed change yesterday after testifying before the City Council. For years, job safety advocates and neighborhood residents anxious about an accident there repeatedly called on the state to do the two tasks separately. Prior to an Aug. 18 blaze that killed two firefighters, contractors hired by LMDC were taking down the building floor by floor while cleaning asbestos and other toxins out of several floors below the demolition. Some investigators have theorized that the simultaneous nature of the work could have contributed to the rapid spread of the fire. The cause of the fire remains under investigation. Schick insisted the simultaneous work had nothing to do with the fire, and that deconstruction work wasn't going on that day - just abatement. Nevertheless, the state will likely "decouple" the two tasks because, Schick said, "That's the traditional way to do it." (NYDaily News, by Kirsten Danis, Sept. 20, 2007)
  
• FINALLY, A FIRE PLAN FOR DEADLY DEUTSCHE ... It took the tragic deaths of two firefighters, but the cursed Deutsche Bank building finally has a fire-safety plan, according to documents obtained by The Post. Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino, who perished in the Aug. 18 blaze in the contaminated building. lost their lives because of lax fire-protection measures, most notably a dismantled standpipe system. Since then, several government agencies and the FDNY have hammered out a plan full of commonsense requirements. Contractor Bovis Lend Lease must now provide plans that show the current layout and configuration of each floor. ... The negative air-pressure units that are needed to prevent the spread of toxic dust must have a master "off" switch. Those fans were blamed for causing the 14th-floor fire to spread unpredictably. And all stairways must now be clear of obstructions and marked with luminous paint. The new rules go beyond the single regulation in the deconstruction plan authored by the subcontractor John Galt Corp. and Bovis last year. Under that plan, the only fire-protection requirement was maintaining the standpipe - a task that wasn't done. (NYPost, by Chuck Bennett, Sept. 20, 2007)
  
• City Aims To Launch Program To Improve Crisis Communication ... The Bloomberg administration is aiming to adopt a host of new ways to communicate with New Yorkers during a crisis. Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler said yesterday that the city hopes to launch a pilot program for a text-messaging notification system by the end of 2007 and a pilot program for a reverse 9-1-1 emergency notification system by early 2008. By mid-October, the pilot program for an e-mail notification system is set to begin in Lower Manhattan. At a City Council hearing on how the city communicates with residents during an emergency, Mr. Skyler said he is "skeptical" of the text-messaging technology. New York's telecommunications infrastructure "isn't as reliable as we'd like," he said, which could lead to other problems during an emergency. "If I sign up for a service and I'm in a situation where I feel that I should be getting information from government and I don't get a message, then I might not do anything," he said. "I might not turn on the television. I might just go about my business and then maybe walk into harm's way.' Mayor Bloomberg promised during his 2005 campaign to work with cell phone carriers to provide emergency notifications and information through text messaging. Lower Manhattan residents have said that in the hours immediately following the outbreak of a fire at the former Deutsche Bank building near ground zero in August, they wanted information from the city that would have assuaged their fears and told them how to stay safe. (NYSun, by Grace Rauh, Sept. 20, 2007)
  
• New help for World Trade Center ailments ... New Yorkers suffering from illnesses caused by toxic dust and debris from the World Trade Center now have two additional places to get free medical treatment, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today. Two new World Trade Center Environmental Health Center clinics, in Chinatown and Queens, will be able to see up to 20,000 patients over the next five years, the mayor said in a statement. Funded by city coffers, the program's first outpost was created at Bellevue Hospital in midtown Manhattan in 2006. Around 1,600 people have signed up to be treated since its inception. But experts believe that thousands more are affected by exposure, including rescue workers and downtown residents. "The center's three sites will allow us to bring comprehensive assessment and specialty treatment to the people with symptoms from WTC exposures who have not yet accessed care," said Alan Aviles, president of the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation. The main complaints include respiratory illnesses, sinus and nasal problems, asthma, shortness of breath, and throat irritations. Other ailments include headaches, rashes, heartburn and indigestion, as well as anxiety. (NYDaily News, Sept. 20, 2007)
  
• MAYOR BLOOMBERG AND HHC PRESIDENT AVILES ANNOUNCE EXPANSION OF WORLD TRADE CENTER ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH CENTER TO TWO NEW SITES AND CALL FOR SUSTAINED FEDERAL FUNDING: Fire Department Releases Comprehensive Assessment of Six Years of Research and Treatment of 9/11 First Responders ... (News Release, Sept. 20, 2007)
  
• City To Expand Care for 9/11 Sick .... In an attempt to treat thousands more individuals with health problems related to the attacks of September 11, 2001, the city has announced a major expansion of its World Trade Center Environmental Health Center at Bellevue Hospital. ... In a statement, Rep. Jerrold Nadler praised the mayor's support for the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which he introduced in Congress last week with Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Vito Fossella. The bill would fund the treatment of health issues related to the attacks, and would reopen the Victim's Compensation Fund. "Whether you were caught in the plume, cleaned up poisonous indoor dust, or were exposed to contamination in your home or workplace — if you were exposed to toxins from the World Trade Center, you should have access to quality care," he said. (NYSun, by Elizabeth Solomont, Sept. 20, 2007)
  
• FDNY leader urges safety fixes ...While some improvements have been made to communications and other equipment, "we have yet to focus on how to better protect the individuals who respond to major disasters in a comprehensive way," Visconti said. Witnesses assailed health and safety monitoring in particular. Although an estimated 40,000 to 70,000 people who worked "on the pile" at Ground Zero were exposed to toxic dust and debris, federal monitoring continues to be "stop and start," said Cynthia Bascetta of the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Tens of thousands of those individuals have yet to be screened at all, she said. (Newsday, by Carol Eisenberg, Sept. 20, 2007)
  
• A Six-Year Assessment: WTC Health Impacts on FDNY Rescue Workers ... (Fire Department, City of NY, Bureau of Health Services, Sept. 2007)
  
• FDNY Not Ready To Fight Toxic Fires: Month After Deutsche Blaze, Dept. Said To Be Without Plan ... There were new developments Wednesday evening in the aftermath of the Deutsche Bank fire. Startling details came out of a closed door meeting of top fire officials. With the deadly fire just over a month old there are apparently still no new plans for fighting fires in toxic buildings. "I'm shocked," said Deputy Chief Richard Alles. Alles was stunned by a disclosure he says was made by Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta and his top aides at a behind-the-scenes meeting Monday night when the chiefs reportedly put Scoppetta and his men on the spot. They asked how they should attack a fire like the one at Deutsche Bank that resulted in the deaths of two firemen. The answer? "They are in the process of designing plans ... one month after the fire," Alles said. Scoppetta and his top aides reportedly revealed the lack of plans at a private session Monday night, with some 50 chiefs assigned to Division I in lower Manhattan. They told their union reps what happened. Alles says a lot of projects are reportedly affected. "One hundred to 200 buildings ... mind-boggling," he said. Added Battalion Chief George Belnavis: "Why don't we have a plan and what do we do next time? We really didn't get any answers yet, but that doesn't help the guys who are working today, tonight and tomorrow." Alles says one thing is certain. The FDNY doesn't appear to be looking out for the people it serves. "It is my belief the upper echelon of this department is more concerned with circling their own wagons and protecting their own interests," Alles said. "If they cared we would have the new procedure to follow today." FDNY spokesman James Long says the statements made by the chiefs are patently false and a misrepresentation of what was discussed at the meeting. (wcbstv, Sep 19, 2007)
  
• OEM to take over Lower Manhattan warning system ... The state agency that owns a contaminated lower Manhattan skyscraper failed to use its e-mail alert system to notify neighborhood residents about a deadly fire in the building because the blaze happened on a weekend, when the agency's offices were closed, city and state officials said Wednesday. As a result, the city and the state-run Lower Manhattan Development Corporation have agreed that the city's Office of Emergency Management will take over the e-mail alert system, which will be revamped and start running sometime next month, said Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler. "They [the LMDC] took on a responsibility but they don't have the 24/7 capability that OEM does," Skyler said after testifying at a City Council hearing on improving community notification in lower Manhattan in the wake of the Aug. 18 fire at the former Deutsche Bank building. The LMDC maintains two community e-mail lists with a total of about 4,000 subscribers, which were created to update residents on the progress of redevelopment at the former World Trade Center site and alert them in the event of an emergency -- a commitment that may have been overly ambitious, given the agency's size and lack of expertise in crisis management, said chairman Avi Schick, who took over in April. "I want to be able to partner with agencies like OEM because a city agency with a large head count and a 24/7 presence is going to, in the event of an extraordinary emergency, be better suited to delivering certain things than we can," Schick said. "What I don't want to do is overpromise -- it's hard to say in the middle of the night at the end of August that we're always going to have the number of staff available on short notice." Schick said the LMDC will continue to use the e-mail lists to notify residents about the results of air quality tests and "more routine, day-to-day issues that arise." The fire at 130 Liberty St., which killed two firefighters, has renewed concerns among lower Manhattan residents about the city's ability to get information about emergencies to them quickly.(Newsday, by Karla Schuster, Sept. 19, 2007)
  
• E-Mail and Text Messages Are Fine. But What About Mrs. McGillicuddy? ... In the wake of last month’s fire at the former Deutsche Bank building, the city is racing to find high-tech solutions — from text messages to e-mail alerts — to dispense information to residents during an emergency. But what about Mrs. McGillicuddy, a highly independent, perhaps elderly and bohemian resident who has not gone gently into the information age? That’s what Councilman Alan J. Gerson wanted to know as he interrogated Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler today, during a City Council hearing examining the city’s failure to provide timely information to Lower Manhattan residents during the Aug. 18 fire, which killed two firefighters. “Mrs. McGillicuddy is the person who doesn’t get her information from the Internet,” said Mr. Gerson, a Democrat who represents Lower Manhattan, as Mr. Skyler waited patiently for the five-minute-long question to unfold. ... Mr. Skyler acknowledged that the city does not have an effective method of informing residents of what to do, or not to do, during events like the Deutsche Bank fire. The blaze began around 3:30 p.m., sending plumes of dark smoke into the air and raising a host of questions among Lower Manhattan residents: Was the smoke toxic? Should they evacuate? Should they stay in doors and close the windows? Many of those questions weren’t answered until a 9 p.m. news conference that night. Mr. Skyler said the city has effective ways for informing residents of what to do in citywide emergencies, such as a blackout, transit strike or a terrorism alert. And in small-scale evacuations, the city can send firefighters door to door or use loudspeakers in police vehicles.“What the city government has not done to this point is deal with things in the middle,” he said, “saying, ‘Well, you don’t need to leave, but maybe you should close your windows,’ and sometimes further than that even if there’s nothing that anybody needs to do, it’s nice to be told that there’s nothing anybody needs to do, because as you know, it decreases anxiety and makes people comfortable to know that somebody has thought about these things and that somebody has communicated them.” (NYTime City Room, by Ray Rivera, Sept. 19, 2007)
  
• City Council Holds Hearing On Disaster Communication Issues ... The City Council looked into community notification problems surrounding disasters like the deadly fire at the former Deutsche Bank building during a hearing today. The deadly fire prompted the council committees on Lower Manhattan Redevelopment and Technology in Government to explore ways to improve communication with residents following a major event. For weeks after the Deutsche Bank building fire, Downtown residents said it was hard to get information about whether the air in their neighborhood was safe to breathe. There were similar concerns after the Midtown steam pipe explosion in July, with those who lived and worked nearby concerned about asbestos exposure, as well as when they'd be allowed to return to their buildings. To prevent future problems, officials hope to pass on information through e-mail, automated phone calls, and text messages – but they say the messages may not always be received. "A protocol in which the cell phone carrier does not believe it's a priority, won't resend it if it bounces a back, or can't commit to re-send it if within an hour, is unacceptable,” said Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler. "One of the most important and comforting things you can give a New Yorker is information, up-to-date information," said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Officials hope to begin a pilot program to test the e-mail alert system beginning this October. ... (NY1, Sept. 19, 2007)
  
• Bank Fire Prompts Hearing On Informing City Residents.... When a fire broke out in the former Deutsche Bank building near ground zero last month, many residents of Lower Manhattan peered out their windows, stumbled into the streets, and frantically called friends in search of information about the blaze. A City Council hearing today will examine the way in which nearby residents were notified about the fire. Lawmakers are expected to discuss establishing effective emergency communication plans so New Yorkers can be better informed during future catastrophes. The vice chairwoman of Community Board 1 in Lower Manhattan, Catherine McVay Hughes, said that when the fire was burning, people who live and work near ground zero had no way of getting answers to basic questions. "Should you stay in place? Should you leave? Should you close your windows?" she asked. "People are very concerned about this, downtown." Council Member Gale Brewer, a Democrat of the Upper West Side who is chairwoman of the Technology in Government Committee, said other cities have plans in place to reach residents during an emergency, such as recorded messages that are sent to landline telephones. "This would have been so helpful," she said, adding that, depending on the situation, residents could have been told to turn their air-conditioners on or off, and whether they needed to be concerned about asbestos in the air. "If I lived in an area like that, I would love to have that information." The use of alarms, e-mail, and text messages to communicate during an emergency also will be discussed at the hearing. Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler is scheduled to testify and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is planning to attend. After the subway flooding in August, lawmakers called on the Metropolitan Transit Authority to install cell phone service on the subway's underground platforms so that riders could be informed about service problems via mobile phones. (NY Sun, by Grace Rauh, September 19, 2007)
  
• City lends support to 9/11 health bill ... In testimony before Congress, the Bloomberg administration announced its support Tuesday for a 9/11 health bill that would require the federal government to pay for health care for first responders and other environmental victims of the attack that crumbled the World Trade Center. Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler said the federal government should help pay the cost of treating illnesses associated with the attack, which he said exposed some 400,000 area residents, Manhattan visitors and disaster first responders to environmental hazards and emotional trauma. ... (amNY, by Martin C. Evans, Sept. 19, 2007)
  
• Bill Would Expand Care and Compensation for Ground Zero Workers ... The Bloomberg administration is supporting a new Congressional bill that would provide health treatment and financial compensation for all workers, residents and others exposed to the dust and smoke from the collapsed World Trade Center. The bill, called the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, was introduced by several members of New York’s Congressional delegation Monday night. It would establish a long-term program to provide a broad range of physical and mental health services similar to those now being offered at Mount Sinai Medical Center and several other medical institutions in the metropolitan area to ground zero workers. The bill would also reopen the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund to help those injured by exposure to the dust recover financial losses related to their illnesses. The bill does not include cost estimates for medical screening, treatment or compensation. Edward Skyler, the New York City deputy mayor for administration, who testified on Tuesday before the health subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg supported reopening the fund because it would “enable the city to get out of the courtroom and focus its energies on helping those who continue to struggle with the aftermath of 9/11.” In Albany, Gov. Eliot Spitzer added his strong support on Tuesday to passage of the bill. The city is facing more than 8,000 lawsuits by workers who labored in the cleanup and recovery operation at ground zero in 2001 and 2002 and who say they became sick because the city was negligent about their safety. “New York City would rather stand with those who’ve filed suit, rather than against them in a courtroom,” Mr. Skyler said. Tuesday’s hearing was the fourth in a week to deal with health issues related to ground zero. Since Democrats gained a majority in Congress, those issues have received far more attention than in previous years, and the New York delegation is hoping that Democratic control of Congress will make it easier to get the legislation approved. The Zadroga bill is named for a New York City detective who died in 2006 after spending hundreds of hours at ground zero. His death was the first to be officially linked to exposure to the dust. The legislation was sponsored by Carolyn B. Maloney and Jerrold L. Nadler of Manhattan, both Democrats, and Vito J. Fossella of Staten Island, a Republican. Despite the bipartisan support for the legislation, it could face significant obstacles. Representative Frank Pallone Jr., a New Jersey Democrat who is chairman of the health subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over the health care part of the legislation, said he expected to see objections to the bill from Republicans opposed to big government programs as well as from those worried about the cost of such programs. Dr. John Howard, the federal government’s 9/11 health coordinator, testified at Tuesday’s hearing that a federal task force studying options for a comprehensive health plan for ground zero workers completed its work last April and had not met since then. He said the government needed to see actual costs for thousands of ground zero workers who had received examinations and prescription drugs in New York and other places before making a final decision on the shape, and possible costs, of a long-range plan. (NYTimes, by Anthony DePalma, Sept. 19, 2007)
  
• To Some, Hiring of Top Criminal Lawyer Suggests Worries in Deutsche Bank Case ... Criminal defense experts said yesterday that the Bloomberg administration’s hiring of a widely respected defense lawyer to represent the city in the criminal investigation into the fatal Deutsche Bank fire last month suggests that it is concerned that prosecutors are focusing on city agencies as possible defendants. On Monday, the office of the corporation counsel, Michael A. Cardozo, released a brief statement saying it had hired the lawyer, Gary P. Naftalis, to represent the city in the investigation into the Aug. 18 fire at the contaminated building, where two firefighters died. The statement said Mr. Naftalis and his firm had been retained to help city lawyers respond to the storm of subpoenas issued by the office of Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, to advise the city and “to appropriately and fully cooperate” with the inquiry. Yesterday, Mr. Cardozo’s office would not comment further on the reasoning behind the hiring, and a spokeswoman declined to discuss whether the city was concerned that prosecutors were exploring possible criminal culpability on the part of city agencies in the deaths. Several criminal defense lawyers said yesterday that the hiring of Mr. Naftalis, a highly regarded criminal defense lawyer with wide experience in complex criminal cases, and his firm, Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, was an indication of the city’s level of concern that prosecutors might explore whether city agencies — the Fire and Buildings Departments — would face charges. “The concern appears to be that the D.A.’s office might consider, on the local level, what the Department of Justice has made many pronouncements recently on the federal level — the criminal liability of companies or business organizations,” Alan Vinegrad, a former United States attorney for Brooklyn, said by e-mail. “In this case, it would also involve the somewhat novel application of that principle to the city.” At the same time, some defense lawyers cited a range of other possible reasons for the hiring, including the relative inexperience of the corporation counsel lawyers in criminal investigations and in dealing with the mass of records sought by prosecutors. Connie Pankratz, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cardozo’s office, said Mr. Morgenthau’s office had not notified the city that it was a subject of the investigation. “We’re only at the point that we’re responding to subpoenas,” she said in a telephone interview. Later, in an e-mail message, she said the city was cooperating fully with the investigation. “Both the city and the D.A. have similar goals: to determine what happened and prevent something like this from happening again,” she said. The fire at the former bank headquarters at 130 Liberty Street, alongside ground zero, exposed a tangle of mysteries about the ill-fated deconstruction project, which has stalled several times over the last three years, and a series of possibly fatal missteps. The city and private contractors failed to conduct required safety inspections at the building and thus never learned that someone had removed a key section of standpipe, a pipe to which fire hoses are connected, in an apparently deadly act that delayed firefighters’ efforts to get water on the blaze. The firefighters were confronted with difficult conditions when they arrived at the building, where the asbestos abatement and dismantling work had transformed the office tower into a maze of plywood and polyurethane sheets and blocked stairwells. Ms. Pankratz said on Monday that Mr. Naftalis, whose firm will charge a discounted hourly rate ranging from $265 to $660 per hour, would represent the Fire and Buildings Departments, the agencies responsible for conducting some of the inspections. Prosecutors, speaking about the case generally, have said they are examining whether negligence led to the deaths. The investigation is far-reaching, examining not only how the fire started and how the firefighters died, but also on how a contractor with questionable ties was selected by the construction manager, Bovis Lend Lease, and approved by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which owns the building. Daniel J. Castleman, a senior aide to Mr. Morgenthau who is overseeing the inquiry, would not discuss details of the case yesterday or say how many prosecutors and investigators had been assigned. But he said it was “obviously a priority.” “People are working around the clock to ensure a complete and thorough investigation,” he said. Asked about the hiring of Mr. Naftalis yesterday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said it was in essence good news that the 700-lawyer corporation counsel’s office did not have much experience in criminal law. “We haven’t needed a lot of expertise in criminal law, but here there are charges that may be brought, criminal charges — maybe they won’t be brought — but we don’t have that expertise, so we’ve gone outside,” he said. “We have offered criminal help, legal help to any of our employees who need it.” (NYtimes, by William K. Rashbaum and Charles V. Bagli, Sept. 19, 2007)
• LEGAL AID IN DEUTSCHE FIRE ... The city is offering free legal help to any of its workers who might face criminal charges in the deadly Deutsche Bank blaze, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday. "We will help anybody who needs legal services," said the mayor. "We treat all our employees exactly the same." Bloomberg insisted the free representation by a high-powered outside legal firm wasn't unusual and was intended to "make sure that this city is represented by people who know what they're doing." On Monday, the city Law Department announced that it had hired the firm of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel to help it handle an investigation by the Manhattan DA's Office into the Aug. 18 fire that took the lives of firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino. (NYPost, by Dvid Seifman, Sept. 19, 2007)
• White Men With Money: The City Lawyers Up ... The Bloomberg administration is facing a heap of subpoenas in the wake of the Deutsche Bank fire that killed two firefighters. So the office of the city's Corporation Counsel is hiring a criminal-defense lawyer, Gary Naftalis, ostensibly to help them sort out which documents to turn over to the investigators. This is, needless to say, an interesting move. City Hall's la-di-da press release says it needs "sufficiently knowledgeable attorneys in order to " fully cooperate" (because, you know, that's what criminal defense does, cooperate). Somehow, we're not thinking Naftalis will be doing what amounts to glorified document review. The man is a co-chair of Kramer Levin, a litigation boutique specializing in ultra-high-profile white-collar litigation; he has a rich (weak pun intended) history of getting wealthy white dudes out of massive trouble, having successfully defended Michael Eisner from Disney shareholders and Salomon Brothers from the SEC. Not that we're implying Bloomberg's in trouble over this, but hiring a guy like Naftalis to "cooperate" is like using a chainsaw to "mend fences." (NYMagazine, 9/18/07)
• Manhattan DA Questions FDNY In Deutsche Probe -- City Hires Expensive Lawyer To Help Craft Defense ... (wcbstv, Marcia Kramer, Sep 18, 2007 )
• City Hires Criminal Lawyer for Deutsche Bank Defense ... The Bloomberg administration announced yesterday that it had hired a top-flight criminal defense lawyer to assist it in defending city agencies in a criminal investigation into the deadly fire at the former Deutsche Bank headquarters last month. ... The investigation is broad, focusing not only on the firefighters’ deaths, but also on the actions of several contractors and city agencies and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is overseeing the dismantling of the building alongside ground zero. The development corporation, which has also come under scrutiny and has been issued subpoenas for documents, has not hired a defense lawyer, according to its spokesman, Errol Cockfield. The prosecutors are examining the work of several contractors and looking into why the building had not been properly inspected by the city. They are also seeking to determine how a company with little experience was hired by the general contractor, Bovis Lend Lease, and approved by the development corporation for the $60 million contract to dismantle the building. ... Relations between the city and prosecutors in the office of District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau have been tense. Two weeks ago, the city sought to meet with several firefighters in advance of their appearance at Mr. Morgenthau’s office, where prosecutors later interviewed them about their experience fighting the Deutsche Bank fire. Connie Pankratz, a spokeswoman for the corporation counsel’s office, said in an e-mail message that Mr. Naftalis and his law firm, Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, would represent “the city and various city agencies,” not any individual city officials or rank-and-file workers. ... Kramer Levin has agreed to reduce by 20 percent its normal hourly charges, and the rates it will charge will vary, she said, depending on the level of lawyer working on the case, from a high of $660 per hour to $265 per hour. ... (NYTimes, by William K. Rashbaum, Sept. 18, 2007)
• CITY HALL LAWYERS UP ... The Bloomberg administration said yesterday that it had engaged Gary Naftalis, one of the nation's top trial lawyers, as outside counsel regarding District Attorney Robert Morgenthau's ongoing criminal probe of the Deutsche Bank fire. .... The announcement came two days after The New York Times reported that FDNY brass had directed several firefighters who were present at the Aug. 18 blaze to meet with city lawyers before sitting down with Morgenthau's investigators. Why City Hall would want to get between Morgenthau and witnesses to a potential crime is a mystery. (NYPost, Sept. 18, 2007)
• Feds: Deutsche Bank demolition came close to disaster ... The Deutsche Bank demolition job is a nightmare of safety violations and near disasters, with subcontractor John Galt Corp. repeatedly misleading regulators, documents charge. Weeks before the Aug. 18 blaze that killed two firefighters, Galt workers accidentally set a safety net afire (click link to see document) and dropped molten steel on some scaffolding. Galt workers doused the fire without calling the Fire Department. Galt also assured the state that a crucial standpipe that failed during the fatal fire was tested and in "working condition" in April 2006. After the fire, inspectors discovered a piece of the pipe had been cut and removed. The Manhattan district attorney and the state attorney general are investigating the cause of the fire and trying to determine responsibility. An increasing number of incidents leading up to the fire are found in internal reports by inspectors for the federal Environmental Protection Agency and an EPA consultant, CH2M Hill of New Jersey, from March 21, 2006, through this Aug. 16 - two days before the fire. The records show regulators were constantly citing Galt for numerous problems. At times, Galt appeared to be trying to deceive its overseers. For instance, on June 9, 2006, the subcontractor claimed a pile of debris had been cleaned of toxic dust and passed air and wipe tests deeming it safe for disposal. Galt couldn't provide documentation, so the EPA decided to check it out. On the 35th floor, the EPA discovered the material was still filthy with toxic dust. After complaining that Galt was wasting their time, regulators confronted Galt executive Don Adler. "Adler stated something to the effect that this building isn't subject to any regulations, (click link to see document) so what standard could it possibly fail?" EPA inspector Bob Fitzpatrick wrote. Another Galt executive, Mitch Alvo, made several excuses. Fitzpatrick noted: "He seemed to know that the material wouldn't pass the regulators' inspection and was trying to justify it." Galt executives did not return a call seeking comment. More than a year later, on July 5, Fitzpatrick noted two containers with "large amounts of dust and debris" that were reported to have been cleaned. "This is a constant and recurring problem," he wrote. It wasn't just dust. Eight days later, inspectors watched as workers dumped contaminated water through a hole in the 20th floor. The pervasiveness of problems appears to have led a key safety inspector to simply throw up his hands. In a March 1 visit, regulators said they confronted Bovis Lend Lease site safety manager Jeff Melofchik about numerous workers without proper hardhats or other protective gear. The report says Melofchik "stated he was aware of the problem but didn't think it was going to be fixed." A Bovis spokeswoman said Melofchik denies making such a statement and insists he tried to correct the problems "immediately." One of the worst days came on July 31, weeks before the blaze that killed Firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino. That day, CH2M Hill said Galt workers cutting steel on the 28th floor set afire safety netting hanging outside the building. Galt workers doused the blaze with extinguishers and a water hose. Inspectors on the 23rd floor saw "pieces of molten metal" falling from above and landing on outside scaffolding. Finally, they asked a Galt "management specialist" to identify the contents of drums of toxic waste that were to be transported from the building. "After 15 minutes, it becomes apparent that the specialist is not really sure what is in each drum," the consultant wrote. Two days later, the city Buildings Department ordered all burning work halted, issuing a violation for unsafe storage of combustible materials, records show. ... (NYDaily News, by Benjamin Lesser & Greg B. Smith, September 18, 2007)
• Earlier Deutsche Bank fire not reported ... The fire department was never called to a smaller and earlier fire in the condemned and contaminated building -- and that raises a most disturbing question: if the department had been notified and known about the dangers in the building, could the deaths of two firefighters have been prevented? The Investigators Jim Hoffer has more. Much of the news about the Deutsche Bank fire has focused on bureaucratic blundering at the FDNY. But in a report, it's the owners and operators at the project site that may have blundered by letting the fire department completely out of the loop about an earlier fire. Twenty five maydays during the Deutsche Bank fire, it is a miracle more firefighters didn't die. But now there's evidence perhaps that the entire incident and the two fatalities could have been avoided had someone paid more attention to this. It's a report from an EPA inspector, obtained by Eyewitness News, that reveals that just 18 days earlier, a small fire broke out just one floor above where firefighter Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino died. The inspector notes in his July 31st visit "that netting outside of the building had caught fire from sparks generated from hot cutting." "This document shows there were fires occurring in the building. This is a gigantic red flag for people that fire safety needed to be looked at in this building," said John Jay College of Fire Science Professor Glen Corbett. But we've confirmed that no one at the Deutsche Bank site ever called the FDNY about the July 31st fire, even though the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's emergency action plan specifically states that in the event of a fire, the contractor must "call 911." "Had they been notified there was a real likelyhood that steps would have been taken to ensure fires didn't occur, there would have been much more scrutiny," Corbett said. This construction safety attorney goes one step further. "If they had done what they should have done, reported this accident, had proper inspection by fire department,this second fire would not have happen because the job would have been shut down," said construction safety expert Jeffrey Manheimer. A spokesman for the LMDC, which has oversight for the project, says "the fire was not big enough to call the FDNY. It was a small fire that only required the use of a fire extinguisher." But an FDNY spokesperson told us simply, "We should have been called." The construction safety expert offers one reason that they weren't. "They buried it .... time is money on these construction projects ... I understand a substantial bonus if they complete the project under schedule ... that's always an incentive," Manheimer said. One firefighter told us had the FDNY been called on the earlier fire, they may have discovered that the stand-pipe had been dismantled. We should note though that the fire department also failed to conduct mandatory fire inspections. If you have a tip about this or any other story, please give our tip line a call at 877-tip-news. (New York- WABC, September 17, 2007)
  
