AUGUST

• Relation between Cord Blood Mercury Levels and Early Child Development in a World Trade Center Cohort.... Levels of total mercury in cord and maternal blood were not significantly higher for women who resided or worked within 1 or 2 miles of the WTC in the month after 11 September, compared with women who lived and worked farther away. Average cord mercury levels were more than twice maternal levels, and both were elevated in women who reported eating fish/seafood during pregnancy. .... Fish/seafood consumption during pregnancy was significantly associated with a 5.6- to 9.9-point increase in 36-month PDI, and 48-month Verbal and Full IQ scores. .... Conclusions: Blood mercury was not significantly raised in women living or working close to the WTC site in the weeks after 11 September 2001. Higher cord blood mercury was associated with reductions in developmental scores at 36 and 48 months, after adjusting for the positive effects of fish/seafood consumption during pregnancy. ... (Environmental Health Perspectives, August 2008, by Sally Ann Lederman,1 Robert L. Jones,2 Kathleen L. Caldwell,2 Virginia Rauh,1 Stephen E. Sheets,1 Deliang Tang,1 Sheila Viswanathan,1 Mark Becker,3 Janet L. Stein,4 Richard Y. Wang,2 and Frederica P. Perera1)
• Media Exposure and Dimensions of Anxiety Sensitivity: Differential Associations with PTSD Symptom Clusters.... The present investigation examined the impact of anxiety sensitivity (AS) and media exposure on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Reactions from 143 undergraduate students in Hamilton, Ontario were assessed in the Fall of 2003 to gather information on anxiety, media coverage, and PTSD symptoms related to exposure to a remote traumatic event (September 11th). Regression analyses revealed that the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI; [Peterson, R. A., & Reiss, S. (1992). Anxiety Sensitivity Index manual, 2nd ed. Worthington, Ohio: International Diagnostic Systems]) and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory trait form (STAI-T; [Spielberger, C. D., Gorsuch, R. L., & Lushene, R. E. (1970). State-trait anxiety inventory. Palo Alto, California: Consulting Psychologists Press]) total scores were significant predictors of PTSD symptoms in general. The ASI total score was also a significant predictor of hyperarousal and avoidance symptoms. Subsequent analyses further demonstrated differential relationships based on subscales and symptom clusters. Specifically, media exposure and trait anxiety predicted hyperarousal and re-experiencing symptoms, whereas the ASI fear of somatic sensations subscale significantly predicted avoidance and overall PTSD symptoms. Implications and directions for future research are discussed. (Journal of Anxiety Disorders, Collimore KC, McCabe RE, Carleton RN, et al (August 2008). 22(6), 1021-8.)
• Documentary dedicated to late 9/11 first responder ... Racked by pain and the ravages of leukemia, first responder Gregory Quibell of North Babylon allowed film crews to record poignant moments of his life. For weeks, his visits to doctors and his struggles to pay medical bills were captured for a documentary called "Save the Brave," which premiered last night at the Bellmore Theatre in Bellmore. The film's opening is dedicated to Quibell, 53, who died Wednesday night at his home, friends said. The film features three other first responders living with Sept. 11-related illnesses. "The movie had no actors in it. They were real-life heroes," said John Feal, the film's producer, who is president of the nonprofit FealGood Foundation and advocates for sick Sept. 11 responders. "Greg is proof that heroes are dying, and it's unacceptable." The three others featured in "Save the Brave" are former New York City firefighter John McNamara of Shirley, former FDNY chief Jim Riches of Brooklyn and former emergency services worker Charlie Giles of Barnegat, N.J. A DVD of the film will be sent to Congress to highlight the need for a national Sept. 11 health bill, Feal said. Lawmakers are considering a proposal that would create federal programs for medical treatment and compensation for ill responders and residents living near Ground Zero. Anne Marie Baumann, senior vice president of the FealGood Foundation, said she became involved in the foundation after her husband, Christopher Baumann - an NYPD officer - had multiple health issues after working at Ground Zero. She said if one thing comes from the documentary being released, she hopes it's "that the bill is passed. I know the sickness isn't going to stop, but the pain can stop." In February, Quibell, a state correction department worker, traveled to Washington and demanded more money for health programs for those who responded to the terrorist attacks. Quibell was one of several dozen search-and-rescue workers deputized by federal authorities to assist at Ground Zero. In the aftermath, he suffered from pulmonary fibrosis and then was diagnosed late last year with leukemia. He said exposure to toxins at the World Trade Center site led to his health problems. ... (NYNewsday, by Michael Frazier, August 29, 2008)
• Report details Deutsche firefighters’ last fatal hour ... While the Fire Department does not seek to place blame, fault comes through clearly in the report. Construction workers on the site waited 13 minutes to call 911 after one of them ignited the blaze with a discarded cigarette. Then the construction workers told firefighters that the standpipe was working (it wasn’t) and that the plywood barriers over the staircases were easy to breach (they weren’t). The firefighters also broke rules intended for their safety so they could stay in the building longer, in what the report refers to as the F.D.N.Y.’s “can-do attitude.” The report also reveals that the former Deutsche Bank building was at serious risk for collapse, as the fire bowed several sections of structural steel. The fireproofing around that steel had been removed. ... (Downtown Express, by Julie Shapiro, Aug. 29 - Sept. 4, 2008)
• Within Harsh Report on Fatal Fire, a Nod to Firefighters’ ‘Can-Do Attitude’ ... Firefighters’ tendency to improvise at fires and other catastrophes was highlighted in a Fire Department report released this week about a fire at the former Deutsche Bank building last August that killed two firefighters. The report, a 176-page lesson plan on firefighting failures, cited several ways in which firefighters broke rules or flouted procedures in the face of overwhelming hazards. In battling the blaze, high up in the tower, which was being dismantled in Lower Manhattan, they pushed their air packs beyond the 45-minute limit, removed their masks in an effort to save air, and ignored warnings of danger. One firefighter rode atop a freight elevator. But while the tone was scolding, the subtext was admiring. The report said the firefighters’ risky actions embodied a culture of positive thinking. “The ‘can-do attitude’ has enabled the F.D.N.Y. to protect life and property at a superior level of excellence since the Fire Department’s inception,” it states. Glenn P. Corbett, an associate professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said city firefighters were known for fearlessness and innovation. Each fire is unique, he said. Conditions can change in a heartbeat. But a question remains: When is it appropriate to deviate from standard operating procedures? .... (NYTimes, by Al Baker, August 23, 2008)
• FDNY eyes policy change after fatal Deutsche Bank fire ... In the wake of last year's deadly Deutsche Bank fire, the city is considering whether to change its policy and require all firefighters to leave a dangerous situation when their supervisor's air supply runs out. "It is being considered," said Francis X. Gribbon, a spokesman for the Fire Department of New York. Current FDNY policy allows supervisors with a depleted air supply to leave a situation "immediately dangerous to life and health" and for subordinates to remain if another supervisor takes over, Gribbon said. The review of air supply procedures is one of 32 recommendations about safety, emergency and inspection practices that the FDNY put forward yesterday in a special report about the Aug. 18, 2007, blaze at 130 Liberty St. Firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino were found unconscious on the 14th floor and died of smoke inhalation. The report indicated that an unnamed Engine Company 24 officer who was supervising Graffagnino and Beddia had to leave the fire zone because his air supply ran out, but told other officers his unit was still working. The officer apparently didn't get another supervisor to take his place and didn't pull both men out with him, said an FDNY official who didn't want to be named. Copies of the 176-page report will be going to all 350 FDNY units today in the department's effort to reinforce training practices and procedures. "This is not a report to fix blame," FDNY Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said at a news conference yesterday. Scoppetta acknowledged that an internal FDNY review was being suspended at the request of the Manhattan district attorney's office, which has a grand jury investigation under way. "Firefighters did an incredible job under difficult circumstances," Scoppetta said. According to the report, a series of blunders, including a severed fire standpipe, damaged sprinklers and blocked exits, created confusion and "contributed significantly to the death of Graffagnino and Beddia." "There were no equipment failures at this fire," Scoppetta told reporters. Scoppetta explained that some firefighters' poor radio procedures only added to the confusion. He said that units are being reinstructed on emergency radio procedures. Scoppetta said there were numerous "Mayday" emergency calls, some of which couldn't be attributed to particular firefighters. He said a review was unable to find any mayday calls from Graffagnino or Beddia. He also noted that there were no inspections done by the FDNY, the Department of Buildings or the demolition contractor, which would have revealed that a water standpipe had been severed. Firefighters struggled for more than an hour to find a water supply, officials said. "Why didn't the buildings department do their inspections for two years?" asked Joseph Graffagnino, father of the dead firefighter. "Had they done their job and gone in there every 15 days, they would have noticed all these violations." ... (NY Newsday, by Anthony M. Destefano, August 22, 2008)
  
• DEUTSCHE TWIST ... Less than two weeks before the blaze at the former Deutsche Bank building killed two firefighters, a safety officer with the FDNY approved an inspection report that allowed workers to use blowtorches on the site, according to documents obtained by The Post. The document was not included in the 176-page report released by the Fire Department yesterday covering the Aug. 18, 2007, fire. The disaster, which killed firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino, also exposed bureaucratic incompetence at several government agencies and sparked a criminal probe by the Manhattan district attorney. "We have to acknowledge that [inspections] were not done," Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta. Unmentioned, however, was the FDNY "inspection report," dated Aug. 6, that authorized a permit for the mob-linked subcontractor, John Galt Corp., to use and store flammable oxygen and acetylene torches at the Ground Zero demolition site. "Did the inspector visit the site?" asked a source who reviewed the permit. "Why was this granted?" Numerous fire-safety violations were revealed in the inferno's aftermath, most notably the removal of a standpipe that left firefighters without water. FDNY spokesman Frank Gribbon said the torch permit was for the upper floors of the tower at 130 Liberty St. - not the lower floors, where the firefighters were killed. They had been trapped in a maze of blocked stairwells by protective sheeting that had been installed to seal in asbestos and toxic dust left by the 9/11 attacks. Still, the FDNY castigated itself in its report for not better handling the fire, which was started by careless smoking. "It was very, very important that the building had not been inspected, and we will deal with that," Scoppetta said. Among the report's findings:
  * It took 13 minutes for workers to call 911 after seeing the fire.
  * A lack of "radio discipline" by firefighters meant that some of the 14 "maydays" and 30 "distress" calls were missed in the frenzied communications.
  * Sixty-seven minutes elapsed before firefighters had access to water.
  * Beddia, 53, still had several minutes of air left in his tank. ...
  Scoppetta said the Buildings Department must explain why it issued alteration permits, which enable contractors to remodel, rather than demolition permits. "By issuing alteration permits, the department limited deconstruction to certain floors at the time, in order to ensure that the demolition work did not proceed before the necessary abatement work was completed," the department said in a statement. (NYPost, by Chuck Bennett & Peter Cox, August 22, 2008)
• Inquiry Lays Out Chain of Failures in High-Rise Fire ... Contractors tearing down the contaminated former Deutsche Bank building in Lower Manhattan never had a formal demolition permit, despite undertaking one of the most complicated efforts ever to dismantle a skyscraper. When a fire broke out last Aug. 18 at the tower, it took roughly 80 minutes to get water on the flames, in part because workers at the building waited some 13 minutes to call 911 and then gave firefighters inaccurate information about whether emergency equipment at the site was working. And communication lapses further disrupted the firefighting response. Walkie-talkies failed, and critical calls for help went unheard. Men were lost in the confusion. One firefighter’s radio problems forced him to crawl to the building’s edge to report that two imperiled colleagues — Robert Beddia, 53, and Joseph Graffagnino, 33 — were trapped by stairwells that had been sealed off. Both men were killed. Those are among the dozens of findings by a team of investigators who were enlisted by the New York Fire Department to conduct a formal inquiry into the deadly fire, according to people who have been briefed on the departmental investigation or have seen its findings. Those people said the report issued by investigators — which has not been publicly released — finds fault or concern with many aspects of the building’s demolition and the response to the fire. The report, presented on Wednesday to fire union officials in a tightly controlled meeting at Fort Totten in Queens, will be turned over to the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau. His office has undertaken a broad criminal inquiry into the fire at the high-rise building, which was being simultaneously decontaminated and dismantled, floor by floor, after being damaged on Sept. 11, 2001, and contaminated by toxins. Mr. Morgenthau’s office, which has been presenting evidence to a grand jury for months, is considering criminally charging the city as part of its inquiry into the fire that left the two firefighters dead, according to people who have been briefed on the inquiry. After the death of a firefighter, the Fire Department always empanels a team to study any problems that might have contributed to the death. ... The investigators do not fix on any specific problem as solely responsible for the deaths of the two firefighters. Rather, they suggest that a series of building code violations — and perhaps firefighting problems, as well — led to the tragedy. Construction workers’ removal of a section of the building’s standpipe left firefighters without water on the upper floors, and local fire companies failed to conduct regular inspections of the building — although it is unclear whether inspectors would have noticed the broken standpipe in a maze of pipes in the building’s basement, or if they simply would have checked to see the standpipe in place in the stairwells. It has been known from the day of the fire that the struggle to get water on the flames was great. But few understood just how long that struggle lasted — now pinpointed by investigators at more than an hour, an eternity in the dangerous, fast-moving conditions of a high-rise fire. In encountering the many hazards at the building, investigators found, firefighters improvised in their response and broke rules. They pushed their emergency air packs beyond the 45-minute limit in providing oxygen; they removed their face pieces in an effort to save air; they ignored warnings of being in danger; one firefighter rode atop a construction elevator. ... Stephen J. Cassidy, the president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, a union that represents roughly 8.900 rank-and-file firefighters, read the department’s report at Fort Totten and criticized many parts of it, saying it largely spared senior department officials. He said the report failed to investigate why senior officials had not developed a plan for fighting a fire at such a complicated demolition site. ... In zeroing in on critical lapses by the city’s Fire and Buildings Departments, the investigators called for the two agencies to work more closely, especially on sharing information about the construction, demolition and abatement of city buildings. Many of the lapses cited by investigators were addressed in a plan for regulating building sites that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg put forward several weeks ago. One issue his administration did not directly address was the decision by the Department of Buildings not to require the building’s owner, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, to obtain a demolition permit. The agency instead allowed the contractors to take out a series of alteration permits to disassemble the building one or two floors at a time. Both types of permits require a series of safety measures that were not present at the time of the fatal fire: working standpipe and sprinkler systems, enclosed stairs and an unobstructed means of exit. The investigation has raised questions about whether a formal demolition permit should have been sought, in part because it might have required inspections of the building to have been done by agency inspectors, instead of by the licensed professionals who, under an alteration permit, conduct such work for a landlord. ... The firefighter was not equipped with a radio device that had a remote emergency alert button on the microphone — worn on the shoulder and outside the bunker gear — and there was confusion about who had transmitted the mayday, so no action was taken to address it. Eventually, the Engine Company 24 firefighter made his way to the building’s perimeter, where, exhausted and vomiting, he informed his colleagues in person that there were still two men inside. The Fire Department has been trying since 2002 to retrofit its radios for the remote emergency alert button, according to union officials. Fire Department officials said that as of a month ago, every radio carried by every firefighter has the special button on its remote microphone. ... (NYTimes, By Al Baker, August 21, 2008)
  
• Deutsche transcripts detail fatal swirl of smoke, radio chatter and terror ... A carelessly discarded cigarette sparked the deadly blaze, which construction workers did not report to firefighters for 13 minutes, according to the report. The FDNY review also reported that the Department of Buildings did not issue a demolition permit for the building but rather a series of alteration permits. The Uniformed Fire Officers Association said Thursday that the absence of a demolition permit explained the lack of FDNY inspections at the site. (NYDaily News, by Lonathan Lemire, Aug. 21, 2008)
  