• $HAKY GROUND ... The obscure state agency charged with coordinating about 60 construction projects downtown - including demolition of the former Deutsche Bank building - is going broke, The Post has learned. Not only has the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, which is under Gov. Spitzer's control, been blamed for mismanaging deconstruction of the bank building at Ground Zero, it apparently can't even manage its own budget. State agencies have refused to transfer millions of dollars to the LMCCC, which has authority over every project south of Canal Street worth more than $25 million, because it cannot provide a satisfactory plan of how the funds would be spent. Unless changes are made, the LMCCC will have a $3 million deficit by next month, said sources with direct knowledge of the budget. For instance, the Port Authority, which has several megaprojects downtown, including the World Trade Center transit hub and the Freedom Tower, hasn't paid a cent of the $21.7 million it promised last year. The money is "contingent on completion of an agreement on how the funds will be used. Since the agreement has not been completed, the funds have not been transferred," PA spokesman Steve Coleman said. LMCCC leaders, including ex-Executive Director Charles Maikish and current head Robert Harvey, have come under fire for their handling of the demolition of the contaminated bank building. After an Aug. 18 blaze at the site killed two firefighters, it emerged that numerous safety hazards that contributed to the fire had been ignored. "We are confident that our partners will fully satisfy their funding commitments," said Errol Cockfield, a spokesman for the state-run Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which manages the LMCCC. The LMCCC has a five-year, $67 million budget, but Cockfield declined to discuss the state of its finances or why it can't document where the money would go. The MTA committed $10.4 million to the LMCCC, but also hasn't transferred any cash. Jeremy Soffin, an MTA spokesman, said the matter was being looked into. And the state Department of Transportation's $2.6 million commitment has yet to reach the LMCCC's coffers. (NYPost, by Chuck Bennett, September 17, 2007)
• Council Takes Agenda to Washington ... Securing money for the health needs of rescue workers and other responders at the World Trade Center site on and after September 11, 2001, is the City Council's top legislative priority when it travels to Washington today to lobby for its federal agenda. The council delegation, led by Speaker Christine Quinn, is scheduled to meet with the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, members of the New York congressional delegation, the president and CEO of the National Housing Conference, Conrad Egan, and Senator Stabenow, a Democrat of Michigan who is chairwoman of the Senate's Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee. Rep. Joseph Crowley, a Democrat who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens, is hosting a reception tonight for the delegation, expected to include 24 council members. It is the first time Ms. Quinn is traveling to Washington with a delegation to roll out the council's federal agenda. The trip is paid for with public money that comes from each council member's individual budget. Members make their own travel and accommodation arrangements. ... (NYSun, by Grace Rauh, Sept. 17, 2007)
• L.M.D.C. agrees to reseal Deutsche after low dioxin levels are found ... Safe air and a working emergency notification system topped a long list of community demands crafted this week in the wake of the deadly Deutsche Bank fire. On Wednesday, Environmental Protection Agency spokesperson Mary Mears said that at least one of those demands will be met “shortly.” After three weeks of community insistence and two strongly worded letters from the E.P.A., the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has agreed to reseal the Deutsche Bank building to prevent toxins from escaping into the environment, Mears said. The L.M.D.C. had previously said it would not reseal the structure until remedial repair work on the building was complete and all of the project’s regulatory agencies had hammered out a new safety plan for the site. Mears said that the agreement to reseal the building was reached during a Wednesday meeting between E.P.A. Region 2 administrator Alan J. Steinberg, L.M.D.C. Chairperson Avi Schick and Dep. Mayors Ed Skyler and Dan Doctoroff. As of press time, the agencies’ technical experts were busy working out the specifics of exactly when and how the resealing would take place. “This is the right step,” said Community Board 1 vice chairperson Catherine McVay Hughes when she learned of the L.M.D.C.’s change of heart. “It’s terrific that all the agencies now are working together to keep our neighborhood healthy and safe.” At an emergency C.B. 1 meeting last Wednesday night — the third such meeting in as many weeks — officials, including a contrite Skyler, came with the intent of discussing a new community notification plan for the Deutsche Bank project and other potential emergencies citywide. However, the discussion often veered into other areas, as local residents chastised the L.M.D.C. for failing to heed, or even respond to, community reservations about the Deutsche project prior to the fire. Board members and activists alike also expressed grave concerns about the L.M.D.C.’s apparent reluctance to follow the E.P.A’s recommendations for dealing with the contaminated building. Their environmental concerns were heightened two days later, when the E.P.A. revealed that elevated levels of dioxins had been released from the building 10 days after the fire, though not at harmful levels. “I cannot tell you how very disappointed we are that the green governor who appointed you would allow you to press for a downgrade [on environmental safety],” Kimberly Flynn of 9/11 Environmental Action told Schick at the Sept. 5 meeting. .... (Downtown Express, By Skye H. McFarlane, September 14 - 20, 2007)
  
• AP Analysis: 9/11 health issue tests Clinton's clout ... Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her fellow New York Democrats will soon face a major test of their clout in Congress: whether they can deliver health care to sick ground zero workers. For years, New York politicians - none more prominent than Clinton - have blasted President Bush for not doing enough to treat those who are sick years after working on the toxic rubble of the World Trade Center. Now that Democrats are the majority in Congress and Clinton is the party's presidential front-runner, there is new hope among ground zero workers for health care - and compensation. ... (AP/Newsdsay, by Develin Barrett, Sept. 16, 2007)
  
• Editorial: A date that changes with time ... Life and death questions related to Sept. 11 also remain in Lower Manhattan. The tragic deaths of two firefighters last month at a building damaged by the collapsing Twin Towers are the source of many of them. Government indifference put those men’s lives at risk unnecessarily and there continues to be a disturbing unwillingness of many to take responsibility. The future health of some of those who worked cleaning up the W.T.C. and those who lived, worked and studied near the site is uncertain. We were pleased to see House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in our neighborhood this week announcing her support for a bill to provide health coverage to those affected by the attack. We hope and expect that New York’s mostly-Democratic Congressional delegation will now be able to get this important legislation passed and perhaps even Bush can be persuaded to sign a bill whose beneficiaries include uniformed officers who sacrificed their health responding to the attack. ... (Downtown Express, September 14 - 20, 2007)
• Firefighters in Bank Blaze Said to Have Ignored Order to Consult City Lawyers ... Fire Department officials directed several firefighters last week to meet with city lawyers before they were questioned by the prosecutors investigating the deadly fire at the former Deutsche Bank building, according to several people involved in the matter. The firefighters ignored the directive to report to the corporation counsel’s office two hours before their 10 a.m. appointment with prosecutors from the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, on Sept. 6, the people involved said. Instead, the men and their union lawyers went directly to Mr. Morgenthau’s office, where they recounted their experiences during the Aug. 18 fire, which killed two of their colleagues. Neither the Fire Department nor lawyers from the office of the corporation counsel, Michael A. Cardozo, notified prosecutors of their plan to meet with the men before they talked to prosecutors about the fire, which is the subject of wide-ranging criminal investigation, several of the people said. Mr. Morgenthau, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment on the city’s directive. But in 2003, when corporation counsel lawyers attempted similar interviews with city employees involved in a Staten Island Ferry crash, federal prosecutors strongly criticized the Bloomberg administration. The city’s actions at the time, the prosecutors said, “had a chilling effect on the candor of some city employees,” limited the ability of city investigators “to get at the truth,” and significantly slowed the inquiry. A spokeswoman for Mr. Cardozo said yesterday that he had no comment on the matter. Relations between Mr. Morgenthau’s office and City Hall have become strained as prosecutors press their investigation into the fire at the contaminated former bank building, which looms over ground zero and is both an ugly reminder of 9/11 and of the government’s slow progress in rebuilding Lower Manhattan. Prosecutors are focusing not only on the firefighters’ deaths, but also on the actions of several contractors and city and state officials and agencies. The city faces potentially significant civil liability in the case. In particular, prosecutors are reviewing the work of several contractors, examining why the building had not been properly inspected by the city, and exploring how a company with little experience was approved by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation for the $60 million contract to demolish the building. Firefighting units that responded to the blaze in the Deutsche Bank tower found that demolition work had created difficult conditions. A standpipe used to deliver water to the upper floors had been dismantled, forcing fire companies to improvise with their own system of hoses, a procedure that delayed getting water on the fire. Required inspections in the building, including tests of the standpipe, had not been done, and the stairwells had been sealed as part of efforts to remove asbestos. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has said that the city will assist the investigation by Mr. Morgenthau and a separate inquiry by the state’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo. “We are cooperating fully with those investigations,” he said at a press conference several days after the fire, “and will take no steps that could interfere with them.” Tom Butler, a spokesman for the Uniformed Firefighters Association, which represents the firefighters, said he could not comment on the city’s actions, citing the investigation. The tensions between the prosecutors and City Hall developed when Mr. Cardozo’s office sought to have city lawyers present when city employees were questioned as part of the inquiry, several people have said. But prosecutors in Mr. Morgenthau’s office rejected that idea. The firefighters questioned last week were not targets of the inquiry, according to several people involved in the matter, and were represented by their union lawyers. They were part of a group of nine firefighters and one fire captain who were interviewed on Sept. 6. One person who has been briefed on the city’s handling of the matter said that the corporation counsel’s office had sought a meeting with the firefighters, not to debrief them, but to offer that city lawyers represent them in the interviews. ... Questioning of city employees by their superiors or city lawyers can, in some instances, cause problems in criminal investigations. When city employees are questioned under oath by the city before they speak to prosecutors, their statements cannot be used against them in a criminal proceeding; that is why police officers involved in fatal shootings are almost never questioned by police officials before prosecutors have a chance to conduct their own inquiry. (NYTimes, by SWilliam K. Rashbaum & Charles V. Bagli, September 15, 2007)
• Variance Reopening Request to OEM Meeting Letter from TRC/LMDC ... (09/14/07)
• Pelosi backs 9/11 health bill ... House Speaker Nancy Pelosi came to the World Trade Center site Monday and announced her support for federally funded health care for anyone suffering from 9/11-related illnesses. ... Pelosi, a Democrat from San Francisco, mentioned ground zero workers but not residents during the Monday press conference and did not respond when Downtown Express questioned her about it as she was leaving the site. ... U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who will be one of the legislation’s sponsors, said Pelosi has told him privately that she supports covering residents and he guaranteed that residents would not be cut out of the effort to provide health coverage. “They will not be negotiated out of the bill,” Nadler said. “Period.” ... Some Downtown residents attribute their new or worsened asthma, other respiratory ailments or cancer to their exposure to the toxic plume and dust released on Sept. 11, 2001 and in the subsequent months while the W.T.C. fires continued to burn. Etta Sanders, 50, a Downtown resident and Tribeca Trib reporter, died of lung cancer on June 5 and she connected her cancer to 9/11 in an essay the Trib published posthumously. Nadler, whose district includes the W.T.C., introduced similar 9/11 health legislation last year as did a fellow Democrat, Sen. Hillary Clinton, who has a bill that would provide $1.9 billion in coverage. The new House bill’s language has not been finalized, but its other New York sponsors will be U.S. Representatives Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat, and Vito Fossella, a Republican. Most of the New York delegation supported last year’s bill but it did not get far in the Republican-controlled Congress. In order to be eligible for coverage under the new House bill, participants would need to have their illness connected to 9/11 by a “Center of Excellence,” or health facility that has been treating 9/11 ailments such as Mount Sinai or Bellevue, and then confirmed by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. NIOSH would fund the program, not Medicare, as was proposed last year. The bill would also provide federal monitoring of anyone exposed to 9/11 toxins and reopen the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund to people who suffered economically because of a 9/11 illness. ... (Downtown Express, by Josh Rogers, September 14 - 20, 2007)
  
• Ex-NFL star Martin starts walk to raise US$10 million for 9/11 rescue workers ... "I've been termed a hero for playing a kids' game at a pro level, and that does not rise to the level of heroic," Martin said Saturday. "I think of 9/11, when I saw people respond and put their health, their careers, their lives in jeopardy." Six years later, there is evidence that many rescue and recovery workers could be in danger from lethal or crippling illnesses linked to their time at ground zero. Martin, 54, hopes to raise US$10 million for these victims with a cross-country walk, heading from the George Washington Bridge to the Golden Gate Bridge. ... (Canadian Press/AP, Sept. 16, 2007)
• Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism ... She sold several screenplays and intermittently wrote novels that were commercial failures, until 1943, when fans of “The Fountainhead” began a word-of-mouth campaign that helped sales immensely. Shortly after “Atlas Shrugged” was published in 1957, Mr. Greenspan wrote a letter to The New York Times to counter a critic’s comment that “the book was written out of hate.” Mr. Greenspan wrote: “ ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.” Rand’s magazine, The Objectivist, later published several essays by Mr. Greenspan, including one on the gold standard in 1966. Rand called “Atlas” a mystery, “not about the murder of man’s body, but about the murder — and rebirth — of man’s spirit.” It begins in a time of recession. To save the economy, the hero, John Galt, calls for a strike against government interference. Factories, farms and shops shut down. Riots break out as food becomes scarce. Rand said she “set out to show how desperately the world needs prime movers and how viciously it treats them” and to portray “what happens to a world without them.” The book was released to terrible reviews. Critics faulted its length, its philosophy and its literary ambitions. Both conservatives and liberals were unstinting in disparaging the book; the right saw promotion of godlessness, and the left saw a message of “greed is good.” .... “Rand believed that there is right and wrong,” he said, “that excellence should be your goal.” .... The book’s hero, John Galt, also continues to live on. The subcontractor hired to demolish the former Deutsche Bank building, which was damaged when the World Trade Center towers fell, was the John Galt Corporation. It was removed from the job last month after a fire at the building killed two firefighters. ... (NYTimes, by Harriet Rubin, Sept. 15, 2007)
  
• State 9/11 program investigates member’s cancer death ... State 9/11 program investigates member’s cancer death The state Health Dept. is investigating the death of Radio Repair Mechanic Glenford Pennington, whose co-workers and sister believe he died of cancer because of his work at Ground Zero. A Public Employee Press article on the Local 1087 member in June sparked the inquiry about Pennington, who succumbed to lymphoma cancer in 2006. Pennington, who was 49 at the time of his death, worked at Ground Zero on 9/11 and subsequently to clean and repair communication gear for the Fire Dept. The state Dept. of Health contacted the DC 37 Safety and Health Dept. after the article appeared to seek assistance in its investigation. The union referred the state to Pennington’s sister, Valorie Pennington, and PEP forwarded background information it had obtained while working on the story to the investigators. The state World Trade Center Responders Fatality Investigation Program is collecting information about the deaths of responders and volunteers who worked at the disaster site. In addition to establishing the cause of death, theinvestigation aims to determine whether Pennington’sillness is among a cluster of ailments associated with the fatalities of responders and volunteers, a state official said. Cancer link to deaths? Pennington’s case is significant because WTC medical investigators haven’t yet acknowledged a link between 9/11 deaths and cancers..... The state program investigating deaths related to the 9/11 disaster urges anyone with information on specific cases to come forward and help. The program needs workers’ names, dates of birth and death and causes of death. The information could lead to improvements in medical treatment and coverage of responders and could help the families ofresponders suffering from illnesses to receivecompensation. Anyone with information on the death of a responder should contact the program at WTCFatality@health. state.ny.us or call 866-807-2130 toll-free. (Public Employee Press, by Gregory N. Heires)
  
• Standpipe Blamed in Fire Is Recertified for Use ... A broken standpipe blamed for hindering the battle against a fire that killed two firefighters in the former Deutsche Bank building was declared operational yesterday, fire officials said. The declaration came more than three weeks after the fire; both the city's fire department and buildings department signed off on the repairs. Fire officials said a full hydrostatic test of the pipe was conducted — meaning water was run through the pipe at pressures sufficient to reach the upper floors of the 26-story building. During the seven-alarm blaze at the building on August 18, fire marshals found that the standpipe had been dismantled. They later discovered that hydrostatic testing of the pipe, required every five years, had not been conducted in a decade. Contractors working in the building, along with its owner, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, are currently being investigated in a criminal probe into the fire. The building is being dismantled after it was damaged and contaminated by toxic debris when the twin towers collapsed in the attacks of September 11, 2001. Pieces of the pipe have been sent to an FBI laboratory to determine if it was purposely dismantled or blew apart under pressure when water pressure was turned on while a valve was shut. The results of that analysis have yet to be released. After the fire last month, the fire department required the LMDC to make other changes to improve fire safety inside the structure. ... (NYSun, by Sarah Garland, Sept. 14, 2007)
• Deutsche Bank: Community Worries About the Fire Next Time: NEW INITIATIVES ON NOTIFICATION AND OUTREACH; LMDC WEIGHS HALTING DECONSTRUCTION UNTIL DECONTAMINATION IS COMPLETE - GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS AND CONTRACTORS POINT TO EACH OTHER AND SAY “ASK THEM” - WHY HASN’T THE BUILDING BEEN RESEALED? ... The fallout from the Deutsche Bank fire on August 18 continues to unsettle residents of Lower Manhattan, whose frustration is compounded by the absence of meaningful answers about the tragedy that claimed the lives of two firefighters, and whether similar disasters can be avoided in the future. ... contention between LMDC and other agencies was aired when the public were invited to pose questions, and Kimberly Flynn asked why the Deutsche Bank building had still not been resealed, more than two weeks after the fire, when it is known to contain hazardous materials. When Mr. Schick explained that the process for getting this approved was complicated and time-consuming, Ms. Flynn asked EPA representative Pat Evangelista (who attended the meeting as an observer) to explain his agency’s position. Mr. Evangelista said, “EPA feels that the building should be resealed while other decisions are being made.” Mr. Schick replied, “we’ll do the best we can.” (The Battery park City Broadsheet, by Matthew Fenton, Sept. 11-26, 2007)
  
• DEUTSCHE STANDPIPE FIX ... The faulty standpipe in the former Deutsche Bank building that led to the death of two firefighters three weeks ago has finally been repaired, officials announced yesterday. The standpipe, which was supposed to send pressurized water throughout the building, was partially dismantled the day of the Aug. 18 fire that killed firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino. The building, which is contaminated with toxic dust, was undergoing demolition. Careless smoking by a worker was blamed for the blaze. Meanwhile, more than two weeks after higher than normal levels of the carcinogen dioxin were detected around the building, officials agreed on a plan to reseal it. Officials could still give no firm date when the resealing work will begin. (NYPost, by Chuck Bennet, Sept. 14, 2007)
• Razzle Dazzle: The Smoke After the Fire ... Nearly four weeks after the Deutsche Bank building blaze in which two Firefighters were killed, the focus remains on what the Fire Department did wrong and who were the culprits. ... The warfare within the Fire Department, however, has turned the conversation away from the early targets of public ire: the contractor, Bovis Lend Lease and its since-dismissed subcontractor, the John Galt Corporation. It has also had the effect of giving a free pass to the Buildings Department, even though, according to several officials, it bears a greater responsibility than the Fire Department for ensuring that the deconstruction of the Deutsche Bank building was conducted safely and without posing fire hazards. Chief Siegel's memo from 30 months ago noted that because the fire alarm system at 130 Liberty St. was out of service, there was a "24 hour a day fire watch," meaning that individuals hired by the contractor were supposed to be walking through the building periodically to check for fire hazards. Glenn Corbett, an Associate Professor of Fire Science at John Jay College who has been active in an attempt to bring greater fire safety to all high-rises in the city, said that on more than one occasion in the past he had mentioned to his co-chair of the Skyscraper Campaign, Sally Regenhard, "This building is an incredible fire hazard." He said last week that he was astonished to learn of the routine violations by workers employed by the subcontractor - including the constant smoking that is now believed to have been the cause of the fire - because of the obstacles that were thrown up when he and Ms. Regenhard had attempted to have the building checked for human remains of the casualties of 9/11. 'Insane' to Use Plywood - Thirteen months ago, Mr. Corbett said, after being put through months of "enormous hoops and hurdles, including extensive medical checks," they were permitted to have an independent forensic anthropologist enter the building, leading to the eventual discovery of more remains. Because of the level of toxicity in the building, Mr. Corbett said, it was "absolutely insane" to use plastic and plywood during the asbestos-abatement work, even though that is fairly common in other buildings where such work is done. "Why weren't they using a lot more sheetrock or gypsum board?" he asked. "They did this on the cheap. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation bears the ultimate responsibility, then Bovis and Galt. But this was not a building that the upper management of the Fire Department should have treated like just another building. The only logical people who should have been in this building [from the FDNY] were members of the Special Operations Command, who have Haz-Mat training, either as a special detail or on overtime. This building was so unique, and so obviously a problem, that it had to go to the upper echelons of the department."... Organized-Crime Link - The LMDC has been criticized for permitting Bovis to retain a subcontractor which had connections to individuals linked to organized crime. One former union official with experience in the construction business said that while it was true that Harold Greenberg had ties to the Gambino Crime Family, he was sufficiently knowledgeable about the deconstruction work involved that Bovis may have figured, "Give it to him, it'll be down in six months." But this official, who spoke conditioned on anonymity, added that even in a building under deconstruction where services were being cut, it would be standard practice to keep the standpipe and sprinkler system in operation for use on the floors below where the work was being done. ... 'Liars Cut Corners' - The former union official questioned the grounds under which Bovis and Galt asked for - and got - an additional $40 million for the deconstruction, saying that there was no reason they wouldn't have known from the outset how much work would be involved. But, referring to published reports that false information had been supplied to the city's Vendex system regarding the contractors, he added, "If your supervision is from somebody who lied to Vendex, you know they're going to cut corners." Another person with extensive knowledge of the Building Code, who also spoke on condition that he not by identified by name, said the brunt of the blame within the Bloomberg administration should rest with the Buildings Department. He pointed out that even the fire-protection provisions for construction are covered in the Building Code rather than its Fire Department counterpart. "These days they're throwing around stop-work orders like confetti," he said of Buildings Department officials. "But on this building, they seem to have deferred to 'Lower Manhattan.''' Nearly as troubling as what happened at 130 Liberty St., he said, is that this might mean Buildings has not been conducting regular inspections at Fiterman Hall, a Borough of Manhattan Community College building which, while smaller than the Deutsche Bank building has some of the same issues. (Ironically, he noted, a smaller Deutsche Bank property to its south at 4 Albany St. had been "deconstructed quickly and neatly. The contrast was remarkable.") 'Not Doing Their Job' - "Buildings is now run by the lawyers and administrators more than the architects and engineers," he said. "It's gotten very bloated, but not at the practical level, so they're not doing their job." He continued, "I think the high echelons in both [city] departments vacated their responsibility." It was hard to believe, he said, that the decision not to conduct fire inspections would have been made by Mr. Bosco, the Captain of Engine Co. 10, which is right across the street from the Deutsche Bank building. "I don't think they would be taking it upon themselves to say, 'Screw it, I'm not going in there.' They would be the first-responders if there was a fire; they're the ones who are going in there." It's possible that a combination of sloth and the resistance among many firefighters to doing building inspection work led to the monitoring of the Deutsche Bank building falling through the cracks. But firefighters who advance up the ranks tend to be people who believe in process and the chain of command, and so it's hard to believe that three officers would have neglected their responsibilities without first asking for direction from higher up. The Profit Motive - It seems far more plausible that those with an interest in getting the building down quickly - either because that's what they were paid to do or because they stood to profit from the building that would go up in its place - would have been less than scrupulous about how it was accomplished. And so even Mr. Cassidy, who last week was calling for the heads of the Fire Department to be subpoenaed to testify by the Manhattan DA's Office, seemed to understand that the biggest culprits - those most likely to face criminal charges - will be found outside the agency which has been under the high-beams of the media for the past four weeks. (The Chief, by Richard Steier, 09/14/07)
  
• Wants Agency Heads Grilled: UFA Leader: FDNY Probe a Whitewash ... The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang - 'SHIFTING THE BLAME': Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy accuses the Fire Department of a cover-up for allegedly not looking into pre-fire procedures in its investigation of the fatal Deutsche Bank Building fire. He also called for the Department of Investigation to look into who leaked information about the probe to the Daily News. ... (The Chief, by Ari Paul, 09/14/07)
• Cleaners File Suit Over Pay for Jobs Near Ground Zero ... Nine workers who spent months after the Sept. 11 attacks cleaning offices, apartments and stores near ground zero filed a lawsuit yesterday against several of their former employers, accusing them of wage violations, including not paying overtime. The suit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, says the workers often put in 70 or more hours a week, but did not receive time-and-a-half pay for overtime, while the companies profited greatly. ... Lawyers for the workers said they hoped the suit would be certified as class action, representing more than 1,000 low-wage workers, most of them immigrants who were hired by several companies to clean up hundreds of buildings around the World Trade Center site. The buildings included churches, hospitals and government offices. The suit says that the companies ignored state labor laws by often paying workers, like Ms. Gil, a flat $60 fee for an eight-hour shift, without paying overtime when they worked double shifts or seven-day weeks. ... About a dozen companies are named as defendants, including Maxons Restorations, based in Manhattan; Crystal Restorations, in Port Chester; and Milro Services, in Freeport. “These companies profited a great deal from this work,” Mr. Swartz said. “But we know that some companies that did cleaning work down there didn’t violate wage and hour laws.” The suit asserts that revenues at Maxons jumped to at least $40 million in 2001, from $10 million the year before. ... (NYTimes, by Steven Greenhouse, Sept. 13, 2007)
• Weeks After Fire, Deutsche Pipe Fixed ... A broken standpipe blamed for exacerbating a fire that killed two firefighters in the former Deutsche Bank building was declared operational today, fire officials said. The fire department and buildings department both signed off on the repairs to the standpipe today, more than three weeks after the fire, and declared the standpipe fully operational for fighting fires in the upper floors of the 26-story building. Fire marshals found the standpipe had been dismantled following a seven-alarm blaze at the building on August 18. Pieces of the pipe were sent to an FBI laboratory to determine if they had been purposely dismantled, or if they had blown apart under pressure when the pipe was turned on. The results of that analysis have yet to be released. ... After the fire last month, the fire department has required that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the building's owner, make changes to improve fire safety there. Fire officials said today that all of those changes have been completed. (NYSun, by Sarah Garland, 09/13/07)
  
• Editorial: Swing the wrecking ball ... This is the same Buildings Department that lost control of the city's building boom and allowed a plague of cracked walls, shifting foundations and worker deaths. And it is the department whose inspectors failed to discover that a Deutsche Bank building standpipe had been disconnected, leading to the deaths of two firefighters. Two months ago, Commissioner Patricia Lancaster vowed to fix her agency. Enough is enough. She gets her act together or Mayor Bloomberg will have to do the job for her. (NYDaily News, 09/13/07)
  
• Hundreds a month apply for World Trade Center help ... Six years after the 9/11 attacks, more than 400 Ground Zero workers and volunteers are still signing up each month to be treated for a range of ailments, medical officials said yesterday. Thousands are suffering, and "respiratory illness, psychological distress and financial devastation have become a new way of life for many," said Dr. Philip Landrigan of New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Landrigan and other specialists testified at a House Education and Labor Committee hearing on continued federal funding for worker treatment and planning for future natural disasters and terror attacks. ... Freddy Cordero, 41, of the Bronx, a Board of Education employee who worked the bucket brigade at the site, said his doctors have told him he has "the lungs of an 80-year-old." (NYDaily News, by Richard Sisk, 09/13/07)
  
• FDNY ripped in Deutsche deaths, but what about Bovis? ... Main contractor at Deutsche Bank, where two firefighters died, is also building WTC memorial. The supervising contractor ultimately accountable for safety violations that killed two firefighters at the Deutsche Bank building remains the lead contractor for the World Trade Center Memorial. That's right: Bovis Land Lease is still building the memorial to those who died on 9/11. This, even though it allowed its subcontractor to turn a building at the very edge of Ground Zero into a deathtrap that killed Firefighter Bobby Beddia and Firefighter Joe Graffagnino. "Today, Bovis is humbled, and privileged, to have been chosen," Bovis CEO Peter Marchetto said back in 2006, when the firm was named lead contractor for the memorial. Some argue that because the Deutsche Bank building was initially damaged on 9/11, Beddia and Graffagnino could be considered the 344th and 345th members of the FDNY to die as a result of the attack on the World Trade Center. Which would make Bovis Lend Lease the first construction company ever to build a memorial that includes heroes its negligence helped kill. The city was lightning quick to publicly shame three respected and dedicated fire supervisors for failing to ensure the Deutsche Bank building was inspected in the weeks before the fatal Aug. 18 blaze. Yet the evidence is even clearer that Bovis Lend Lease abjectly failed in its supervising responsibilities. How can officials discipline fire commanders for not detecting the hazards before the fire and not just as quickly seek sanctions against to the company that allowed those hazards to materialize in the first place? How can a distinguished deputy fire chief be deemed no longer worthy to command his division while Bovis retains the honor of building the memorial? And if there is continued grumbling that the highest levels of the FDNY should be held accountable for the Deutsche Bank fire, what about the entity that retained Bovis? The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. not only hired Bovis but approved the hiring of the subcontractor John Galt despite warnings from the city Department of Investigation that it is a shell company run by characters with shady pasts. Anybody who starts pointing a finger at the FDNY about the Deutsche Bank fire should shake a fist at the LMDC. At least we have one bit of proof that Beddia and Graffagnino did not die completely in vain. That came on Aug. 29, after the Fire Department inspected the site of another Bovis project at the old Queens County Family Court building on Parsons Blvd. The firefighters discovered plastic and plywood partitions such as had been erected for asbestos abatement at the Deutsche Bank building. They then came upon a more alarming similarity that was confirmed by the Department of Buildings. "Buildings inspectors noted that the standpipe was missing sections on the first floor," DOB later reported. Bovis later said the building was under 75 feet high and therefore was not required to have a working standpipe. DOB issued a stop-work order that it posted on the construction fence near the big sign reading BOVIS. "Work was being performed in a dangerous or unsafe manner," the notice announced. Bovis hired the Federated Fire Protection company of the Bronx, which repaired the standpipe and reported in an Aug. 31 letter that it had been "tested and is in proper working order." The FDNY certified that day that the standpipe had indeed been fixed. The Buildings Department lifted the stop-work order yesterday. The Queens job can now proceed as safely. "We're being as cooperative as possible," a Bovis spokesman said yesterday. One remaining question is how Bovis would have allowed any demolition job in a building of whatever height not to have a working standpipe in the aftermath of the double tragedy at the edge of Ground Zero. The much bigger question is how there came to be a severed standpipe and a host of other safety violations at the Deutsche Bank building. That question is being considered by the Manhattan district attorney as the work on the 9/11 memorial continues. (NYDaily News, by Michael Daly, 09/13/07)
  
• FDNY BOSS A CHOPPER DROPPER: UNION ... Union leaders blasted Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta yesterday, saying he ignored a plan to fight high-rise fires with helicopters and abdicated authority over the downtown skyscraper where two firefighters died last month. According to the firefighters' union, Scoppetta passed up a chance to use federal Homeland Security funds more than two years ago to help buy helicopters that could hold 1,000 gallons of water and shoot it at flames. Union officials said the aircraft could have saved the lives of Joseph Graffagnino and Robert Beddia, who died Aug. 18 when a high-rise fire at the former Deutsche Bank building grew out of control after a broken standpipe failed to deliver water to firefighters."If you had a high-rise fire without sprinklers or a working standpipe, how else are you going to fight the fire?" said Uniformed Firefighters Association president Stephen Cassidy. Top commanders, including then-Chief of Department Peter Hayden, urged Scoppetta in March 2005 to buy the copters. Hayden said they proposed paying $30 million for two or three regional-use helicopters, a purchase that would have been offset by Homeland Security funds. The commanders made their pitch just two days after a battalion chief wrote a March 22, 2005, "smoking gun" memo detailing a strategy for fighting a fire in the contaminated building. "It didn't go anywhere," Hayden, who retired last year, said of the helicopter proposal. "He didn't see the need for it." Scoppetta yesterday said it would be unsafe to use helicopters for high-rise fires in the city, and that they can be utilized only for observation. The Police Department makes its choppers available when needed, he said. (NYPost, by Samuel Goldsmith, Kaili McDonnough & Leonard Greene, 09/13/07)
• EPA and LMDC Agree on How to Proceed With 130 Liberty ... The EPA and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation have reached an agreement on how to temporarily proceed at the former Deutsche bank building. REPORTER: Deputy Mayor’s Dan Doctoroff and Ed Skyler met EPA officials and LMDC head, Avi Schick. They committed to reseal the building site while preliminary work is done. REPORTER: Last week the EPA had taken the LMDC to task for not keeping it's public commitment to work with regulators and reseal the building to protect workers and the public from potential contamination. The site at 130 Liberty was severely damaged and contaminated on September 11th. REPORTER: The LMDC is still working on how it wants to approach the remediation and deconstruction of the building in the aftermath of last month's fire that killed two firefighters and destroyed environmental protections that had been put in place at the site. (WNYC, Bob Hennelly, Sept. 12, 2007)
• Variance Reopening Request from LMDC/TRC 130 Liberty Street Letter to NYSDOL (Sept. 12, 2007)
• Fire Chopper Could've Prevented Deutsche Tragedy? UFA President Slams FDNY Commish Over Failure To Act ... (wcbstv, Marcia Kramer, Sept. 12, 2007)
• Problems in Buildings ... To the Editor: “Burning Questions After a Blaze,” by Dennis Smith (Op-Ed, Aug. 31), talks about plenty of blame to go around with respect to the Deutsche Bank disaster. But maybe there is another side to this story that needs to be looked at. Many construction and demolition problems occur because of unrealistically low budgets or severe scheduling restrictions placed by the building’s owners when soliciting bids. Building owners trying to foist low budgets on contractors will generally require the contractor to cut corners. Unrealistically short schedules may cause the contractor to expedite work in such a way that worker safety or public protection is in danger. So maybe the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation ought to look at its bidding procedures. Did they not receive more bids for the work initially? Was denial of a reasonable profit for the contractor the cause? Or did they impose other restrictions that created an accident waiting to happen? (NYTimes, by Sidney M. LevyBaltimore, Aug. 31, 2007; published September 9, 2007 - The writer is a construction consultant.)
  