• Report on fatal Deutsche Bank fire cites a cut water pipe ... City fire commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said that if firefighters had known of the dangerous and difficult conditions in the Deutsche Bank building -- including a cut water line -- before they entered it to fight the fire that killed two members of the department, they would have fought the blaze differently.  Scoppetta, talking with reporters Thursday morning as he released the FDNY's after-action report of the Aug. 18, 2007, blaze, which killed firefighters Joseph Graffagnino and Robert Beddia, said the 176 page report didn't try to affix blame for the deaths. Both died of smoke inhalation. But he bluntly said that proper inspections of the building would have revealed that a crucial water standpipe had been cut. "Inspection of the building would have found the standpipe" cut, Scoppetta said. "The key fact here is that there were no inspections." Scoppetta said that crucial inspections that would have uncovered the standpipe problem weren't done by the FDNY, the city Department of Buildings or building demolition contractors. A grand jury investigation of the fatal blaze is being carried out by the Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau's office and, as he has done in the past, Scoppetta acknowledged that he has testified without immunity to the panel, which he said is focusing on the standpipe. Scoppetta also said that the FDNY has held up its own internal probe of the actions of department personnel at the request of Morgenthau while the criminal probe is under way. The report contains 49 findings of fact and made 32 recommendations, most of which had already been implemented, Scoppetta said .... But Scoppetta said it took 13 minutes before the fire on the 17th floor, which started from careless smoking, was called into the FDNY. It also took an additional 20 minutes for firefighters to find alternate sources of water to fight the blaze. In all it took 67 minutes for a hose to be connected to a viable source of water, said Scoppetta. Blocked stairwells, inoperable elevators, plywood and plastic sheeting also contributed to great difficulty for firefighters, he said. (NYNewsday, by Anthony M. Destefano, August 21, 2008)
  
• FDNY Probe Finds Series of Big Failures Led to Deutsche Horror ... Everyone failed them. The two firefighters killed in last year's inferno at the old Deutsche Bank building died as a result of a perfect storm of neglect and tragic mistakes, the FDNY's internal review of the fatal fire shows. The report - which will be released today - blames the FDNY for not conducting mandatory inspections; the Buildings Department for not issuing a formal permit for demolition and the building's contractor for shoddy work that turned the condemned skyscraper into a death trap, sources who reviewed the report told the Daily News. "These guys' fate was sealed as soon as they got in that fire," said a source who was briefed on the 176-page document. "And when they called for help, they couldn't even get through right away," the source said. Tragically, when firefighters Joseph Graffagnino - who would have turned 35 years old Wednesday - and Robert Beddia began to scream "Mayday!" their cries could not be immediately acted upon, according to the report. Though FDNY protocol is for radio communication to cease when a "Mayday" is issued, continued radio chatter made it difficult for the officers on the ground to hear where the panicked firefighters were trapped, the report says. ... (Daily News, by Alison Gendar & Jonathan Lemire, August 20th 2008)
  
• Disabled Ground Zero worker gets city pension ... A Park Slope Ground Zero worker denied disability benefits can finally expect to collect his modest $20,000-a-year pension. But Demetrius (Bo) Samadjopoulos, 49, formerly a city Transportation Department carpenter, has yet to get official recognition he was physically harmed by his work after 9/11. ... "On Sept. 11, 2001, I went to Ground Zero to do something good," he said. "When I got there, I found hell. Although I could not possibly imagine or explain what I saw, I didn't let it stop me from doing what needed to be done." In 2005, Samadjopoulos retired from his job, complaining of respiratory ailments and other health problems. In the fall of 2006, Samadjopoulos was denied his pension by the city medical board. He appealed - and last week the board ruled he was no longer able to work. Samadjopoulos spent more than $25,000 on medical and legal bills, he said. ... The decision - if approved by the NYC Employees Retirement System Board - will provide Samadjopoulos with medical insurance and insurance for his 8-year-old daughter. "This is income he badly needs," said Gary Stone of South Brooklyn Legal Services, who took up Samadjopolous' case free of charge. "It's a fiasco he wasn't awarded benefits the first time." Despite the judge's decison, Samadjopoulos will receive no disability benefits for the last two years. "That's what the law is," said city retirement board official. "You only get benefits from the time you are found to be disabled." (Daily News, By Rachel Monahan, August 19, 2008)
• Uneasy Anniversary of Firefighters' Deaths ... WRONGFUL-DEATH SUITS - Both the Graffagnino and Beddia families have filed wrongful death lawsuits against the city and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which are on hold until the grand jury probe is complete. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta -- both of whom spoke at yesterday's memorial -- were named as defendants in the lawsuits. Scoppetta said he would be surprised if the city ever faced criminal charges, pointing out that it hasn't happened in a decade. "Let's just wait until the investigation comes out and we get some official findings," he said. Bloomberg said he believed it was a case of negligence, and questioned whether criminal charges would be appropriate. (SI Advance, August 19, 2008)
• Firefighters were betrayed in Deutsche Bank building deathtrap ... New York marked the one-year anniversary of the Deutsche Bank building with a memorial ceremony for Firefighters Joseph Graffagnino Jr. and Robert Beddia - along with fresh evidence that they were fatally betrayed. Safety reports uncovered by the Daily News revealed that six small fires had broken out in the hulking structure in the two months before Graffagnino and Beddia lost their lives in a horrific inferno. Ruined and contaminated by asbestos and other toxins on 9/11, the tower was being dismantled in 2007. Sparks from acetylene torches touched off the sporadic fires, none of which was reported to the FDNY.
  • June 25: "Russell from Bovis was on 29th floor when a small fire on ceiling was noticed."
  • June 26: "Small fire on ceiling of 26 was put out by roofers."
  • July 25: "A small fire from sparks from the roof started on S/E side column of 22nd floor."
  • July 26: "On the 22nd floor a small fire started around 8:45 a.m."
  • July 31: "Small fire on the 15th floor on the east side exterior scaffold."
  • Aug. 10: "At 2:47 p.m. S/W side column had a fire. No fire watchman or fire extinguisher on the floor."
    
• One week later, the building went up in flames. To be clear, the cause is believed to have been a discarded cigarette - not sparks from a torch. The point is that the demolition work was inherently dangerous, as safety inspectors recognized in calling time and again for a beefed-up fire-watch team. The clear peril makes it all the more outrageous that the building had been converted into a deathtrap for the purposes of dismantlement. It had been sheathed in plastic, and air was drawn in from outside to prevent contaminants from escaping. Stairwells had been sealed. A standpipe that was supposed to deliver water had been cut. Graffagnino, Beddia and their colleagues knew none of that when they rushed in because the FDNY had not inspected the premises as it was supposed to have and the Buildings Department was missing in action. The Fire Department is nearing completion of an inquiry into what went wrong. Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau is deep into a grand jury investigation that will undoubtedly produce criminal charges. Now more than ever, they seem warranted. (NYDaily News, August 19th 2008)
• FDNY To Catch Lots Of Heat In Deutsche Fire Report - Families Of Fallen Firefighters Graffignino, Beddia Reflect On 1-Year Anniversary Of Tragic Blaze ...Graffignino Sr. is hoping that the Manhattan district attorney will bring criminal charges in the case, and include actions by the contractors and negligence by city and state agencies. The Buildings Department, for example, failed to insure that a vital standpipe to bring water to the fire, was working. .... After pouring over some 300 million pages of documents, the grand jury is reportedly set to start considering the criminal charges sometime next month, everything from criminally negligent homicide, racketeering and blowing off safety regulations. (CBS, Marcia Kramer, Aug, 18, 2008)
  
• Call for justice at FDNY's plaque ceremony ... As two more plaques go up, the FDNY is expected to review with the Graffagnino and Beddia families the department's official report on the fire. That will be followed by the results of the Manhattan DA's investigation. The long list of people at whom the DA has been taking a hard look includes a former deputy mayor, executives of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., construction contractors, Buildings Department officials and FDNY higher-ups. When the culprits are finally named, we should not let them cause us to forget one heroic firefighter; a young man from Engine 255 who was filling in at Engine 24/Ladder 5 the day of the fire. When Graffagnino ran out of air in the man-made hell on high, the young firefighter - anonymous for now - removed the regulator from his own face mask to share his air. The smoke was so toxic that the young firefighter nearly lost consciousness after one choking breath of it. ... (NYDaily News, by Michael Day, Aug, 18, 2008)
• DA TIGHTENS NOOSE IN DEUTSCHE PROBE ... One year after two firefighters died in a ferocious inferno at the former Deutsche Bank building, a grand jury has been eyeing evidence of racketeering and money laundering against the contractors in charge of the structure, The Post has learned. Among the issues being probed is that officials from John Galt Corp., which was subcontracted by Bovis Lend Lease to raze the tower, laundered millions of dollars through various shell companies, sources said yesterday. Another is whether Galt and the inspectors it hired ignored safety guidelines in dismantling the toxic building, including the removal of a standpipe necessary for getting water to the hoses. The floors and stairwells were also littered with debris that created a maze-like hazard for firefighters. The Aug. 18, 2007, blaze was sparked by workers smoking on the site and compounded by a confusing maze of environmentally sealed barriers along with the dismantled standpipe that left the firefighters without any water. Also facing heat is the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. over its management - or mismanagement - of the job. A key question is why Galt was allowed on the job despite the fact it lacked experience in a project as big as the Deutsche Bank demolition and deconstruction and may have had mob ties. Also on the firing lines are officials with FDNY and the Buildings Department over whether they conducted proper inspections of the building at 130 Liberty St. at Ground Zero. The grand jury is on hiatus until after Labor Day. A spokeswoman for Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau said yesterday that the investigation is continuing and a decision is expected "in the next few months." When asked about the grand-jury probe, Galt executive Don Adler, a vice president at Safeway Environmental Corp., which handled the demolition work, said: "I don't know anything about that. I can't help you." Attempts to reach other Galt officials were unsuccessful. ... (NYPost, by Murray Weiss, Laura Italiano, & Chuck Bennett, Aug. 18, 2008)
• One Shameful Year ... There was supposed to have been a detailed firefighting plan in place, and there were supposed to have been regular safety inspections of the building - both FDNY responsibilities. But there was no plan. There had been no inspections - and yet Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta still has his job. Meanwhile, the building itself stands every bit as tall as it did on the day of the fire - 26 stories - a mocking monument to the paralysis that has plagued Ground Zero reconstruction from the outset. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. had only begun the demolition - almost six years after 9/11 - even though the building was supposed to have been down by the end of 2007. Yesterday, The Post's Ginger Adams Otis reported that it will be at least another year before demolition is complete - never mind that crucial structural work for all of Ground Zero depends on the building being down or that JP Morgan Chase is still waiting to build a new tower on the site. And LMDC Chairman Avi Schick still has his job. Which brings us to Mayor Bloomberg, who has been standing by dumb as a stump all this time when he could be bringing pressure to bear on all parties to keep things moving. ... (NYPost, Aug. 18, 2008)
• Safety warnings were ignored before Deutsche Bank fire ... Months before the Deutsche Bank inferno killed two firefighters, inspectors knew there was a blatant disregard for even the most basic fire-safety rules, a Daily News probe has found. A review of thousands of internal documents exposes how careless hardhats at the downtown site regularly sent sparks flying, started small fires and ignored repeated warnings to stop. Inspectors hired to look for safety failings warned a dozen times that John Galt, the company decontaminating and demolishing the tower, did not have enough safety managers to watch for blowtorch sparks. They also reported that six small fires were put out without Fire Department notification. "Burning details are being manned by only one fireguard. Demo foreman has been strongly advised of the need for an additional fireguard or perhaps two," an inspector wrote July 25. Two weeks later, another report said, "At 2:47 pm S/W side column had a fire. No fire watchman or fire extinguisher on the floor." And then tragedy struck.A year ago Monday, investigators theorize, a worker carelessly chucked a lit cigarette, igniting the blaze that claimed the lives of Firefighters Joseph Graffagnino Jr. and Robert Beddia. When inspectors and FDNY investigators walked back though the building nine days later, they made a shocking find in a sixth-floor room. "Many cigarette butts were found along with a Weber black small BBQ," one wrote. "Someone was barbecuing?" Graffagnino's outraged widow, Linda, said last week when told by The News of the finding. "I'm not surprised. That stuff really makes me angry. How could that be allowed?" she asked. She may soon get some answers. An internal FDNY probe is expected to be highly critical of the department's inspection failures and handling of the blaze. A grand jury investigating the blaze is expected to issue indictments next month. The inspectors who cited trouble before the blaze worked for a subcontractor, Site Safety LLC, and were hired by URS, the company managing the Deutsche project and working with Galt. The two companies reported to the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the state agency in charge of rebuilding downtown. Site Safety and URS declined to comment, and John Galt could not be reached. Michael Murphy, spokesman for the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which owns the site, could not say whether Site Safety's reports were reviewed by the state agency. Murphy insists close attention was paid to fire safety — and that the regular mention of problems shows how carefully inspectors were monitoring work. "The issue of fire watch and reviewing the fire watch was extremely important, as were any other safety issues," he said. "They served as one component of a system in which job-site issues were monitored and corrective action taken as necessary." Other city, state and federal inspectors regularly trolled the site, yet none stopped the practices that led to the fatal blaze. The city has since revamped construction rules to require better inspections, and is seeking authority to enforce building codes in state-owned property like the former Deutsche Bank building. The Fire Department, which failed to inspect the tower every 15 days as required by law, now says it meets the 15-day target on 93% of buildings. "It was the perfect storm last year: a contaminated building being taken down by a shady company, and our guys weren't doing the inspections," one FDNY source said. A key question is who cut a 40-foot length of standpipe from the basement, leaving Graffagnino and Beddia stranded without water in the mazelike building. In hundreds of daily reports, inspectors noted changes to standpipe connections, and twice said the standpipe was too far below the level where workers were dismantling columns. The basement standpipe, though, was barely mentioned. Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy wants the FDNY to add a new rule that firefighters must be advised of water conditions during a blaze. .... (NYDaily news, by Jonathan Lemire & Adam Lisberg, Aug. 18, 2008)
• CUNY'S DOWNTOWN SHAKEDOWN ... IT sure smells like a shake down to me: City University officials say they won't even think about taking down the hulk of Fiterman Hall, which casts a morbid pall over Ground Zero's north rim, until City Hall coughs up tens of millions of dollars more the school wants to put up its dream replacement. The point is moot for the moment - although decontamination is underway, the Environmental Protection Agency has yet to approve a demolition plan. But CUNY Vice Chancellor Iris Weinshall as much as admitted to me that they'd rather let the macabre ruin remain if they can't get what they want. ... (NYPost, By Steve Cuozzo, August 18, 2008 )
  
• On a Grim Anniversary, Firefighters Are Honored ... An investigation by the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, has not yet reached its conclusion. Many said they were curious to see the Fire Department’s own report about the blaze, which fire marshals have said was apparently started by a cigarette left by workers tearing down the building. Firefighters had trouble getting water to the fire because a standpipe that carried water throughout the building, which was damaged on 9/11, had been dismantled. Later on Monday, when asked about the possibility that the district attorney could seek to charge the city in the case, Mayor Bloomberg said: “I can tell you that in my heart of hearts, I don’t believe anybody deliberately did anything to make that building less safe. Were they derelict in their duty? Only time will tell.” He added: “It’s a great tragedy and we can point fingers, but the real issue is: What do we do for the future to make sure or lessen the probability that it will happen again, because we can’t undo the past. And whether any of this were to get up to the level of criminality, I don’t know what the definition of criminality in this case is.” ... (NYTimes, by Al Baker, Aug. 18, 2008)
  
• Fire at WTC building exposes government lapses ... The Aug. 18, 2007, fire at the troubled former Deutsche Bank tower across from ground zero exposed the incompetence of multiple government agencies assigned to near-daily inspections of the building, which was being dismantled. The blaze also unmasked a questionable subcontractor and the Fire Department's failure to point out dozens of hazards _ including a break in a pipe meant to supply water to fire hoses _ before the blaze. "The community had been raising red flags for months and sometimes years" about the toxic tower, said environmental activist Kimberly Flynn. "It's a mystery to us how you can have the number of inspectors that ... were practically living in that building and have that level of disaster." Manhattan prosecutors are preparing to conclude soon whether the failures before the blaze at the state-owned building were bureaucratic blunders or crimes. A grand jury has been meeting for nine months, deciding whether to lodge criminal negligence charges against contractors, the government or both. Officials have stepped up inspections, outfitted the tower with state-of-the-art fire safety systems and come up with dozens of new proposals intended to make demolition sites safer. But they say the building posed challenges like no other. The tower "is a tragically unique building," said deputy Mayor Edward Skyler. "It exposed an area that the city had never looked at this comprehensively. When we looked at it, we found a lot of areas that could be improved." The Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the rebuilding agency that owns the tower, has switched subcontractors and resumed cleaning the building of toxic debris _ but not simultaneously demolishing other floors at the same time, a practice the city opposes. The city has pledged to have the building's multiple regulators talk to each other more, and inspectors will be cross-trained to spot any kind of hazard. Firefighters now inspect the building regularly; a fire chief is assigned full-time to the site and two other nearby buildings that still need to be demolished. Three fire officers were reassigned in the week after the blaze. The original, $45 million budget for taking down the building has tripled, and the project is four years behind schedule. Planners hope eventually to supplant it with one of five office towers replacing the trade center. The blaze is believed to have started when a construction worker discarded a cigarette after the work day ended. The spark shed light on multiple lapses. Regulators _ including the city Buildings Department and federal, state and city environmental agencies _ had not corrected multiple fire hazards. Among them were blocked stairwells and a negative air pressure system that sucked the fire downward. A standpipe had been cut into pieces in the basement, leaving firefighters without a water supply for an hour after they entered the building. The Fire Department was required to inspect the site every 15 days but hadn't been there in more than a year. The department had not prepared a fire plan, as it has for more than 200 other sites that pose special challenges. (NY Newsday/AP, by Amy Westfeldt, August 17, 2008)
  
• TRAGIC BLDG. TO STAND 1 YR. MORE ... (NYPost, by Ginger Adams Otis, August 17, 2008)
• Prosecutors Said to Consider Charging City in Fatal Fire ... The fire at the former Deutsche Bank tower at ground zero. Investigators uncovered a long list of missteps in its demolition. Aides to the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, have called the investigation of last summer’s deadly fire at the former Deutsche Bank building at ground zero one of the most complex their office has ever undertaken. Prosecutors from the Rackets Bureau have sifted through more than three million documents and interviewed about 100 people, many of whom have testified before a grand jury — one that has heard evidence twice a week for about nine months. Mr. Morgenthau’s investigators believe, according to people briefed on the case, that negligence by city agencies — from the Buildings Department’s failure to ensure that a vital standpipe was maintained and tested at the former bank tower, to the lack of safety inspections by the Fire Department during the building’s demolition — may have directly contributed to the deaths of the two firefighters last Aug. 18. As a result, several of the people said, Mr. Morgenthau and his senior aides were considering seeking charges against the city itself — a rare action, and one with uncertain consequences. The city’s corporation counsel, Michael A. Cardozo, said that a prosecution of the city or any of its agencies “would be completely and absolutely unwarranted and unjustified.” He said that the city, its agencies and its officials have cooperated with the investigation and that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration was “committed to the highest standards of public safety.” But Mr. Cardozo’s office has clashed with Mr. Morgenthau’s prosecutors, starting in the early days of the investigation, when Fire Department officials were directed to meet with city lawyers before they were interviewed by prosecutors, a direction they ignored, several people involved in the issue have said. Indeed, relations between senior city officials and prosecutors — and Mr. Morgenthau and the mayor — have ranged from strained to worse. The two men — among the most powerful in the city — have long had a tense relationship, people who know both of them have said, and the investigation and the focus on the city’s role have done little to improve things. The inquiry has uncovered a catalog of failures and missteps at the site, by city and state agencies, by development officials, by regulators and by contractors, say investigators, city officials and people briefed on the case. Mr. Morgenthau has several times likened the events that preceded the deaths to “a perfect storm” of errors. The firefighters who died were trapped in the maze of the building, which was being simultaneously dismantled and cleansed of asbestos. But whether any negligence on the part of New York City or any other government agencies rose to the level of criminality is now one of the issues being considered by Mr. Morgenthau’s team of investigators. Experts say criminal charges against municipalities are rare, and while federal cases — including one against New York City — have been brought for environmental crimes, and in some instances, civil rights violations, state charges have seldom been seen over the last 100 years. Certainly no one can remember a case in which a city was charged in state court for a negligent death, let alone charged in the deaths of two of its own firefighters. “It’s highly, highly unusual,” said Stuart P. Green, a professor at the Rutgers University School of Law who has written about the criminal prosecution of municipalities in the 19th century, but found the practice extremely rare in the last century. If the city or one of its agencies, or one of the other government entities or contractors, were charged, individuals could also face indictment, people briefed on the case said. If the city were convicted, it could face possible fines of up to $5,000 for criminally negligent homicide, a Class E felony. Were the city or another agency convicted, no individual would face prison. Professor Green said that if there were a guilty plea, such a case might lend itself to an agreement of some kind to implement reforms or other actions. Also under scrutiny are the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which owns the building and oversaw the deconstruction; the State Department of Labor, which regulates asbestos removal; the City Department of Environmental Protection, which also regulated environmental conditions at the site; Bovis Lend Lease, the construction giant which has the contract — now valued at about $170 million — to take the building down; and the John Galt Corporation, the demolition subcontractor created for the sole purpose of doing the job for Bovis. The legal theory behind a possible prosecution of the city is based on the state penal code. The criminally negligent homicide statute says a “person” is guilty of that crime when, with criminal negligence, he causes the death of another. But the penal law defines “person” as “a human being, and where appropriate, a public or private corporation, an unincorporated association, a partnership, a government or a governmental instrumentality.” ... In February, federal regulators from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration accused Bovis and Galt of indifference or intentional disregard for dangerous conditions that led to the fire, like the standpipe and blocked stairwells. But those administrative charges also raised questions about how so many violations, 44 in all, escaped the attention of the Buildings and Fire Departments, the Environmental Protection Agency, the State Labor Department and OSHA itself, many of which had inspectors at the site full time. In the fire’s aftermath, questions also swirled around Galt and how it was created. A marriage of convenience, it seemed, it linked executives of Regional Scaffolding, which had a reputation as a competent contractor, and senior officers of Safeway Environmental Corporation, a demolition company where one of the founders had a troubling history with regulators and law enforcement. The district attorney’s office was also looking into the circumstances surrounding Bovis’s hiring of Galt, despite vociferous warnings from the city’s Department of Investigation against hiring any Safeway executives. The deadly fire, and the scrutiny it brought to the demolition project, was the first of a series of accidents and scandals that have beset the construction industry and the Buildings Department in New York City over the last year, including two tower crane collapses that left nine people dead. One legacy of the fire is that it has helped to crystallize a range of issues involving the industry. They include the inefficiency of the Buildings Department, the lack of coordination among city agencies, the vagaries of demolition work in the city and a haphazard approach to fire inspections, particularly in buildings undergoing asbestos or some other kind of toxic abatement. The city has already changed many of these procedures — some were announced last month, weeks before the fire’s anniversary — but not before the families of the firefighters filed suit, charging that the men would not have died but for what they characterized as a blizzard of failures by city officials. .... State officials involved with rebuilding at ground zero now say that the long-awaited deconstruction, which has delayed other work at the former World Trade Center site, will be completed next summer, more than five years after the development agency first awarded a contract to do the job. (NYTimes, by William K. Rashbarum & Charles V. Bagli, August 17, 2008)
• City May Be Sued Over Deutsche Bank Fire ... Prosecutors are reportedly considering filing charges against the city in last summer's fatal fire at the former Deutsche bank building. The New York Times reported that investigators in the Manhattan District Attorney's office believe neglect on the part of several city agencies may have contributed to the deaths of firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino. According to the paper, investigators are focusing on the Buildings Department's failure to check a disconnected standpipe and conduct routine safety inspections. The fire was apparently started by a cigarette. Stairwells in the building had been sealed, blocking off escape routes. City corporation counsel Michael Cardozo said that all departments have cooperated with the investigation and any charges would be unwarranted. The district attorney’s office told NY1 that the investigation is continuing and will be finished in the next few months. Meanwhile, one of the major fire unions is pushing for better communication to prevent further tragedies. The Uniformed Firefighters Association wants commanders to be notified every five minutes about water supply problems and to relay that information to firefighters in the building. A fire spokesman said the department is reviewing the proposal. (NY1, 8/17/08)
• A Year After the Deutsche Bank Fire, Abatement Continues ... Nothing worked as it should have. Measures put in place to protect the neighborhood from toxic dust during the deconstruction process made it much harder to fight the fire. Contractors had set up a negative air pressure system to keep asbestos and other pollutants inside the building. It ended up trapping smoke inside while feeding the flames with more oxygen drawn from outside. A standpipe was missing a whole section, so that any water fire engines pumped into the building ended up in the basement. Workers had removed the stairwells and put plywood over the floor openings in order to seal in the contaminants. But that meant firefighters couldn't get from floor to floor except by an external elevator. REPORTER: Two fire fighters died. One was found right on top of the plywood, as if trying to claw his way through. A few days later, after two other firefighters were injured in another accident at the building, the job was shut down. The Mayor formed a task force. The District Attorney launched an investigation that is still going on. In January, Avi Schick, the chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the state agency that owns the building, announced it had gotten rid of the old abatement firm, a mysterious company named the John Galt Corporation. In came a new one, LVI Services. SCHICK: Their record of safety, their record of professionalism is, we believe, unparalleled. REPORTER: The LMDC, along with a spaghetti soup of other regulatory agencies, also revised the protocol for the right way to take down the building from now on. SCHICK: [ensure that we have] the safest possible building going forward, safe for first responders, safe for workers in the building, safe for people who live and work around 130 Liberty Street. REPORTER: The painstakingly meticulous abatement process became even more so. The new protocol calls for the contractor to remove those plywood divisions between floors, build the stairwells back, and install a switch that can turn off the negative air pressure with one flick. They also cleaned up a lot of the debris that was just hanging around on the floors. Catherine McVay Hughes, a member of Community Board One, has been one of the most tenacious critics of the building's deconstruction. She took a tour of one of the decontaminated floors in May. She came away with the sense that, finally, things were beginning to change for the better. HUGHES: The signage is impeccable. There is no way you could [not] miss where the stairwells are [signage where the edge of the buildings are,] like very tidy. REPORTER: Another neighbor, Pat Moore, says she likes it whenever she passes by the site and sees workers outside smoking. That's because investigators suspect the fire began at a spot on the 17th floor where workers used to take smoke breaks. MOORE: Now you can't even take your pack of cigarettes in the building. You have to check your pack of cigarettes at the gate when you first come in. REPORTER: But neighbors and others are wary of declaring that the Deutsche Bank building has shaken off its curse. NEWMAN: Just in no particular order there is an NYC [DO-] Department of Buildings violation around July 24th REPORTER: David Newman is an industrial hygienist at the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, a union-supported watch dog group. NEWMAN: Site conditions endangering workers, no site safety manager present-this is not acceptable on this kind of site [another one from the department of buildings operating without permits. Another one 3 inch by 6 foot by 6 foot, I don't know if that's a type or not it could be 6 inches by 6 inches anyway a significant chunk of concrete fell from the north side of the building.] Here's another one a 3 foot by 3 foot section of glass fell from the 15th floor. REPORTER: A spokesman for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation says the piece of glass never fell-that the buildings department citation got it wrong. The site safety manager, according to the spokesman, was missing for just two hours one morning, which was a result of miscommunication. The Fire Department now posts a battalion chief at the site whenever work is underway-and checks the standpipe daily. But Jack McDonnell, the president of the fire officers union, warns that it's still tough to keep tabs on deconstruction projects, especially when contamination is involved. The battalion chief, in this case, has to put on protective clothing and a respirator whenever he wants to enter the building, then shower and change when he comes out. MCDONNEL: [And] He can go in and be up close and personal with the contamination but he's going to have to suit up and that's where the difficulty lies with the fire department. REPORTER: Meanwhile, it still hasn't been decided who is going to pay for all of this. The LMDC has allocated $240 million of taxpayer money, some of which already went to acquire the building, the rest being spent on taking it down. The agency wants the insurance companies to reimburse some of that. But that part of the deal is already in litigation. (WNYC, by Matthew Schuerman, Aug. 15, 2008)
• Worker productivity and outpatient service use after the September 11th attacks: Results from the New York City Terrorism Outcome Study ... Background: Research has shown that the terrorist attacks in New York City (NYC) on September 11, 2001 had an impact on the psychological status of area residents. Since a major goal of many terrorist attacks is to also adversely affect local socioeconomic activities, the long-term impact of exposure to terrorist attacks on productivity and outpatient service utilization among workers in NYC is assessed. Methods: The impact of the World Trade Center disaster (WTCD) among 1,167 workers in NYC is examined using a prospective cohort design. The study included measures of WTCD exposures, stressful life events, other traumatic events, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and depression, assessed at 1 year and 2 years post-disaster. Results: Bivariate analyses suggest that exposure to WTCD events is associated with high productivity loss at baseline, but not consistently at follow-up. Both PTSD and depression are associated with lower quality workdays at baseline and follow-up, but depression is more consistently associated with high work loss and medical service use. In multivariate analyses, WTCD exposure is associated with productivity loss at baseline, but less consistently at follow-up. At baseline, depression and history of traumatic events are associated with lower quality workdays and negative life events with greater workdays lost. Multivariate analyses at follow-up indicated that experiencing negative life events is associated with higher workdays lost and lower quality workdays and that PTSD is associated with lower quality workdays. Similar regression models suggested that increased outpatient service use is associated with depression and lifetime traumatic events at baseline and with negative life events at follow-up. Conclusion: This study suggests that while the WTCD had an impact on worker productivity within the first year after the attack, this did not generally persist, especially after controlling for baseline status. Having PTSD or experiencing stressful life events at follow-up, however, is associated with lower quality workdays, even after controlling for baseline status. (American Journal of Industrial Medicine, August 2008)
  
• Doctors Say More Funding Needed To Treat 9/11 Responders ... Seven years after the terror attacks on the World Trade Center, hundreds who served as first responders are still suffering health problems, and despite a new $9 million federal grant for treatment and monitoring, doctors say more money is needed. The Long Island World Trade Center Monitoring and Treatment Program at Stony Brook University Medical Center received the funding in a newly announced grant from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, an arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The money will pay for treatment and patient monitoring through next July. Dr. Benjamin Luft, the program's director, said yesterday the difference between the medical conditions seen shortly after the attacks and those being treated now has been the transformation from acute illnesses to chronic ones. Respiratory problems, gastrointestinal conditions and post-traumatic stress disorder are common and often chronic for those who worked at Ground Zero, Luft said. "We have about 4,500 people in the program," he said, "many of whom suffer from a wide variety of problems and we continue to do our surveillance for new things that might evolve, whether it's cancers or autoimmune diseases." ... (Newsday, by Delthia Ricks, August 15, 2008)
  
• Deutsche One Year Later: Families STill Waiting For Answers As They Grieve ... The deadly fire came after years of Community Board 1 and other local residents and activists warning that the building was unsafe. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which owns the building, hired an asbestos decontamination subcontractor who had no experience and alleged mob ties. A series of accidents led up to the fire, and each time the community raised an alarm. Each time, they were ignored. In the year since the fire, abatement work at the building has resumed under a new subcontractor and much stricter oversight, but demolition work is not expected to start until early next year. In response to residents’ confusion and fear on the day of the fire, the city launched a widely hailed emergency notification system. But community members still want more transparency from the L.M.D.C., especially regarding the chain of command. ... Graffagnino Sr. places the bulk of the responsibility for last August’s fire on the L.M.D.C. He is suing them, along with the city, Department of Buildings, Fire Department, contractor Bovis Lend Lease and subcontractor John Galt Corp. Beddia’s family filed a similar civil suit. Both suits are on hold while the district attorney investigates criminal charges. Graffagnino said the district attorney was supposed to do indictments this summer but now pushed them to September or October. A source told Downtown Express that the grand jury has the month of August off and intends to wrap up the indictments when they return in September. Meanwhile, Graffagnino is getting impatient. ... Community Board 1 passed a resolution several years ago warning the L.M.D.C. about John Galt Corp., but the L.M.D.C. ignored the warning. After the fire, C.B. 1 submitted the resolution to the D.A.’s office, hoping to make the case that the L.M.D.C. was negligent in hiring John Galt since the L.M.D.C. had reason to believe the subcontractor was unfit for the job, a senior C.B. 1 official said. A source briefed on the D.A. investigation told Downtown Express last year that while the criminal investigation is taking precedence, the D.A. plans to release a report citing the non-criminal government mistakes that led to the fatal fire. L.M.D.C. chairperson Avi Schick declined to comment for this story. ... (Downtown Express, by Julie Shapiro, Aug. 15-21, 2008)
  