• Doctors: Long-term illnesses plague ground zero workers ... Doctors treating sickened ground zero workers offered Congress a detailed diagnosis Wednesday of the ailments still affecting thousands after the September 11 attacks, but warned that there's no way to determine how many more may become afflicted with life-threatening illnesses. Dr. Philip Landrigan of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine described three months of recent medical treatment to a House panel examining how many of those who toiled on the toxic debris pile are still sick -- or may get sick. Thousands of people "are still suffering," Landrigan said a day after the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Their ailments range from runny noses to laryngitis to lung disease, he said. "Respiratory illness, psychological distress and financial devastation have become a new way of life for many," he told the House Education and Labor Committee. He advocated leaving September 11-related medical programs in place to try to determine how many workers might develop long-term diseases. ... (CNN, 07/12/07)
  
• Doctors Testify Before House Committee On 9/11 Health Problems ... (NY1, September 12, 2007)
  
• State, EPA agree to seal contaminated WTC tower after fatal fire ... Workers will seal a contaminated ground zero skyscraper damaged in a fatal fire at the same time new fire safety measures are adopted in the building, officials overseeing the building's demolition said Wednesday. The former Deutsche Bank building's owner, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., gave no timetable for when it would close windows on several floors that have been open to the elements since the Aug. 18 blaze, which killed two firefighters. Several more meetings will have to precede any work at the condemned building. But officials from the LMDC, the city and the federal Environmental Protection Agency agreed in a meeting Wednesday to simultaneously seal the building and complete necessary safety work, the EPA said. At a downtown Manhattan community board meeting last week, LMDC Chairman Avi Schick and Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler said the building would not be sealed until other safety work is completed; Schick said that could take weeks. An EPA official publicly criticized the move, and the agency wrote letters to the LMDC demanding that the building be resealed immediately. ... (NYNewsday/AP, September 12, 2007)
  
• UFA Head Says Helicopter Could Have Prevented Deaths At Deutsche Bank ... (NY1, September 12, 2007)
  
• Labor Committee Explores Lessons Learned After Failure to Protect World Trade Center Rescue Workers ... (News Release, September 12, 2007)
  
• House Democrats Challenge OSHA Efforts At World Trade Site ... (CQ HEALTHBEAT NEWS, By Mary Agnes Carey, Sept. 12, 2007)
• Ground Zero cleaning workers sue ... Workers who cleaned buildings of World Trade Center debris around ground zero after Sept. 11 sued several companies Wednesday that they say underpaid them while making millions in profits. Nine of the workers filed a suit seeking class-action status against a dozen private companies and employers who hired people to clean dust and debris from private office buildings and apartments after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.(Newsday/AP, September 12, 2007)
  
• Report Confirms Problems with EPA WTC Indoor "Test and Clean" Program ... The GAO is the non-partisan investigative arm of Congress charged with auditing and evaluating Government programs and activities. The report is titled, “World Trade Center: EPA’s Most Recent Test and Clean Program Raises Concerns that Need to be Addressed to Better Prepare for Indoor Contamination Following Disasters,” .... (Occupational Hazards, by Sandy Smith, Sept. 11, 2007)
• Former FDNY Commish: Deutsche Bank A 'Death Trap' -- EXCLUSIVE: Von Essen Says Department Partly At Fault .... (wcbstv, Sept. 11, 2007)
• Health Problems Linger For 9/11 Responders ... "First time in the history that we had a mixture of JP4 aviation fuel, with PCB's from fluorescent lights, from heavy metals like chromium from plumbing fixtures - all stirred together and released by this catastrophic disaster," said Dr. Ben Ho, 9/11 first responder. Dr. Ben Ho was among Oakland's elite search and rescue team dispatched to Ground Zero. Ho and his fellow team members experienced no lasting ill effects, but many others have. "We had 70 percent of our personnel that were ill when they came back. Very unusual. Many upper respiratory infections. People with pneumonia. Young people who had pneumonia. Bronchial infections. Bloody noses, skin rashes," said Chief Harold Schapelhoman, Menlo Park Search and Rescue. Menlo Park's Frank Fraoni spent 18 days at Ground Zero. "I ended up with a severe respiratory concern. I had coughs that probably lasted a good nine or ten months, continuous," said Fraoni, Menlo Park Search and Rescue. .... (abclocal, by Laura Anthony, Sept. 11, 2007)
• Choosing life, leaving town ... Jennifer Rosenberg planned to board a Hamptons-bound bus last night, not to enjoy the end of summer or to escape the constant construction near her Front Street apartment. She has a more basic need: safe air to breathe. Rosenberg, 43, returned to Lower Manhattan eight months after 9/11 to "give back" to her hometown. She had been living in Beaver creek, Colo., where the air was the "cleanest in the world," she said. But within months,Rosenberg began feeling the effects of expsoure to asbestos and other toxins released into the air following the Twin Towers" collapse. She has been diagnosed with chronic pulmonary disease and WTC asthma and fears she won't live to see 50. .... Rosenberg, who lives roughly 470 yards east and "downwind" from Ground Zero, has been told by EPA officials that while she is on their list for its latest round of air =quality testing, she must wait until other residential spaces closer to the site are analyzed first. Rosenberg resistered for the testing in February, according to e-mails obtained by Metero. Most of her neighbors have sealed their vents to keep out possible toxins, she said.... (Metro, by Joshua Rhett Miller, 09/11/07)
  
• Deutsche lessons in Fiterman Hall plan ... A spokesperson for the EPA said some minor changes to the deconstruction plan, such as using more flamee-retardant materials, were on the table." "There may have to be some adjustments to the approach taken at this building," said EPA spokesperson Mary Mears. "But we would not expect those changes to significantly delay [deconstruction], larely becuase it has not started yet." (Metro, by Michael Rundle, 09/11/07)
  
• Ground Zero May Be Making Even Well Protected Workers Sick ... The recent fire at the Deutsche Bank building and the controversy that followed has reminded people once again of the environmental hazards that were left behind after September 11th. While for many awareness of these problems has just been reawakened, thousands of workers who participated in cleanup efforts that followed the Twin Towers collapse believe they are ill, due to the dust they breathed back then. REPORTER: As part of our occasional series, “Feet in Two Worlds”, Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska has this report on one group of workers who were already accustomed to work with hazardous materials, and trained to protect themselves from them, but who still say that chemicals and contaminants floating in the air after the terrorist attack made them sick. Even under the best of circumstances, asbestos removal is a hazardous job. And Lower Manhattan after 9/11 was a hazardous place. Miroslaw Gorczkowski worked 4 months on the cleanup, mostly at the World Financial Center. Walking around the site 6 years later the images of the work he did back then keep coming back. .... Interview with Miroslaw Gorczkowski -- GORCZKOWSKI: in November I went through skull trepanation, because they discovered 2 tumor in my head, they gave me 5 month " they took 1 tumor away, and after that I was on intravenous drip, and I underwent rehabilitation, and then they took me to the hospital" all together I spent 7 months in the hospital"Yes I was learning how to walk again, I was learning to coordinate my movements, at first I couldn’t read, because I was not able to make sense out of words" I couldn’t go from line to line, but after a while I was able to do it" I still don’t read that fluently" but for myself it’s enough" REPORTER: Today, Miroslaw looks like an old and tired man. In 2006 doctors removed an abscess from his brain. After the surgery, at the age of 50, he had to learn to walk and read again. He was also diagnosed with diabetes, lung lesions, and chronic cough. Unable to earn a living, he was forced to move to a homeless shelter. Miroslaw was one of about 3,000 workers in Local 78 of the Asbestos Lead and Hazardous Waste Laborers. They worked around the World Trade Center site in the months following 9/11. They got ptaid the undion wage of $23.15 and hour plus benefits. The union at the time was comprised mainly of Polish immigrants – many of them undocumented. Union treasurer Pawel Gruchacz says about 30 members have died since 2004. Interview with Pawel Gruchacz -- GRUCHACZ: prior to that we had some deaths, but the causes was accidents on the jobs and other reasons ' however we see the increasing number right after 9/11 but (((like I said,))) if that's the reason, it's not up to me to determine. REPORTER: Henryk Piesta died of heart failure in November 2004, a month after medical testing at Mt Sinai center found fluid and scarring in his lungs. Piesta had a history of heart disease. But his daughter Kasia believes that the toxins he was exposed to at the World Trade Center site hastened his death. ... (WNYC, by Eaw Kern-Jedrychowska, Sept. 11, 2007)
  
• EPA's Second Round of 9/11 Testing Falls Short ... As a result, none of the members considered the panel successful in meeting its established goals: to develop the second program; to identify unmet public health needs; to identify remaining risks using exposure and health surveillance information; and to determine steps to further minimize risk. Some members were so unsatisfied with the second program that they discouraged public participation. (OMB Watch, 09/11/07)
  
• Toxins Released at Deutsche Bank ... A small amount of toxic dioxin leaked from former Deutsche Bank building last month, following a fatal fire that led to the deaths of 2 firefighters. EPA officials say the release of dioxins a week after the blaze didn't reach dangerous levels. Nevertheless, the officials have ordered the building sealed immediately. An EPA spokeswoman says it's the first time its sensors have detected dioxins. State officials declined to comment on the report. Dioxins are a group of chemicals that come from plastic. (WNYC, 09/11/07)
  
• Jim Riches, FDNY Deputy Chief ... Deutsche Bank was a terrible tragedy. The standpipe being broken is criminal. LMDC and Bovis were required to maintain the standpipe operational. Where were the site safety managers of Bovis and daily inspections by them? .... We will protest around the states to let everyone know the Rudy failed to prepare for the WTC attacks. He failed miserably before, during and after 9/11. No drills at WTC from 1993 to 9/11/01. Radios failed in 1993 and again in 2001. Command center at 7 WTC. No unified command, No interoperable radios FD and PD. 911 operators telling people in South Tower to stay put even before plane hit South Tower, yet FD commanders at scene were calling for its evacuation. Lying about quality of air, and not obtaining proper face fitted respirators until Nov 2001 leading to 70% of 1st responders with 9/11 illnesses while Rudy was too busy to lift a finger to help them because he was making tens of millions of dollars capitalizing off 9/11. His legacy will be thousands of sick and dying first responders. ... (Gotham, 9/11/07)
  
• 6 Years Later, 9/11 Health Questions Linger ... (Washington Post, By E.J. Mundell, Sept. 11, 2007)
  
• Police Union To Offer 9/11 Follow-Up Via Health Screen Vans ... Of the 34,000 New York City police officers who responded to ground zero in the days and months following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, only about a third have been screened for health problems by the city's main World Trade Center monitoring program, according to statistics quoted by a police union. As lawmakers consider reopening a fund to treat first-responders and others with illnesses related to the terrorist attacks that occurred six years ago today, police unions have been encouraging more of the police officers who were there to have their health checked. As a part of that effort, the Sergeant's Benevolent Association informed The New York Sun it is planning to send a van to visit each police precinct around the city starting next year so that police officers can be screened for illnesses without having to leave work. ... (NYSun, by Sarah Garland, Sept. 11, 2007)
  
• Cornell Study Examines Long-Term 9/11 Effects ... No matter where they were or what they were doing, all Americans were affected by the events of Sept. 11, 2001. A recent Cornell study has examined the specific effects of the tragedy on those who were in New York and in close proximity to the World Trade Center towers when they collapsed. The Cornell study, which examines those individuals who were in Manhattan and witnessed the attacks, found that those people may have experienced trauma on a significant enough level to change the way their brains process and react to emotional experiences. Emotionally and physically healthy individuals who have experienced trauma such as Sept. 11, but have not been clinically diagnosed with a stress-related disorder, such as post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, may still exhibit many of the symptoms of PTSD. These symptoms can include difficulty sleeping, distressing memories, and avoidance of the site even several years later. The appearance of these symptoms in a seemingly healthy and resilient individual can be indicative of the long-term effect that trauma may have on people’s brains. The study, conducted four years after the attacks, by Barbara Ganzel M.S. ’99, Ph.D. ’02, compared the brain scans of healthy individuals who were within one-and-a-half miles of the twin towers with those of other healthy individuals who were over 200 miles away at the time the towers fell. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the researchers were able to see how the brain responded when exposed to emotional stimuli; photographs of actors displaying fearful faces and calm faces. When exposed to the stimuli, individuals who were in the vicinity of the towers showed hyperactivity in their amygdalae, the part of the brain that judges emotional intensity and generates fear related behavior. In contrast, those individuals that were over 200 miles away when the attacks occurred exhibited normal behavior in their amygdalae when exposed to the same stimuli. “The findings of the study suggest that even a number of years later, there might be subtle, yet real, changes in the brain following exposure to trauma,” Ganzel said. (The Cornell Daily Sun, By Alyssa Goldschmidt, Sep 11, 2007 )
• EPA: Toxins leaked into air after Deutsche fire ... The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the release did not reach dangerous levels but ordered the building, which was badly damaged in the Aug. 18 fire, sealed immediately. What bothers EPA officials is this appears to be the first release of the highly toxic substance from the Liberty St. tower since it was nearly destroyed during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "We raise it as an example because we had not detected dioxin from any of our monitors in the past," EPA spokeswoman Mary Mears said. "The detection simply reinforces our position that there is an ongoing potential for contaminants being released into the environment and a need to reseal the building as soon as possible." The state Lower Manhattan Development Corp. has resisted resealing the tower, claiming unspecified "regulators" told them the building must be shored up before it can be resealed. That has left the building open to the elements since the blaze that killed two firefighters there three weeks ago. "We're very concerned about this dioxin release," Julie Menin, chairwoman of Community Board 1, said. "This is the first time we're hearing about it." ... On Aug. 27, a monitor on the 15th floor of the northwest corner of the building registered an unprecedented level of 0.12 nanograms of dioxin per cubic meter of air. The next day it was higher, at 0.18 nanograms. That's still below the 0.25 nanograms EPA considers unsafe, but the agency was concerned because it was the first dioxin release detected at the building. "I recommend this action to prevent an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health and the environment when any work is performed at 130 Liberty St.," EPA Regional Director Alan Steinberg wrote to LMDC Chairman Avi Schick. (NYDaily News, by Greg B. Smith, Sept. 11, 2007)
  
• Bellevue Program Aims To Help Residents Affected By 9/11-Related Illnesses ... Before 9/11 Margrily Garcia says the worst health problem she ever had was a cold. But six years later the 34 year old paralegal, whose office was located just a few blocks away from the World Trade Center site, was recently diagnosed with sarcoidosis, an inflammation that produces tiny lumps of cells in different organs of the body. While it's a condition that can be mild in most people, it disturbed her heart rhythm. Now she has a pacemaker. “All of this at 34, so you can only imagine how disconcerting it is for me,” says Garcia. “It's just like my life ever since World Trade Center has been just like spiraling. I'm glad to be alive and that I'm getting such good treatment from these doctors, but you know when you look back and you compare the quality of life. It's very disconcerting.” Also diagnosed with asthma and allergies, Garcia bounced from doctor to doctor before finally getting the treatment she needs through Bellevue Hospital's World Trade Center Environmental Health program. Since the Trade Center attacks, the doctors at the hospital have seen about 1,600 residents, students, office and cleanup workers. In the short-term, doctors are able to give patients like Garcia treatment. But the director of Bellevue's program says the challenge continues to be when it comes to 9/11 related health concerns, they're still dealing with a lot of unknowns. “This is the problem we're faced with: that many people get sarcoid. It's not an uncommon disease,” says Bellevue World Trade Center Environmental Health program director Dr. Joan Reibman. “So the question is: are we seeing an increase in sarcoid? Is it related to WTC dust exposure? How can we figure that out? And that's why it's so important to have research projects to help us.” Sixteen million dollars in funding from the city over a five-year span is allowing Bellevue to expand services. But Reibman says it’s federal funding that's needed to maintain treatment programs and get more research done to fully understand what the extend of World Trade Center related diseases may actually be. (NY1, by Kafi Drexel, Sept. 11, 2007)
  
• Feds: Deutsche Bank cleanup may be unsafe ... For the second time in less than two weeks, a federal regulator has lashed out at the state agency that owns a contaminated lower Manhattan skyscraper, accusing the agency of ignoring environmental risks in the wake of a deadly fire at the building. The Environmental Protection Agency, in a Sept. 7 letter, raised concerns about the clearing of debris and other repairs and cleanup being done by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation at 130 Liberty St., where an Aug. 18 blaze killed two firefighters. "I am concerned that these work activities ... in this breached building may cause a release of contaminated dust and debris," EPA Regional Administrator Alan Steinberg wrote to LMDC Chairman Avi Schick. The former Deutsche Bank building, heavily damaged and contaminated in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was being decontaminated and demolished when the seven-alarm blaze broke out last month, likely sparked by a worker's cigarette, officials believe. The original demolition required EPA approval because of the toxins in the building, and requirements included sealing the structure to prevent contaminants from escaping into the air. Since the fire, the EPA, the LMDC and city officials have been meeting twice a day to hammer out the safest way to resume demolition work at the building, as well as how quickly the structure should be resealed. Air quality tests show the air is safe, city and federal officials say. "EPA has been there since the day of the fire and it's EPA's position that the building be resealed while these other issues are addressed," said Pat Evangelista, the EPA'S World Trade Center coordinator, at a community meeting last week. A spokesman for the LMDC declined to comment Monday. All demolition work has been suspended, but Schick said last week that the work being done at the building now aims to make it safer for first responders, including clearing debris blocking stairwells. He said that the fire safety work must be completed before the structure is resealed, while EPA officials contend the two things can be done simultaneously. "The shoring-up work needs to be done before the resealing," Schick said at a community meeting last week. "We are focusing on the safety issue first." (amNY.com, by Karla Schuster, Sept. 11, 2007)
• Editorial: Help our heroes ... Some 10,000 are suing the city and its cleanup contractors, threatening the companies with bankruptcy. Congress put $1 billion in an insurance fund to cover such claims. But that's not nearly enough, and the money will be available only after costly, years-long court battles. By stepping in, the government could spare thousands needless anguish and send a message that, in the event of another attack, responders will not be left in the cold. Reps. Carolyn Maloney, Jerrold Nadler and Vito Fossella have drafted legislation to reopen the fund, as well as to extend care to responders through so-called centers of excellence. They include Mount Sinai Medical Center and affiliated hospitals, and the FDNY medical office. Pelosi did not endorse the bill, saying she wants to study a number of proposals. We look forward to her conclusions with impatience, for the 9/11 health crisis continues to swell. Mount Sinai's consortium has screened more than 20,000 people, more than half of whom still need treatment, and has treated 6,000 patients for Trade Center-related disease, such as asthma and pulmonary fibrosis. Bellevue Hospital is treating 1,400 downtown residents and office workers. (NYDaily News, Sept. 11, 2007)
• EPA: Small Amount Of Toxins Released Following Deutsche Bank Fire ... EPA officials have ordered the former Deutsche Bank building at the World Trade Center site to be sealed immediately, after they say a small amount of toxins was released into the air following last month’s fire. officials say the amount of toxic chemicals released hasn't reached dangerous levels. But the agency has told the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation that demolition work at the building must stop until the building is sealed. Sources tell NY1 that the Fire Department is working on administrative changes in the aftermath of the fire. Those changes could include more streamlined sharing of information between the Department of Buildings and the Fire Department. ... (NY1, by Kafi Drexel, Sept. 11, 2007)
  
• LMDC/TRC Letter to EPA ... (September 11, 2007)
• Cancer ends his fitness life after toil at the Pit ... Sept. 11 is still killing our heroes. Frank Macri, a 52-year-old housing cop from Queens, died a week ago today after a five-year battle with lung cancer - and his family insists his illness was caused by the long hours he spent working at Ground Zero. "Frank never smoked," Macri's wife, Nilda, told the Daily News. "He ate well. He worked out every single day since he was 14." On the day the World Trade Center towers came crumbling down six years ago, Nilda Macri endured an excruciating eight hours before she discovered her heroic husband was still alive: He just barely escaped getting buried. "I was so blessed that he survived," Nilda Macri said. After being treated for minor injuries, Macri was back at Ground Zero two days later, doing his part in the hunt for survivors, she said. He spent more than two months amid the toxic fumes swirling around Ground Zero and at no point did he complain about his assignment - even after he experienced a bout of vomiting one day that lasted nearly 30 minutes. Dreadful news hit the family less then a year later: the man known for his extraordinary health was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. No one who knew Macri well doubted the deadly disease came from anything but the many hours he spent at The Pit. It was a conclusion, she said, that was shared by his doctors. As she prepares to file line-of-duty death benefits, Nilda Macri is uncertain city officials will agree. "They're still in total denial over everybody with cancer," she said. Her husband endured repeated bouts of radiation and chemotherapy after receiving his diagnosis five years ago. Even after it spread to his vertebrae, there were times when it seemed the man nicknamed "Gym" had his cancer under control, but then doctors discovered cancer cells in his spinal fluid last month. For the first time, Macri's weakened body was not responding to chemotherapy. .... (NYDailyNews, by Rich Schapiro, Sept. 20, 2007)
• Report: Half of kids near Ground Zero have breathing problems ... More than half of the children closely exposed to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks developed breathing problems in the years after the catastrophe, according to new information collected by city health officials. Some 53% of kids enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Registry experienced new or worsened shortness of breath, sinus problems or wheezing in the three years after 9/11. Of the 3,184 kids registered, 180 were diagnosed with asthma. Nearly half of kids in the registry — 45% — were caught in the dust cloud, a significant factor in developing new asthma and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. Half witnessed a disturbing event that day. The findings were published on a city-sponsored Web site launched yesterday for New Yorkers and others whose health was affected by the attacks. Although it’s too soon to say how many of the children’s breathing problems became chronic, “the environmental impact of 9/11 was substantial for everyone [below Canal St.]. We’ve seen with adults and this reminds us that it was for children, too,” Deputy Health Commissioner Lorna Thorpe said yesterday. The site also includes previously unreleased information from the registry about lower Manhattan residents. In the two to three years after 9/11, respiratory and psychological symptoms were most common among adults who returned home before Sept. 14 or after Dec. 19, 2001. Fewer than one-third of adult downtown residents had returned home by Sept. 19. Just over half reported being caught in the dust cloud, according to registry data. The site can be found at www.nyc.gov/html/doh/wtc/html/home/home.shtml. (NYDaily News, by JordanLite, Sept. 10, 2007)
• Still breathing the horror of 9/11... this week's Government Accountability Office report indicates that there are still open wounds from that day. The GAO report is titled "World Trade Center: EPA's Most Recent Test and Clean Program Raises Concerns That Need to Be Addressed to Better Prepare for Indoor Contamination Following Disaster." It was obvious from the start that many offices and residences were contaminated due to the collapse of the World Trade Center. With dust-filled apartments, many residents left the area. Funds were provided for the cleaning and testing of these buildings littered with asbestos, lead, glass fibers and pulverized concrete. Despite cleaning efforts, approximately 1 percent of the residences were still affected by asbestos. The community raised concerns about how the pre and post testing took place, demanding to know what was tested and where it was tested. The EPA finally responded with a second look/program. However many problems with that testing program are now coming to light. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., pointed out that many of the community's concerns were also raised by the EPA's Ombudsman Robert Martin. Mr. Martin's concerns got someone's attention besides New York City workers and residence, as his office was locked and his files confiscated. The Ombudsman's Office suffered a "reorganization", and no one heard from them on this topic again – death by reorganization. Then the Scientific Advisory Committee added its voice to the community concerns about the testing, pointing out that it did not even take place for some substances such as Mercury. The committee also revealed that there were no tests in areas that were surely affected such as parts of Brooklyn. Again, no meaningful government action took place. What is worse is that the testing did not include most offices, nor did it test the buildings as a whole, such as testing the HVAC systems. The testing also did not include areas such as under beds or behind refrigerators. .... What is of more concern is how the EPA failed to educate the people who were living and working in the shadow of the World Trade Center as to the true nature of the contamination. They released only the test figures on asbestos and other contaminants after they had cleaned a building. Of course, for the contaminants that were never tested, no figures have been released. We have all heard about "sick building syndrome," but the 9/11 contamination brings this syndrome to a whole new level. Rep. Nadler also pointed out that the EPA cannot say with certainty, "that not even a single building in the area is free of World Trade Center contamination." He argues that many people in New York will "become sick because of lingering environmental toxins in their homes, workplaces and schools." ... (WorldNetDaily, by Ellen Ratner, Sept. 10, 2007)
• Health Concerns At Center Of 9/11 Anniversary ... In Foley Square Sunday, a vigil was held to remember those still suffering from exposure to the toxic fumes following the terrorist attacks. "They are all sick; all three of my children are chronically ill," said lower Manhattan resident Mariama James. Speaker after speaker talked of the health problems of thousands on the same day a new report by city health officials revealed that more than half of the children closely exposed to the terror attacks developed breathing problems in the years following the catastrophe. Some 53 percent of the children enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Registry experienced new or worsened shortness of breath, sinus problems, wheezing or asthma. Nearly half of the children in the registry -- 45 percent -- were caught in the dust cloud. The findings were published on a city-sponsored Web site launched Sunday for New Yorkers with 9/11 health problems. At the vigil in Foley Square, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-Manhattan) said a bill he's about to introduce to provide medical coverage to first responders and others faces an uphill battle. "I do believe it will be enacted. It may not be enacted while this president is president, but it will be enacted because the American people ultimately will recognize the moral debt they owe," Nadler said.(cbstv, by Magee Hickey, Sept. 10, 2007)
• Magazine Article Says White House Covered Up Crucial 9/11 Health Info .... A magazine article set to be released Tuesday paints a grim picture of the effect the 9/11 attacks had on the environment in Lower Manhattan. In the October issue of "Discover" magazine, an article uses personal stories, EPA documents and scientific research to show the health effects of 9/11 on everyone other than first responders. The report says important health information was held back by the White House, keeping New Yorkers in the dark about the dangers they faced. "Proper testing was never done in New York, which, the natural conclusion becomes then that there must be many pockets of Lower Manhattan that still remain to be cleaned appropriately,” said “The 9/11 Cover-up” writer Michael Mason. “The office buildings were contaminated, they were never tested and cleaned, and we were exposed to stuff that there was no reason for us to be exposed to,” said Robert Gulack, who worked in the World Trade Center. “This was purely and simple, a government foul-up." The article says up to 70 percent of first responders are sick from toxins in the air. It says if that rate of illness holds true for those who lived and worked near the site, up to 300,000 New Yorkers could eventually become sick because of 9/11. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is expressing more concern about demolition work at the former Deutsche Bank building. In a letter released Monday, the city's EPA representative told the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation that the work at the site has to stop until toxins can be contained. The building had been sealed off until last month's deadly fire. The EPA says while toxin levels haven't reached danger points yet, they still might if the work there kicks up dust. State officials have said they want to make the building safer for first responders. Both sides are expected to hash out an agreement about how to proceed soon. Sources tell NY1 that the Fire Department is working on administrative changes in the aftermath of the fire. Those changes could include more streamlined sharing of information between departments. (NY1, Sept. 10, 2007)
  