• Under Cover: No demo -- As a political ploy, the City University of New York may leave the damaged Fiterman Hall standing in an effort to convince the city to cough up cash to rebuild it. CUNY is currently decontaminating Fiterman Hall, a classroom building ruined on 9/11, and then they had planned to demolish it. CUNY has plenty of money to cover both the cleaning and the demolition, and the building could be ready to come down later this year. But a source who spoke with Iris Weinshall, CUNY’s vice chancellor, tells UnderCover that Weinshall may put the demo on hold to try and get the $78.7 million she and many others say the city owes. That could leave the blighted building casting a shadow over the Downtown rebuilding effort for even more years. “That would be a very unpopular move,” said Julie Menin, chairperson of Community Board 1, when told of Weinshall’s plans. “Fiterman Hall and 130 Liberty St. are the very bleak symbols that still exist in this community. It’s a constant reminder, that seven years passed and both buildings are still there.” CUNY is angling to get the rebuilding money in the city’s September capital budget, but the Mayor’s Office wouldn’t comment on how likely that is. Michael Arena, CUNY spokesperson, would not confirm or deny that CUNY might put the demo on hold. ... (Downtown Express, Aug. 15-21, 2008)
  
• Push for better building safety at Deutsche and beyond ... Of the 885 state, federal and international buildings in New York City that are exempt from city codes, one stands out in Borough President Scott Stringer’s mind: The former Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty St. “That was the worst example of stumbling and bungling and incompetence that resulted in death and revisiting 9/11 for the community,” Stringer told Downtown Express last week. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. was in the process of decontaminating and demolishing the former Deutsche Bank building, which was damaged on 9/11, when a fire broke out last Aug. 18 and killed two firefighters. The L.M.D.C., a subsidiary of a state public authority, does not have to follow city codes. While the L.M.D.C. allowed Buildings Department inspectors inside the building before the fire, the building’s broken standpipe was never inspected. Since last August, 130 Liberty St. has been awash with federal, state and city inspectors, and L.M.D.C. spokesperson Mike Murphy assures that the L.M.D.C. is following city codes. But Joseph Graffagnino Sr., whose son was killed in the fire, said the L.M.D.C. has a record of broken promises. “They said they would comply, but they didn’t,” Graffagnino said. “That’s why two people died.” In the year since the fire, the L.M.D.C. and contractor Bovis Lend Lease have made many safety changes at 130 Liberty St., including adding a standpipe alarm that would detect malfunctions, installing an external switch to turn off the negative air pressure in the building and constructing two internal fire-rated stairwells. The L.M.D.C. also promised to separate the decontamination and demolition of the building, which the community had strongly urged them to do for years. “They made it safer because they had to,” Graffagnino said. “If it wasn’t for the media on their case, they wouldn’t do anything. If they could save a dollar — they don’t care. They’re being forced to comply.” Earlier this summer, Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler recommended that the city apply the L.M.D.C.’s new safety measures to all abatement and demolition projects in the city. Among the recommendations is a zero-tolerance policy on smoking, since investigators believe a worker’s cigarette reportedly started the Deutsche Bank fire. But, as Borough President Stringer put it at a press conference Sunday: What’s the point of New York City having the best building code in the country, if hundreds of buildings within the city’s borders don’t have to comply? Jim Riches, a retired F.D.N.Y. deputy chief whose firefighter son was killed on 9/11, said the agencies currently exempt from the city’s codes will respond to nothing less than legislation. He scoffed at memorandums of understanding, agreements in which agencies voluntarily put themselves under the city’s control. “A memorandum of understanding means nothing,” he said. “It’s like piece of paper you throw in the garbage.” State Sen. Martin Connor said Sunday that he would introduce legislation to bring state buildings under the city’s jurisdiction. ... (Downtown Express, by Julie Shapiro, Aug. 15-21, 2008)
  
• Community Leaders Say After the Deaths, Warnings are Heeded ... In the years before the fatal fire at 130 Liberty St., Lower Manhattan residents asked one question over and over: What would it take to get the government to listen to warnings about the toxic skyscraper? On Aug. 18, 2007, the residents got their answer. A fire tore through the former Deutsche Bank building that day, killing two firefighters. The community was left with their own warnings ringing in their ears, knowing the deaths could have been prevented. “Our worst fears were realized,” said Catherine McVay Hughes, chairperson of Community Board 1’s W.T.C. Redevelopment Committee. “The public had tried to do everything to prevent such a tragedy from happening. Are they listening to us more now? Tragically, yes.” For Rob Spencer, director of media services at the Organization of Staff Analysts union, the events of Aug. 18 played out almost in slow motion, as the horror the community had predicted came to fruition. The feeling of large-scale tragedy recalled 9/11, he said. In the months that followed the fire, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which owns the building, slowly started implementing the safety suggestions the community made years earlier. The L.M.D.C. fired subcontractor John Galt Corp., a company with little experience and reported mob ties (though John Galt caused yet another accident on the site five days after the fire, sending a pallet jack over the edge of the building and injuring two firefighters, one seriously). Six months after the fire, the L.M.D.C. finally agreed to finish decontaminating the building before resuming demolition. “Sadly, people have to die for things to get better,” said Esther Regelson, who lives several blocks from 130 Liberty St. “That’s horrendous…. You can yell and scream up the wazoo that this is unsafe [but] they don’t listen until someone really is gone for good.” Spencer agreed that the L.M.D.C. is listening to the community “a little bit more,” but he pointed out that L.M.D.C. officials still sometimes broadcast the “blame the community” message. One of the biggest things the community pushed for both before and after the fire was an emergency notification system. ... After the fire and Moore and other activists’ renewed pleas, the city launched Notify NYC, a pilot notification program that sends e-mails and text messages to people in Lower Manhattan and several other neighborhoods. So far, 6,126 people have signed up for the Lower Manhattan notifications, said Jason Post, spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office. The city plans to announce the results of the pilot program and possible next steps by the end of the year, Post said. ... Silver opened his Community Advisory Committee meeting Aug. 13 with a moment of silence in honor of the one-year anniversary of the fire. Silver then said that the task force’s work was far from over, as the project still needs oversight, said C.B. 1’s Hughes, who attended. Kimberly Flynn, head of 9/11 Environmental Action, wants to see “preventative accountability,” meaning that the L.M.D.C. and its contractors would be held accountable for problems before someone gets hurt, not after. The inspections and violations should be more public and transparent, so the community can have a larger role, Flynn said. Flynn wants the L.M.D.C. to host the government regulators at a public meeting to present their inspection schedules, but Mike Murphy, L.M.D.C. spokesperson, said the L.M.D.C. cannot force the regulators to attend. Murphy said the L.M.D.C.’s next public meeting on 130 Liberty St., sometime this fall, will focus on a draft of the demolition plan. Like Flynn, many local residents and activists were keeping a vigilant watch on the project before the fire, and while they see improvements, they have not let down their guard. Moore had an uncomfortably close view of the accidents that preceded the fire from her apartment next-door to the Deutsche Bank building. A 15-foot steel pipe crashed through the roof of the 10/10 firehouse in May 2007, injuring two firefighters. The pipe fell just feet from Moore’s bedroom window. Now, Moore said she feels fairly safe living next to 130 Liberty St. because the government agencies seem more aware of the potential dangers. Still, she said, “Any of us in this area could fall victim to any accident.” No one is keeping closer tabs on the continuing violations at 130 Liberty St. than Spencer, from the Organization of Staff Analysts union, which has members working near the building. He checks the Buildings Department Web site regularly and finds problems ranging from a falling steel disc to the accumulation of flammable material. Since work on the building resumed, the Department of Buildings has issued a handful of stop-work orders for the violations, but they never lasted long. While Spencer called the violations “concerning,” he is hopeful that the increased oversight on the project means that it is safer. “We’ve made progress, but I’m leery of being too happy,” Spencer said. “You never know. You just never know.” The one-year anniversary of the 130 Liberty St. fire is another date for Downtown residents to add to the list of tragedies that are commemorated yearly. Andy Jurinko, Pat Moore’s husband, said he is growing weary of the growing list: The 1993 W.T.C. bombing, 9/11 and now Aug. 18, 2007. “I try to ignore them as much as possible, to be honest,” Jurinko said from his home of 31 years across from ground zero. “Enough is enough.” Of the triad of anniversaries, Aug. 18 is the bitterest, Jurinko said, because terrorists didn’t cause it. “It was a kind of self-inflicted wound,” Jurinko said. “It was two guys dying over a derelict building that should have been taken down four years earlier, or five…. It’s just a nightmare.” Adding to the nightmare is the fact that Jurinko doesn’t know whom to blame.“It’s hard to narrow it down as to who is the criminal,” Jurinko said. “When everybody’s guilty, I guess nobody’s guilty, really. It’s diffused, it’s nebulous, it’s all over the goddamn place. It’s a tangled web of responsibility.” (Downtown Express, by Julie Shapiro, Aug. 15-21, 2008)
  
• 9/11 Insurance Company Working Well, IG Says -- Company established by $1-billion FEMA grant fulfiling its mandate... The insurance company set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to handle the claims of support personnel after the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11 has been doing its job well, although FEMA could exercise greater oversight on the company, according to a review by the inspector general (IG) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released Tuesday. FEMA established the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company in July 2004, after private insurance companies refused to provide coverage to New York City for the health complaints of contractors who worked at the site in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. FEMA funded the company with a $1 billion grant, most of which has been unspent as US courts dealt with various lawsuits over the claims of workers. The DHS IG conducted its review in response to an inquiry by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who questioned if The Captive acted properly in litigating every individual claim before it and if the company has an adequate process for handling the claims. The congressmen also inquired how much the company has spent to date. The IG's office answered those questions in the wake of a ruling by a US appeals court in March 2008 that New York City and state were not immune to suit by the claimant contractors, which largely consist of debris removers from about 140 companies. As of that time, the billion-dollar fund remained largely untouched--and indeed had grown through investments--as no settlements had been made to any cases alleging respiratory problems, stomach or intestinal problems, or cancer. The fund had settled with six plaintiffs with claims of broken bones and cuts. The Captive acted correctly in litigating the claims under the law that created it (PL 108-7), the IG found, because it is responsible for following the mandate of the insured as a third-party liability insurance company. "The ongoing litigation regarding debris removal claims with which the Captive is involved, while delaying possible relief to those with health problems arising from debris removal work, conforms to the Captive's mandate as an insurance company to defend an insured against any suit seeking any damages," the IG report read. "Immunity is an available defense which New York City and contractors have urged the Captive to assert. In interposing immunity defenses, the Captive is not acting inconsistently with its charter[.]" The report also noted that The Captive contracted GAB Robins, a risk management services company, to develop and implement claims procedures that support the insurance company's mandate. While the IG's office believed The Captive has operated according to its charter, it "discovered specific areas related to financial reporting and procurement where FEMA's internal controls should be strengthened" to provide increased oversight of the billion-dollar grant fund. As such, the IG recommended FEMA implement review processes and build stronger communications between The Captive and the agency's young Grants Management Branch. In a written response, FEMA largely agreed with the recommendations. (HS Today - Homeland Security Insight & Analysis, 13 August 2008)
  
• NIOSH Awards $9 Million to SBU 9/11 First Responder Program ... (ohsonline.com, August 11, 2008)
  
• Outside asbestos work prompts surprise & explanation ... Neighbors were surprised to see packages with asbestos being loaded outside of Fiterman Hall last week after officials had suggested all hazardous materials would be loaded in the building. Airtek Environmental Corp., which is decontaminating the building, took responsibility for providing incorrect information, but said the work poses no danger to the public because the packages are sealed inside the building. ... When Paul Stein walked past Fiterman Hall last Thursday night, he noticed something odd. Along W. Broadway, workers with respirators were loading plastic-wrapped boxes from Fiterman Hall into a trailer. The trailer was marked: DANGER ASBESTOS. “It’s alarming to see people with their faces covered with respirators,” said Stein, health and safety chairperson of the New York State Public Employees Federation. “It’s a scary thing to see right on your street.” Fiterman Hall, a City University of New York classroom building, was damaged on 9/11 when 7 W.T.C. collapsed into it. The building is currently being decontaminated so it can be safely demolished. The community was surprised to see respirator-wearing workers along a public street, because they expected all hazardous materials to be loaded inside the building. At public presentations, representatives of Airtek Environmental Corp., the company charged with decontaminating Fiterman, touted the internal loading dock as providing an extra layer of protection to the public, Stein and others said. “None of us remember any emphasis on contaminated materials being loaded out on the street,” said Kimberly Flynn, head of 9/11 Environmental Action. Rather, Lewis emphasized the internal loading dock, and “We thought, ‘Oh, that’s really great, we don’t need to worry about any release happening out in the community,’” Flynn said. One of the “frequently asked questions” on Fiterman Hall’s Web site also refers exclusively to the internal loading dock. ... (Downtown Express, By Julie Shapiro, August 1 - 7, 2008)
  
• Kevin M. Delano, firefighter and 9/11 rescue worker ... Kevin M. Delano, a firefighter who worked to find survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, has died of leukemia. The former Howard Beach, Queens, resident was 54 and died July 30. As a member of Ladder 142 in Ozone Park, Queens, Delano was one of the first people to arrive at the rubble of Ground Zero after the skyscrapers crumbled. He worked at the site for more than 40 hours straight. He had hoped to find any survivors, but especially sought his close friend, Ray York, of Howard Beach, who was killed. (Newsday, by Zachary R. Dowdy, August 6, 2008)
  
• CBC/NY TIMES 2006 Documentary  9/11's Toxic Legacy is up on YouTube
  Part 1  
  Part 2  
  Part 3  
  Part 4  
  Part 5  
  

JULY

• Mayor Pushes Long Term Health Program for 9/11 Workers ... Mayor Michael Bloomberg was in Washington, D.C. today, continuing his push for a long-term program aimed at helping September 11th recovery workers and residents who were exposed to toxic dust and debris. Testifying before a House subcommittee, he called the federal effort on Ground Zero health "uncertain and insufficient." He said the city plans on spending about $100 million on the issue over the next three years , but that long-term treatment for those who are sick, or who could become sick, is a national responsibility. ... (NY1, Jul 31, 2008)
  
• Mayor To Testify On 9/11 Workers' Health Bill ... (NY1, Jul 31, 2008)
  
• New Voice Is Raised for the City Among Solons in Washington ... WASHINGTON — When Mayor Bloomberg testifies here this morning before a House subcommittee, lawmakers will hear a familiar plea: The city needs more federal aid for rescue workers who toiled at ground zero after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The difference today will be a new voice added to the clarion call: that of Rep. Peter King, the veteran Long Island Republican familiar to many New Yorkers for his hard-line stance on homeland security and illegal immigration. Mr. King will appear alongside Mr. Bloomberg and Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney as he joins the push for funding to monitor and treat illnesses linked to the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The testimony on the September 11 health issue is a first for the eight-term lawmaker, but it probably will not be the last. With the likelihood growing that the city will lose its lone Republican representative in Congress, Mr. King, 64, has quietly emerged as a go-to Republican for the five boroughs, taking over a role long held by Rep. Vito Fossella of Staten Island, who is leaving his seat following a drunken driving arrest and the public disclosure of an extramarital affair.... (NY Sun, by Russell Berman, July 31, 2008)
  
• 9/11 AID MAY $ICK IT TO US ... Federal legislation to help those suffering health problems from the World Trade Center terrorist attacks could cost taxpayers up to $13 billion, The Post has learned. The bill, which will go before a House hearing today and is strongly backed by Mayor Bloomberg, would reopen the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund and would provide funding for medical care for downtown residents and for firefighters, cops, EMTs and construction workers who worked at Ground Zero. The preliminary estimate of the cost of the measure by the Congressional Budget Office ranged from $8 billion to $13 billion, congressional sources said. The staggering cost figure hasn't been publicly disclosed yet but was revealed to The Post by sources. Under the bill, roughly 35,000 people living within 1.5 miles of Ground Zero would be eligible for medical benefits at a projected cost of $3.1 billion. Thousands of first-responders would also receive medical aid at a cost of $2 billion. As many as 85,000 first-responders could be eligible for medical aid. But the overall cost for their care is less than for residents because most of the first-responders have health insurance that covers a large share of their medical bills, sources said. The price for reopening the victims' fund was harder to calculate because congressional analysts couldn't predict how many people would apply. They put the cost at anywhere from $3 billion to $8 billion, sources said. The legislation has the active support of Bloomberg, who last month met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to push for its passage. If approved, the bill would spare the city from massive liability by letting sick workers, or families of those who died, apply for aid from a reopened and federally financed Victim Compensation Fund. After the terror attacks, the federal fund paid out $6 billion to families of those who died on 9/11 and another $1 billion to the injured through 2003. The current bill is far less costly than an earlier version that was estimated at $30 billion. (NYPost, by Daphne Retter & Tom Topousis, July 31, 2008) ....
• Vito Vetoes Attack on 9/11 Health Bill ... A top GOP lawmaker on Thursday slammed a 9/11 health bailout bill for New York City as too big, only to face a feisty fellow Republican who backs it: Rep. Vito Fossella. Texas Rep. Joe Barton threatened to vote against the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act drafted by a bipartisan group of city lawmakers led by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan). Addressing Mayor Bloomberg, who testified for the bill at a House hearing, Barton griped that it covers too many "who just happened to be in the vicinity" of the twin towers on 9/11. "It appears on the surface, to be as polite as I can, to be somewhat more comprehensive and beneficial than it really needs to be," Barton told the panel. Bloomberg and his allies hope the legislation to reopen the federal victims fund and treat those who got sick will get passed before the attacks' seventh anniversary next month. But Barton accused Democrats of moving too quickly on a bill introduced just last week, and "haste does make waste." But Fossella - soon to retire as a Staten Island rep because of a May drunken-driving arrest that led to disclosing his secret family in Virginia - blasted the GOP colleague seated beside him. "I have the deepest respect for Mr. Barton," Fossella said frostily, "but almost seven years, to me, is not haste." New York has fought for years to get the feds to aid people sickened after the terror attacks, and any concerns over waste "are unfounded," Fossella added. ... (Daily News, by James Gordon Meek, July 31, 2008)
• Skyscraper Safety Campaign applauds NYPD Security Plan at GZ,& Calls for full enforcement of NYC codes ... The Skyscraper Safety Campaign (SSC)  commends Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly on the recent agreement between the City of New York and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey that gives the New York City Police Department primary responsibility for security at the World Trade Center site.
  This is extremely significant news for all who will visit, work, or respond to emergencies at the WTC site as well as for the surrounding downtown community. The NYPD will bring a proven record of expertise and transparency to policing efforts at Ground Zero which will work towards ameliorating the obvious security design flaws of the underground truck and tour bus parking areas. In addition,  the severe security deficiencies of the WTC underground memorial and museum call for a proven record of achievement and reliability associated with the NYPD security and anti-terrorism programs.  Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly are to be congratulated for  this benchmark achievement.
  Although this agreement is a significant milestone on the road toward comprehensive security at the nation's number one terrorist target, we are still a long distance from total safety at the WTC site. The SSC calls on the City of New York to continue  efforts at ensuring not only a secure World Trade Center site but a safe World Trade Center site as well. The WTC buildings remain essentially above the law by virtue of their immunities and exemptions from all NYC Building and Fire codes, just as the original WTC was. The necessity for the future WTC site to be constructed under the legal jurisdiction of the codes of the NYC Building and Fire departments is just as important as security measures at this ultra sensitive location. In this city, no buildings - especially the WTC - should be above the law.   
  Specifically, the SSC asks the City of New York to:
  1)  Insist that the Port Authority of NY/NJ relinquish its fire and building code immunities and exemptions from NYC codes. 
  2)  Ensure that the entire World Trade Center site will be constructed under the legal jurisdiction of  NYC building and fire codes. 
  3)  Eliminate previous meaningless and unenforceable code compliance "memorandums of understanding" between NYC & the Port Authority,  and instead, institute code compliance requirements such as plan reviews, building permits, periodic unannounced inspections with enforceable findings, certificates of occupancy and the ability to vacate any unsafe structures just like any other privately owned building in  NY City.
  4)  Address the significant dangers posed by the underground museum and memorial which will descend to as much as seven stories below ground. .  With thousands of visitors descending below grade, any emergency will present a life safety risk of immense proportions.  This dangerous architectural design with the extreme remoteness of emergency escape stairwells will  necessitate that fleeing visitors will travel lengthy horizontal distances to reach stairwells which will allow them to climb back up to street level. Many will literally have to travel off site to stairwells across West Street, across Liberty Street, and into the Calatrava transit hub.  This long horizontal trek, combined with a seven story ascent in some cases, defies all safety logic.  It will be impossible to move large numbers of people, especially the disabled , up to grade level as well. In addition, the large square footage and depth of the museum will greatly hinder quick emergency responder access & safety.
  The Skyscraper Safety Campaign considers the WTC memorial/museum design to be inherently perilous for  visitors, emergency responders, and the community at large and believes it must be modified to ensure  public safety at the WTC site by safe design and full enforcement of NYC building and fire codes. In this way, the City of NY can aspire to achieve the goals of a safe as well as secure WTC site for the millions of people who will visit this National Memorial. (07/28/08)
  
• Judge Alvin Hellerstein does right by 9/11 families and rescue workers ... Isn't it nice when a judge strikes a blow for justice? Congratulations go to Judge Alvin Hellerstein of Manhattan Federal Court, who is shielding 9/11 victims' families from lawyers with dollar signs in their eyes. Bonus: Hellerstein's act could likewise shield thousands of sick rescue and recovery workers now seeking fair compensation for their suffering. The judge, who is overseeing all the 9/11-related litigation, rejected a settlement for the families of four Pentagon victims who chose to sue the airlines rather than join the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. While he had previously approved payments to the plaintiffs of $5.5 million, $7 million and two for $8 million, he stopped the clock when told the Maryland law firm of Azrael, Gann & Franz was going to collect 25%, or $7.125 million. While a 25% fee for legal work is typical, the judge ruled that this is "not an ordinary case." The obvious obviously needed to be stated. Hellerstein believes that 15% is enough and should be the limit in any 9/11 case. Repeat: Any 9/11 case. Regarding the Maryland firm, the judge wrote: "Azrael's entire strategy seems to have been to coast on the work of others, and to wait for last position before entering into any meaningful settlement discussions with respect to his clients." And he hammered on: "Azrael's strategy made little contribution to the progress of the cases before me, or to the settlements that largely have resolved this litigation; indeed, his strategy is now an affront to the hard work that others contributed in the belief that they would not be prejudiced in comparison to later settlers." By law, to ensure consistent treatment of all parties, every 9/11 case will be handled by a single court, Manhattan Federal. And Hellerstein will preside. His ruling should be a caution to the attorneys heading up the case on behalf of the WTC sick. The lawyers have been dreaming of reaping as much as 40% of the $1 billion pie Congress set aside for claims. If a $7.125 million payday is thought out of bounds, a $400 million jackpot should have no chance. ... (NYDailyNews, July 27, 2008)
• Building Costs Soar, Toxic Dust Lingers and Plans Drag at Fixup Near WTC ... The badly damaged 15-story hulk sits on the north rim of Ground Zero, unchanged nearly seven years after the dark hour its side was ripped open on Sept. 11, 2001. A scarred anomaly amid the rebirth of the World Trade Center, the wreck known as Fiterman Hall still isn't fixed - while the cost to taxpayers of rebuilding has nearly doubled. Delayed by environmental concerns and money disputes, the cost of fixing Fiterman is expected to total $325 million. Its owner, the City University of New York, has changed its vision about what to do with Fiterman, starting small and adding to its wish list for a "state-of-the-art vertical campus." The rising costs have infuriated the city, which is funding half the project, and, as a result, officials are withholding support - a move that could further delay elimination of that last reminder of Sept. 11. In June, CUNY asked Mayor Bloomberg to appropriate $71.2 million extra. He didn't. ... (NYDaily News, by Robert Gearty, July 26, 2008)
• After the tragedy: Vent? Not necessarily ... On the heels of events such as terrorist attacks, say researchers, some people do better to leave things unsaid for a while. ... "The common assumption is that in order to successfully cope with a traumatic or disturbing event, people need to talk about it, to express their feelings," says Mark Seery, psychologist at the University of Buffalo. "And if they don't, they're suppressing true feelings and that will cause problems down the road." But hold on a minute. That has simply not been proved true for all people in all circumstances, Seery says. His most recent research, in the June issue of Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, shows that after a large-scale traumatic event, such as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, quickly talking about one's emotions isn't necessarily for the best. "In the immediate aftermath of a collective trauma, it's perfectly healthy to not want to express your thoughts and feelings," he says. In fact, it can do more harm than good. Some people have periods of what psychologists call "healthy denial." Like Scarlet O'Hara, they cope by promising themselves to think about it tomorrow. Being pushed to give voice to their worst reactions too soon could embed the worst of it in memory and cause them to dwell on the tragedy. And if they can't or won't talk, urging them to act against their instincts could make them think that something is wrong with them. The new study is in line with other mental health research that suggests some things are better left temporarily unsaid -- at least for some people. Those who immediately talk about the trauma of an attack or a hurricane can find, as often as not, that airing it doesn't change the memory and fails to bring relief. Seery found that those who responded quickly to prompts to write online about the attacks had higher levels of stress two weeks later. Months later, they were more likely to have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. In his bereavement research, James Pennebaker, chair of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, found that choosing not to express feelings in the face of a death reflected resilience, rather than vulnerability. Pennebaker's research examines expressive emoting, and research results on bereavement and trauma often overlap. None of this negates the value of talk therapy or of expressing thoughts and emotions when it feels right. But the new research suggests that widespread use of clinical techniques that are proved to help some situations -- like a couple in marital trouble or a depressed person exploring emotions with a therapist -- has gotten ahead of the evidence on the best course of mental healthcare after a disaster. "Rubbing people's noses in their miserable experiences immediately after is probably bad for a significant number of people," Pennebaker says. .... (LATimes, By Susan Brink, July 28, 2008)
  
• Statement from Construction Companies on 9/11 Congressional Health and Compensation Act-HR 6594 ... Construction companies involved in the clean-up of the World Trade Center after the 2001 terrorist attack strongly support the re-introduction of H.R. 6594, an improved version of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act that makes significant progress in resolving the issues faced by the construction companies and workers responding to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The legislation is a bipartisan solution that addresses the health and liability issues for the workers and the construction companies that came to the aid of the nation on 9/11. Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Vito Fossella (R-NY), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Peter King (R-NY), Zoe Lofgren (D-Ca), and Steve King (R-IA) have worked hard to draft this legislation, which is designed to help heal the wounds of 9/11. The companies will continue to work with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic and Republican leadership in Congress on this legislation to meet the significant challenges facing all concerned so that it can be approved this year. The companies are Bovis Lend Lease LMB, Inc., Tully Construction Co. Inc., Turner Construction Company, AMEC Construction Management, Inc., and Plaza Construction Corporation. (Reuters, SOURCE Bovis Lend Lease LMB, Inc.; July 24, 2008)
• US To Grant $30 Million for Civillians' 9/11 Ailments ... The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to announce on Thursday that it plans to award $30 million to hospitals and clinics that monitor and treat residents, students and other so-called nonresponders who were exposed to dust and smoke at ground zero. These nonresponders were not among the rescue and recovery workers sent to the World Trade Center site after the twin towers were destroyed on 9/11. Some of those workers have complained of respiratory and gastrointestinal ailments. Thousands of firefighters, for example, developed what has become known as the World Trade Center cough. Christine Branche, the acting director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, said in an interview on Wednesday that the money was set aside in an appropriations bill that Congress passed and President Bush signed in December. She said it would be given as grants in three installments of $10 million, and would go to as many as three hospitals or clinics. Those institutions will have to apply for the grants. Dr. Branche said she did not know how many might apply. A spokesman for one place that has treated people exposed to the dust and smoke from the trade center site, the W.T.C. Environmental Health Center at Bellevue Hospital Center, said he had not heard about the grants until a reporter called. But he said he hoped there would be “funding for support services for area residents, cleanup workers and others served by our program.” Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, chairman of the department of community and preventive medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, which runs a center that has examined more than 15,000 ground zero workers and volunteers, said the center would decide whether to apply once details about the grants were formally announced. “This is a good thing,” Dr. Landrigan said. “People who lived and worked in Lower Manhattan in the days and weeks after 9/11 were exposed to the dust, and many have never been properly treated.” ... (NYTimes, by james Barron, July 24, 2008)
  
• Don’t blame community... To The Editor: A recent article implies that the concerns of the local community were to blame for the delays in the demolition of the Deutsche Bank building, located at 130 Liberty St. (news article, July 4 – 10, “L.M.D.C. head blames C.B. 1 for some Deutsche delays”). As the Congressman who represents that area, I can unequivocally say that nothing could be further from the truth. While there are many reasons for the time consuming demolition, the community is not to blame for delays. Here are just two examples that demonstrate this. First, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the building’s owner, hired John Galt to conduct the demolition, despite concerns raised in C.B. 1 resolutions and the fact that they had never handled a demolition projection of this scale or unique nature. We know that John Galt ignored key safety guidelines for the demolition, perhaps contributing to the tragic fire that happened there last year. Second, the demolition is guided by entirely appropriate and legally mandated environmental safety rules, rules that the L.M.D.C. attempted to dismantle. Nothing should be done to harm the safety of local residents or the demolition workers – and that goal should be shared by all the parties involved. It is indisputable that C.B. 1 has shown strong leadership in trying to ensure that residents and workers are protected and that the demolition moves forward expeditiously. I know that we can all agree that this demolition must happen safely and swiftly, and that these two goals are not mutually exclusive and can be achieved. We should stop playing the blame game, and instead focus on how we can achieve that goal. Congressman Jerrold Nadler
  To The Editor: We were dismayed to learn that Avi Schick had “blasted” Community Board 1 Chairperson Julie Menin at the June 26 Lower Manhattan Development Corp. board meeting, blaming the community board — and the community it represents — for delays in the 130 Liberty St. demolition necessitated by the decoupling of decontamination work from the work of structurally dismantling the building (news article, July 4 – 10, “L.M.D.C. head blames C.B. 1 for some Deutsche delays”). Schick’s comments, implying that the new plan was adopted solely to please the community, and therefore the community is somehow at fault for the altered timeline, were then unfortunately amplified in a number of the local dailies. When the plan was approved, L.M.D.C. released a statement celebrating it as the result of a productive collaboration among “partners in state and federal government,” who agreed that “safety must be the primary concern.” The new plan was adopted because there was full consensus between the regulatory agencies, the L.M.D.C. — and yes, the community — that decoupling was one of the necessary changes in approach that would provide sufficient protections for the workers on the job; residents, students and workers in the vicinity; and first responders who would be called to the building in the event of an emergency. The community’s concerns about this project are longstanding, reasonable and legitimate. How predictable that we see yet another attempt to lay the project’s problems at the feet of the community when they were brought about by insurance delays, institutional and regulatory failures of every kind and the hiring of incompetent contractors. Schick should publicly renounce his “blame the community” message. Kimberly Flynn and Rob Spencer, The writers are members of the WTC Community-Labor Coalition (Downtown Express, July 18 - 24, 2008)
  