• Pelosi Announces Support For Re-Opening Federal 9/11 Victim's Fund ... A day before the September 11th memorial ceremonies, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Governor Eliot Spitzer walked among cranes and jackhammers as they toured the World Trade Center site Monday. Pelosi also took the opportunity to announce her support for reopening the federal Victim's Compensation Fund to ensure treatment is provided to ground zero workers who have fallen ill as the result of breathing in toxic dust from the fallen towers. ... Mayor Michael Bloomberg puts the price tag of treating workers who are currently sick and who may become ill at $393 million a year. “We have to make sure that, God forbid, if there's another emergency people are willing to show up to rescue and recover others,” said Bloomberg.... (NY1, Sept. 10, 2007)
  
• Pelosi Due Here To Meet Spitzer at Ground Zero -- Big New Outlays Are Planned for Post-9/11 Health Care ... On Wednesday, the House Education and Labor Committee will convene a hearing to evaluate whether the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration protected workers from safety and health hazards at ground zero. The committee will also examine the role of New York City in protecting rescue workers following the attacks. ... (NYSun, by Elizabeth Solomont, Sept. 10, 2007)
• ‘Living’ with 9/11 ... FOLEY SQUARE. New Jersey resident Celia Correa, an administrative assistant whose job was relocated to 88 Pine St. in October 2001 worked there until July 2004, when she became too sick to continue. “I had some kind of digestive problem, like acid reflux. I had a rash. I was treated with Cipro a couple of times,” Correa told Metro at yesterday’s vigil. “I was going from specialist to specialist.” She was finally diagnosed with a lung disease — “basically, I have scarred lungs,” she said. Correa finally went to the Bellevue Hospital’s WTC Environmental Health Center, which treats residents, office and cleanup workers. “They gave me medicine that helped me get better for a while,” she said, “but it can’t do anything more for me now. They need more funding for research.” ... U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler told the crowd last night that “the government has betrayed” and “refused to pay the health care” for the Ground Zero rescue and recovery workers, as well as the people who live and work in Lower Manhattan. ... (Metro, by amy zimmer, Sept. 10, 2007)
  
• WTC Medical Monitoring Program Sees Steady Flow Of Patients ... (NY1, Sept. 10, 2007)
  
• Beyond Ground Zero ... There was pain in Mariama James’ voice as she described how 9/11 has affected her. When she returned to her apartment near the World Trade Center that September day six years ago, her children were covered in white dust. Now, all three of them, including one she was pregnant with at the time, take five medications a piece for the allergies and respiratory problems they developed following the tragedy. .... Shortly after 9/11, Beyond Ground Zero began addressing the health impacts of the World Trade Center collapse on the predominantly immigrant, low-income communities of Chinatown and the Lower East Side. But Tamano said that since politicians and the media have focused much of their attention on sick first responders and recovery workers, many residents’ stories remain untold. Take Fung Mei Ng, a Chinatown woman who since 9/11 has suffered from migraines and shortness of breath because, she said, the government told her the air in her neighborhood was safe to breathe despite a foul odor that permeated it for months. .... (NYPress, Sept.10, 2007)
  
• . . . AND A JOB FOR MIKE ... Going beyond the long-term health effects of 9/11, it remains that focused leadership is essential if Ground Zero reconstruction is to remain on schedule. And with Gov. Spitzer grievously crippled by self-inflicted wounds, the only practical source of that leadership is Mayor Bloomberg. Job One: The swift dismantling of the Deutsche Bank building. ... (NYPost Editorial, Sept. 10, 2007)
  
• THE DUST AT GROUND ZERO - The 9/11 attack has claimed a whole new set of victims: thousands of firemen, policemen, construction and other workers who are now ill - maybe permanently - because they breathed the toxic dust on the "pile" at the World Trade Center. Katie Couric reports. Kyra Darnton is the producer. ... (CBS TV, Sep. 9, 2007 )
  
• Rally at Ground Zero Aims to Build Support for 9/11 Health Care Legislation ... Several hundred union workers and elected officials, including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, rallied near ground zero yesterday in support of federal legislation that would provide long-term monitoring and treatment for people exposed to dust in Lower Manhattan during the 9/11 cleanup. “The fact that men and women are ill and not being helped here is a national disgrace,” said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, one of the sponsors of the bill, which has bipartisan support. “We are the wealthiest nation on earth; the least we can do is provide health care for the men and women on 9/11. They were here for us. We need to be here for them.” ... “In 9/11 we gave compensation for those families who lost their loved ones,” Ms. Maloney said. “We need to give compensation to the men and women who made a decision to run into flaming buildings to help others while others were running the other way. These are the real heroes and heroines, and they deserve compensation.” Mrs. Clinton, taking time away from her presidential campaign to attend the rally, appeared to stake out a position similar to that of Rudolph W. Giuliani as the real 9/11 candidate. “From the first moment that I came to ground zero on the day after the attacks on our city and our country and saw the conditions under which the firefighters and police officers and E.M.T.’s and paramedics were laboring,” she told the crowd, which included many of the 9/11 first responders. “I knew we were going to have problems, that people would get sick, and that people would die from what they were exposed to. And I pledged to myself, and I pledge to all of you, that I will stay with you every step of the way until we get every single person the health care they deserve.” Doing that, she added, “will be my highest priority, whether I am your senator or I am your president.” Mrs. Clinton drew cheers from the crowd and posed for several pictures with labor leaders before leaving the stage. Both she and Mr. Giuliani are expected to return to ground zero on Tuesday to commemorate the attacks. .... (NYTimes, by Ray Rivera, Sept. 9, 2007)
  
• Hundreds Attend Candlelight Vigil for 9/11 Victims .... Just two days before the sixth anniversary of September 11th -- many are puasing to remember the victims lost -- in the terror attacks. Hundreds turned out tonight for a canlelight vigil in lower Manhattan ... (wcbstv, John Metaxas, Sept. 9, 2007)
• Mayor Announces Launch Of WTC Health Website ... Also on the website is a report on kids suffering from their exposure to the September 11th attacks. About 50 percent of the more than 3,100 kids enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Registry developed breathing problems three years after the attacks. The registry cites health issues such as shortness of breath and wheezing. The report also says nearly half of the kids were caught in the dust cloud, which led to new cases of asthma and posttraumatic stress disorder. (NY1, September 09, 2007)
  
• Lawmakers Gather For Health Care Labor Rally Downtown ... The bill would provide long-term medical monitoring, treatment, and financial compensation to anyone exposed to the toxic dust and debris from the collapse of the World Trade Center. The bill would include first responders and rescue workers, construction workers and volunteers who helped clean up the site. But it would also cover residents, students, office workers and others who were in the area. ... (NY1, September 09, 2007)
  
• Near Ground Zero, Baby Carriages and Busy Shops .... “It’s frustrating for the residents here,” said Ms. Latifi, 38. “I have so many customers that have moved because of the noise and the air quality.” ... (NYTimes, by Patrick McgGeehan, Sept. 9, 2007)
  
• Daily News probe finds WTC contractors with mob ties, fraud ... Seven contractors cited for everything from mob ties to tax fraud to fatal accidents are getting a slice of the $16 billion reconstruction at Ground Zero, a Daily News investigation has found. The problem firms are found every day working the bulldozers, cranes, jackhammers and pile drivers rebuilding the site of the World Trade Center. All of the companies work for the Port Authority, the Dormitory Authority or the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. on taxpayer-funded contracts worth millions of dollars. The list starts with the John Galt Co., the shell company at the heart of growing investigations into the Aug. 18 fire at the Deutsche Bank tower that killed two firefighters. Galt has ties to Safeway Environmental, a company with a lousy safety record that has been barred from city work because one of its directors is a reputed mob associate. The News found six companies with issues: QUADROZZI CONCRETE: Last week, a steady convoy of Quadrozzi Concrete's distinctive yellow and orange trucks delivered cement to the Freedom Tower job. Six months before the Sept. 11 attacks, the city Department of Environmental Protection rejected Quadrozzi's request to be an approved city supplier, citing then-owner John Quadrozzi Sr.'s ties to the Luchese crime family and other concerns. In 2004, Quadrozzi Sr. died and the company was taken over by his son, John Jr., who was owner of an affiliate that refused to answer a subpoena from city investigators vetting a permit application. In October 2004, Quadrozzi Jr. reapplied to the city for approval as a supplier. Last year, Quadrozzi Concrete withdrew the request without explanation. He did not return calls on Friday. That withdrawal came after the January 2005 indictment of Constatine Quadrozzi, then a vice president of Quadrozzi Concrete. He was charged with dumping toxic waste into Newtown Creek. In June 2006 Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Carolyn Demarest dismissed the indictment. The judge found that although Quadrozzi had knowledge of the illegal dumping, he'd fixed the problem so no further prosecution was necessary. The district attorney has appealed. PAL ENVIRONMENTAL CORP.: In 2005, PAL Environmental signed a consent order admitting it had illegally disposed of toxic office equipment from the notorious Deutsche Bank tower at 130 Liberty St. For four months in 2004, PAL shredded computers and furniture at the contaminated site without obtaining a permit from the state Department of Environmental Conservation. This meant DEC did not monitor the job. Instead PAL monitored itself, providing the state with data it said showed no toxins leaked into the neighborhood. In August 2005, the state DEC dismissed criminal violations against PAL after owner Salvatore DiLorenzo agreed to take "full responsibility" for claims arising from the illegal shredding and paid a $10,000 civil fine. The Dormitory Authority, which is paying PAL $16.3 million to clean out Fiterman Hall behind 7 World Trade Center, was aware of this violation. DiLorenzo did not return calls. LETICIA INC.: The black and white trucks hauling dirt from Ground Zero Wednesday had an unusually un-macho name - Leticia Inc., named after company president Leticia Rojas. In April 2006, Rojas' husband, Manuel Mier, signed an affidavit promising "for the remainder of my life" to stay out of his wife's trucking business - Leticia Inc. That's because Mier is a felon who pleaded guilty to using Leticia Inc. and other companies in a wide-ranging tax fraud scheme. He was sentenced to a year in jail and owes $523,000 in back taxes and penalties. In April 2006, Rojas signed an agreement with the city Business Integrity Commission promising to keep her husband out of the company. (Mier is allowed to work for Rojas' real estate company, MEM Realty LLC). Rojas agreed to hire a special monitor picked by the city to ensure her husband doesn't get a dime. Because of the monitor, the Port Authority allowed her company to work at Ground Zero. On Friday Rojas said, "Why do you care about this?" and hung up. TESTA CORP.: Testa Corp.'s bright yellow cranes dominate the southeast end of Ground Zero. In April, Pamela Ciampi, whose family owns Testa, pleaded guilty in Boston Federal Court to dodging $250,000 in federal income taxes. Investigators had seized records from Testa and Ciampi's other firm, PT Corp., both of Lynnfield, Mass., in a probe of sham women- and minority-owned firms. That followed a July 2005 citation by federal regulators charging Testa with 15 job safety violations after a 190-foot tall steel craneway collapsed during a Testa demolition job, killing two workers. OSHA slapped Testa with $60,000 in penalties, alleging that Testa did not do an engineering survey to determine the craneway's stability. In July 2005 Testa agreed to a $16,800 settlement. A Testa executive who would only give his first name, Tim, said the Port Authority was aware of the craneway accident when it was hired. LAQUILA GROUP: The firm is an offshoot of Laquila Construction whose owner, Dino Tomassetti Sr., has long-time ties to the mob, the FBI says. Several informants have told the FBI Laquila Construction paid off mob-controlled unions so it could inflate profits by using nonunion help. Tomasetti Sr. pleaded guilty to one count of construction labor fraud in April. Laquila Group - owned by Dino Tomassetti Jr. - was hired by developer Larry Silverstein to do excavation for the Freedom Tower. The Port Authority took over the job this year. When investigators discovered Laquila Group was renting equipment from Dino Sr.'s company, a monitor was put in place and Dino Sr. agreed to stay away from the job. The monitor, Toby Thacher, says the elder Tomassetti donates equipment to his son for the $35 million Freedom Tower job. Laquila Group executives did not return calls. JUDA CONSTRUCTION: Juda Construction has agreements with both Westchester County and the city of New York barring any interaction with a former Juda owner, Joseph Attonito, his son, Thomas, or any of their companies. Joseph Attonito is a convicted felon. Law enforcement sources have said he was associated with organized crime. His son, Thomas, was convicted of perjury in 2003 for trying to hide from regulators his father's interest in another company, Whitney Trucking. Juda has no such agreement for its work at Ground Zero, where last week Juda's white dump trucks hauled dirt from the Freedom Tower excavation site. An employee answering the phone at Juda declined to comment and said owner Nicholas Paniccia was not available. (NYDaily News, by Greg B. Smith, Sept. 9, 2007)
  
• Labor leaders rally for WTC victims' medical and financial aid ... Labor leaders and lawmakers rallied at Ground Zero yesterday in support of legislation that would give medical and financial assistance to victims of 9/11-related illnesses. Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan/Queens), Vito Fossella (R-Brooklyn/Staten Island) and Jerrold Nadler (D-Brooklyn/Manhattan) plan to introduce the bill on Tuesday, the anniversary of the attacks. The 9/11 Health and Compensation Act would guarantee coverage to first responders and volunteers who were exposed to toxic dust and provides for health monitoring and treatment for those who lived, worked or went to school in lower Manhattan after the attacks. ... (NYDaily News, September 9th 2007)
  
• Downtown's upswing ... Meanwhile, over in the public sector, the cursed Deutsche Bank building looms over Ground Zero as a symbol of government ineptitude, the price tag of the Port Authority's far-too-fancy, vastly overpriced PATH train station has zoomed out of control and Fiterman Hall, a City University building damaged beyond repair on 9/11, has been idle for so long that the structure appears to have sprouted trees.Gov. Spitzer and Bloomberg must force action on the Deutsche Bank building and Fiterman Hall. Both are disgraceful impediments to a rebirth that starts at Ground Zero ... (NYDaily News Editorial, September 9th 2007)
  
• MAYOR BLOOMBERG ANNOUNCES LAUNCH OF NEW 9/11 HEALTH WEBSITE: Those with Health Concerns Can Visit nyc.gov for Latest Information and Resources ... (Press Release, Sept. 9, 2007)
• One more 9/11 victim to be named on 6th anniversary of attacks ... The addition of Felicia Dunn-Jones, a 42-year-old civil rights attorney caught in the dust cloud that enveloped lower Manhattan on the day of the attacks, to New York City's Sept. 11 death toll occurred in a year that sharply focused on post-Sept. 11 illness - and the legacy of the cleanup of ground zero - more than ever before. That legacy was painfully altered by the unearthing of several hundred human remains from streets and sewer lines around the trade center site, which officials acknowledged were missed the first year. Doctors published more studies establishing direct links to respiratory illnesses and the exposure to the mixture of pulverized concrete, asbestos, mercury and other toxins that wafted over ground zero for close to a year. One study showed a powerful connection to sarcoidosis - the lung-scarring disease that killed Dunn-Jones - and city firefighters. "I don't think anyone's questioning any more how many thousands of people are sick," said David Worby, who represents close to 10,000 plaintiffs suing the city and contractors who oversaw ground zero's cleanup. More than 100 of his plaintiffs have died, he says. City officials have argued that more research is needed before the true health effects of Sept. 11 can be proven. But they significantly changed their position this year, commissioning a health panel that concluded in February that treating the ailments of exposed workers could cost close to $400 million a year. ... Three months later, city Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch surprised many by adding Dunn-Jones' name to the official Sept. 11 victims' list. ... (Newsday, Amy Westfeldt, Sept, 8, 2007)
  
• Rally for 9/11 bill to treat ailing first responders, residents ... Politicians and labor leaders gathered Saturday at ground zero to support federal legislation aimed at providing medical coverage to first responders and others afflicted by toxic dust and debris after the World Trade Center attack. The rally was timed to coincide with the upcoming sixth anniversary of the attacks, when three members of New York's congressional delegation will introduce the bipartisan 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. Democrats Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler, along with Republican Vito Fossella, will bring the bill to Congress on Tuesday. "The heroes of 9/11 responded immediately when our country was attacked, but when these same heroes needed help, our government dragged its heels," Maloney said. "Thousands are sick and that's a fact." The bill would cover first responders and rescue workers, construction workers and volunteers from the nine-month cleanup of the rubble from the twin towers. It would also provide health monitoring and treatment for local residents, students and others who were in lower Manhattan after the attacks. Joining the politicians were representatives from the New York City Central Labor Council, the New York Building & Construction Trades Council and the New York State AFL-CIO. "We will not forget," said U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton. "We're going to rescue the rescuers." (NYNewsdasy/AP, Sept. 8, 2007)
  
• OP-ED: Giuliani’s Ground Zero Legacy ... He has never acknowledged that it might have been better if he had focused less on getting the disaster site cleared away fast, and more on getting all the workers out in one piece. Recently, he had the temerity to claim that he’s a victim, too. “I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers ... I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I’m one of them,” he said last month during a campaign stop in Cincinnati. ... (NYTimes, by Gail Collins, Sept. 8, 2007)
  
• Downtown Emergency Notification Plan Meets Criticism ... In the wake of the Deutsche Bank building fire last month—and complaints by nearby residents that they were left in the dark about what to do or where to go—city officials announced at a Community Board 1 meeting on Sept. 5 that a Downtown emergency notification system is in the works But the plan, which is meant to allow easy communication between residents and safety workers in the event of an emergency, met with skepticism from many in the audience, who called it too vague and too slow in coming. In the third of three community meetings between high-level officials and community members following the fire, Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler said the responsibility for communicating with Downtown residents in the event of an emergency will lie with the Office of Emergency Management’s Watch Command in Brooklyn. The command is the central point of communication in an emergency, monitoring all radio traffic and helping city, state and federal responders talk to each other. “The advantage of using OEM is that they’re there 24-7,” Skyler said, adding that the watch command has the capacity to quickly send e-mails to a Lower Manhattan mailing list, alerting people to developments. Skyler said the city is also looking into other communication technologies, and that he expects a more comprehensive emergency notification plan to be developed by the end of the year. In addition, Lower Manhattan Development Coordinator Avi Schick offered to fund an automated “robo-call” system, like that used by telemarketers and political campaigns, to be used until the city’s more comprehensive system comes on-line. “We’re going to give out Community Enhancement Project Grants next month,” Schick said. “We can think of no better community enhancement than to get this project up and running.” Schick told the board that the LMDC is hiring more personnel to improve communication with the community, and is also prepared to pay for CB1 to hire its own staffer to stay abreast of developments at the 130 Liberty St. site. But many residents attending the meeting, still angry that it has taken years for officials to respond to their demands for a notification system, were not mollified by the promises to create a notification system under the Office of Emergency Management. “I’m an angry, frustrated worker, and I don’t have any hope that this is going to be any better,” said Rachel Snyder, who works on Maiden Lane. “The people in charge of coming up with the new plan are the same ones who have failed us before.” ... Schick said more structural work must be done before the building can be sealed, and that other agencies’ concerns about firefighter safety must be weighed against the EPA’s desire to seal the building immediately. Asked to respond, the EPA World Trade Center Coordinator Pat Evangelista said, “It is EPA’s position that the building be resealed while these other issues are being addressed.” The EPA letter also objected to what it called Schick’s “preliminary position” in recent confidential clean-up negotiations that the LMDC “implement a new sampling plan” and “revisit abatement procedures” in the building’s abatement plan. At the community board meeting, residents worried that the LMDC might be trying to weaken environmental precautions at the site. “There will be no dialing back of environmental controls,” Schick said. “You have my word here tonight we are going to continue to abide by city and state regulatory activities.” Schick added that the LMDC is “seriously considering” completing the clean-up of the building’s toxic materials before preceding with its deconstruction. (Tribeca Trib, By Nick Pinto, Sept. 7, 2007)
• Accuracy of 9/11 Health Reports Is Questioned ... (NYTimes, by Anthony DePalma, Sept. 7, 2007)
• Stalled at Ground Zero ... The recent preventable deaths of two firemen in the toxic hulk of the Deutsche Bank building adjacent to Ground Zero casts a shadow on New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's hands-off managerial style. It also casts a light on Rudy Giuliani's handling of the 9/11 cleanup, and by extension his governing style as mayor. Both the 9/11 cleanup (achieved with surprising, even defiant, speed) and the deconstruction of the Deutsche Bank Building (which is still standing six years after 9/11) have involved bitter controversies with the firefighters. Mr. Giuliani's imperative was to clear Ground Zero and thus defy the terrorists by ... (WSJ, by Fred Siegel, Sept. 7, 2007)
• Reps. Maloney, Nadler & Fossella to Introduce Bipartisan 9/11 Health and Compensation Act ... WASHINGTON, D.C. –On the eve of a major rally at Ground Zero in support of health care and compensation for 9/11 responders, Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY), Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), and Congressman Vito Fossella (R-NY) announced that they will introduce comprehensive, bipartisan legislation to address the health impacts of the 9/11 attacks.  The lawmakers intend to formally introduce their bill next week. The Maloney-Nadler-Fossella 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which is strongly supported by the New York State AFL-CIO, would ensure that everyone exposed to the toxins of Ground Zero has a right to be medically monitored and anyone who is sick as a result has a right to treatment; expand care to the whole exposed community, including residents, area workers and students, and to the thousands of people who came from across the country to respond to the 9/11 attacks; provide compensation for economic damages and losses by reopening the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund; and build on the expertise of the Centers of Excellence (currently at the FDNY, Mt. Sinai Hospital, Bellevue Hospital, Queens College, SUNY Stony Brook, and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey), which are providing high-quality health care to thousands of responders. The bill would also require the federal government to collect data about and research the extent and severity of WTC-related illnesses.  Specifically, the legislation would establish and fund Coordinating Centers of Excellence to collect and analyze data, coordinate outreach, and develop medical monitoring and treatment protocols; and require the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to conduct or support research about conditions that may be WTC-related, and about diagnosing and treating WTC-related conditions. ... (News Release, Sept. 7, 2007)
• Statement of Senators Schumer and Clinton and Representatives Maloney, Nadler and Fossella Regarding 9/11 Health Effects.. (News Release, Sept. 7, 2007)
• The 9/11 Cover-Up: Thousands of New Yorkers were endangered by WTC debris—and government malfeasance ... Although Nina could not have known it at the time, she had just entered one of the most dangerous atmospheric conditions ever to occur on American soil, and she suffers the consequences. She had chronic bronchitis until 2003 and still has esophagitis and sinusitis. Many health professionals believe others like her won’t experience the harsher, suffocating symptoms for several more years. ... (Discover Magazine, by Michael Mason, 09/07/07)
• Firefighters Turn Out to Fight Blaze at 80 Washington Street ... Once again, thick smoke poured out of a black-shrouded building just south of the World Trade Center site in the midst of deconstruction. And again firefighters rushed to a burning building that only recently was being cleansed of asbestos. While the parallels between the Sept. 6 fire at 80 West St. and the recent fire at the nearby Deutsche Bank building may be disconcerting to those in the area, the differences were significant. At the 26-story Deutsche Bank Building, the toxic clean-up was not yet completed, the fire spread across 13 floors, and two firefighters lost their lives. The 80 Washington St. fire was confined to the bottom two floors of an elevator shaft in the nine-story building, and the asbestos clean-up had already been completed when the fire broke out, according to a Fire Department spokesman. Two firemen received minor injuries. But the Deutsche Bank building fire was clearly on the minds of emergency responders. Though the 80 West St. fire was relatively small, 33 units and 133 firefighters responded to the blaze, crowding into the narrow streets surrounding the building. ... (Tribeca Trib, By Nick Pinto, Sept. 7, 2007)
• Community Alerts Top Priority List at 130 Liberty ... s planning continues for 130 Liberty Street's resumed deconstruction, state and city officials met with Community Board 1 (CB1) on September 5th to discuss plans for emergency public-notification systems. The meeting follows two previous CB1 meetings addressing issues about the August 18th fire at 130 Liberty Street, the former Deutsche Bank building. It was co-sponsored by New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, State Senator Martin Connor, State Assembly Member Deborah Glick, and City Council Member Alan Gerson. Plans for the new systems were explained by Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler and Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) Chairman Avi Schick. They were joined by LMDC President David Emil and Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center (LMCCC) Acting Executive Director Robert Harvey and Environmental Director Tom Kunkel. Members of the city Office of Emergency Management (OEM), federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other agencies also attended. Skyler explained that the city is at work on several modes of communication that could alert the public -- including residents and workers both indoors and outdoors -- in the event of emergency. Traditional email alerts and web casts are planned, along with new technologies such as emergency text messages and "reverse 911," which broadcasts a prerecorded message to all mobile phones in a certain area. The new notifications are a priority to the city and LMDC, and expand on technology already in place. New Yorkers now can contact 311 for information 24 hours a day, while local media share the up-to-the-minute updates from the city. Subscribers of LowerManhattan.info alerts also are part of the city's emergency-email recipient lists. Responding to public requests, Schick and Skyler asserted that traditional modes of public notification, such as sirens, radio and television broadcasts, and person-to-person outreach also will be streamlined. To take advantage of existing resources, Schick said that OEM will play a bigger role in coordination during periods of emergency. The agency already has direct access to emergency responders like the police and fire departments, as well as to the EPA, city departments of buildings and environmental protection, and others. OEM also will be able to help create the messages conveyed through new systems. Skyler added that the city will improve its coordination with Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT) to help rapidly share information through particular neighborhoods and buildings as needed. Members of the LMDC and LMCCC are coordinating input from various agencies, as well as from contractor Bovis, on the 130 Liberty building's revised deconstruction plan -- a process Schick expects will take another few weeks. The plan will include details on how both the decontamination and floor-by-floor deconstruction will proceed, and how the building will be re-sealed. .... (lowermanhattan.info, September 6, 2007)
• NY Senators & Tri-State Reps. Seek Answers from Bush Administration Following Resignation of 9/11 Health Task Force Chair (News Release, 9/6/2007)
• NY Senators &Tri-State Reps. Request 9/11 Health Care Funding in President’s Budget (9/6/2007)
• Residents Gather to Learn More About Deutsche Bank ... Lower Manhattan residents packed another Community Board meeting last night to get answers about the former Deutsche Bank Building's dismantling. REPORTER: Initially, the plan was for the tower to come down by the end of this year, so JP Morgan could start work on its new building and infrastructure for the Freedom Tower can be put in place. WNYC’s Bob Hennelly has more on how the plan is changing. Local residents were emphatic. They want the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation that owns the toxic site to follow the advice of the federal EPA. The agency wants to reseal the partially deconstructed office tower with the same level of environmental protection that was in place before the August 8TH fire that killed two firefighters. London Tieling lives across from the site. TIELING: We can wait 6 more years to make sure that building comes down cleanly so that nobody dies because of the contaminant in it. So don’t rush the job do it right. REPORTER: LMDC chief Avi Schick said that re-sealing has to wait until some structural work is completed at the tower, which has already had 16 floors removed. He also said his agency may abandon its past approach of simultaneously decontaminating and deconstructing the tower. Officials attempted to reassure the public that hundreds of air samples collected since the fire showed no threat to the public. (WNYC, Sept. 6, 2007)
  
• Officials: Deutsche Bank delays won't slow WTC ... "The rebuilding efforts are moving forward as planned and they are on schedule," said Errol Cockfield, a spokesman for the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the state-run agency that owns the building. Changes in scheduling are helping to keep the project on track, according to Port Authority officials at a news conference touting redevelopment progress at the former World Trade Center site. "There's a lot of ways to move things around so that the end dates don't change substantially, and the magic of engineering is finding ways to accomplish that," said Anthony E. Shorris, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. "Once we know when the deconstruction [of the former bank building] will begin and finish, then we'll get a sense of what impact, if any, there will be," Shorris said. ... The building is owned by the LMDC, which will turn over the site to the Port Authority once the demolition is complete. It is not clear when demolition work will resume on the former bank building, a job already complicated because of the presence of toxic chemicals and bone fragments from 9/11 victims and sure to face even more intense scrutiny when it starts up again. "Right now, our priority is to make sure that a framework is put in place so that the building is safe for workers, first responders and the community at large," Cockfield said. The redevelopment of Ground Zero can work around delays in the demolition of the former Deutsche Bank building, which was suspended last month after a seven-alarm blaze that killed two firefighters, officials said Wednesday. (NYNewsday, Sept. 6, 2007)
  