• DEUTSCHE FIRE SPURS MAJOR RULE OVERHAUL ... The death of two firefighters in the former Deutsche Bank building at Ground Zero led the city yesterday to issue sweeping new regulations to avert future tragedies at demolition sites. Some of the revised rules involved common sense. Before Mayor Bloomberg ordered a comprehensive review of procedures following the Aug. 18, 2007, blaze, the Buildings Department didn't notify the Fire Department when it issued a demolition permit. So fire companies drove around searching for abandoned buildings that were about to be taken down, in order to make sure they were safe. "That's nonsensical," said Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler, who led the review. Thanks to a $5 million computer upgrade, fire and buildings officials will now be able to share such information instantly. A ban on smoking at construction sites - believed to be the cause of the Deutsche fire - was strengthened with a "zero tolerance" policy. Among 33 other rules are daily inspection of standpipe connections and valves. The standpipe at Deutsche Bank was mysteriously removed. (NYPost, by David Seifman, July 17, 2008)
• New Buildings Safety Measures Aims For Better Inter-Agency Communication ... The Bloomberg administration unveiled 33 steps it's taking to make the demolition of buildings safer. Many of them fix problems in communication between city agencies that may have contributed to last August's fatal fire at the Deutsche Bank building. Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler says now the buildings department will give the fire department a heads up whenever demolition or asbestos abatement projects begin. That way firefighters know where to conduct inspections. SKYLER: Previously the fire department drove - you know, fire fighters drove around neighborhoods and tried to you know to pick out what was under construction or demolition. That's nonsensical. REPORTER: The FDNY had not inspected the Deutsche Bank site for more than a year before the fire and a broken standpipe made extinguishing it difficult. The recommendations do not address staffing at the fire department, but they do continue the administration's policy of relaxing the frequency of inspections at smaller construction sites so that buildings taller than 75 feet can get more attention. (WNYC, by Matthew Schuerman, July 17, 2008 )
• Bloomberg Offers Measures to Help Agencies Share Info on Building Sites ... Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced broad changes on Wednesday in how the city will regulate building sites and share information between agencies to improve the inspection process and avoid tragedies like last summer’s fire at the Deutsche Bank tower in Lower Manhattan. The 33 recommended measures are an outgrowth of a six-month study by the mayor’s staff, which reviewed flaws in the way the city inspects construction locations, demolition sites and places where asbestos abatement is taking place. Two firefighters died last August after responding to a fire believed to have been started by a discarded cigarette at the former Deutsche Bank tower. The fire became difficult to control because a section of standpipe that provided water to the upper floors had been removed. City officials have said they believe that the missing piece of pipe would have been detected if the assigned fire company had inspected the demolition site every 15 days, as required. The 41-story Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty Street, which had been damaged in the terrorist attack of 2001, was being taken down beam by beam at the same time that asbestos was being removed. Firefighters found themselves inside unmapped territory, where plastic sheeting meant to contain asbestos obscured their view and stairwells were covered by plywood. “It has been nearly one year since the deadly fire broke out during the deconstruction of the former Deutsche Bank building,” Mr. Bloomberg said during a press conference inside City Hall. “The fire, which took the lives of two of New York’s bravest, underscores the inherent danger in asbestos abatement and demolition, especially when these two operations happen simultaneously.” Some of the changes will address conditions that contributed to the fire. Standpipes will be subject to more stringent inspections, for instance, and smoking bans at specified work sites will be strengthened. But the most striking differences will involve the ways that certain city agencies will communicate. Mr. Bloomberg said that the Department of Environmental Protection, Fire Department and Buildings Department will share information about work sites, exchange inspection reports and create a computerized system under the control of the Fire Department that will store a wealth of data accessible to all three agencies. The changes are meant to increase the efficiency of construction and demolition site inspections. Soon after the Deutsche Bank fatalities, high-ranking fire officials said the rule on inspections was followed inconsistently and was difficult to enforce because the Fire Department received no official notice of construction or demolition jobs from the Buildings Department. Most fire companies found out about buildings being raised or taken down in their area simply by driving though the streets surrounding their fire houses. The new regulations would require that the Fire Department inspect buildings shorter than 75 feet only once every 30 days and are designed to make the 15-day inspections for taller buildings more organized. Mr. Bloomberg said that the Buildings Department would formally notify the Fire Department whenever a demolition permit is issued and send a second notification when demolition begins. The changes will also require the Department of Environmental Protection to tell the Buildings Department and the Fire Department about asbestos abatement jobs, and call for inspectors for all three agencies to watch for conditions that might concern other agencies in addition to those that relate to their own. At one point in his address, Mr. Bloomberg appeared to bristle at a question from a reporter on whether the cost of implementing the new rules would be onerous. “I don’t think that it is a very big economic cost in terms of writing checks,” the mayor said. “I do think that if we don’t do this, it is a terrible cost in terms of lives.” (NYTimes, by Colin Moynihan, July 17, 2008)
  
• A Pointless Departure ... Just why John Howard was denied reappointment as head of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health is a mystery that deserves to be cleared up. But whatever the reasons for it, the timing of his departure — in the waning months of the Bush administration — could hardly have been worse. Programs often slip badly as an administration winds down, and we fear that without Dr. Howard’s leadership, the agency’s exemplary work on behalf of ground zero workers will stall. Dr. Howard’s six-year term as director of the institute, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention within the Department of Health and Human Services, expires on Monday. He had asked to be reappointed, but just before the long July Fourth weekend Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the disease control centers, let him know that she was beginning a search for a new director. Dr. Howard has gained particular renown over the past two years for coordinating and championing health programs for workers who were sickened at ground zero, including screening, monitoring and treatment. Both the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the Chamber of Commerce urged his reappointment, at least on an interim basis. So did the American Society of Safety Engineers and the American Industrial Hygiene Association, which called him “the most respected leader in NIOSH’s history.” Several House members from New York, both of New York’s senators and the state’s governor, David Paterson, all want Dr. Howard kept on. Some members of Congress believe that the White House or the health and human services secretary, Michael Leavitt, wanted him out because he was pushing for 9/11 health programs that they deemed too costly. Others believe that he simply ran afoul of Dr. Gerberding, who had tried to oust him in a reorganization plan four years ago but failed. A C.D.C. spokesman’s explanation — that Dr. Gerberding had decided to “go in a different direction” — makes no sense with so little time left to go in any new direction. Surely it would make more sense to reinstate Dr. Howard for the rest of this year so that he can continue his important work. Then the next president could decide whether to give him another six-year term. (NYTimes Editorial, July 11, 2008)
  
• Deutsche Bank Demo: Safety Upgraded But No End in Sight ... Fire and worker-safety protocols in the demolition of the Deutsche Bank building in lower Manhattan, where two Firefighters were killed in a fire last August, have been dramatically overhauled, officials from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the primary contractors said during a public hearing July 1 at the LMDC's headquarters. ... FDNY Must Okay 'Hot Work' -- Mr. Master explained that no "hot work" such as welding or cutting could be done on the site without Fire Department approval and that no flammable gas or combustible materials could be left on the floors. There are now 11 fire extinguishers on each floor and the standpipe is inspected six times per day. Bovis has also hired fire-safety patrollers, and the FDNY keeps two Chiefs at the site. The State Attorney General and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office are still investigating the fire. Firefighter unions have faulted the FDNY for failing to regularly inspect the site before the fire. Some firefighter advocates at last week's meeting believed there were still unanswered questions. "Who knew about what when?" Uniformed Firefighters Association Health and Safety Officer William Romaka asked rhetorically. "Did I really expect them to answer it? They're not going to answer something like that anyway. I think it's hard to be satisfied when there are always going to be open-ended questions." 'A Lot More Vigilant Now' -- Glenn Corbett, an Associate Professor of Fire Science at John Jay College, said he saw improvements in the way fire safety was handled at the site, but added that the measures Bovis had implemented should have been there before the fatal fire. "I'm pleased to hear that there was significant change made as far as the combustibility of the containment protocols that they put in the place," he said. "It seems like the Fire Department is a lot more vigilant over this building." Twenty-six floors are still standing at the Deutsche Bank building, with full decontamination completely down to the 20th floor. Floors 12 though 19 are currently being abated. Before the August fire, the building had been scheduled to be demolished by December, but the overhauls in protocol have delayed completion of the demolition indefinitely. "This is the part you don't want to hear," said Roy Johnson of LVI Services, the company responsible for decontaminating the building. "Our initial schedule kind of went out the window. We are reluctant to commit to a deadline or a timeline." Outside the LMDC's headquarters before the meeting, Public Employees Federation rep Paul Stein performed a song on his accordion that he wrote before the August fire when advocates were complaining that the demolition process was being significantly delayed. Mr. Stein said last week that the lyrics were still timely. "Pataki, Spitzer, Bloomberg, Bovis Lend Lease and John Galt," he sang, "These politicians, corporations, they are all at fault. Again I'll explain, it's really a shame that Deutsche Bank is still a standing hell." (The Chief-Leader, by Ari Paul, July 11, 2008)
• Bloomberg Wants 9/11 Health Chief Rehired ... Mayor Michael Bloomberg today joined the chorus of local leaders protesting last week's firing of Washington's point man on World Trade Center health issues. Bloomberg praised John Howard for having a thorough knowledge of the situation - and for being an advocate for federal funding of screening and treatment programs. And Bloomberg, speaking at Staten Island’s St. George Ferry Terminal, says the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services should not have terminated Howard's position. BLOOMBERG: I certainly would ask Michael Leavitt re-think this and keep this guy on. He's a breath of fresh air. REPORTER: Howard has been the head of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the agency that oversees the administration of OSHA. His term expires this year, and the White House has not announced plans to appoint a successor. Last year, the federal government spent $158 million for 9/11-related health programs locally and nationwide. (WNYC, by Fred Mogul, July 08, 2008)
  
• Officials Ask Ground Zero Health Czar Be Rehired ... Federal and New York City officials are calling on the Bush administration to rehire the World Trade Center health czar who is being let go. Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler held a news conference at ground zero to ask that Dr. John Howard stay on in the job he has done since 2006, as the administration's point person on post-Sept. 11 health issues. Separately on Tuesday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg also said the administration should "rethink this" and let Howard keep the post, calling him "one of the few people that really understands the issues." (NYNewsday, July 8, 2008)
  
• Pointing Fingers Over Deutsche Delays (Updated).... Schick, a veteran of Eliot Spitzer's AG office, is leaving his position as president of ESDC in September. But he's sticking around as chair of LMDC (much to The Post's chagrin), and thus will continue to be responsible for overseeing the decosntruction of the Deutsche Bank building, which was damaged on 9/11 and has been something of a white elephant ever since. The building in located in the district of a Schick ally and fellow Orthodox Jew, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who blamed former Gov. George Pataki in the wake of last summer's deadly fire for not having a "handle" on the long-delayed demolition project. At the time, Silver praised Schick, for his work following the fire, saying he had "proven himself over and over again" by reaching out to residents in the surrounding community and trying to address their concerns. Silver has been quietly monitoring the progress (or lack thereof) at the Deutsche Bank building, holding regular meetings at his Manhattan office with all the stakeholders, including both Menin and Schick. The speaker has been trying to act as a go-between for everyone involved, and this most recent flare-up is certain to only make his task that much more difficult. ... (NYDailyNews, by Elizabeth Benjamin, July 7, 2008)
• Congress Members, Responders Decry NIOSH Director’s Firing ... On July 3, Gerberding notified Howard that he would not be reappointed to a second term as NIOSH director, despite praise from industry and labor interests regarding his service protecting American workers. In February 2006, the New York congressional delegation successfully urged the Bush administration to appoint Howard to serve as the federal government's coordinator to oversee the response to Ground Zero health impacts. (Occupational Helath & Safety, Jul 09, 2008)
  
• 9/11 Workers Refute NYC’s Claim of Incomplete Medical Records ... Attorneys representing more than 10,000 Ground Zero workers including police, firefighters and other rescue, recovery and debris clean-up personnel who became ill after working at the World Trade Center site after 9/11 refuted the city’s claims that the plaintiffs produced inadequate medical records for the case. ... (Occupational Hazards, By Laura Walter, July, 09 2008)
  
• After Initial Post-9/11 Ailments, the Dogs are All Right ... A new study in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association reveals that New York Police Department dogs deployed to the World Trade Center after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have not experienced any long-term health effects. The study focuses on 27 dogs that assisted in relief efforts at the site, many of which remained deployed throughout the 37-week cleanup operation. Both short-term and long-term health assessments were conducted. According to the study, about 63 percent of the dogs had some type of health disorder during the first week, including fatigue, eye irritation, respiratory tract problems, decreased appetite, dehydration, and cuts. What surprised the study's authors, however, was that only mild and infrequent health conditions were identified during a five-year follow-up period. None of the dogs, according to the study, was identified as having chronic respiratory tract disease or any type of blood disorder. Nineteen of the 27 dogs were still alive and apparently healthy five years later. In fact, the five-year mortality rate for the 27 working dogs examined in the study was similar to the rate for a control group of household pets and law enforcement dogs that had not been dispatched to the site. "The general good health of the dogs studied was an unexpected result," said Philip Fox, DVM, the study's lead author and director of The Caspary Research Institute of The Animal Medical Center in New York City. "The dogs appeared to be unaffected in the long term by their exposure to the smoke, dust, and toxins they encountered while working at the World Trade Center site." ... The findings are in contrast to some human emergency responders who worked at the site, as various studies have identified increases in the rates of illness and the severity of various symptoms of respiratory tract disease. The reason the dogs appeared to suffer so few long-term health conditions may be due to differences between human and animal airways and differences in lung defense mechanisms, the study concludes. For more information, visit www.avma.org. (Occupational Health & Safety, July 7 2008)
• LMDC Head Blames CB1 for Some Deutsche Delays ... Costs have also risen on the project. Last week, the L.M.D.C. board authorized another $37.5 million, which the corporation hopes will be enough to complete the cleanup and demolition. The board also authorized nearly $3 million for what it calls “document management” — the legal and copying fees needed to defend the criminal investigation into the fire and the civil lawsuits filed by the firefighters’ families. The total cost to buy, clean and demolish the building now stands at about $280 million. Schick said that roughly half of that will cover the cleanup and demolition, and the corporation expects to eventually get much of it back. In a 2004 deal brokered by former U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell — who had also mediated disputes in Northern Ireland and the Middle East — the corporation bought the damaged building for $90 million, and Deutsche Bank’s building insurers agreed to pay most of the cleanup and demolition costs that exceeded $45 million. This week’s community board meeting was less contentious than last week’s L.M.D.C., meeting, but the frustration level remains. “I would love to look out and not see that building there,” said Kathleen Moore, who lives next door. “It just seems to take forever.” ... (Downtown Express, By Josh Rogers, July 4 - July 10, 2008)
• Talking Point: Building safety problems threaten everyone, not just my fiancé ... Roy Johnson, senior project manager at 130 Liberty St. for LVI Environmental Services Inc, said the Deutsche cleanup is much more complicated than the firm thought it would be.“We didn’t anticipate the things we’re faced with every day,” he said at the Board 1 meeting Tuesday night. “Our initial schedule kind of went out the window. Until we’ve completed a typical floor, I’m reluctant to commit to a timeline or deadline. This project is like none we’ve dealt with.” ... (Downtown Express, July 4 - July 10, 2008)
• Paterson Writes Bush About WTC Health Czar .... Gov. David Paterson asked the president Wednesday to extend the term of the official overseeing the federal government's response to ailing ground zero workers. John Howard's appointment as director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health expires Saturday. The Bush administration hasn't announced a successor or said whether he will be retained. A call Wednesday to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, which oversees NIOSH, wasn't immediately returned. Paterson said Howard ``played a pivotal role'' in coordinating health programs for ground zero workers. His departure could jeopardize those efforts, the governor said. ... (1010 WINS/AP, 02 July 2008)
• Lawyers detail health ... Lawyers for those who worked at the World Trade Center in New York after the 2001 terrorist attacks say 67 percent suffer from respiratory disease. Papers filed in court Tuesday claim nearly half, 45 percent, have gastrointestinal problems, the New York Post reported. The lawyers, countering claims by the city that 30 percent have not developed serious health problems, say that their information is still incomplete. "As information continues to be received, there is a clear picture that these plaintiffs' conditions are tending to get worse, not better," the lawyers said in a letter to U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein. The firefighters and police officers who worked at Ground Zero were among the fittest people in the city before their time there, the letter said. (UPI, July 2, 2008)
• 9/11 Illnesses "Get Worse" ... Of 10,000 Ground Zero workers suing the city, medical records show 67 percent suffer respiratory ailments and 45 percent have a gastrointestinal disease, their lawyers claim. The numbers, filed in court last night, aim to rebut the city's argument that 30 percent have "only nominal injuries" and that serious claims are not proven. The lawyers say they're still collecting records from Mount Sinai Hospital, which has treated thousands of 9/11 responders. "As information continues to be received, there is a clear picture that these plaintiffs' conditions are tending to get worse, not better," the lawyers say. They claim that most 9/11 responders suffer three separate illnesses. The lawyers' tally includes: 4,517 people with upper respiratory ailments; 3,857 with lower respiratory illness; 398 with lung disease; 2,616 with asthma; 1,340 with sleep apnea; and 2,528 with a heart condition caused or worsened by 9/11. The city already has FDNY and NYPD medical records, the lawyers say in a letter to Manhattan federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein. "These were New York's 'Finest' and 'Bravest' and, accordingly, the fittest" before 9/11, it adds. Citing NYPD cop Frank Maisano, who has nodules in his lung and suffers from asthma, the letter blasts the suggestion that he and other 9/11 responders are "malingerers." (NYPost, by Susan Edelman, July 2, 2008)
• 9/11 Rescue Dog to Be Cloned ... A German shepherd that served as a rescue dog in the days following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been chosen for cloning by a Mill Valley, Calif., company. BioArts International said retired Canadian police officer James Symington wrote an essay about his dog, Trakr, that won the company's contest to find the most "clone-worthy dog," the New York Daily News reported Tuesday. Symington and Trakr were among the first search-and-rescue teams to seek out survivors of the Sept. 11 attacks at Ground Zero in New York City. Trakr, 15, now suffers from a degenerative neurological disorder that experts said may be linked to exposure to toxic smoke at the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan. (UPI, July 1 , 2008)