• LMDC: New Deutsche Bank Demolition Plan Emphasizes Firefighter Safety ... The owner of the former Deutsche Bank building promises that a new plan to take down the condemned office tower quickly and safely will incorporate lessons learned from last month's fatal fire. FDNY sources told NY1 Thursday that the stand pipe that failed to work during the fire that killed firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino last month has since been repaired and will work in the event of another emergency. Inspectors, however, have not officially signed off on the safety of the system, because it is still not fully up to code. Only three of its four sprinkler connections work, but sources say work on the fourth connection could be done by the end of the week. ... What still remains unclear is why the original plan didn't address emergency responders in the first place. ... A search to replace fired sub-contractor John Galt is underway, but Schick wouldn't answer questions about his confidence in the building's contractor, Bovis Lend Lease. ... Sources say the FDNY won't sign off on the standpipe system until a hydrostatic test is completed sometime next week. ... (NY1, Sept. 6, 2007)
  
• Flaws Seen in Effort to Clean Homes Near Ground Zero ... The federal government’s latest effort to test and clean hundreds of residences in Lower Manhattan that were exposed to toxic dust from the collapse of the World Trade Center is seriously flawed and inadequately financed, according to a report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office. The report said the current cleanup project — which covers 272 residences and 25 buildings — does not include areas above Canal Street and in Brooklyn that were engulfed by the dust cloud. The accountability office, an investigative arm of Congress, also said that the $7 million that the Environmental Protection Agency plans to spend on the cleanup was not based on a formal estimate of need, but simply reflected money remaining in the agency’s budget after an earlier residential cleanup program in 2002 and 2003. The accountability office also found that the environmental agency had misled New Yorkers about the degree of danger posed by contaminants when it reported that only a “very small” number of samples from the first program showed unsafe levels of airborne asbestos. In fact, those results were from tests conducted after the residences were cleaned, not before, possibly leaving residents with a false impression of the level of risk. The report concluded that the agency did make some improvements after the first cleanup. “But we are uncertain about how completely E.P.A. has laid the groundwork for effective response to indoor contamination following future disasters,” it said. ... The report has found that the current program does not put into practice some of the recommendations made by a panel of 18 independent technical experts that spent two years reviewing the results of the first cleanup. In that program, which was voluntary, the E.P.A. spent $38 million testing and cleaning 4,167 residences and 144 buildings. Concerns raised by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and other members of New York’s Congressional delegation about the adequacy of that program forced the environmental agency to consider a more comprehensive follow-up program. But the current cleanup plan, which the E.P.A. presented in December 2005, was criticized by residents and by most of the members of the technical panel, who said the plan fell short of their goals. The registration period for the current cleanup has ended, and the testing of apartments has begun. (NYTimes, by Anthony DePalma, Sept. 6, 2007)
  
• World Trade Center: EPA's Most Recent Test and Clean Program Raises Concerns That Need to Be Addressed to Better prepare for Indoor Contamination Following Disasters ... EPA has incorporated some recommendations and input from the IG and expert panel members into its second program, but its decision not to include other items may limit the overall effectiveness of this program. For example, while EPA agreed to test for more contaminants, it did not agree to evaluate risks in areas north of Canal Street and in Brooklyn. EPA reported that it does not have a basis for expanding the boundaries of its program because it cannot distinguish between normal urban, or background, dust and WTC dust. The expert panel’s ability to meet its goals was limited by two factors: (1) EPA officials’ belief that some panel goals were more appropriately addressed by other agencies, and (2) EPA’s approach to managing the panel process. Furthermore, the majority of expert panel members believe the panel did not meet any of its goals, and that EPA’s second program does not respond to the concerns of residents and workers affected by the disaster. EPA’s second plan does not fully inform the public about the results of its first program. EPA concluded that a “very small” number of samples from its first program exceeded risk levels for airborne asbestos. However, EPA did not provide information such as how representative the samples were of the affected area. Residents who could have participated in this voluntary second program might have opted not to do so because of EPA’s conclusion about its first program. EPA did not develop a comprehensive cost estimate to determine the resources needed to carry out its second program. EPA is implementing this program with $7 million remaining from its first program. While EPA has acted upon lessons learned following this disaster, some concerns remain about its preparedness to respond to indoor contamination following future disasters. Specifically, EPA has not developed protocols on how and when to collect data to determine the extent of indoor contamination, one of the concerns raised by panel members. ... (GAO-07-1091: United States Government Accountability Office, September 2007)
• John Galt Shrugged: How Could He Know What Was Going On ... As for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, we were quite unfamiliar with Avi Schick, who was appointed chairman of the LMDC board, a position formerly held by John C. Whitehead, who had been co-chairman of Goldman Sachs and Deputy Secretary of State under Secretary George Shultz. On April 22, 2005, Whitehead wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal, titled MR. SPITZER HAS GONE TOO FAR-POST-9/11 NY CANNOT AFFORD TO DRIVE AWAY CORPORATE INVESTORS, criticizing then Attorney General Spitzer for publicizing allegations of financial misconduct against Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, then chairman of AIG (American International Group, an insurance giant). On reading the article, Spitzer telephoned Whitehead in Texas and said, according to Whitehead’s notes, “Mr. Whitehead, it’s now a war between us and you fired the first shot. I will be coming after you. You will pay the price. This is only the beginning and you will pay dearly for what you have done. You will wish you had never written that letter.” The conversation became public on December 22, 2005 when Mr. Whitehead apparently fired his second shot in another opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal titled SCARY. Avi Schick, a 40-year-old attorney, has written articles about school vouchers, the Bill of Rights and religious discrimination. On behalf of Attorney General Spitzer, he argued the case in the Appellate Division against Richard Grasso, former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. He graduated from the Mirrer Yeshiva Central Institute and Columbia Law School. The Sun reported that he was Mr. Spitzer’s unofficial representative to the Orthodox community. Schick fights for tax credits for religious school tuition as an alternative to private school vouchers. Mr. Schick also argued in the tobacco settlement case. He knows separation (or non-separation) of church and state. He does not, however, appear to have a professional background in major real estate development, construction supervision, demolition or fire protection. Nor has he dealt with captains of industry or finance, as his predecessor Mr. Whitehead had. By appointing him to fill Secretary Whitehead’s position on LMDC, Mr. Spitzer may have believed that he was making a point. In fact he made a point, but perhaps not the point he intended. Competence tops revenge. (Queens Tribune, by Henry Stern, Aug. 30- Sept. 5, 2007)
  
• FDNY Expands Physical, Mental Health Services ... (NY1, Amanda Farinacci, Sept. 5, 2007)
  
• Owner of toxic WTC tower spars with EPA about sealing building ... The owner of a contaminated ground zero skyscraper that burned in a fatal fire said Wednesday the building can't be sealed until new fire safety rules are agreed on and the building is stabilized _ a plan publicly opposed by a federal environmental regulator. "It is the EPA's position that the building be resealed while these other issues are addressed," the Environmental Protection Agency's World Trade Center coordinator, Pat Evangelista, said at a community meeting about the former Deutsche Bank building. He said it wasn't clear that the building would be sealed to the elements quickly "in parallel to all the other activities." Several floors of the building, which was heavily damaged on Sept. 11, 2001, are still contaminated with asbestos, World Trade Center dust and other toxins. Windows were broken during the Aug. 18 blaze, which killed two firefighters, leaving some of the floors open to the elements. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the state agency that owns the building, the Fire Department of New York, the city and environmental agencies have been meeting daily to work out a new plan to take down the building safely, LMDC Chairman Avi Schick said at the community board meeting. But "safe means safe in every way," he said, saying the risk of fire hazards still in the building needed to be considered along with possible effects of the open building on air quality. Schick and Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler told board members that the building could not be sealed immediately while discussions continue about safety protocols and work continues at the building. Schick said part of the south side of the building still needed to be stabilized and some regulators hadn't approved the planned work last week. "There will be no dialing back of environmental controls," Schick said of the regulations that have governed the tower's cleanup. He said hundreds of air tests have shown no dangerous levels of toxins in the neighborhood since the fire. Schick also said the LMDC was "seriously considering" separating the cleanup and demolition of the building once work resumes. Workers had been cleaning the lower floors of toxic debris while removing upper floors that had already been cleaned. Officials also said the standpipe that provides water to the 26-story partially demolished tower and was broken the day of the blaze was functioning as of Wednesday. (Newsday, Amy Westfeldt, Sept. 5, 2007)
  
• Firefighters Union Wants Probe Into Deutsche Bank Blaze Expanded ... Fire officials say the fire safety command is supposed to investigate only the fire and that a separate investigation into what happened before the fire will be conducted by its internal investigation unit, the Bureau of Investigation and Trials. They say that investigation has not yet begun since – for now – the Manhattan district attorney's office is taking the lead. (NY1, Amanda Farinacci, Sept. 5, 2007)
• Clinton, Nadler, and Maloney: New GAO Report Confirms Serious Problems with EPA WTC Indoor "Test and Clean" Program and Preparedness for Future Disasters (9/5/2007)
• Deutsche demo firm grilled, but gives few answers ... Similar to Mark McGwire’s defense against steroid accusations two years ago, Bovis Lend Lease executives said Wednesday that they did not come to a community meeting Wednesday to talk about the past – in other words what led to the deaths of two firefighters Aug. 18 at the former Deutsche Bank building. When Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver asked the execs in charge of dismantling Deutsche whether they were asserting their Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate themselves, Mark Melson, who supervises Bovis’s offices in the Northeast, didn’t answer directly but he did say he didn’t want to compromise the investigation into the fire. Robert Morgenthau, Manhattan’s district attorney, has begun a criminal investigation into Bovis and its subcontractor, John Galt Corp. The F.D.N.Y. and the agency that hired Bovis, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., are also conducting inquiries. The L.M.D.C. bought the damaged and contaminated building across from the World Trade Center site in 2004 for $90 million and Bovis could get $130 million to finish taking it down. It was originally 41 stories and is now down to 26. ... Melson said Bovis has always been a “good neighbor” Wednesday but he did not answer questions as to why the firm’s six supervisors allowed smoking in a building with combustible materials, why Bovis committed six Buildings Dept. violations this year and why they did not move against Galt sooner, even though Galt committed even more fire and safety violations than Bovis. He did say all of Bovis’ violations have been rectified. They include letting large amounts of combustible material accumulate (June 6) and failure to remove combustible debris from areas where sparks from blow torches were landing (Aug. 1). “We can’t answer questions that are related directly to the ongoing investigations,” Melson said at one point. He repeated different versions of that phrase several times throughout the evening. Immediately after the meeting at 250 Broadway Melson and James Abadie, who heads Bovis’s New York office, slipped out a side door and did not answer reporters’ questions. Joseph Graffagnino, whose son Joseph, 33, was killed trying to put out the fire two weeks ago, said he came to the meeting hoping for answers. “I’m more interested in what happened in the past, but they refused to answer,” he said. ... [Jim Long, an F.D.N.Y. spokesperson, said the standpipe of another building damaged on 9/11, Fiterman Hall, was inspected last week and it is working. The sprinkler system was broken in 2001 and Long said it will not be fixed for the demolition, which could begin this year. Long said inspectors will return to Fiterman every two weeks until the building is down.] Melson and Abadie denied there was widespread drinking and a bar set up in the building, as was reported in the Daily News last week, but they did not dispute there was smoking. The Fire Dept. concluded this week that the fire was started by a cigarette, even though there was a no-smoking rule at the site. ... Last Tuesday, Silver convened a private meeting with local elected officials, a few C.B. 1 members, residents and L.M.D.C. officials including Avi Schick, the agency’s chairperson and an appointee of Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Schick, in response to a question, said he was trying to get Bovis to put its “A-team” at Deutsche, according to Pat Moore of C.B. 1 and one other attendee who requested anonymity. Two days later, the machinery crashed, injuring the firefighters, and Bovis kicked Galt off the site. Silver’s group reconvened this Tuesday, with Spitzer also attending. Schick informed the group that Bovis indeed had transferred at least one person to Deutsche. Scott Stringer, Manhattan’s borough president, confirmed that Schick said Bovis was transferring top personnel to the project. Several attendees said Spitzer’s presence this week had a positive influence on the meeting. (Downtown Express, By Josh Rogers, Aug. 31 - Sept. 6, 2007)
  
• Deutsche Bank Bombshell: FDNY Cover-Up? Union Head Says Dept. Brass 'Whitewashing' Tragedy ... here were stunning new allegations Wednesday surrounding the deadly fire at the Deutsche Bank building, charges that top brass at the FDNY are staging a major cover-up to protect themselves. It is a bombshell charge -- fire department brass interfering with the Deutsche Bank building investigation to protect themselves. "The fire department is clear right now that they are doing everything they can to whitewash this tragedy where two firefighters died and 20 others almost perished," said Stephen Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association. Cassidy said fire investigators are being ordered not to ask critical questions about who in the upper echelons of the department are to blame for the fact that there was no pre-fire plan to battle a blaze in the toxic building. "We've been told that safety command has been ordered specifically to only look at what happened operationally the day of the fire," Cassidy said. "They're not allowed, they've been ordered not to, not to specifically look at anything prior to the day of the fire." In its defense, the FDNY claims it has others in the agency looking into why there was no plan for the Deutsche Bank. Asked who exactly is investigating, an FDNY spokesman said "the department." Cassidy says the only way to get the truth is for the Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau to subpoena FDNY Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta and other top officers before a grand jury. "A real investigation will go to the top of the New York City fire department," Cassidy said. Cassidy also questioned the actions of William Siegel, now a top aide to commissioner Scoppetta. In March 2005 Siegel wrote the smoking gun memo that demanded the Deutsche Bank building be inspected every week. "The person who wrote the memo is now at the top echelon of the New York City fire department," Cassidy said. "It's not possible; it’s not believable that the people he works with did not know what he wrote and why he wrote it." ... (wcbstv, Marcia Kramer, Sept. 5, 2007)
  
• Clearing the Air: 9/11's toxic dust obscures answers about cancer and other health claims ... Based on a Voice count, more than 52 illnesses have been mentioned in connection with the 9/11 toxic cloud, either anecdotally in press reports, more broadly in government comments, or with some scientific underpinning in research studies. "In the six years since the attacks, we have accumulated a mountain of evidence that tens of thousands of those exposed are suffering from chronic respiratory disease and, increasingly, a variety of rare cancers," said Representative Jerrold Nadler, who has emerged as a leading advocate on the issue, during a June 25 congressional hearing. More than 100 scientific papers have been written exploring a link between 9/11 and health ailments. Many of those strongly suggest that the dust was a factor in increased respiratory illnesses among people exposed to the cloud. ... At least 12 deaths from lung ailments and cancer have been blamed on the dust cloud in press reports. Among them is firefighter Ray Hauber, 47, who died of esophageal cancer. Friends and family say Hauber was a healthy man who didn't smoke. In two of the cases—those of Police Officer James Zadroga, who died of pulmonary fibrosis, and lawyer Felicia Dunn Jones, who died of sarcoidosis—local medical examiners agreed that exposure to the dust was a factor. Another was that of Cesar Borja, a police officer who died of pulmonary fibrosis. Initial reports said that he'd worked 16-hour shifts at Ground Zero, but records subsequently showed that he worked there only 17 days, starting in December 2001—casting doubt on whether his fatal illness stemmed from his time at Ground Zero. Not long before she died from lung cancer, lower-Manhattan resident Etta Sanders wrote an essay blaming her own illness on the WTC exposures. ... (Village Voice, by Graham Rayman, Sept. 4, 2007)
  
• A Labor Day Labor Forgot to Celebrate ... But at least organized labor usually shows the flag on the Saturday after Labor Day, with a march along Fifth Avenue. Not this year. The New York City Central Labor Council called off the 2007 parade, replacing it with a rally on Saturday at the World Trade Center site, focused on health issues affecting those who toiled there after 9/11. ... (NYTimes, by Clyde Haberman, Sept. 4, 2007)
  
• SHOCK TALE OF FIRED CHIEF .... "On Wednesday, three days after the [Aug. 18] fire, before we were relieved of command, I was called in to set up emergency fire plans for two buildings which had similar hazardous conditions as the Deutsche Bank," Chief McDonald said. Those buildings were at 130 Cedar St. and Fitterman Hall, 30 West Broadway. Wait a minute. So the brass at the FDNY make an urgent call to Chief McDonald to devise a crisis plan, and then amazingly and inexplicably, five days later, torpedo his professional life, as well as two others? It gets better. McDonnell, the head of McDonald's union, the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, said the debacle only shows that there would have been a similar plan in place for the Deutsche Bank site near Ground Zero before the fire. "The fact that the Fire Department headquarters wanted the chief to draw up fire plans for 130 Cedar and Fitterman Hall leads me to believe they would have requested the same plan for the Deutsche Bank earlier," McDonnell said. ... (NYPost, by Steve Dunleavy, Sept. 3, 2007)
• BATTERY PARK CRISIS TEAM WAS OVERLOOKED ... When fire struck the Deutsche Bank building on Aug. 18, the local Community Emergency Response Team was the last to know. "We were not activated, which we think should have been done, under the circumstances," said Sidney Baumgarten, chief of the Battery Park City Community Emergency Response Team (CERT). Run by more than just volunteers, CERTs have been hyped by City Hall and the feds' Department of Homeland Security as a way to augment overwhelmed emergency units. The Battery Park team, the largest in the city, was created in 2003 with federal dollars as a way for civilians with training in emergency management, medicine or certain other fields to aid first responders. But when the toxic blaze hit 130 Liberty St., no agency contacted Baumgarten. He learned of the fire through unofficial channels and "self-activated" his team to help with traffic and crowd control - and encountered problems even then. "The most distressing thing is every cop on the scene, from patrolman up to captain, had never heard of CERT," said the retired New York National Guard brigadier general. Neither the city's Office of Emergency Management nor the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. notified him, Baumgarten said. ... (NYPost, Sept, 3, 2007)
  
• Letters to the Editor: Reporter Etta Sanders is remembered by the community ... (Tribeca Trib, Sept. 1, 2007)
  
• Anger in Aftermath of Building Blaze ... “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. ... 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.” ... (Tribeca Trib, by Nick Pino, Sept. 1, 2007)
  

AUGUST

• Widow of firefighter killed at Deutsche Bank rails at city ... The family of deceased firefighter Joey Graffagnino at his home in Bay Ridge. From l.: father Joe Graffagnino, 9-month-old son Joseph, widow Linda, and mother Rosemarie. Joey Graffagnino with his wife Linda. Graffagnino was killed in a fire at the Deutsche Bank building two weeks ago. The grieving widow of firefighter Joseph Graffagnino condemned city officials yesterday for sending her husband into a death trap. "It seems with the city it's really all about money. It's not about human life," Linda Graffagnino said. "Now, who is paying the price? Me, my in-laws and my children. My children don't have a father now." Two weeks after her husband and fellow firefighter Robert Beddia were killed by a fire at the toxic Deutsche Bank building in lower Manhattan, Graffagnino broke her silence, speaking to reporters at the dining room table of her Brooklyn home. The numbing sadness that comes with burying a father who will never see his 9-month-old son stand on his own has given way to anger. "Why was this work still going on in this building with all the violations," she asked, referring the litany of violations found at the tower by the city Buildings Department since demolition began in March. Graffagnino said she also wonders why no one knew that a standpipe in the tower had been disconnected, preventing the firefighters from getting water up to the fire and dooming her husband. "If you don't have water to put a fire out, I don't know how you're going to put it out," she said. "I don't know who you're going to save." "My husband had to die for someone to take notice and take action," she said. "It's sad.... No one apologized. I don't know if anyone will." "It's not just dollars and cents," she added. "People's lives are at stake. But you don't realize it until lives are lost." (NYDaily News, Aug. 31, 2007)
  
• Senior FDNY chiefs spent weeks at toxic tower before fire ... No one has pinpointed exactly why fire inspectors failed for months to check the condemned ground zero skyscraper where firefighters encountered a maze of hazards and potential deathtraps when responding to a blaze two weeks ago. But there is perhaps a greater mystery: Months before the Aug. 18 fire that killed two firefighters, numerous senior fire chiefs spent weeks at the demolition site and apparently never reported those conditions. The battalion chiefs were at the building to search for remains of Sept. 11 victims. Now, those who played a role in the remains search are being questioned by investigators. Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned this week that the chiefs' judgement must be questioned. "It's troublesome that there were a lot of senior fire officials that had come through that building when we were searching for remains," Bloomberg said. "They saw the kind of conditions that were in that building, and as far as I can tell so far, none of them brought it to anybody's attention." A series of dangers existed in the former Deutsche Bank building before the blaze. They include barricades in the stairwells, combustible debris strewn about, signs that workers routinely ignored the site's no-smoking rule and a tangle of polyurethane sheeting and other materials used to seal against asbestos and lead leakage. ... Fire inspectors were required to check the building every 15 days and never did, investigators found. But meanwhile, numerous battalion chiefs were there nearly every day last spring as part of the city's renewed search for remains of Sept. 11 victims, Bloomberg said. The Fire Department declined to identify those officials or make them available. Spokesman Frank Gribbon said the matter was under investigation. According to a June 1 memo written by Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler, updating Bloomberg on the remains operation, searchers had been in the building since March 15 and completed the job on May 29. ... At the former Deutsche Bank building, numerous fire officials were said to have worked in different shifts on those teams, spending hours amid the conditions that investigators now say likely worsened the fire earlier this month. Firefighters who responded to the blaze quickly found that the inside of the building was nearly impossible to navigate. Barricades on the stairwells and among the floors made it easy to get disoriented or lost. And as part of the asbestos containment operation, a system had been set up to create negative air pressure on some floors. Officials believe this caused the fire to behave differently - flames were quickly sucked downward instead of creeping up, which surprised firefighters who typically set up a base of operations a few floors under the point of origin. With the odds already stacked against them, firefighters also couldn't get water out of the building's supply network known as its standpipe. Marshals later found pieces of it lying in the basement. Bloomberg said Friday that the battalion chiefs who were there for the remains search would not have known about the standpipe problem, because they were not in the basement, but should have raised objections about the multitude of other problems. Fire marshals have begun interviewing officials who played a role in the remains search at the Deutsche Bank, according to a person with direct knowledge of the remains operation. Gribbon, the Fire Department spokesman, declined to say what investigators have learned and whether anyone will be reprimanded, but Bloomberg has warned of possible disciplinary action "up and down the chain of command." Three other fire officials said to be responsible for the department's lack of a fire plan for the tower and its failure to inspect the building, including the standpipe, have already been relieved of their commands and reassigned to headquarters. (Newsday, August 31, 2007)
  
• Op-Ed: Burning Questions After a Blaze ... New York real estate and construction is about money, and if reporters and investigators follow the contracts and the subcontracts of the Deutsche Bank building they are bound to find a clear line of responsibility for the conditions that led to the killing of these two men. ... (NYTimes, by Dennis Smith, Aug. 31, 2007)
• Threat Seen in History of Demolition ... In the fall of 2005, the planned demolition of the former Deutsche Bank headquarters finally seemed to have gotten back on track. Bovis Lend Lease, an international construction management company, had been awarded the job to oversee the work. The federal Environmental Protection Agency had accepted its detailed demolition plan, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation had approved a tentative arrangement under which three large contractors would do the complex work. Just as a draft contract was being completed, the deal fell apart. It collapsed days after the president of one of the companies, a large Massachusetts demolition contractor, received an anonymous telephone call telling him to stay out of New York, according to the contractor and several other people briefed about the call. The F.B.I. investigated the threat, sending two New York City agents to Waltham, Mass., to interview the contractor, Chris Berardi. Mr. Berardi, the president of North American Site Developers Inc., known as Nasdi, said in a telephone interview from Boston last week that he thought the call had been meant to intimidate him. “It was basically, ‘Don’t come to our city. You’re going to come in here and you’re going to be leaving very shortly,’ ” he recalled. “Reading between the lines, it was a threat to say, ‘Don’t come here, stay where you are; you’ll regret it.’ ” Mr. Berardi, nearly two years later, played down the significance of the threat in describing his decision to withdraw from the deal, saying instead that the decision had come down to money. He acknowledged, though, that the federal agents who interviewed him took the matter seriously and seemed concerned. Two people who worked on the deal — one for the government and one for a private contractor — expressed some skepticism, suggesting that North American Site Developers wanted out of the deal anyway. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is under investigation. The collapse of Bovis’s deal with North American Site Developers and the two other potential demolition contractors, LVI Services Inc. and Bedroc Contracting, cleared the way for the hiring of the John Galt Corporation, the troubled contractor that has come under scrutiny in the criminal inquiry into the Aug. 18 fire at the building that left two firefighters dead. After three months, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation approved a deal under which Bovis gave Galt a $60 million contract for the job, despite concerns raised by the city’s Department of Investigation. The city investigators had strongly warned development officials against hiring any companies tied to another demolition contractor, Safeway Environmental. Galt, an arranged marriage of sorts including executives from a scaffolding company with no demolition experience and two former Safeway executives who had done asbestos abatement, was seen by city investigators as too closely tied to Safeway. Safeway had come under scrutiny because one of its former owners, Harold Greenberg, had been convicted of bribery and mail fraud linked to a bid-rigging scheme in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and has been accused of being tied to organized crime. The Department of Investigation began investigating Galt after the company was approved to work on the bank demolition in part because of concerns that Mr. Greenberg had connections to the company, people with knowledge of the matter have said. While several people briefed on the F.B.I. investigation said it had not determined the source of the call, Mr. Berardi said the agents who interviewed him asked about Mr. Greenberg and his former partner in Safeway, Steven Chasin. Mr. Berardi, who has never worked in New York, said Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Chasin did not threaten him personally. The two F.B.I. agents, who had traveled to Massachusetts to interview Mr. Berardi rather than delegating the task to other agents in the bureau’s Boston office, were from a New York squad that investigates public corruption. Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Chasin have not returned calls seeking comment. When North American Site Developers withdrew from the project, the arrangement with the other two companies collapsed because only North American Site Developers had the adequate financial strength for the job, several people involved in the deal said. “We were ready to go forward and do this project in a safe and conscientious manner, and once Nasdi, which was providing the bonding for the demolition portion of this job, withdrew, the deal fell apart,” said Paul Desser, the director of estimating and marketing for Bedroc. “And we were down to the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed.” The chairman of LVI Services, Burton T. Fried, would not comment. Once the deal fell apart, according to several people involved in the project, Bovis proposed using a half-dozen other companies, some of whom city officials felt were too closely tied to Safeway. Eventually, Bovis hired Galt despite the strong caution voiced by the city’s Department of Investigation. A spokesman for Bovis yesterday would not discuss the telephone call to Mr. Berardi or the reasons that the earlier deal with his company collapsed. (NYTimes, by William K. Rashbaum and Charles V. Bagli, Aug. 30, 2007)
  
• ALARM LINGERS AFTER DEUTSCHE BANK FIRE -- CB1 MEMBERS DECRY “TOXIC CLOUD OF UNCERTAINTY” AND “TRAGEDY REPEATING ITSELF AS FARCE” SKEPTICAL RESIDENTS DEMAND ASSURANCES ABOUT POSSIBLE CONTAMINATION NO-SHOW JOB: CONTRACTORS SLAMMED FOR SKIPPING EMERGENCY CB1 MEETING ... Mr. Schick predicted that “negative air pressure” (which prevents toxic materials from escaping, because all air flows inward) would not be restored in the building until the various investigations were complete. This led Battery Park City resident Craig Hall to note that “many of us have already been through two EPA cleanups,” and ask “what is the risk of new contamination?” When officials from multiple agencies repeated that data collected thus far shows no such risk, Congressman Jerry Nadler broke in to ask, “if new data show an increased level of risk, what will you do and how long will it take?” EPA representative Pat E v a n g e l i s t a answered that it would take “several weeks, at a minimum” to restore negative air pressure, an outlook that Mr. Nadler termed “unacceptable.” ... LMDC chair Avi Schick voiced surprise, saying, “we were told they would be here tonight to answer questions,” which led Congressman Nadler to predict, “they’re going to
  answer questions, under subpoena and under oath.” Borough president Scott Stringer said that “Bovis never misses a Community Board meeting when they want something from the community, so they should have been here tonight.” Mr. Shick concluded by saying that “we’re going to hold Bovis’ and Galt’s feet to the fire by asking them hard questions. And if
  their answers aren’t satisfactory, they won’t be back.” ... (BPC Boradsheet, by Matthew Fenton, Aug. 28-Sept. 11, 2007)
  
• HUNDREDS OF LAWSUITS FILED AGAINST BPCA TEMPORARY WORKERS FROM SIX YEARS AGO CLAIM TO SUFFER FROM ‘WORLD TRADE CENTER SYNDROME’ SHOULD RESIDENTS EXPECT TO BE TAKEN TO CLEANERS BY CLEANERS? ... .At a July meeting of the Battery Park City Authority’s board, deputy general counsel Annette Guarino announced that 375 lawsuits have been filed against the Authority in recent weeks by temporary workers whom building managers hired in 2001 to clean Battery Park City apartments of World Trade Center dust and debris. “This makes us the largest defendant outside of Ground Zero,” Ms. Guarino noted, adding that 50 similar “cleanup cases” were filed against the Authority between 2001 and 2005, with 43 ultimately being dismissed. “These people have been certified by Mount Sinai Hospital as having a cluster of symptoms called ‘World Trade Center Syndrome,’” Ms. Guarino added, “and a large plaintiff firm that specializes in tobacco litigation has taken their cases en masse.” Authority chairman James Gill described the suits as “baseless,” while president Jim Cavanaugh noted, “we didn’t hire these people. They were hired by contractors who were hired by landlords, which had nothing to do with the Authority. So there’s no reason we should be a party to these actions.” Authority spokesperson Leticia Remauro later added that, “in addition to the fact that we should never have been named as defendants, these lawsuits have been filed too late to be legally valid.” While Ms. Guarino was cautiously optimistic about the wave of suits being dismissed, nobody at the Authority was able to predict whether residents who owned condominiums or rented apartments at the time of the September 11 attacks, and whose homes were cleaned by contractors, should expect to be named as defendants in similar litigation in the future.(BPC Boradsheet, by Matthew Fenton, Aug. 28-Sept. 11, 2007)
  
• Differences in PTSD Prevalence and Associated Risk Factors Among World Trade Center Disaster Rescue and Recovery Workers .... CONCLUSIONS: Workers and volunteers in occupations least likely to have had prior disaster training or experience were at greatest risk of PTSD. Disaster preparedness training and shift rotations to enable shorter duration of service at the site may reduce PTSD among workers and volunteers in future disasters. .... (Am J Psychiatry , August 29, 2007)
  
• EPA Letter to LMDC David Emil: Abatement and Deconstruction of 130 Liberty Street (also known as the Deutsche Bank Building) .... writing to express the concern of the U.S. EPA about the "preliminary position" that you stated at the August 28, 2007 meeting with pat Evangelista, WTC Coordinator .... and representatives of the NYSDOL, NYCDEP, OSHA, and others.... Mr. Evangelista informed me that you have proposed tthat the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) implement a new sampling plan to gather new data for the building at 130 Liberty Street and to revisit abatement procedures .... EPA has participated, and continues to participate, in meetings to understand the concerns of the FDNY and to address them expeditiously. Our primary environmental concern at this time is the need for LMDC to implement all necessary measures to seal the buioding to control potential releases of contaminants into th environment. In so doing, we urge LMDC to employ additional measures to safeguard public and worker safety and health, and to incorporate appropriate recommendations from FDNY.... (EPA, August 29, 2007)
  
• Community, Officials Slam Deutsche Bank Contractor ... More than 100 community members and a half-dozen public officials fired heated questions at the contractor in charge of demolition of the Deutsche Bank building at a meeting Wednesday night. The meeting came nearly two weeks after two firefighters died in a blaze at the building, and a week after falling construction equipment at the site injured two other firefighters. Mark Melson, executive vice president of northeast region of Bovis Lend Lease, opened by saying that while he is deeply sorry about the loss of life, the demolition at 130 Liberty Street is “one of the most highly-regulated demolition efforts in New York City.” Melson said the company has lost confidence in the project's subcontractor, the John Galt Company and, as a result, terminated its contracts with the company last week. He said due to investigations by the Manhattan district attorney and the attorney general, the company could not go into details about the situation at the building that led up to the fire. "I'm happy to answer any questions you have, but there are certain subjects, they are the subject of an ongoing investigation and we do not intend to talk [about with] this community and this board," said Melson. State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, and Community Board 1 Chairwoman Julie Menin put pressure on Bovis to disclose information as to how the company went about hiring John Galt despite pleas from the Community Board not to hire the contractor. "Had you put a halt to John Galt and had the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation seen fit to put a halt to John Galt, I venture to say that we wouldn't be here tonight," said Kimberly Flynn of 9/11 Environmental Action. Melson said it has obtained outside counsel to investigate the hiring procedure and what went wrong at the site, but it is not sure whether Bovis will make the findings public. "Your reputation has been sullied, gentlemen, and that happened with the blood of the people who were killed at your building," said local resident Sally Regenhard, who lost her son in the September 11th terrorist attacks. According to Melson, it is up to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to ask the community for approval of a subcontractor. ... Bovis Senior Vice President James Abadie said the company will work with representatives from the FDNY and the Department of Buildings to ensure future safety at the site and that rules will be tightened in regards to smoking, which fire marshals believe caused the blaze. "Any person who is violating any of those rules will be removed from the job and barred from working there," said Abadie. ... Meanwhile, lawmakers are pointing fingers across the aisle, blaming political opponents for conditions that led to the fire. Some Manhattan Democrats say Governor George Pataki is to blame. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Borough President Scott Stringer say the building should have been demolished years ago. "The Pataki administration LMDC, you couldn't meet with them, they wouldn't talk to you, they totally didn't care, and everything they did was about their own politics,” said Stringer. Pataki's spokesperson says he won't dignify the comments with a response. The number two Republican in the State Senate, however, puts the blame on Avi Schick, head of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Senator Dean Skelos says days before the fire, Schick even took The New York Times on a tour of the building to show how well the demolition was going. Democrats say the blame is unjustified and that Schick and Governor Eliot Spitzer have been more involved in the rebuilding effort than the previous administration. (NY1, Aug. 29, 2007)
• Survey Shows a High Rate of Asthma at Ground Zero .. Rescue and recovery workers at ground zero have developed asthma at a rate that is 12 times what would be expected for adults, according to findings released yesterday by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Of nearly 26,000 workers surveyed in 2003 and 2004, 926 reported that they developed asthma for the first time after working at ground zero (a rate of 3.6 percent). In a group that size, under normal conditions, no more than 77 new cases of asthma (0.3 percent) would have been expected, according to the report, which is published in the current issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, a science and health journal. The health department also found that workers who arrived at ground zero on Sept. 11, when the dust cloud and smoke from the fires were thickest and respirator masks were least available, had the highest risk of developing asthma in the aftermath of the disaster. ... (NYTimes, by Anthony DePalma, Aug. 28, 2007)
• Questions On City's Role In Demolition Near 9/11 Site ... The former headquarters of Deutsche Bank, at the edge of ground zero, has been in state hands for more than three years, ever since the Pataki administration fashioned a deal to buy and demolish it. The wounded tower had stood as both an ugly reminder of Sept. 11 and the slow progress in rebuilding downtown Manhattan. But for at least 30 months, New York City officials have themselves played a role alongside first the Pataki and now the Spitzer administration in helping to determine how the contaminated 41-story building at 130 Liberty St. was to be demolished, who was to do the work, how much they would be paid and, ultimately, whether the companies hired for the job were reputable firms. As it turned out, the subcontractor hired for the demolition was an organization comprised of executives from one company without the requisite experience and two senior executives from a second company under scrutiny by city investigators, a company whose former owner twice had been convicted of federal crimes, and had been accused of ties to organized crime. The subcontractor, known as the John Galt Corporation, is now the focus of a criminal investigation after two firefighters died in an Aug. 18 blaze; evidence points to the fire's being caused by workers smoking on the building's upper floors. The efforts of firefighters to combat the blaze were badly compromised by an inoperable sprinkler system and a nonworking standpipe in the contaminated building. The Galt firm was hired even though the city and the state had jointly established an agency -- the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center -- and charged it with coordinating construction activity downtown, and preventing troubled contractors from getting work there. A former city investigator was appointed to the agency. Interviews with current and former officials involved in the work at the Deutsche Bank also show that at least two senior Bloomberg administration officials were clearly aware that the executives from the suspect company, Mitchell Alvo and Donald Adler of Safeway Environmental, had ultimately been hired to work on the demolition project. Records show that one of those officials was Martha Stark, the commissioner of the city's Department of Finance. Ms. Stark served on a committee of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation overseeing the Deutsche Bank building, and received a copy of a letter responding to the continuing concerns of city investigators regarding the two men from Safeway after the Galt Company was hired. To date, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his aides have said little about their knowledge of the troubled company at the heart of the demolition work. The administration has refused to say whether senior officials were alerted by city investigators about their objections to the use of Safeway and its executives. And it has refused to say whether Ms. Stark briefed anyone about the company's role, and the concerns swirling around it. A spokesman for Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff, who served on the board of the downtown development agency, indicated last week that Mr. Doctoroff was aware that the Safeway executives had been hired, but had been satisfied that safeguards had been put in place to prevent any wrongdoing. It was unclear whether Mr. Doctoroff knew about the full range of concerns of city investigators. Yesterday, a mayoral spokesman, Stu Loeser, again refused comment, citing the investigation by the Manhattan district attorney. But the records show City Hall officials attended a meeting convened by Mr. Bloomberg and Gov. Eliot Spitzer at Gracie Mansion on Jan. 29, 2007, after the John Galt Company and Bovis Lend Lease, the company that hired Galt, walked off the demolition job in a bid for more money. The companies complained they were being asked to do more work than the contract entailed. The city eventually backed the state's decision to provide an additional $40 million to complete the demolition and remediation work, money that, if finally approved, would flow in part to the Safeway executives. That meeting took place seven months after the city's Department of Investigation took action against Safeway that would probably prevent it from doing future city work and five months after the agency's investigation of the John Galt Corporation blocked that company from winning a contract to tear down the Bronx House of Detention. Again, it was unclear whether those concerns were ever raised during the negotiations at Gracie Mansion. Diane Struzzi, a Department of Investigation spokeswoman, citing the current criminal inquiry, would not say whether officials from the agency had notified anyone inside city government, from the mayor and Deputy Mayor Doctoroff, down to lower-level managers, about their concerns. Much of the work in rebuilding downtown, of course, had been headed over the years by the Pataki administration, which first created the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. The state, now under the direction of Mr. Spitzer, controls the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and is a partner with New Jersey in the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the World Trade Center site. State officials from the Pataki and Spitzer administrations have yet to explain their roles and responsibilities at the Deutsche Bank building. District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau has subpoenaed records from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, John Galt, Bovis, the Fire Department and others as part of a widening investigation. But the city's Department of Investigation has long been interested in Safeway Environmental, its owners and executives. Its concerns originated from the criminal convictions and accusations of organized crime connections against Harold Greenberg, a former Safeway owner. Indeed, in the summer of 2005, city investigators persuaded the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to disqualify Safeway from getting a $13 million contract to erect scaffolding at the Deutsche Bank building. And in early 2006, it sent a letter to the development agency cautioning against using Safeway officials in the much larger undertaking of demolishing the building. Nonetheless, in January 2006, Bovis and the development agency struck an agreement that allowed the Safeway executives to play a role in the project. Under the terms of the arrangement, Mr. Alvo and Mr. Adler were required to cooperate with an unspecified inquiry by the Department of Investigation. A former official who had been involved in the project said the Department of Investigation did not learn of the arrangement until March 31, in a meeting with the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center. Charles Maikish, a command center official, eventually conceded in a letter to city investigators that he had been remiss in failing to consult the Department of Investigation and acknowledged that the department had supplied the command center with ''negative'' information about Mr. Adler and Mr. Alvo, according to two people who have seen the letter. Mr. Maikish's letter indicates that he sent a copy to Ms. Stark. In the following months, city investigators' interest in Safeway intensified -- as it intervened to end the company's involvement in several city contracts. One deal was with the city's Department of Sanitation. The Department of Investigation sent a letter dated May 5, 2006, to Mr. Alvo, president of Safeway, notifying him that the company was in ''default'' of a monitoring agreement that allowed the company to undertake contracts with Sanitation. Among the reasons for the finding, the letter said, is that two Safeway officials, Mr. Alvo and Steven Chasin, had refused to submit to follow-up interviews with investigators as the agreement required. It was precisely that sort of requirement -- that Safeway officials would continue to cooperate with investigators -- that reassured state and city officials that Mr. Alvo and Mr. Adler could be cleared to work on the Deutsche Bank demolition job. (NYTimes, by Charles V. Bagli and William K. Rashbaum; Diane Cardwell, August 29, 2007)
• Politicians Play Blame Game Over Deutsche Bank Demolition ... There's lots of blame to go around. Democrats and Republicans are pointing fingers at each other for why the Deutsche Bank building was even still standing. Democrats pounced on former Governor George Pataki. The building stood on his watch for five years after it was crippled in the September 11th terrorist attacks. ... The remarks from Stringer echoed what a fellow top Democrat said Monday. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was quoted criticizing Pataki, but a day later he said was not interested in rehashing fights with his former sparring partner. “What’s important is we go forward,” said Silver. The GOP, meanwhile, shot at Pataki's successor. The Senate's number two Republican says Governor Eliot Spitzer's point man for rebuilding Lower Manhattan, Avi Schick, has been more focused on good public relations for his boss, than on tearing down the contaminated structure. “He said that everything would change on day one, and now we’re almost nine months into his administration and nothing changed,” said State Senator Dean Skelos. Republicans have not been shy about carping on the governor. He's currently embroiled in an ethics scandal. But with the fire near Ground Zero still fresh, the GOP has stayed away from casting blame, although a state agency under Spitzer owns the building. Skelos changed that; he says days before the fire, Schick took The New York Times on a tour of the building to show how well the demolition was going. “The issue is not about pointing fingers, blaming,” said Skelos. “[It’s about] getting to the truth.” Not surprisingly, Democrats quickly came to Schick's defense. They say he and Spitzer have been more involved than the previous administration. Speaker Silver has close ties to Schick. Although he bit his tongue about Pataki, others were not shy. ... (NY1, August 28, 2007)
  
• FIRED-FIRM CEO STILL RUNS SITE'S SCAFFOLDS ... The top executive of a subcontracting company being blamed for the deadly Deutsche Bank blaze will continue to play a key role in the demolition of the building, although his company was fired from the project. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp., owner of the black-shrouded building at 130 Liberty St., continues to retain the services of Regional Scaffolding & Hoisting on the site - a company run by the same man who heads the John Galt Corp. Officials with the LMDC declined to comment on the relationship between the two companies and refused to provide details on the kind of services Regional Scaffolding will continue to provide nor the value of its contract. .Greg Blinn, CEO of the John Galt Corp. and vice president of Regional Scaffolding, said his contract with the LMDC forbids him from speaking to the press. His two companies operate out of the same offices at 3900 Webster Ave. in The Bronx. Last week, the LMDC and the main contractor for the demolition project, Bovis Lend Lease Corp., fired John Galt as the asbestos-removal subcontractor in the wake of the Aug. 18 blaze that killed two firefighters. Five days after the deadly fire, a John Galt employee dropped a 300-pound pallet jack from the 23rd floor of the building injuring two more firefighters. Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday that that fire was most likely started by careless smoking on the 17th floor. Employees of John Galt have said basic safety practices were ignored and, despite specific rules forbidding it, on-site smoking was routine. The John Galt Corp. was also slapped with 12 violations from the Department of Buildings and 20 federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration violations for work at the building near Ground Zero. (NYPost, by Chuck Bennett, August, 28, 2007)
  
• HEROES GASPING AT 9/11 ASTHMA-RATE SHOCK ... Of 25,748 rescue workers surveyed, 926, or 3.6 percent, developed asthma after working at the toxic site. Of workers who were there 90 days or longer, 7 percent developed asthma. "The dust from the World Trade Center collapse appears to have had significant respiratory health effects at least for people who worked at the site," Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Frieden said. ... Robert Grey, an attorney who specializes in workers'-compensation issues, said he expects the new numbers won't stop the city from challenging the compensation claims of 9/11 workers. "There has been a disconnect between the Law Department and the Health Department for quite some time now," Grey said. "It would not surprise me if the new report gets ignored by the Law Department because [it has] taken a position that they have an obligation to protect the city's money by contesting these claims." ... (NYPost, by Frankie Edozien, Aug. 28, 2007)
  
• buildings: ACCIDENTS -- New York City Toughens Construction Fire Protection Rules in Wake of Fatal Ground Zero Blaze .... New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered Aug. 27 a crackdown on fire safety protections for all city demolition, decontamination and construction projects following an Aug. 18 blaze at the Deutsche Bank deconstruction project at Ground Zero in which two firefighters were killed. Bloomberg ordered the city Fire Dept. to mandate "surveillance by every fire unit...of all buildings under construction/demolition," to review "pre-fire plans" and to order new plans created, if necessary at "any potential structures." Bloomberg also confirmed that city fire marshals have "tentatively" determined that the seven-alarm fire was caused by "careless smoking" by abatement or construction workers on the building's 17th floor. He also pointed to gaps in city and contractor oversight of the building's water supply system and fire safety measures. "Senior fire officers decided against creating a unique fire plan for the building," said the Mayor, who also announced the demotions of three top department officials and the submission of sections of an inoperable building standpipe to the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Va. for metallurgical analysis. Work on the demolition project remains halted as multiple investigations continue. Bovis Lend Lease, the project's contractor, did not return calls to confirm whether it has officially terminated the demolition subcontractor, The John Galt Corp. The firm was issued a notice of contract default on Aug. 22. Bovis also did not confirm reports that two new firms are handling emergency work at the site—Gramercy Group, a Westbury, N.Y.-based demolition and environmental contractor and Atlantic Heydt Corp., a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based contractor and scaffolding firm. ... (McGraw Hill Construction Engineering News-Record, by Debera K. Rubin, 9/27/07)
• Rep. Nadler Reacts to WTC Health Registry's Findings on Asthma (8/27/2007)
• SCOPPETTA'S DUTY ... Written by then-Battalion Chief William Siegel, the memo called for: * "Weekly surveillance" of the building - in addition to the department's mandatory 15-day inspections for buildings under demolition. * Regular updates on interior conditions, like the status of its standpipe system and stairwells. (Standpipes bring water to fight upper-floor fires, and clear stairwells are needed for rapid evacuation in a fire-fighting emergency.) * Adoption of protocols to ensure that up-to-date information would be relayed to firefighters responding to an emergency at the building. In the event, firefighters arrived at the building unaware that its stairwells had been boarded up and that its standpipe system had been partly dismantled. They ended up trapped on the 14th floor. Only sheer luck and extraordinary skill prevented more fatalities.Obviously, those who ignored calls for a "pre-fire plan" and "weekly surveillance" needed to go. ... No doubt others in the FDNY chain of command are going to join Fuerch on the sidelines; that's as it must be.And ongoing probes by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo must determine precisely who was responsible for the conditions inside the building. All that in due course. ... (NYPost, August 28, 2007)
• Union decries 'knee-jerk' decision ... (NYDailyNews, Aug. 28, 2007)
• 4% of 9/11 workers developed asthma: study ... Previous studies have found up to 70% of 9/11 workers reported some kind of respiratory problem. ... The new findings were released yesterday by the city Health Department and published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. The large-scale survey of the more than 25,000 rescue and recovery workers enrolled in Mount Sinai Medical Center's 9/11 registry found that 926, or 3.6%, had developed asthma since 2001. ... (NYDaily, by Helen Kennedy, Aug. 28, 2007)
• Subpoenas issued in Deutsche Bank fire investigation: Three FDNY officers stripped of their commands ... The forensics is just a part of this investigation. It is very much a white collar paper chase. This building will hold some of the clues, but not all of them. Prosecutors and their investigators have examined the building extensively, taking photographs and gathering evidence. Eyewitness News has learned that a series of subpoenas have now been issued for the documents, memos, letters and e-mails that could prove vital to the investigation. ... Officials also sought today to reassure neighbors that the air was not contaminated by the fire, insisting that after 576 tests over nine days there is still no evidence of airborne contaminants. But legislative oversight is being stepped up. ...(abc7, August 28, 2007)
• Asthma up for 9/11 workers, city study says ... A study released yesterday by the city’s Health Department found a significant increase in asthma rates among 9/11 rescue and recovery workers. Of the 25,000 workers participating in the World Trade Center Health Registry, 3.6 percent of them reported developing asthma after their efforts at the toxic Ground Zero site, which is 12 times higher than normal for an adult populatuion over the same time period. “There were significant increases in risk for earlier arrival, total duration of work, exposure to the dust cloud, and working on the pile at the WTC site,” stated the report published yesterday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. The survey, conducted in 2003 and 2004, found that workers who arrived on Sept. 11, 2001, and worked more than 90 days reported the highest rate of new asthma at 7 percent. .... (Metro NY, by Ammy Zimmer, Aug. 28, 2007)
  
• FDNY Tragedy May Reach Top Brass: Union Official Tells CBS 2 High-Ranking Officials Knew About Deutsche Building's Dangers For Years ... "It goes all the way to headquarters, all the way to the chief of the department," says Jack McDonnell, a spokesman for the Uniformed Fire Officers Association. McDonnell says top FDNY officials -- well above the three commanders who were reassigned following the fire -- were very aware of the potential dangers of fighting a fire at that very building. "We're talking a very high-profile, very dangerous building," McDonnell says. How did they know? A memo issued by the city last week tells the tale. The memo states that on April 6, 2005, top department brass went to the Deutsche Bank building to familiarize themselves with its dangers. So whose agency organized the meeting? "It was Chief [Salvatore] Cassano," McDonnell says.... All of this comes as CBS 2 HD has obtained another smoking gun memo urging the creation of a plan to fight fires at the Deutsche Bank building. On November 21, 2005, City Councilman Alan Gerson wrote to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation -- the owner of the Deutsche Bank building -- demanding a fire fighting plan that "would spell out in advance what their normal protocols would be in several of the most likely emergency situations, for example, fire." Still, there was no pre-fire plan that was ever developed. In what may be just as bad, according to union officials, there are still no department guidelines for inspecting toxic buildings. "The fire department at the very highest levels ... failed to establish protocols for the men and women in the field. To lay the blame at the foot-soldier level is just not right," says UFOA attorney Steven Rabinowitz. ... (CBS, Aug, 28, 2007)
  
• Giuliani role in Sept. 11 ceremony angers some rescue workers ... Rudy Giuliani will speak at the sixth anniversary remembrance of the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attack, as he has every year, but some relatives of those who died said the solemn ceremony is no place for presidential politics. ... (NYNewsday, Aug. 28, 2007)
  
• 'Failures' by FDNY spur angry mayor to demote bosses: Lack of a fire plan led to 'inexcusable' errors at fire that killed 2 bravest; smoking is cited as cause ... (SI Advance, by Sally Goldneberg & Peter N. Spencer, August 28, 2007)
  
• Asthma Diagnosed after September 11, 2001 among Rescue and Recovery Workers: Findings from the World Trade Center Health Registry ... The rate of self-reported newly-diagnosed asthma was high in the study population and significantly associated with increased exposure to the WTC disaster site. Although we could not distinguish appropriate respiratory protection from inappropriate, we observed a moderate protective effect of mask or respirator use. The findings underscore the need for adequate and timely distribution of appropriate protective equipment, and the enforcement of its use when other methods of controlling respiratory exposures are not feasible. ... (Environmental Health Perspectives; by Katherine Wheeler, Wendy McKelvey, Lorna Thorpe, Megan Perrin, James Cone, Daniel Kass, Mark Farfel, Pauline Thomas, and Robert Brackbill, Online 27 August 2007)
  
• SURVEY FINDS ELEVATED RATES OF NEW ASTHMA AMONG WTC RESCUE AND RECOVERY WORKERS: New Findings from the World Trade Center Health Registry Indicate That Respirators Helped Reduce the Risk of Developing Asthma ... (News Release, August 27, 2007)
  
• Firm to face public after Deutsche Bank fire: Forum scheduled this week as cleanup continues ... A public meeting set this week for the company charged with taking down the Deutsche Bank building. Its' been one week since two New York City firefighters died in a fire there in lower Manhattan. Also, two local lawmakers believe they've come up with a way to help prevent a similar tragedy. ... To help prevent this from happening again with this building or another vacant one, a city councilmen and state senator announced Saturday they're pushing for a waiver or state law to free up retired firefighters who could inspect complex buildings like Deutsche Bank. It would also require standpipe problems or sprinkler problems to have to be logged in a database. "We cannot allow or continue to allow the safety of firefighters and the public to fall through a mysterious black hole of inspection," said NY State Senator Eric Adams. And, after two other firefighters were injured from falling debris at the Deutsche Bank building on Thursday, local residents want their own answers, too. "Who knows whether they're trying to cover anything up or anything like that?" said lower Manhattan resident, Bruce Oelschlager. "It's a dangerous building." A public meeting is scheduled somewhere in lower Manhattan this week. The chief contractor, Bovis Lend Lease, is promising to attend. ... (abc, by Emily Smith, Aug. 26, 2007)
  

• Unclear When Work At Deutsche Bank Building Will Resume ... It remains unclear when work will resume at the former Deutsche Bank building at the World Trade Center site, after a construction worker lost control of a hand-held pallet jack yesterday afternoon, injuring two firefighters in the third incident at the site in four months. ... In yesterday’s incident, the heavy jack fell 23 stories – more than 200 feet – and crashed through a shed, hitting two firefighters who were keeping the area secure. The machine is used for heavy lifting at construction sites. ...Officials say the worker who dropped the jack was from the John Galt Company, the subcontractor at the building, which on Wednesday was given five days to finish up before being removed from the project.Residents in the area urge caution in moving forward at the site. ... All work had been suspended on the site after last week’s fire, other than some scaffolding work, but now all activity whatsoever has been halted at the site to allow for an investigation into the fire and yesterday’s incident. The Manhattan District Attorney and the Attorney General are investigating Saturday's fire. (NY1, Aug. 24, 2007)
  