JUNE

• Chief of 9/11 Health Programs Gains Support ... Labor leaders, business executives and members of New York’s Congressional delegation say they fear that the federal government’s health programs for ground zero workers will be endangered if Dr. John Howard, who has coordinated those programs since 2006, ends his term as scheduled on July 5. Dr. Howard’s strong support of screening, monitoring and treatment programs for ground zero workers has sometimes put him at odds with the Bush administration, which has been reluctant to provide long-term financing. The ground zero health programs have recently expanded nationally. Congress has appropriated about $108 million this year and proposed a similar amount for next year, but has made no commitment beyond that. In April, Dr. Howard wrote to Michael O. Leavitt, secretary of health and human services, indicating his desire to be reappointed as director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a post he has held since 2002. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, under which the national institute operates, declined to comment on the end of Dr. Howard’s term, saying it had a standing policy of not discussing personnel issues. Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the centers, is scheduled to meet with Dr. Howard soon to discuss the issue, said Thomas W. Skinner, a spokesman. Members of New York’s Congressional delegation, who have lobbied intensively for federal funds for ground zero workers, want Dr. Howard to be reinstated. Without his continued leadership and support, they said, the programs would be at risk of losing financing or direction. ... (NYTimes, by Anthony DePalma, June 28, 2008)
  
• More Funding Allocated To Deutsche Bank Building Demolition ... More money is being allocated to demolish the contaminated Deutsche Bank building downtown. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation said Friday it's shifting about $37.5 million to help tear down the structure as quickly and safely as possible. A spokesman says the money will come from federal funds awarded to the agency to repair utilities around the World Trade Center site. The Deutsche Bank Building was badly damaged on September 11th. Since then, its demolition has stalled over concerns about asbestos, the discovery of human remains, and a deadly fire. ... (NY1, 06/27/2008)
  
• LMDC: More Delays for Demolition of Former Deutsche Bank Building ... The state official in charge of taking down the former Deutsche Bank tower says the structure is likely to remain standing into next year. Avi Schick, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, estimated in January that the contaminated building would be dismantled by the end of the year. But at an LMDC meeting this morning, Schick says it was taking longer than expected to remove asbestos and mold and that it was more important to do the job well, than to do it quickly. SCHICK: The city, the state, the regulators are working toward that goal. And we are not going to cut one safety corner to get to that goal. A fire at the building last summer killed two firefighters. Schick says the building will be decontaminated by the end of the year, but may not be taken down by that time. The entire job, including acquisition, is around $274 million. (WNYC, by Matthew Schuerman, June 26, 2008)
• Death Trap' Demolition Costs $280M ... In January, the chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Avi Schick, said the building would be brought down by the end of 2008. But now, sources familiar with the demolition plans say that is far from a realistic goal. News of the increased costs and delays at the Deutsche Bank building comes just days before the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is expected to present an updated construction schedule for the entire World Trade Center site to Governor Paterson. According to an official involved with construction at the site, a delay at the Deutsche Bank building could have a ripple affect for other projects in the vicinity, particularly construction on the underground vehicle security center. "It affects the vehicle screening center, which has an impact on Tower 4 and fitting out of the rest of the site," the official said. ... (NYSun, by Peter Kiefer, June 26, 2008)
• Deutsche Bank demolition will cost more, take longer than expected ... A new contractor, LVI Environmental Services, was selected to demolish the toxic tower after a deadly Aug. 18 blaze at the site killed two firefighters. Then-contractor John Galt Corp. was fired shortly after the blaze. Schick said LVI has 250 employees on the site working double shifts six days a week. "We got to pay the bills," the chairman said. Demolition costs have escalated due to the complexity of the job. The building was being cleaned of toxic dust and torn down floor-by-floor simultaneously, but after the fire, that procedure was scrapped. Now the dust must be completely removed before demolition can move forward. The Deutsche Bank structure was damaged by falling debris on Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center was destroyed by terrorists. The state agreed to purchase it for $90 million to resolve a dispute between the bank and insurers. As part of the agreement, LMDC will tap those insurers to pay for 75% of demolition costs above $45 million. ... (NYDaily News, by, June 26, 2008)
  
• State Bill Expands Pool of Possible 9/11 Benefit Recipients ... Even as New York City battles thousands of ground zero workers over their health claims in federal court, New York State is making more workers eligible for health care benefits. The State Legislature has passed a bill that will make hundreds of public service workers who labored at the World Trade Center site during the nine-month cleanup after the attacks of Sept. 11 eligible for state disability payments. Aides to Gov. David A. Paterson said on Wednesday that as many as 1,800 such workers who had already been denied disability benefits could now be eligible to receive them. The measure, passed on Monday, also extends the deadline for other ground zero workers to register for state workers’ compensation in case they become sick or disabled in the future as a result of their work at ground zero. Governor Paterson, who strongly supported the legislation, is expected to sign it shortly. .... (NYTimes, by Anthony DePalma, June 26, 2008)
• City lawyers say 30 percent of Ground Zero illness claims are negligible ... Lawyers for New York City claim 30 percent of those suing in federal court claiming ground zero-related illnesses don't have serious health problems. The city is fending off claims of approximately 10,800 plaintiffs, who claim to suffer from one or more of 387 different types of injuries. The claims are filed in federal court in Manhattan, where Judge Alvin Hellerstein is overseeing the cases. About half of the claims were filed by city workers, such as NYPD and FDNY personnel. In a letter to Judge Hellerstein last month, a white-shoe firm hired by the city contended that their review of the pending claims show about 30 percent of the people seeking compensation allege "only nominal injuries." The city says those are cases where a specific injury is not diagnosed, but instead only a symptom described, such as runny nose or sleep problems. "This is not to suggest that the remaining 70 percent of plaintiffs are seriously injured," the lawyers wrote to the judge. "To the contrary, diagnosable injuries such as sinusitis and acid reflux are not necessarily serious." ... (AP/NYDaily News, June 25, 2008)
  
• City's "Sick" 9/11 Claim ... Many workers who got sick at Ground Zero aren't as ill as they claim, and some aren't sick at all, the city claims in court papers. Of the more than 10,000 plaintiffs suing the city over 9/11-related illnesses, about 31 percent reported they had only mild ailments, according to a review of medical records to Manhattan federal court. About 3 percent, or 306 plaintiffs, said they were not ill. But William Groner, a lawyer for the workers, said last night, "The city has completely skewed the statistics to argue wrongly that there have not been significant illnesses." Groner insisted the city is basing its claims on short-form complaints filed by plaintiffs concerned about potential symptoms who wanted to file suit before the statute of limitations runs out. Some of the plaintiffs, including some who admit they are not ill, are looking for the city to pay for medical testing, he said. ... (NYPost, By Kati Cornell and Ed Robinson, June 25, 2008)
  
• City Questions 9/11 Workers’ Claims of Illness ... Lawyers for the city, who conducted the review in response to a court order to sort out the seriousness of the claims, also found that many records were contradictory or incomplete, making it difficult to determine when an ailment began or how long it persisted. The documents included few records before Sept. 11, 2001. The city, which faces a huge financial liability in the lawsuit, has ample reason to play down the claims of firefighters, police officers, construction workers and others who say they became ill because they were not given proper breathing equipment during the nine-month rescue and recovery operation at ground zero. The workers’ lawyers have sharply criticized the city’s review, calling it skewed and largely inaccurate. They have consistently claimed — but have never released a detailed analysis of the claim — that the workers suffer from a broad range of medical problems, mostly respiratory or gastrointestinal sicknesses, but also more serious conditions like cancer, chronic pulmonary disease and sarcoidosis, a lung-scarring disease. The city’s findings have no immediate impact on the litigation because the court is not ready to rule on the severity of illnesses or make connections between diseases and exposure to ground zero dust. But the review is important despite its obvious limitations. Until now there has been no attempt to categorize the extent of illnesses in these workers, assumed to be the most badly injured of about 40,000 or more who labored at the World Trade Center site. And the conflict over the review findings is a preview of how difficult it could be to prove that trade center dust — a complex mix of materials created by the collapse of the twin towers — sickened workers. Much is riding on the result. Hundreds of workers who could not return to jobs after 9/11 have had their lives interrupted until the litigation is settled. The city and its contractors could be forced to pay $1 billion or more in compensation if they are found to have been negligent in not ensuring that the workers received breathing masks and wore them. The judge hearing the individual cases, Alvin K. Hellerstein of United States District Court in Manhattan, has criticized the workers’ lawyers for not providing complete medical records back to 1995. He has given them until the end of this month to produce thousands of missing documents so that both sides can come up with a system, known as a severity chart, to classify injuries by type and seriousness. ... (NYTimes, by Anthony DePalma, June 25, 2008)
  
• The Other Drama Continues at WTC Site ...Although the buildings at the former Ground Zero have understandably gotten most of the news coverage of World Trade Center site rebuilding efforts, at least one other noteworthy story has been playing out in parallel to those. Fiterman Hall at the City University of New York’s Borough of Manhattan Community College was irreparably damaged on Sept. 11, 2001, by the collapse of 7 WTC. Now the 15-story building at 30 West Broadway is currently 16 months behind schedule on deconstruction, reportedly because of funding issues and environmental impact concerns. Originally scheduled to have been completed by February 2007, the deconstruction would pave the way for a new building designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. At a New York City Council hearing last Friday, Elizabeth Berger, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York, presented a statement expressing “the Lower Manhattan business and residential community’s collective frustration that Fiterman Hall is still standing.” Noting that no date is currently set for deconstructing the building, she pointed out that BMCC will likely “still be ‘recovering’ come the 10th anniversary of 9/11.” Urging the council to get the Fiterman project back on track, Berger emphasized the strides that the community college has made since 9/11, such as a 20 percent increase in enrollment since fall 2001. BMCC’s enrollment is nearing 20,000, according to a statement from college president Antonio Pérez. On June 1, 2008, The New York Times reported that although the city’s administration says it has committed $80 million to the project, university officials and New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver contend that the city has committed only $20 million. .... (Commercial News, By: Scott Baltic, June 23, 2008)
  
• A Ruinous Fire at the Deutsche Bank Tower Inspires a Poignant March for Safety .... Confidence in the city’s construction industry has suffered after several fatal accidents, including two crane collapses in Manhattan, this year. As a result, the city has moved to hire more inspectors and has increased the number of safety examinations at construction sites. An investigation after the Deutsche Bank blaze uncovered several fire hazards, including the absence of a piece of standpipe intended to carry water to higher floors. Federal safety regulators have accused the contractors who were taking down the building of ignoring safety risks. The rally on Saturday was meant to put pressure on government officials to ensure that proper safety measures are put in place and enforced to prevent disasters. “We want to save other families from going through what we went through,” Rosemarie Graffagnino said. “We don’t want anyone else to die.” ... Some demonstrators held signs calling for the dismissal of city officials, and others criticized what they saw as a tendency by construction companies and the city to cut corners rather than commit to an investment in equipment and enforcement. ... (NYTimes, by Javier C. Hernandez , June 22, 2008)
  
• Hundreds Rally In Manhattan For Building, Fire Safety ... Graffagnino praised the city for improvements made in fire and building codes since the tragedy, but he said there is still much work to be done. "The Fire Department, of course, has basically a new fire department manual -- the first time in 100 years," he said. "And I think that's great. But there are still loopholes in the law that agencies can take advantage of and I think those loopholes need to be closed." "I think what Mr. Graffagnino particularly is saying is we need all buildings to conform to the new buildings code, to the new fire code, and I think that's what we're trying to make a point here today in doing," said City Councilman Vincent Gentile. Also on hand for the rally was Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who said he is outraged by the fire and construction accidents in the city. "What do you say to New Yorkers? You can't just say it's all about the Buildings Department," Stringer said. "We need to bring in the Police Department, the Fire Department, multiple agencies have to get their arms around this, because I don't want to say that this will happen again. I pray that it does not, but does anyone really think that we're safer now? I don't think so." .... (NY1, June 21, 2008)
  
• TCDI to handle info for massive World Trade Ctr litigation ... TCDI has been selected as the manager and data access provider for information related to the World Trade Center Disaster Site Litigation by the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York. The data involved is the discovery being generated by the 10,000-plus cases associated with the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the impacts on the health of disaster site clean-up crews. Greensboro-based TCDI will use its software and expertise to provide a single database of information and reports from the cases. TCDI's systems have been used in massive and complex cases before, including multi-state tobacco lawsuits. President Bill Johnson said his company is ready for its role in the World Trade Center suits. "TCDI is honored to have been chosen for this project, and we're confident we will provide a powerful and secure system for all sides involved in this important litigation," Johnson said. According to the court order approving the TCDI appointment, the company's bid for its services on the project was $249,750 in the first year and $204,000 in the second year. (The Business Journal, June 17, 2008)
  
• 9/11 workers hold first rally at World Trade Center ... Donna Michaels wipes away tears after speaking about her husband, Thomas, at World Trade Center Responders Day in Manhattan. Dozens of 9/11 responders gathered downtown Saturday to recount their stories of heroism and ask for more help from the government. The first World Trade Center Responders Day was designed as a "day of appreciation" for rescuers and laborers who spent months at Ground Zero, said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who is sponsoring a bill that would mandate healthcare funding for sick 9/11 workers. One by one, rescuers approached an open microphone at Vesey and Greenwich Sts. to tell their stories before attending an interfaith church service. "Politicians are looking to forget about this, but today is to remind them that we are here and we are slowly but surely dying," said Frank Silecchia, 54, a laborer with Local 731 who suffers from sleep apnea, respiratory problems and posttraumatic stress disorder after working at Ground Zero for 10 months. "It has become a nightmare every night and a daymare every day," he said. "The pain just doesn't go away." Susan Sidel, an attorney, volunteered for three months in supply tents and also lives downtown, so she's doubly concerned about her health. ... (NYDaily News, By Robert Erikson , June 14, 2008)
  
• Inaugural WTC Responders Day held at Ground Zero ... Several first responders such as Susan Sidel, 50, of Brooklyn Heights, who volunteered in a Salvation Army tent at Ground Zero, shared their tales of deteriorating health with the small crowd. Sidel, a former entertainment lawyer, said she had to leave her job after suffering severe memory loss. "If you don't have your health, you have nothing," she said. ....Steve Zablokci and Kirk Arsenault's Boston-based demolition crew was hired to help tear down 5 World Trade Center, located east of the North Tower, and remove large pieces of the South Tower from the Bankers Trust building. Since then, Arsenault, 44, of Salem, Mass., was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Two of his fellow crew members were diagnosed with brain cancer and breast cancer, respectively. Following the cleanup, Zablokci, 44, also of Salem, had difficulty hearing and had to have tubes surgically inserted in his ears. "My surgeon told me, '44 years old, that's not normal,' " said Zablokci. "He had to get tubes inserted in his ears like a little kid," added Arsenault. ..... (NYNewsday, By Daniel Edward Rosen, June 14, 2008)
  
• Study Shows Long-term 9/11 stress in lower Manhattan ... One in eight people who lived near the World Trade Center at the time of the September 11 attacks in 2001 were still suffering post traumatic stress disorder two to three years later, a new study indicated on Friday. The study, based on a 2003-2004 survey of 11,000 lower Manhattan residents, showed low-income and less educated people were more prone to PTSD, as were divorced people, with around one in five in those groups reporting symptoms. Authors of the study called for further monitoring of PTSD victims from the neighborhood and the city urged them to take advantage of free mental health services. The condition is an anxiety disorder sparked by traumatic experiences of intense fear, horror or hopelessness. Symptoms include irritability or anger, sleep difficulties, trouble concentrating, extreme vigilance, flashbacks and nightmares. The New York City health department, which conducted the study, said it was the first to measure the attack's long-term effect on the mental health of the community. ... (AP, By Claudia Parsons, June 13, 2008)
• 1 in 8 Lower Manhattan Residents Suffer from Stress Disorder ...A new study released today shows the scope of the mental health effects of the September 11th terror attacks on those who lived near the World Trade Center. A survey by the city Health Department found one in eight Lower Manhattan residents showed signs of post-traumatic stress disorder as many as three years after the attacks. Researchers surveyed 11,000 residents through the World Trade Center Health Registry. The percentage of residents suffering from PTSD matched the percentage of first responders also showing signs of psychological trauma. "They were working in the towers and had to escape the towers," explained Deputy Commissioner of Health Dr. Lorna Thorpe. "Large numbers of them had to flee the dust cloud, had to evacuate their homes, had to live in that community while the community was recovering." Symptoms of PTSD include replaying the traumatic event in one's mind, nightmares, or agitation when triggers occur. The Health Department is offering a number of treatment options for people still experiencing stress related to the attacks. .... (NY1, June 13, 2008)
  