• Firefighters Bid One of Their Own Farewell ... There was grief today at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, and even some laughter at a few memories of Firefighter Robert Beddia, a 23-year-veteran of the department who died on Saturday doing the work he loved. ... The fire raised troubling questions about why it had taken so long to bring down the 41-story building that was damaged beyond repair in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. On Thursday, as Firefighter Graffagnino’s funeral was taking place in Brooklyn, two more firefighters were injured at the building when a worker lost control of a small forklift on the 23rd floor of the building, sending it tumbling down 200 feet to the ground. The forklift crashed through a construction shed on the ground level, and part of the shed collapsed on the two firefighters. Both firefighters, Neil Nally, 35, and William Carbettis, 51, of Engine 258 in Long Island City, Queens, were listed in stable condition today at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan. They both sustained head injuries. Firefighter Carbettis had his spleen removed. Firefighter Nally also had an injured back and right hand, according to a fire official, and could be allowed to leave the hospital today, fire officials said. At today’s funeral for Firefighter Beddia, there were echoes of the funeral on Thursday for his colleague, Firefighter Graffagnino. ... (NYTimes, by Maria newman & Coolin Moynihan, Aug. 24, 2007)
• Firefighter Injured In Deutsche Bank Incident Released From Hospital .... One of the firefighters injured when a piece of construction equipment plummeted off the side of the Deutsche Bank building yesterday was released from the hospital this afternoon, while the other remains in stable condition. Firefighter Neil Nally was released from the hospital after being evaluated for neck and back injuries. Firefighter William Corbetis underwent surgery to have his spleen removed and 100 staples placed in his head. He also broke his rib and fractured vertebrae in his neck..... All work at the former Deutsche bank building has stopped after a construction worker lost control of a hand-held pallet jack yesterday. The heavy machine plunged 23 stories – more than 200 feet – and crashed through a shed, hitting the two firefighters who were keeping the area secure and a construction worker. Officials say the worker who dropped the jack was from the John Galt Company, the subcontractor at the building, which on Wednesday was given five days to finish up before being removed from the project. This latest accident comes just days after two firefighters were killed battling a fire in the condemned building. The cause of the fire is still being investigated. It remains unclear when demolition work will resume at the site, but residents in the area said safety should be a top priority. “The investigation should continue and we have to get this thing settled one way or the other,” said one area resident. “We’re going to need more agencies to get involved and do more investigating before they decide what they’re going to do with the building.” “I think the right thing to do is to take a step back now,” added another. “Obviously get it down sooner rather than later, but do it the right way.” “When it’s safe, it should come down,” added a third. “Until they can find a safe way to do so, I think they should not do it until they can get it done correctly,” added a fourth. Thursday's accident was the third in four months at the building to hurt or kill city firefighters. In May, a 15-foot sprinkler pipe fell off the 35th floor and through the roof of the local firehouse, hurting two firefighters inside. The Manhattan District Attorney and the Attorney General are investigating Saturday's fire. (NY1, August 24, 2007)
• Debris Removal and Scaffold Repair Work ... (LowerManhattan, Aug. 23, 2007)
• Nadler Outraged by Suggestions that Environmental Safety Rules to Blame for Tragic Deutsche Bank Fire ... Congressman Jerrold Nadler (NY-08), whose district includes the Deutsche Bank building that caught on fire Saturday and resulted in the tragic loss of two firefighters, today raised serious objections to the arguments by some that environmental safety rules were to blame for the blaze.  Rep. Nadler noted that the likely cause of the fire is negligence. "The City's Fire Marshalls have not yet reached any conclusion as to the specific cause of the tragic fire, but some are already jumping the gun and placing blame on the local community for demanding the environmental safety guidelines that were in place for the building's demolition.  Such a move is outrageous, unwarranted and deflects attention from the real problems - the negligence on the part of the government and the contracted companies.  Blame cannot be placed on the residents who demanded that both public health and worker safety be protected during the demolition process.  "We know now that the Fire Department did not have a fire plan for the building; we know that the building's standpipes - required by law to be maintained and inspected - were not; and we know that building's sprinkler system was not working.  We also know that key safety guidelines were ignored by John Galt and Safeway.  Indeed, Community Board 1 had unanimously passed a resolution on April 18, 2006, rejecting Safeway and John Galt because of their prior safety violations. "The community and I had repeatedly warned the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation about the safety of the Deutsche Bank building.  There were serious safety concerns about the John Galt and Safeway - and neither company had handled a demolition projection of this scale or unique nature.  We had to petition hard to get the LMDC to even recognize that there was a legal obligation to follow environmental safety guidelines.  And, there was never a single agency that was placed in charge of the demolition project and the monitoring of adherence to safety, health and environmental rules - despite our repeated calls for that necessary step. "It is clear that even before the fire, the various government agencies involved and John Galt and Safeway were bad actors.  The demolition of the Deutsche Bank building had to be conducted in a manner that protected the safety of local residents - and these steps were not the cause of Saturday's fire.  We must let the investigation run its course and let the truth come to light." (News Release, Aug. 23, 2007)
• Behind 9/11 Demolition Work, Obscure Name and Slim Record ... The John Galt Corporation of the Bronx, hired last year for the dangerous and complex job of demolishing the former Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty Street, where two firefighters died last Saturday, has apparently never done any work like it. Indeed, Galt does not seem to have done much of anything since it was incorporated in 1983. Public and private records give no indication of how many employees it has, what its volume of business is or who its clients are. There are almost no accounts of any projects it has undertaken on any scale, apart from 130 Liberty Street. Court records are largely silent. Some leading construction executives in the city say they have never even heard of it. That may not be as surprising as it seems. John Galt, it appears, is not much more than a corporate entity meant to accommodate the people and companies actually doing the demolition job at the emotionally charged and environmentally hazardous site at the edge of ground zero. The companies and project managers who have been providing the expertise, the workers and the financing for the job are Regional Scaffolding and Hoisting Company, which is not in business to demolish skyscrapers, and former executives from Safeway Environmental Corporation, a company that was already removed from one contract at 130 Liberty because of concerns about its integrity. Using a separate corporation to insulate the assets of a parent company from the enormous potential liabilities of demolition work is not itself unusual. And challenging construction projects in the city often have several companies come together in a joint effort. The arrangement involving Galt -- achieved after multiple companies that had bid on the Deutsche Bank contract were eliminated for one reason or another -- is nonetheless odd for such a momentous job, one that is expected ultimately to cost roughly $150 million. The arrangement, never fully publicly disclosed, was proposed by the general contractor charged with overseeing the demolition, Bovis Lend Lease, and approved by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which owns 130 Liberty Street. Yesterday, Bovis announced that it had declared Galt in default on the bank building contract, saying the outfit Bovis had selected had failed ''to live up to terms of its contract with respect to site supervision, maintenance and project safety.'' One person who has spoken to Bovis executives, but who was not authorized to speak for the company, said it was likely that Galt would be formally fired within the week. When officials at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation approved Galt's participation, they even allowed two former senior Safeway executives to join the operation at the Deutsche Bank building on several conditions, including that they cooperate with an investigation being conducted by the city's Department of Investigation. In the 17 months since Galt took shape -- and as problems mounted at the demolition site, including repeated safety violations -- city and state officials have made announcements about the work and problems at 130 Liberty referring to John Galt as if it were a fully established corporation, and never mentioning by name the more controversial and less than perfectly qualified people and companies doing the work. .... (John Galt, by the way, is a central character, an engineer, in Ayn Rand's novel ''Atlas Shrugged.'' The book begins with this line: ''Who is John Galt?'') John Galt's stationery puts its headquarters at 3900 Webster Avenue in the Bronx, near Woodlawn Cemetery, the same address as Regional Scaffolding's. The two companies also share many of the same officers. Greg Blinn, who is shown in city records as the president of the John Galt Corporation, said in a telephone interview: ''I'm not really sure how I can help. My contract precludes me from talking to the media. I have to refer all questions or inquiries to the L.M.D.C.'' Daniel L. Doctoroff, the city's deputy mayor for economic development, who was a member of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation at the time it approved the Galt contract, said through a spokesman this week that safeguards had been put in place to make sure that the former Safeway executives did nothing inappropriate -- like funnel money back to Safeway. Those safeguards included enlisting the help of an integrity monitor who would scrutinize, among other things, Galt's hiring, purchases and financial transactions. ... Safeway first surfaced on the scene at 130 Liberty when it, along with Regional Scaffolding, won a $13 million scaffolding contract in 2005 for the bank building. But Safeway, its former owners, Harold Greenberg, 61, and Stephen Chasin, 56, and another company they long operated, Big Apple Wrecking and Construction Corporation, had a troubled history. Mr. Greenberg, of Staten Island, has gone to federal prison twice for crimes related to the industry. Identified by federal investigators as a Gambino crime family associate, he was convicted in 1988 of bribing a federal inspector to overlook asbestos-removal violations while Big Apple was demolishing Gimbels department store on East 86th Street in Manhattan. Three years later he pleaded guilty to mail fraud in a bid-rigging scheme involving other contractors. Safeway's failure to disclose his criminal history and the accusations of mob ties led the authorities to bar the company from working on city schools in 2003. School investigators contended that Mr. Greenberg and his partner in Big Apple and Safeway, Mr. Chasin, sought to disguise their roles in companies in order to obtain public contracts and other work from which his convictions would bar them. (Safeway Environmental was one of the subcontractors used in the development of a new headquarters for The New York Times, across Eighth Avenue from the Port Authority Bus Terminal.) ... At the city's insistence, Safeway was ultimately bounced from the scaffolding contract at the bank building. Meanwhile, the effort to take down the building moved slowly, as litigation and fights over costs and responsibility dragged on. By early 2006, though, Bovis, a multibillion-dollar global operation, had won the giant contract to oversee the demolition of the bank building. Seven contractors submitted bids to Bovis to do the demolition work under Bovis's direction. Some, though, were deemed not qualified. Others dropped out. That all opened the way for what was known as the John Galt Corporation. ''There was only one contractor willing to work on taking down the building, as far as I know,'' Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Tuesday. Thus began the negotiations to allow Galt to go forward and tackle the contaminated building. According to an agreement between the state and Bovis, John Galt was allowed to take on Mr. Alvo and Mr. Adler, the two former Safeway executives. ''A series of conditions were included in the contract at the direction of L.M.D.C. that prevented questionable individuals from working at this job or from having any association with John Galt,'' said Mr. Doctoroff, the deputy mayor. ''Once Galt and Bovis agreed to these stipulations, representatives on the L.M.D.C. board from the city joined their state counterparts and voted to approve the contract amendment to Bovis.'' According to the agreement, portions of which were shared with a reporter, neither John Galt nor Bovis could employ or use the services of any other senior executives, principals or owners of Safeway Environmental or two other companies, one of them Big Apple Wrecking. The contractors also agreed to allow Mr. Alvo and Mr. Adler to cooperate with the city's Department of Investigation in what was described in the agreement -- without elaboration -- as an ongoing investigation.The presence of Mr. Alvo and Mr. Adler on the 130 Liberty Street project was not mentioned in the development corporation's March announcement but was highlighted in a Daily News article on April 16, 2006. John Galt, having done little, if any, work before the 130 Liberty Street project, did actually try to win another project shortly after starting work at the bank building.It was the winning bidder for the demolition contract at the Bronx House of Detention in the summer of 2006. But it failed to obtain approval through the city's contract review process and lost the job because, officials say, they learned that the city's Department of Investigation had opened an investigation into John Galt.''In July 2006, E.D.C. and the developer were made aware that D.O.I. had initiated an investigation of Galt that might delay a background clearance, so the developer instead used the next lowest bidder,'' said Janel Patterson, a spokeswoman for the city's Economic Development Corporation. Galt's work at the Deutsche Bank building, however, went on unaffected. Deputy Mayor Doctoroff said the city's decision to deny Galt the Bronx contract did not obligate the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to re-examine whether Galt was the right company to be working at ground zero. ... (NYTimes, by Charles V. Bagli, David W. Dunlap, and William K. Rashbaum, Aug. 23, 2007)
  
• Two Firefighters Injured At Deutsche Bank Building ... A piece of construction equipment fell from a condemned ground zero skyscraper Thursday, injuring two firefighters, the Fire Department said. Demolition work at the former Deutsche Bank skyscraper was suspended after Saturday's blaze, but work has continued to remove debris and contain toxic material in the condemned building across from the World Trade Center site. Fire Department spokesman Frank Gribbon said scaffolding fell from the north side of the building facing the World Trade Center site shortly before 2 p.m. City officials said a piece of equipment fell from a high floor on the north side of the building through a sidewalk shed, injuring the firefighters who were standing underneath the shed. (CBS/AP, Aug. 23, 2007)
  
• ...AND BRING THE BUILDING DOWN NOW ... Vital as it is to conduct a management housecleaning at the FDNY, it is equally urgent that New York's leaders - Gov. Spitzer in particular - expedite the demolition of the skyscraper in which two firefighters died Saturday. The Deutsche Bank building has stood at 130 Liberty St. - shattered, empty and dangerous - for nearly six years. Now it must go - as quickly as it can be cut to pieces and carted away. Not in another six years. Not next year sometime. Now. Mayor Bloomberg, too, must aid in that effort. The building's owner - the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. - is, after all, a joint city-state entity. But as governor of the entire state - and partner with New Jersey's governor in the Port Authority (which retains long-term control over all of Ground Zero) - Spitzer is most responsible for the fate of that site and its surroundings. And so Spitzer needs to take the lead. He needs to home in on that building like a laser, for much more is at stake than the fate of a single abandoned office building - toxic waste dump that it is. As The Post's Steve Cuozzo made painfully clear on these pages yesterday, the building's removal is essential if other work at Ground Zero is to proceed. And Ground Zero, in turn, is the ticket to guaranteeing the long-term vitality of Downtown - and, ultimately, New York City itself. Certainly, as home to one of New York's most vital industries - finance - lower Manhattan's fortunes are linked closely with those of the state. ... (NYPost Editorial, Aug. 23, 2007)
• Scaffolding collapse at NYC fire site injures 2: Blaze broke out at condemned skyscraper last week, killing 2 firefighters ... (MSCNB/AP, Aug 23, 2007)
  
• Ex-Demolition Boss Warned of Safety Lapses ... Workers at the toxic former Deutsche Bank tower drank, smoked and ignored basic safety rules on the job - and the company doing the $177 million demolition project never reined them in, a whistleblower told the Daily News. "The firefighters - they didn't stand a chance. They walked into a deathtrap, a booby trap a year or more in the making," said the 52-year-old asbestos-removal supervisor, who worked at the Ground Zero job site for a year. The supervisor met with FDNY marshals Tuesday, telling them he saw a slew of safety violations in the toxic tower. He said the 29th floor was casually known as "Teddy's Tavern" because of the vodka and other booze regularly consumed in that floor's decontamination unit, where men cleaned up and ate meals. The 29th floor has since been demolished. The whistleblower also said work crews smoked heavily and ran live power lines along floors where asbestos removal was being done - a dangerous lapse. He said the demolition subcontractor, John Galt Corp., hired one electrician to monitor 10 floors, instead of the required two per floor. He charged that some workers set up transformers on work floors and failed to safeguard the red-hot electrical generators. Galt was hit with a "Notice of Default" yesterday from Bovis Lend Lease, the general contractor. The notice axed Galt from the project, citing numerous safety violations at the demolition site and "the failure to properly maintain all required site safety precautions." The whistleblower worked at the job site from May 2006 until Memorial Day 2007, when he said he had a blowup with his boss at John Galt over an unpaid bonus. The whistleblower said he quit and took a better job. He said he came forward so what happened to the doomed firefighters at the former Deutsche Bank building doesn't happen to another firefighter. "My son is FDNY, a firefighter. It could have been my son going into that deathtrap," he said. "The people in charge of that site knew there were problems. They were told there were problems, and they did nothing." ... The Ground Zero project was Galt's first demolition of a tower and its first major asbestos job - and it showed, he said. He said the company fired an asbestos supervisor around last Christmas because he was routinely drunk, but then rehired him in the spring to run the 17th floor, which is where the FDNY believes the fire ignited. "He was a drunk. Everyone knew it. For whatever reason they let him back on thejob this spring, and now everyone's looking at the 17th floor," the whistleblower said. The asbestos supervisor singled out by the whistleblower acknowledged he was in charge of the 17th floor, but said he never drank on the job, and didn't allow anyone else to drink. He said he left several hours before Saturday's fire erupted. "I wasn't there when the fire broke out. I left at noon. I had to go to New Jersey," the man said, adding his employer told him "not to say anything to the press." A cordial but tight-lipped Greg Blinn, Galt's president, said outside his mansion overlooking the Hudson River in Valley Cottage, Rockland County, "According to my contract with Bovis and the city, I'm not allowed to talk. I wish I could, but I can't." .... (Daily News, by Alison Gendar, Aug 23, 2007)
  
• FDNY Admits No Pre-Fire Plan For Deutsche Blaze ... Details of what the FDNY did not know before hundreds of firefighters rushed into the vacant, burning Deutsche Bank building at Ground Zero that left two dead on Saturday were released late Wednesday afternoon. Five days after Joseph Graffagnino and Robert Beddia died from smoke inhalation while trapped in an unfamiliar burning building, the FDNY admits it did not have a pre-fire plan for the building which was in the process of being demolished. A plan may have alerted firefighters to the labyrinth-like structure as the contractors dismantled the building floor-by-floor. It turns out the standpipe -- the critical way for firefighters to get water in a high-rise -- was inspected the day before the tragic blaze, but that inspection occurred on the 25th floor. The fire happened well below that, where firefighters found the standpipe was not working. That forced the firefighters to carry hoses up the floors, and because they were working harder walking up the stairs, it expended more air from their air packs. Before long, Beddia and Graffagnino died after running out of air while trapped in a thick, black smoke. The track records of both contractors responsible for the dismantling of the building are also coming to light. The Department of Buildings says there have been 60 inspections of the deconstructed floors since March 2007, and in that time, six separate stop-work orders have been issued along with 19 violations for assorted safety violations. Neither Bovis Lend Lease nor employees of the John Galt Corporation are talking. Late Wednesday there was even more finger-pointing. A letter from Bovis Lend Lease was hand delivered to the John Galt Corporation essentially complaining that its subcontractor is making too many mistakes. The letter goes on to say in part that the "failure to properly maintain all required safety precautions are only some areas of concern." The letter comes a day after CBS 2 reported criminal charges could come forward following two investigations, one from Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morganthau, and another from State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.(wcbstv, by Sean Hennessey, Aug. 22, 2007)
  
• A stunning admission in Deutsche Bank fire: Interim report on deadly blaze out ... Mayor Bloomberg's office is admitting the FDNY had no plan to battle a fire at the contaminated and condemned Deutsche Bank building -- and there were no inspections of the building since last November. ... The mayor's interim report is not good news for the FDNY. What it clearly indicates is that months ago the department stopped doing regular inspections at the Deutsche Bank building and did so in violation of its own city code. The code requires the FDNY to conduct visual inspections of standpipes located in buildings under demolition every 15 days. The report states that the lack of adequate inspections will now be a major focus of the investigation. Almost equally stunning is that the report confirms that the fire department had no pre-fire plan for the building. Keep in mind this was a toxic demolition site loaded with tons of flammable plywood and plastic wrap. ... (WABC, by Jim Hoffer, Aug. 22, 2007)
  
• Criminal Investigation Into Fatal Fire At WTC Site Underway ... The Manhattan district attorney has launched a criminal investigation into Saturday's fire that killed two firefighters at the former Deutsche Bank building. The D.A.'s office will work with fire marshals and other agencies to determine whether there were any criminal violations involved. The investigation centers on a standpipe which had been disconnected, cutting off a crucial water supply for firefighters. .... State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says he is also looking into what led to the deadly fire, but he says the D.A.'s investigation will take the lead. And while the cause of the fire is still under investigation, the Daily News reports that at least one worker at the site says he and his colleagues routinely smoked on the job near hazardous chemicals and often had to deal with shoddy equipment, constantly blowing fuses. .... (NY1, Aug. 22, 2007)
  
• UPDATE ON INVESTIGATIONS OF THE FIRE AT 130 LIBERTY STREET: Summary of FDNY Inspection, Violation and Administrative Activity at 130 Liberty Street ... (NYC Mayor's Press Release, August 22, 2007)
  
• Fitterman Hall Raises Concerns ... At last night's Community Board One public hearing on last weekend's Deutsche bank fire, questions surfaced about another casualty of September 11th - CUNY's Fitterman Hall. The 15-story academic building was badly damaged in the attacks. REPORTER: It has remained vacant while CUNY developed plans for its decontamination and demolition. Paul Stein, of the New York Public Employees Federation, quizzed city officials about Fitterman's safety in light of the fatal fire at Deutsche Bank. He quoted directly from CUNY's website which disclosed that as of this March, the standpipe in Fitterman needed to be repaired. STEIN: Have any of the agencies here go to Fitterman Hall and inspected the fire stand pipers system and rested it, pressurized it and made sure that it works? REPORTER: NYFD Fire Chief Sal Cassano said fire inspectors would go through Fitterman Hall as early as today. Before the Deutsche Bank fire, the New York State Dormitory Authority said Fitterman Hall would take a year and a half to deconstruct and another 2 and a half years to rebuild  (WNYC, Aug. 22, 2007)
  
• Subcontractor At WTC Site Dropped After Deutsche Bank Fire ... In a letter to Galt executives, Bovis executive James Abadie wrote that in recent weeks, "and most notably in the days following the tragic accident that occurred at the project site on Aug. 18, Galt has demonstrated an inability to comply with the terms of its trade contract with respect to site supervision, maintenance and project safety."The contractor taking down a toxic ground zero skyscraper where two firefighters were killed last week was dropped from the project Wednesday for safety problems. John Galt Corp., which was conducting most of the work at the site, was given five days notice before its contract is terminated. The decision was made by Bovis Lend Lease, the company managing the dismantling of the former Deutsche Bank office building. ... City officials also announced several other failures to properly inspect the abandoned building damaged on Sept. 11 before the fire. The cause is still under investigation. The Fire Department was required to inspect the building's standpipe -- which provides water throughout the building to fire houses -- once every 15 days, but the firehouse two doors down had not inspected the building since April 2006, the city said in a statement. There were periodic checks before that, but the last comprehensive inspection was in March 2005. The broken standpipe -- pieces have been found lying unattached in the building's basement -- caused thousands of gallons of water to go into the basement instead of fire hoses, leaving more than 100 firefighters in the building without enough oxygen or water. Firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino died of cardiac arrest a few floors below where the fire started in Saturday's blaze. The Fire Department also did not have a plan to fight fire in the building, which it was required to do, the city said Wednesday. Demolition work has stopped at the building, which lay vacant and contaminated with asbestos and other toxins for four years before cleanup work began. Emergency crews were working to repair broken windows and wood panels that had kept environmental toxins from leaking out into the air. Tests from a dozen air monitors for asbestos contamination have been negative. (wnbc, Aug. 21, 2007)
  
• Prosecutor To Launch Probe Into Fire Deaths ... The Manhattan district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, is launching an investigation into the deaths of two firefighters over the weekend in a major fire at the former Deutsche Bank building near ground zero. Prosecutors will join the fire department in the probe. A spokeswoman for Mr. Morgenthau, Barbara Thompson, said it was too early to consider filing criminal charges. Her comments echoed those of Mayor Bloomberg. "At this point there is no reason for anybody to think in terms of criminal charges or anything else," Mr. Bloomberg said this morning. "We will continue to act the way you expect us to act. We will do a careful, thorough investigation." When asked why firefighters were sent into the burning building on Saturday, even though it was being destroyed, Mr. Bloomberg said people work inside the building during the day and the fire department was uncertain whether people were inside. What's more, he added, "You can't let a fire go out of control," because it could damage the structure of the building or release contaminates into the air. When asked in the contractor responsible for the demolition, Bovis Lend Lease, and its subcontractor, John Galt Corp., should be removed from the job, Mr. Bloomberg said, "I don't know who you would suggest we get." "When we went out for contractors to perform this work there was only one contractor willing to take on the job and we are appreciative of that," he said. "Without that the building would still be at 40 stories." (NYSun, by Grace Rauh, Aug. 21, 2007)
  
• Lingering questions; Faulty standpipes at Deutsche Bank ... There may have been no way to avoid sending firefighters into the building, even if there was nobody inside to rescue. But why didn't the standpipes, which should have pumped water to the blaze, work properly? Who was responsible for making sure that they did? Were firefighters prepared to deal with the irregular conditions in the building, which had been considered dangerous even for the workers demolishing it? Did they know about apparent changes in exit routes? Why didn't they have enough oxygen to survive longer than they did? There will be a lot of second-guessing about all the delays in deconstructing this building and in rebuilding the entire Ground Zero site. What's important is what the authorities learn, so this sort of tragedy is less likely to happen again. (NY Newsday, August 21, 2007)
  
• Criminal Probe Of Fatal Ground Zero Fire ... Prosecutors opened a criminal investigation Tuesday into the blaze that killed two firefighters at a toxic ground zero skyscraper. Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said attorneys in his office have been in touch with city fire marshals to determine whether criminal violations occurred in Saturday's fire at the former Deutsche Bank office building next to the World Trade Center site. Authorities said it was not unusual for prosecutors to join the investigation of a serious building fire or collapse. Their involvement would give fire marshals subpoena power, should they need it. The cause of the blaze, in which two firefighters died on the building's 14th floor, was still under investigation. City officials have said that the fire started on the 17th floor of a building that was being dismantled floor by floor. Workers were cleaning asbestos and other materials on that and several other floors on Saturday afternoon when the fire broke out. 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." Mayor Michael Bloomberg said earlier Tuesday that the investigation was continuing and "at this point, there's no reason for anybody to think in terms of criminal charges or anything else." City officials have said that workers would routinely take smoking breaks near the place where the fire started, and that electrical equipment including hot water heaters for decontamination showers were also nearby. 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. (cbs, Aug. 21, 2007)
• 9/11 'LIES' HANG IN THE AIR ... (NYPost, by John Mazor and Leonard Greene, Aug. 20, 2007)
• Community Questions Downtown Air Quality Following Fire ... Community Board 1, which represents Lower Manhattan residents, held an emergency public hearing Tuesday night to question officials about the neighborhood’s air quality following the Deutsche Bank building fire this past weekend. .... "The Deutsche Bank building has been an area of long concern for us," said one local resident. "There has been a lot of delays in terms of deconstructing the building, and a lot of concern as to whether they are really doing things safely. And, unfortunately, the events of this weekend sort of highlight a lot of the concerns that are building up to this. They really are sort of shortcutting wherever they can." ... An official from the Environmental Protection Agency said some of the air monitoring stations have been inaccessible because of the fire investigation. The agency also says that even if toxins are found, it could take weeks before the building is sealed. "I believe we're talking many weeks," said Pat Evangelista of the EPA. Last year, the community board expressed concern about the subcontractors who were hired to demolish the building. The board claims the contractors had previous violations on other projects, but the Pataki administration never took action. "We passed a resolution, but unfortunately they were hired and as the facts come out over the next couple of days we'll see what the level of involvement was," said Community Board 1 Chair Julie Menin. .... Meanwhile, the city says it is holding a meeting Wednesday to look into resealing the building. (NY1, Aug. 20, 2007)
• Officials Address 130 Liberty Community Concerns ... State and city officials, along with more than 100 downtown community members filled the New York State Assembly Hearing room at 250 Broadway last night. They gathered to better understand the course of events leading to and repercussions of the fire at 130 Liberty Street on August 18^th. The meeting was called by Community Board 1 and was co-sponsored by New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, State Senator Martin Connor, and City Council Member Alan Gerson. ... (LowerManhattan.info, Aug. 20, 2007)
• Rep. Nadler and Borough President Stringer Call for Improved Emergency Communication System: Modernization Is Necessary to Address Safety Concerns Facing Lower Manhattan Residents ... Congressman Jerrold Nadler and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer today called on the City’s Office of Emergency Management to improve and modernize their emergency communications system in order to better relay essential information to the public in the event of an emergency. In response to the recent tragedy at the Deutsche Bank Building, and the confusion that ensued for many residents of the area, local officials have said it is time for the City to better utilize modern technology to provide residents of lower Manhattan with vital information and answers to their valid questions when situations like the events of Saturday afternoon arise.  At a press conference in front of a residential building near the Deutsche Bank Building, Nadler and Stringer were joined by community leaders and concerned local residents who indicated a strong desire to have a clearer line of communication between coordinating agencies and the public. The residents of lower Manhattan continue to have legitimate concerns over air quality safety as a result of the toxic plume produced on September 11^th and the toxins that lingered in the area for months after the terrorist attacks.  ... (News Release, Aug. 20, 2007)
• Deutsche Bank blaze stops work at site ... Authorities are continuing an investigation into the cause of a fire that killed two firefighters battling a blaze in the former Deutsche Bank building on Saturday. On Monday, work was officially halted at 130 Liberty St., where the condemned 41-story building is located. The building had been undergoing a floor-by-floor demolition since February after several fits and starts since the 2004 decision to tear it down. Demolition was halted last June when the Environmental Protection Agency raised concerns about asbestos or lead toxins in the air and in December, workers for John Galt Corp., the subcontractor responsible for the demolition, walked off the job in a dispute over costs. The city’s Building Department said Monday that only repairs needed to keep the building safe will be permitted until the investigation is complete. ... Manhattan’s Community Board 1, which oversees the area, spoke out on behalf of local residents, who complained that there was no discernable chain of communication during or after the blaze. Community board members have previously raised the issue about a building-by-building evacuation plan, but one has never been put in place. ...(Craines, August 20, 2007)
  
• Downtown, New Worries About Air and Notification .... A few hours later, the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, attended an impromptu meeting at which community board members discussed residents’ concerns about the need for a building-by-building evacuation plan. Through the day, some neighborhood residents complained that once the building was ablaze, they were not given official word on whether to evacuate their apartments or stay put. The building caught fire about 3:30 p.m. Saturday. ... Air quality concerns were not the only issue renewed by a burning building downtown. Residents also had questions about emergency notification. “If something goes wrong, what should we do?” asked Catherine McVay Hughes, the vice chairwoman of Community Board 1, which covers the neighborhood. She said the board had repeatedly cited a need for a comprehensive notification system to alert residents quickly about what to do in case of emergencies. But no plan was ever adopted, she and other board members said. After the fire broke out on Saturday, said Patricia L. Moore, one of the community board members, “no one buzzed our buzzers, no one called us on the phone, no one contacted us by e-mail.” She and others said that in the absence of official guidance, there was confusion and uncertainty about whether people should stay in their apartments or get out. Other community representatives said they had discussed with redevelopment officials a list of what-if possibilities. One of those possibilities, they said, was a fire at the vacant building.“Some of the responses we got were, ‘Don’t worry, it will never happen,’ or ‘We’ve got procedures in place,’ ” said Kimberly Flynn, executive director of 9/11 Environmental Action, a coalition of downtown residents and advocates. ... (NYTimes, by James Barron, August 20, 2007)
  
• Blame contractors for hazards, lack of water, FDNY source ... Shoddy work by contractors at the toxic former Deutsche Bank tower contributed to nightmarish conditions that trapped and killed two firefighters, FDNY sources told the Daily News. General contractor Bovis Lend Lease's construction plan called for the 41-story skyscraper to have a working water source throughout the demolition. "They were responsible for having water in that building and for keeping it free of combustible materials," a fire source said. "Clearly, that did not happen." FDNY officials and building owner Lower Manhattan Development Corp. declined to comment on the work while the investigation continues. But sources said the building was filled with flammable materials and debris, which helped spread the blaze. ... Galt has no previous experience tearing down contaminated skyscrapers - but The News reported last year that Galt execs previously ran a demolition company with reputed mob links that was responsible for the spectacular 2005 collapse of an upper West Side supermarket during demolition. .... Demolition began in February after years of arguments about who would pay to clean up the highly toxic mess. .... City inspectors have routinely cited crews there for stockpiling flammable and combustible materials. As recently as Aug. 1, the city Buildings Department slapped the site with a stop-work order because combustible material posed a fire hazard. The order was lifted when the material was removed. Two days later, a stop-work order and violation were issued because an FDNY certificate for storage of hazardous material had expired. The order was lifted on Aug. 6. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration had probed the site after a steel pipe fell 35 stories, a worker fell 40 feet and workers removed asbestos without protection. (NYDaily News, by Alison Gendar & Melisssa Grace, Aug. 20, 2007)
• Terror pays a second visit ... Ed Serrapede can't believe he witnessed another raging inferno at Ground Zero - and that once again city officials neglected to evacuate him and other nearby residents. Six years ago, when the twin towers collapsed, Serrapede, just released from the hospital after open-heart surgery, was trapped in his apartment. Back then, overwhelmed city officials hadn't thought to double-check to make sure everyone in buildings adjacent to the World Trade Center was evacuated. He and many of his neighbors decided after that great tragedy not to abandon lower Manhattan. For six years they have endured the daily tribulations of noise and dust from 24-hour construction at the Ground Zero Pit outside their windows. They figured that, at the very least, our city had gotten better at disaster response. This weekend, they were shocked to learn otherwise. On Saturday afternoon, Serrapede was sitting in the living room of his 11th-floor apartment at 125 Cedar St. when a rumbling noise - "like a monstrous waterfall" - startled him. He rushed to his window and looked across narrow Greenwich St. at the giant former Deutsche Bank building that looms about 100 feet away. Chunks of debris and broken glass were raining down on the black-shrouded scaffold around the contaminated building, and he saw the building was on fire. "I started getting calls from all my neighbors asking what we should do," Serrapede said. He and his companion Mary Dericks didn't waste any time. They grabbed a few items, got out of the building and stayed blocks away from the scene. ... "We didn't know what to do, and no one was telling us," Reggelson said, "and I'm a member of the community emergency response team." Reggelson called 911 and asked for guidance on whether to leave the building or stay. "They told us to stay where we were," she said, "but didn't explain anything else." Certainly, after what happened six years ago, no one can be blamed for worrying about a massive fire causing a high-rise collapse. If the former Deutsche Bank building had fallen, who knows what would have happened to Serrapede, Reggelson and those in the immediate vicinity. At a press conference yesterday near the fire site, more than a dozen residents and community leaders blasted city officials for failing to evacuate those closest to the fire or to provide better communication to the community. "No officials seemed to know what to tell us," said Pat Moore, a member of the local community board. "This is a painful reminder that all is not well" with the Ground Zero cleanup, said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who mourned the loss of two brave firefighters and joined local residents in demanding answers to the blaze and any potential health impact from toxins released in the fire. "This is one of the most-looked-at buildings in the world," Stringer said. Still, we have "another great fire, another great tragedy." .... (NYDaily News, by Juan Gonzalez, Aug. 20, 2007)
• 2 Firefighters Are Killed in Blaze at Ground Zero ... The demolition work created difficulties for firefighters trying to reach and put out the blaze, which started on the 17th floor, allowing the fire to mushroom out of control, fire officials said. The building did not have a working standpipe, which runs through high-rise buildings to provide a source of water for firefighters. It was “a truly difficult fire,” Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said. “We had to lift lines from the street, with ropes in order to get it up to the 17th floor.” ... The cause of the fire was under investigation, though officials ruled out acetylene torches, which were not in use Saturday by workers dismantling the building. Investigators are looking into whether the fire was started by a worker smoking, an official said. The two firefighters became trapped in the building and died of what appeared to be cardiac arrest resulting from exposure to carbon monoxide, Mr. Bloomberg said. They were Joseph Graffagnino, 33, of Brooklyn, who had been with the department for eight years, and Robert Beddia, 53, of Staten Island. An official said he had been with the fire department 23 years and was the senior firefighter on the scene. They were taken to NYU Downtown Hospital, where they died. They were assigned to Engine 24 and Ladder 5 of Battalion 2, which are housed together at Sixth Avenue and Houston Street. Eleven firefighters from that station house died on Sept. 11. The two men were found on the 14th floor close to a hose line. An official said they ran out of air. Mr. Scoppetta said the fire was discovered when workers at the site saw smoke and notified an elevator operator. Paula Sanchez, who was cleaning on the 18th floor, said she smelled smoke and radioed Marshall Greenberg, the elevator operator. He picked her up, and they went to the 19th floor to get her backpack, then headed down. But the elevator hesitated, and Mr. Greenberg switched it off and on to get it running again. “I thought I was a goner,” he said. The workers made it out of the building and notified the Fire Department, which arrived within 3 ½ minutes, Mr. Scoppetta said. Eighty-seven units and 475 firefighters responded, he said. City, state and federal officials also rushed to the scene, some wearing protective masks over their mouths and noses. ... Burning debris flew from the building to the street below as dark plumes of smoke billowed over Lower Manhattan in a scene eerily reminiscent of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “The air smells bad,” said Catherine McVay Hughes, a member of Community Board 1 and chairwoman of its World Trade Center redevelopment committee, which has been monitoring the dismantling of the Deutsche Bank. “The question we have right now is, what is it that caught fire at the Deutsche Bank? Was it the debris? Was it the boxes containing the asbestos?” asked Ms. McVay Hughes, who lives one block east of the site. “The community is devastated that this happened, and we want to know what will be done to prevent this from happening again.” ... (NYTimes, by Ray Rivera & Fenanda Santos, August 19, 2007)
  
• NYC OFFICE OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT PROVIDES UPDATE ON CITY’S RESPONSE TO 130 LIBERTY STREET FIRE ... (News Release, Aug. 19, 2007)
• ‘No Danger’ of Collapse at Deutsche Bank Fire, Mayor Says; 2 Firefighters Are Dead ... Mr. Bloomberg said the fire was not yet under control but there was “no danger” that the building would collapse. ... Commissioner Scoppetta said: This was an especially difficult fire, made especially difficult because that building is under demolition. There was a lot of asbestos abatement going on, being monitored all the time. Civilian employees saw smoke, notified an elevator operator, he discovered fire on the 17th floor, workers all went down with him, and the Fire Department was notified. We were here in less than three and a half minutes. There were 87 units, 475 firefighters, fight a truly difficult fire, because of the smoke conditions as well as the fire. We had to lift lines from the street, with ropes in order to get it up to the 17th floor, because that building, being under demolition, being in the condition that it is. " The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which took ownership of the building in August 2004, has a Web site with extensive resources on the building, including past air monitoring results and the plan for deconstructing the building. ... (NYTimes City Blog, Aug. 18, 2007)
  
• Deutsche Bank Building Blaze Kills 2 Firefighters ... VIDEO ... The two firefighters were inside the abandoned Deutsche Bank building, which was coming down floor by floor. Before the fire broke out asbestos abatement was underway. How the blaze started is unknown, but maze like conditions, cardboard for packing, and a standpipe that apparently did not work may have created a recipe for fiery tragedy. “Because of all the demolition work, there were a lot of flammable things there,” said Bloomberg. The two firefighters were on the 14th floor while working the hose line. Maydays were given, then in a flash they were the victims of smoke inhalation severe enough to bring on fatal heart attacks. “The carbon monoxide in their lungs was at such an elevated level, it was not surprising that they went into cardiac arrest,” said Bloomberg. ... (CBS, Aug. 18, 2007)
  
• Two Firefighters Killed Battling Deutsche Bank Blaze ... Two New York City firefighters died Saturday fighting a massive seven-alarm blaze at the former headquarters of Deutsche Bank in Lower Manhattan, but city officials say the building and the area around it are now safe. The vacant structure, known as the Deutsche Bank building, sustained severe damage in the September 11th terrorist attacks and was in the process of being demolished. The blaze began shortly after 3:30 Saturday afternoon on the 20th floor of the building, sending dark smoke into the air over Lower Manhattan in a scene reminiscent of the attacks of six years ago. Hundreds of firefighters from across the city responded to the blaze. Two of them became trapped in the fire and were taken to NYU Medical Center, said Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a 9 p.m. press conference. They died after going into cardiac arrest. The two firefighters were from Ladder 5, Engine 24, which lost 11 members on 9/11. The mayor said five other firefighters were injured fighting the blaze but were treated and released. Although earlier reports suggested officials were concerned about the possibility of a further collapse, the mayor stressed that the building and the surrounding area is in no danger. "We've had the Building Department in there," Bloomberg said. "They looked at every floor and they are totally convinced that the building is safe." The mayor also said that initial air tests showed a minor elevation of particle smoke, but nothing harmful to area residents. He did, however, say that further testing would be done at the site. The building was in the process of being torn down as part of the rebuilding efforts downtown. As of Tuesday, construction crews had already dismantled 14 of the building's 40 stories, leading some to speculate about the stability of the structure. Several buildings in the area were evacuated Saturday evening but residents were allowed back in shortly thereafter. Although it is too early to know the cause of the blaze, fire officials say that an electrical problem may have been to blame. There have been 785 potential human remains found at the Deutsche Bank site since the 9/11 attacks. In recent years the discovery of human remains and toxic substances have slowed the demolition process. (NY1, August 18, 2007)
  
• Abandoned High-Rise Burns by Ground Zero: Fire Threatens Collapse of Former Deutsche Bank Skyscraper Next to Ground Zero ... The cause of the fire was not immediately known, but smoke pouring from the burning building was visible from midtown Manhattan and the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. NYU Downtown Hospital reported its emergency room was treating at least one patient brought in from the blaze. The acrid smell of smoke, which hung over the neighborhood for days after Sept. 11, returned to lower Manhattan along with the wail of emergency vehicles. More than three dozen fire vehicles, with more than 160 firefighters, responded to the blaze as pieces of burning debris fell from the building to the streets.The 1.4-million square foot office tower was contaminated with toxic dust and debris after the World Trade Center's south tower collapsed into it. Efforts to dismantle it were halted by a labor dispute last year, along with the ongoing search for the remains of attack victims. ... (abcnews, by Verena Dobnik/AP, Aug 18, 2007)
  
• Unbuilding a Skyscarper Wounded on Sept. 11.... It is, Avi Schick said, like watching a video of a building being built, but in reverse. Mr. Schick, the chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, was walking through 130 Liberty Street, the building opposite ground zero that was gashed by pieces of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. The building, the New York base of Deutsche Bank at the time, is now being dismantled. That is different from being demolished. The building is being taken apart almost piece by piece, something demolition experts say has been done before. What is a first is the complete removal of a building so large and so badly contaminated by hazardous substances. And it is happening under the wary eyes of regulators, neighbors and even the Wall Street types who will someday fill the building that is scheduled to take this one’s place. So, day after day this summer, workers with acetylene torches are going floor by floor, slicing through the steel beams, the horizontal parts of the building’s skeleton. With help from small tractor like machines, they are pulling down the beams and the steel columns they are attached to. Then they are cutting the beams and columns into smaller pieces and loading them into trash-hauling bins that a crane lowers to the street. Working their way down from the top of what was once a 41-story building, the workers reached the 26th floor on Tuesday morning. They were cutting into the beams at the southwest corner of that floor, and the two-and-a-half-inch-thick concrete floor slab was vibrating. That was because a mechanical excavator — another tractorlike machine, with a jackhammer mounted on a movable front arm — was breaking through the slab on the southeast corner. The broken pieces went into another trash-hauling bin and the crane took them away, too. The workers can dismantle one floor every four days or so. A separate team is working its way through the building, removing the interiors and scrubbing away any contaminants that may remain. Consultants to the development corporation said more than two years ago that besides asbestos, the building had excessive levels of seven hazardous substances, including dioxin, lead and chromium. ... And there was the continuing search for human remains. The chief medical examiner’s office said in February that 766 body parts had been found in the building. Most were fragments of bone less than four inches long. The long-delayed project got under way in earnest in February. A large construction company, Bovis Lend Lease, won a contract worth $82 million to clear the site, and before that, there was a court fight between Deutsche Bank and its insurers that ended after former Senator George J. Mitchell was called in as a mediator. The solution was for the development corporation, which is controlled jointly by the state and the city, to buy the building for $90 million. The federal Environmental Protection Agency approved the plan for dismantling the building last September after reviewing methods for keeping contaminants from being released into the air during the deconstruction. The E.P.A. action came two months after a deputy commissioner for the city Department of Environmental Protection, Robert C. Avaltroni Jr., began leading meetings every other week with city and state officials and officials from the regional office of the E.P.A. to deal with issues raised by the project. Those meetings continued as Gov. George E. Pataki left office and Gov. Eliot Spitzer took over. ... Then the project slowed down again, as Bovis and the John Galt Corporation negotiated with the development corporation. They said they wanted an extra $30 million because the project turned out to be more complicated than they had expected it to be. Mr. Schick said the development corporation agreed to advance a total of $38 million toward the cost of finishing the job, with the exact amount to be negotiated — or litigated — later. ... Mr. Emil said the removal of the Deutsche Bank building would be finished in “late winter” — that is, in early 2008. But the deal for the additional money for Bovis and John Galt included a bonus if they finish by Dec. 31. The deconstruction has had its problems. In May, a 22-foot-long metal pipe fell from the 35th floor and smashed through the roof of a nearby firehouse. No one was seriously hurt, but the deconstruction work was halted for about a week while the city reviewed safety precautions. Mr. Schick said that a Buildings Department inspector is assigned to the building full time, as are inspectors from the E.P.A. and the state Labor Department, who are checking for environmental hazards. ... (NYTimes, by James Barron, Aug. 17, 2007)
  
• New Deutsche violations ... As the former Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty St. has continued its steady downward progress this summer, the project – now under the constant supervision of the Department of Buildings – has continued to rack up violations. On July 3, a partial stop-work order was issued for dangerous demolition. According to the D.O.B.’s online records, that order was lifted on July 6 after an engineer’s report. On July 11 a violation was issued for “failure to maintain” when the demolition caused a large hole in the 31st floor of the building. On Aug. 1, the D.O.B. issued a stop-work order when it found that “burning operations” – the use of torches to cut through steel – were sending sparks down onto lower floors where combustible materials were being stored. That stop-work order was rescinded the same day, but the next day, the D.O.B. found that 130 Liberty’s permits to safely store combustible materials had expired. Those permits must be issued by the Fire Dept. On Aug. 3 a stop-work order was issued for all operations involving torches. According to D.O.B. spokesperson Kate Lindquist, the stop-work order was lifted on Aug. 6 after the project renewed its expired permits. The Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, which manages the deconstruction project, declined to comment on the stop-work orders and referred press inquiries to the D.O.B. Though none of the recent snags were as serious as the incident in which a 15-foot pipe plummeted from the building into a firehouse last spring, they have spawned worried emails and phone calls between local residents and environmental advocates. Several residents of nearby buildings like 125 Cedar St. have said they will not feel completely safe until the Deutsche Bank tower is gone for good. The 41-story office tower, which was heavily damaged and contaminated on 9/11, will no longer meet its Dec. 31 deadline for deconstruction. According to several officials, it is now expected to be down sometime in early 2008. (Downtown Express, by Skye H. McFarlane, August 17 - 23, 2007)
• Giuliani's ground zero exposure could impact his health ... Dr. Joan Reibman, who heads a city-funded program at Bellevue Hospital in New York to study the health effects of ground zero exposure, said she had no knowledge of Giuliani's health history or exposure, but that given his public presence at the site, he should probably be enrolled in the health monitoring program for ground zero workers and lower Manhattan residents. "I think he would have fit the criteria," said Reibman. ... (Newsday, by Devlin Barreett, Aug. 15, 2007)
• BALCONY Commends New York State One Year Extension of the 9/11 Workers’ Compensation ... (August 14, 2007)
• NYPD Program To Track Health of September 11 Officers ... Now, for the first time, the police department is preparing to release its own study examining how the 34,000 officers who worked at the site have fared. Due out in October, the study is part of a ramped up effort by the department to start a monitoring program for police modeled on the twin programs of the fire department and Mount Sinai Hospital, which receive federal funding to track the health of workers and residents. But like nearly everything surrounding September 11 — from the location of the anniversary ceremony to the use of ground zero imagery in the presidential campaign of Mayor Giuliani — the study is already infused with controversy. Police doctors are seeking federal funding similar to what the existing two programs receive, but their effort has been stymied thus far, in part by accusations from some police unions and others that their research is not objective. "There's definitely a conflict of interest," the president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, Edward Mullins, said. "The people who would be overseeing our health are the same group of people who would be overseeing our disability claims." One of the authors of the study, the chief surgeon of the NYPD Medical Division, Dr. Eli Kleinman, has been named in a lawsuit by Officer Hynes, who says Dr. Kleinman is refusing to acknowledge that Officer Hynes's rare lung disease, sarcoidosis, was a result of the 111 hours he spent working on the pile. The officer is s e e k i n g $ 1 , 6 2 5 f r o m t h e department to help him cover medical bills associated with his illness. ... (NYSun, by Sarah Garland, Aug. 13, 2007)
• WTC INSURE FUND MAKES A TOXIC $350M 'BLUNDER' ... The city-run $1 billion fund for claims by sick 9/11 responders has "screwed up" by failing to lock up at least $350 million in coverage, lawyers charge. The WTC Captive Insurance Co., run by the Bloomberg administration, failed to promptly notify insurers for the city's Ground Zero contractors that they could be on the hook for claims, the lawyers allege. Dozens of those insurers now say notice came too late for them to honor policies for millions of dollars in coverage for injured workers. The city may have now blown its chance to collect some $350 million in primary coverage for 9/11 workers with respiratory illness, cancer and other diseases from toxic exposure."Their failure jeopardizes the ability to get the full compensation available for these heroes," said Paul Napoli, a lawyer for 10,000 cops, firefighters and other workers.... (NYPost, by Susan Edelman, Aug. 12, 2007)
• RUDY CLEARS THE AIR ... Trying to defuse a 9/11-related uproar, Rudy Giuliani admitted yesterday he misspoke about his presence at Ground Zero following the attacks. Giuliani attempted to clarify his initial comments - that he was at the site as often or more often than emergency responders following the collapse of the Twin Towers - after coming under fire from victims' families and emergency workers for exaggerating the time he spent there. "What I was trying to say yesterday is that I sympathize with them because I feel like I have that same risk [of illness]. And the way I said it, I probably could have said it better," Giuliani said on the Mike Gallagher radio show. "What I was trying to say was I was there quite a bit. There are people that were there more than me, people that were [there] less than me. There were people there less than me - people on my staff - who already have had serious health consequences and they weren't there as often as I was," Giuliani said. The Republican front-runner touched off the controversy when he said Thursday: "This is not a mayor or a governor or a president who's sitting in an ivory tower. I was at Ground Zero as often - if not more - than most of the workers. So, in that sense, I'm one of them." Giuliani yesterday also appointed his former deputy mayor, Rudy Washington - who suffers from respiratory illnesses after working for months at Ground Zero - as his New York City campaign chairman. ... NYPost, by Carl Campanile, Aug. 11, 2007)
• Giuliani Criticized For 9/11 Exposure Claim ... Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is being criticized for comparing his own exposure to toxins at the World Trade Center site to that of first responders. During a campaign stop in Ohio Thursday, the Republican candidate said he was at the site, "as often, if not more, than most of the workers.” He said his dust exposure is the same as sick recovery workers, many of whom are asking for money to cover medical bills. In response, the head of the Detectives Endowment Association said, "I don't think he rises to the level of being an equal with those men and women who were involved in the rescue, recovery and cleanup." (NY, Aug 10, 2007 )
  
• THE OVERLOOKED: Sick neighbors of Ground Zero are on their own ... It scans like the harmful side effects warning at the end of a prescription drug commercial: Sinus, nasal and postnasal congestion; heartburn, hoarseness, and throat irritation, shortness of breath and wheezing; chronic cough; postnasal drip syndrome asthma; gastroesophageal reflux disease; interstitial lung disease; chronic bronchitis, pulmonary eosinophilic infilitrates; post-traumatic stress disorder; depression and generalized anxiety disorder. But there was no advanced warning for the people who lived and worked in the debris, dust, smoke and fumes that trailed the World Trade Center attack. This catalogue of maladies comes from a guide released last year by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, to help clinicians identify and treat New Yorkers with disaster-associated physical and mental health conditions. As of May, 21,000 rescue workers and volunteers at Ground Zero had developed a physical or mental disorder as a result of exposure, according to the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. Although proving that health problems are directly related to the attack can prove difficult, 9/11 workers are technically eligible for workers’ compensation, and will remain eligible indefinitely, even if they are currently healthy, provided they register with the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board by the twice-extended deadline of August 13, 2008. But residents of the area who weren’t on the Ground Zero roster are assured no such coverage. A class-action lawsuit against the EPA on behalf of residents, students and office workers exposed to hazardous substances was struck down in April. So there’s no compensation for the family of Etta Sanders, a freelance writer and mother of two who lived near the World Trade Center and died of metastatic lung cancer this summer. She believed her cancer grew as a result of breathing the dusty, smoky air that hung about Ground Zero long after the Environmental Protection Agency had deemed it safe for residents to return.  Sanders, in parting, feared her case would turn out to be a harbinger of things to come, but for now, Downtown residents who still have their health are going about their lives with fingers crossed. “It’s not my sense that health concerns are uppermost on the minds of most Downtown residents,” says Carl Glassman, Sanders’ editor at the Tribeca Trib, “though I’m sure many of us feel uncertain, at least, about the long-term consequences of exposure to the air after September 11.” ... (NYPress, By Becca Tucker, August 2007)
  
• Throat cancer kills WTC worker ... A 47-year-old Brooklyn firefighter who worked at the World Trade Center wreckage for a month after the Sept. 11 terror attacks has died of throat cancer. Ray Hauber's relatives and colleagues believe conditions at Ground Zero might have caused the esophageal cancer that killed him Saturday morning. Hauber, who worked for 17 years at Engine Co. 284 in Dyker Heights, had retired from the FDNY on a disability pension last year, after he was diagnosed with the cancer, friends and family said. ... Hauber is the second Ground Zero worker to die from esophageal cancer this year. Frederick Stuck, also of Staten Island, was a retired city deputy sheriff and Sept. 11 first responder and cleanup worker.He was 49 when he died Jan. 9, and his family also believes conditions at Ground Zero caused his illnesses. ... (NYDaily news, by Michael White, August 7, 2007)
  
• Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11: On the stump, Rudy can't help spreading smoke and ashes about his lousy record ... (Village Voice, by Wayne Barrett, August 7th, 2007)
• U.S. senators eye WTC insurance report ... Two U.S. senators have taken it upon themselves to follow up on a report that found discrepancies in a $1 billion insurance fund for the World Trade Center. The New York Post Sunday said its investigation into the clean-up efforts at the World Trade Center had prompted Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., to look into alleged misappropriations of federal aid. The Post investigation found that tens of millions of federal aid was spent on lawyers and overhead. The investigation also found that injured Sept. 11 recovery workers were paid far less and employee compensation claims for related illnesses have been rejected. That report prompted Leahy and Specter to request answers from WTC Captive Insurance Co. regarding the investigation's findings. ....(UPI, Aug. 5, 2007)
  
• Libby meets Manhattan:  Connecting the dots between a New York terrorist attack and a Montana mining disaster ... (Missoula Independent, by Paul Peters, August 3, 2007)
  
• Libby meets Manhattan: Connecting the dots between a New York terrorist attack and a Montana mining disaster ... (The Missoula Independent Online, By Paul Peters)
  
• Part of 9/11 Workers' Suit: Ex-Detective Still Feels Fallout ... SAYS 9/11 COMPENSATION WITHHELD: Former Detective John Walcott is one of the first-responders suffering from illnesses related to recovery work at Ground Zero who is suing Mayor Bloomberg and the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company. They claim the city and the company are holding money owed to sick workers. ... He was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia in early 2003. He went through six months of chemotherapy and spent two weeks on an ice mattress because his body temperature was too high. There was bleeding from all of his orifices, he recalled: from his mouth, his nose and even his eyes. The thing that ultimately saved his life was a stem-cell transplant in November of 2003 from an unrelated donor in Germany, whom he plans to visit and thank personally. Mr. Walcott is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan July 17 claiming that the $1 billion granted to the city by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to give to workers suffering respiratory illnesses and injuries as a result of working on Ground Zero has been kept from these workers. Marc Jay Bern, the attorney for the workers, explained that the city put the money with the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company, which along with Mayor Bloomberg is a named defendant in the lawsuit. ... (The Chief-Leader, by Ari Paul, Aug. 3, 2007)
• EMSL Analytical Awarded EPA World Trade Center Contract ... EMSL Analytical, the leader in providing cutting edge laboratory services and products, has been awarded a significant contract from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). EMSL will be providing the agency with analytical services for samples taken in lower Manhattan as part of the Test and Clean Program. The contract is the result of ongoing efforts to monitor current environmental conditions for residents and workers impacted by the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Air and microvacuum samples are being collected from multiple sites in the area and are being analyzed for asbestos and man-made vitreous fibers (MMVF) following specialized methodologies via PCM, TEM and SEM. The contract is an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity award that has a maximum expected value of $1.5 million with a base contract period of one year and an option to extend the contract for an additional six months. The laboratory analysis has already commenced as of July 2007. EMSL is providing analytical support from their Manhattan laboratory facility in addition to the corporate headquarters situated in New Jersey. “EMSL Analytical was proud to be the first and primary laboratory for the EPA on the original contract work immediately following the tragic events of 9/11,” reported Robert DeMalo, Senior Vice President, Laboratory Services at EMSL Analytical. “We are honored to be entrusted with this important task of protecting the health of area residents and workers,” DeMalo continued. EMSL Analytical is one of the nation’s largest accredited environmental laboratories specializing in the analyses of natural, manmade and microbiological contaminants. The company and its over 400 employees have a 26 year history of providing cutting edge analytical services to government agencies, industry and property owners. .... (News Release, 8/1/2007)

JULY

• 'I believe my cancer is related to expsoure to WTC dust and smoke.' ... The following opinion piece was written by Etta Sanders shortly before her death and was provided to the Trib by her husband, Andrew Weinstein. I believe I am the victim of the lies of my government. I live a short distance from the World Trade Center site. Ten days after the Sept. 11 attacks, my husband, our twin boys who had turned 3-years-old on Sept. 8, and I moved back into our home. For months, like so many of our neighbors, we worried about the air, kept our windows closed, ran air filters day and night, took the children out of the neighborhood to play outdoors and tried to believe what we were told—that the air was safe. Two years ago I was diagnosed with stage IV, metastatic lung cancer. Inoperable. Incurable. Since then I have responded well to a series of treatments, chemotherapy and recently approved pills. I have been able to maintain a normal life—working, traveling, caring for my family. My condition has now worsened and the possible treatment options are running out. I strongly believe my cancer is related to exposure to World Trade Center dust and smoke. If the government had said we’re not sure about the safety of the air and it would be prudent for residents to stay away, I don’t think I would have this cancer. ... I dearly hope that I am in a small minority of people who were so gravely harmed by the aftermath of the WTC attacks, but I fear otherwise. Whether the numbers are large or small, the U.S. government is culpable for that harm and there must be compensation for all victims and their families. Frankly, I don’t know how Christine Todd Whitman lives with herself. At a recent community board committee meeting, there was a presentation by someone from the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation. At the end, a board member asked if there would be room on the wall of victims’ names for those who died after the attacks from toxic exposures (a few days later the first such victim was added). It was a chilling thought. There will be more names. But I think we need a separate wall for those whose deaths were not caused by a direct act of terrorism, but by the actions of a cavalier government. (Tribeca Trib, by Etta Sanders, July/August 2007)
  
• September 11th Rescue Dog Dies Of Cancer ... A black Labrador named Jake who became a four-legged hero in the aftermath of September 11th was put to sleep Wednesday after a battle with cancer. The pup from Utah helped rescue workers search through the rubble at the World Trade Center site and later worked in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. The 12-year-old was one of less than 200 federally-certified rescue dogs. There have been reports from some rescue dog owners that their animals became sick from working at the Trade Center site. Autopsy results on Jake's body will be part of a medical study of September 11th search-and-rescue dogs. ... (NY1, July 26, 2007)
• 9/11 Workers Not Getting Enough Care, Report Says ... Almost six years after the terrorist attack on New York, the federal government still does not have an adequate array of health programs for ground zero workers — or a reliable estimate of how much treating their illnesses will cost — according to a federal report released yesterday. The report, produced by the Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress, concluded that thousands of federal workers and responders who came to ground zero from other parts of the country do not have access to suitable health programs. The report also said that an estimate of health care costs made late last year by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health was based on questionable assumptions, inconsistent data and instances of double billing. As a result, the report concluded, “It is unclear whether the overall estimate overstated or understated the costs of monitoring and treating responders.” But officials at the institute, the federal agency that coordinates spending on the ground zero health programs, said the new report looked at outdated estimates, which they admitted were shaky.New estimates by the institute, made public last week, considered recommendations by the Government Accountability Office and are based on the first few months of treatment costs reported by the Fire Department of New York and a consortium of regional health care institutions led by the Mount Sinai Medical Center. An estimate for 9/11 health programs released late last year and analyzed by the accountability office put the annual cost of monitoring and treatment services, along with associated expenses, at $230 million to $283 million, depending on the number of workers who seek help. The institute’s revised estimate last week put this year’s costs at $195 million. But it said the total figure for 2007 and 2008 could be between $428 million and $712 million if more workers register to participate in the programs and a greater percentage of them need medical or mental health treatment. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that while the accountability office indicated that previous health program cost estimates have been imprecise, the report “leaves no doubt that substantial federal resources are needed for the foreseeable future.” .... (NYTimes, by Anthony DePalma, July 25, 2007)
• HHS Should Provide Health Care Services to ALL 9/11 Responders, New GAO Report Says ... A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released today by U.S. Representatives Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY), Christopher Shays (R-CT), and Vito Fossella (R-NY) - members of the congressional 9/11 Health Caucus - shows that some World Trade Center first responders don’t have access to the thorough, uninterrupted health screening and monitoring services they need.  [Click here for a summary and link to the full GAO report, “September 11: HHS Needs to Ensure Availability of Health Screening and Monitoring for all Responders.”] “If we continue down this road of ‘start-stop’ health monitoring, World Trade responders with serious, debilitating diseases will continue to go undiagnosed and untreated,” said Rep. Maloney.  “Last week, we learned that the Administration is finally working on a plan to help the thousands of rescue workers who need medical assistance.  The plan needs more work and must be expanded to include residents, area workers, and school kids, but it’s a step forward after years of empty promises and inaction.” ... (News Release, July 24, 2007)
• As he walks his last walk, construction czar cracks whip but sees progress too ... Friday will be the last day on the job for Maikish, a Port Authority veteran who became Downtown’s “construction czar” in 2005. The command center has not yet chosen a replacement, but Bob Harvey, the agency’s head of capital planning and construction, will serve as interim director. ... According to Maikish, violations and fines seldom convince contractors to comply with health, safety and environmental regulations. It is far more effective, he said, to use the leverage of future permits and trucking access to persuade builders to clean up their acts. If that doesn’t work, Maikish said, then a stop-work order will usually get a contractor’s attention. To keep an eye on Downtown builders and traffic, the command center now has a 58-member “enforcement task force” made up of highway inspectors, building inspectors and N.Y.P.D. traffic agents. ...(Downtown Express, by Skye H. McFarlane, July 20 - 26, 2007)
• Feds still muddled on 9/11 health ... Federal efforts to coordinate health care programs for sick ground zero workers have been hampered by shaky cost estimates and unsteady spending to keep the programs running, a new report has found. The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, on Tuesday released the results of its fifth study of 9/11 health programs, concluding that five years after the attacks the government still doesn't have a consistent set of programs - or a good sense of what ground zero illnesses will cost. The agency overseeing 9/11 health issues, the National Ins