• 9/11 Related PTSD More Widespread Than Thought ... The findings are based on analysis of 11,000 surveys collected by the Health Department for World Trade Center Health Registry in 2003 and 2004. In April, the city announced a program to cover certain mental health services for those still suffering the psychological effects of the World Trade Center attacks, with referrals coming through the 311 information system. ... (WNYC, by Fred Mogul, June 13, 2008)
• City Treating Children for Possible 9/11 Ailments ... New voices are echoing in the hallways of Bellevue Hospital’s W.T.C. Environmental Health Center, and they belong to children. The center, which has been treating Lower Manhattan residents and office workers for 9/11-related illnesses for several years, recently launched a pediatric program. One of the first patients late last year was 15-year-old Amanda Bermudez. She developed asthma after 9/11 and relies on the Bellevue clinic for exams and to get the medications that keep her asthma in check. “It’s not really our fault that we got the asthma because of 9/11,” she said recently in a phone interview. Her mother, Lillian Bermudez, likes that the clinic’s doctors listen to her daughter and make her feel comfortable. Her son, 18, is enrolled in Bellevue’s program for adults. “The medication is doing them wonders,” Bermudez said. “[Their asthma] hasn’t been acting up so much.” Bermudez also likes that the clinic is free. She has health insurance for her four children, but even the $5 co-pay was sometimes a stretch. A handful of parents have brought their children to the pediatric clinic so far — clinic staff would not say an exact number — suspecting that they are sick because of their exposure to the chaos and dust-drenched air of 9/11. The children receive a comprehensive physical and mental health evaluation on their first visit, which takes several hours, and then the newly hired pediatrician and child psychologist recommend a course of treatment. All services and medications are free. “Kids were affected very directly [by 9/11],” said Terry Miles, executive director of the center. Many of those effects have lingered or worsened, adding to the center’s importance, Miles said. Children show the same symptoms as many adults who were Downtown on 9/11 — asthma, acid reflux and sinus congestion, along with depression and anxiety — but the symptoms often present themselves differently. Kathryn Kavanaugh, the clinic’s child psychologist, looks at how the children are behaving at home and asks whether they’re having trouble at school, academically or socially. When evaluating the children, Kavanaugh and Ruee Huang, the pediatrician, ask about the impact of 9/11 on the entire family. The child may have been far from Downtown on 9/11, but if a parent suffered serious physical or mental effects, that can affect the child, Kavanaugh said. Dr. Huang said she has even seen physical effects of 9/11 on children who were nowhere near the dust cloud. If one of their parents was working Downtown on 9/11 or worked in the cleanup and recovery effort, the dust could have traveled back to the child’s apartment on the parent’s clothes. At the heart of Kavanaugh and Huang’s task is to decide whether a child’s illness is connected to 9/11. “It’s really difficult,” Huang said during a recent interview at the center. “We don’t know for certain what is World Trade Center-related.” Illnesses like asthma can take years to show up, and it can be tricky to pinpoint the origin of anxiety or mood disorders. Kavanaugh takes a meticulous clinical history of the children, trying to document how they functioned before and after 9/11. ... (Downtown Express, By Julie Shapiro, June 13-19, 2008)
• Deutsche Demo On Hold But Contractor Talks Cranes, Safety and Morale ... Ray Master, the person charged with bringing the Deutsche Bank building down safely, said his colleagues constantly tell him two things. The first is that he’s crazy to take a job as safety director at 130 Liberty St., where a blaze last August killed two firefighters. The second is that he’s crazy to go before the community board to answer questions. But Master told Community Board 1 Monday night that being called crazy doesn’t stop him. “I don’t mind coming here anytime,” Master, a Bovis Lend Lease supervisor, told the World Trade Center Redevelopment Committee, before briefing them on progress at 130 Liberty St. And board members certainly don’t mind having him — they heralded Master’s openness in contrast to the past reticence of Bovis, the general contractor, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which owns 130 Liberty St. Master updated the board on work to decontaminate the building, which contains 9/11 toxins. Abatement is underway on floors 14 to 19, with floors 18 and 19 nearly complete. Workers are finishing decontamination chambers on floors 12 and 13, an L.M.D.C. spokesperson later added. ... (Downtown Express, By Julie Shapiro, June 13-19, 2008)
• Mike's 9/11 Aid Plea ... Mayor Bloomberg met behind closed doors with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi last week to plead that she move a bill to reopen the federal Victim Compensation Fund for sick Ground Zero workers - a move that would cost "billions" of tax dollars, sources told The Post. While the city hosted a "9/11 health lunch" in Washington, DC, Thursday to drum up support, Bloomberg huddled with Pelosi in her office. Joining him were Democratic Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler and Richard Wood, president of Plaza Construction, one of the city's main contractors in the World Trade Center cleanup, sources said. The city is desperately pushing for passage of the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act to ensure the feds pay the mounting medical costs of ailing firefighters, cops, construction workers and others from the WTC rescue and recovery. The bill would also spare the city from massive liability by letting sick workers, or families of those who died, apply for economic aid from the Victim Compensation Fund. That now-closed fund paid out nearly $6 billion to the families of those who died on 9/11 and roughly $1 billion to the injured through 2003. Applicants gave up their right to sue. The Congressional Budget Office is working on cost estimates for the bill - and a multibillion-dollar price tag could spell political doom. ... (NYPost, by Susan Edelman, June 12, 2008)
  
• Dad lost son to Deutsche Bank fire but will go there for safety rally ... Graffagnino's son and Firefighter Robert Beddia lost their lives in the smoke of the 14th floor. "The reason why he passed is because of the building code violations and safety code violations and all the loopholes and things that have been going on," said the 59-year-old Vietnam veteran who lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and installs communications systems for the federal government. "You've got to hold people accountable. They're killing people." In the wake of the city's staggering array of construction deaths, Graffagnino hopes his march will be a clarion call for change. At 10 a.m. on June 21, he will lead a procession from outside the Liberty St. building to City Hall. He hopes to have plenty of company. "We have nothing else to depend on except those laws and regulations," said John McDonnell, president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, who will head up a contingent of his members at the march. "We're literally taking our own lives in our hands when we go into a building." Graffagnino wants an end to what he sees as a slapdash culture within the industry in charge of rebuilding New York's skyline - one that pushes limits, hopes for the best and weighs dollars against blood. ... He was encouraged by the broad package of construction reforms introduced last week by Mayor Bloomberg and other city officials, as well as unions and the construction industry - but he said that doesn't guarantee that the city will change its ways. "Something is better than nothing," he said. "But if you don't enforce them, and you don't hold people accountable, then it doesn't matter." ... (NYDaily News, June 11, 2008)
• Leavitt left it to SWAT .... When 12 activists and a baby in a stroller show up to yell at a federal official, what does the N.Y.P.D. do? Call in the SWAT team, of course. That’s what happened to Kimberly Flynn, head of 9/11 Environmental Action, when she and other activists confronted the man they say is behind the federal government’s refusal to fund 9/11 healthcare for anyone besides first responders. Michael Leavitt, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, was in town this week to address the American Association of Exporters and Importers, but he ended up with an earful on his decision to not release any money for residents, students and office workers who got sick after 9/11. Flynn and 11 others, including Celia Correa, a Lower Manhattan office worker who ties her lung disease to 9/11, staked out Leavitt inside the Hilton Hotel at 53rd St. and Sixth Ave. As Leavitt passed, they called out demands that he release the 9/11 treatment money. Leavitt turned around and looked at the group, then turned away and went into his meeting. Security officers hustled Flynn, Correa and the others (including the baby stroller) out of the building. As the activists regrouped on the sidewalk and prepared to pass out fliers, a black van pulled up with flashing lights: The SWAT team had arrived. Helmeted N.Y.P.D. officers with bulletproof vests and semiautomatic weapons poured out, along with a dog that growled at the protesters. “It was a wasteful overreaction, designed to be intimidating,” Flynn told UnderCover after the protest. “We’re not doing anything wrong". We’re being treated as if we’re terrorists.” (Downtown Express, June 6-12, 2008)
  
• Deutsche widow suit challenged as DA asks court to put criminal charges first ... Manhattan prosecutors want a civil suit filed by the widow of a firefighter killed in the Deutsche Bank fire delayed for fear it will "compromise" their criminal probe. The Manhattan district attorney's office wants a judge to put a halt to Linda Graffagnino's suit until a grand jury finishes its investigation of the Aug. 18, 2007, fire that killed firefighters Joseph Graffagnino and Robert Beddia. "The substantial interests of justice require that the grand jury investigation be given priority over a civil litigation," District Attorney Robert Morgenthau wrote in court papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. Morgenthau wrote that allowing Graffagnino's suit to move forward will "likely adversely affect and compromise" a probe into whether there were criminal violations while the toxic tower next to Ground Zero was being dismantled. A stay would stop depositions from being taken in the civil suit and delay it indefinitely. ... (NYDaily News, June 7, 2008)
  
• Dissing Mayor Mike .... On Monday, representatives of people sickened by 9/11 toxins confronted Leavitt in Manhattan, demanding to know when the government would deliver money, as pledged, to cover medical care for downtown residents, office workers and school children. Leavitt refused to answer. Which puts them in good company. Mayor Bloomberg has been asking the same question. He has written personally to Leavitt, and City Hall aides have called. But Leavitt has not shown even the courtesy of a reply. In his letter, Bloomberg reminded Leavitt that in December, President Bush signed legislation that made people who lived and worked around Ground Zero "eligible for federal assistance for medical evaluation, screening and treatment." Yet, as has long been the case with 9/11-related health costs, HHS is dodging and delaying. In the meantime, City Hall has spent $7 million to treat 2,600 people from New York and 20 other states at World Trade Center Environmental Health Center clinics at Bellevue and two other hospitals. Patients typically suffer shortness of breath, coughing, wheezing, acid reflux and chronic sinus congestion. The center gets an average of 250 calls and 30 new patients a week. The cost of care is projected to tally $100 million through 2011. And Leavitt won't explain how much he plans to fork over and when. Not to friends and loved ones of the ill. Not to the mayor of the City of New York. His arrogance is galling. (NYDaily News Editorial, June 6, 2008)
  
• Ex-health boss now cashing in on 9/11 ... The former health chief under President Bush, criticized for not doing enough to help Ground Zero heroes, is now making millions off the 9/11 tragedy, tracking the health of sick workers. Tommy Thompson heads Logistics Health, a Wisconsin-based company that has won an $11 million contract from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to track about 5,000 workers who worked at the World Trade Center site in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, and live outside the New York area. He was health and human services secretary from 2001 to 2005. "It is ironic that former HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson's firm won the contract to provide the services, given the history of delay from the Bush administration when he was secretary and now," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan). "But I am glad these heroes are finally getting the help they deserve." Logistics Health will provide yearly examinations to first responders outside of New York City, which has its own monitoring program, and help diagnose and treat any conditions that developed after workers were exposed to toxins at Ground Zero. Thompson's company also provides medical services to the Army. Last year, the Bush administration was slammed when it abandoned efforts to treat sick workers around the country, saying it was too expensive and putting the services out to contract. (NYDaily News, by Stephanie Gaskell, June 5th 2008)
• GAO: Feds Still Lack Coordinated Plan to Protect Disaster Responders - 6+ Years After Attacks, Lessons of 9/11 Not Learned by Bush Admin. ... (News Release)
• AIHce: Occupational Health Impact of the World Trade Center Disaster: Lessons Learned ... Featured general session speaker Robin Herbert, M.D., director, World Trade Center (WTC) Medical Monitoring Program Data and Coordination Center, Mount Sinai-Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine, discussed her experiences with WTC terrorist attack responders to illustrate lessons learned to help prevent occupational health problems in similar, future events. Herbert discussed the background, history and medical consequences of the WTC attack on responders to the disaster (including firefighters; police; utility; construction; transit and telecom workers; and others). She stressed that the responders to the WTC attack did not just include traditional first responders such as firefighters and police, but also included many other workers who were not trained or prepared to respond to a disaster of that magnitude. “This is one of the important messages to take home if " there is a disaster in your community and you are called to consult at such an event,” she said, “in addition to the traditional first responders that we all think of, a large number of World Trade Center responders came from occupations and industries which had not prepared in any way for the horrors of disaster response work.” After discussing the physical and mental health effects the WTC disaster had on responders, Herbert had suggestions for the audience to help them prepare those who might respond to future disasters. “(It is critical to) create and define boundaries, keeping a list of who enters those boundaries, limiting the amount of time people can spend within those boundaries, limiting periods of work and making sure people don’t sleep where they are working,” Herbert said. She also added that rosters should be kept of those working in disaster recovery sites, and better respiratory protection gear training is needed – especially for those workers who do not normally use such gear in their day-to-day jobs but who would wear it in a disaster response situation. ... (Occupational Hazards, by Sandy Smith, June 5, 2008)
• WTC Responders' Health Problems Not Abating, Expert Says ... "The surprise is that people are not getting better despite persistent and intensive, long-term treatment," said Dr. Robin Herbert, director of the Mount Sinai Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine's screening and treatment program for World Trade Center responders who are not enrolled in the New York City fire and police screening program. Almost seven years after the 9/11 attacks, medical professionals screening and treating these responders consistently find they are still experiencing shortness of breath, dry cough, panic and anxiety attacks, substance abuse, and other problems that were predicted immediately after the attacks and began showing up only a month after they occurred, she said. Herbert gave the keynote address Wednesday at the AIHce meeting in Minneapolis. She said the overall estimate is that 91,500 responders were exposed to a mixture of vaporized combustion products and building materials because of the fires and destruction caused by the attacks. Silica, gypsum, cement, glass particles, asbestos, heavy metals, dioxins, and other hazardous substances were in the mixture, the precise contents of which will never be known, Herbert said. "I just want to emphasize that there was a tremendous human cost to some of the responders who were down there," she added. "I think it's reasonable to assume that we'll never, ever know the full extent of the exposures from the attack." ... (Occupational Health & Safety, June 4 2008)
• Judge Nudge on Heroes' $$... More than 10,000 World Trade Center rescue and recovery workers who filed suit against the city will be classified by the type and severity of their diseases to pave the way for trials or settlements, a judge has ordered. Manhattan federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein has given lawyers in the massive post-9/11 case about 30 days to agree on a medically based grid that will categorize the firefighters, cops, other city employees and construction workers according to their ailments. .... (NYPost, by Sussan Edelman, June 1, 2008)
• Ill Bill: City taps 9/11 'Piggy Bank" ... The city has dipped into the $1 billion World Trade Center insurance fund to pay more than $15 million for staff, rent, electricity, phones and other expenses, The Post has learned. While refusing to pay claims by Ground Zero workers with respiratory and other illness, the city's Law Department has gotten $15.5 million from the federally funded WTC Captive Insurance Co. to cover its own costs through July 1, 2005 - and has submitted a bill for $4.8 million more, officials said. The WTC Captive - a self-insurance fund governed by Bloomberg-administration officials - forked out the cash from the $1 billion in federal 9/11 aid that it manages. ... (NYPost, by Susan Edelman, June 1, 2008)

MAY

APRIL

• Leading September 11th Family Advocate for 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund Calls for Congress to Reopen the Fund for Ailing Rescue and Recovery Workers at Ground Zero ... (News Release, March 31, 2008)
  
• Exposure to WTC Attacks Associated with preschool behavioral issues. .... Preschool children exposed to both the World Trade Center attacks and another traumatic event were more likely to experience behavioral problems than children exposed only to one event or to none, according to a recent report (Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, February 2008). Young children may be especially vulnerable to the adverse psychological consequences of trauma, according to the study. However, little is known about the effect of terrorism on preschoolers. ... These behavior problems appeared more severe among children who had also experienced another traumatic event. Compared with children who were not exposed to high-intensity WTC events or to other trauma, those who were exposed to both had 21 times the odds of having emotional problems or being anxious or depressed and 16 times the odds of having attention problems. Those who were exposed only to high-intensity WTC events and not to other traumatic events were not significantly more likely to have behavioral problems than those with only less intense exposure to the attacks. The findings are consistent with an allostatic load theory of stress, which holds that accumulated exposure to difficult events increases the risk of psychological effects, the authors noted. "Physicians seeking to assess the impact of terrorism and disaster on very young children should assess for disaster-related exposure and for other trauma," they stated. "More vigorous outreach to trauma-exposed preschool children should become a post-disaster public health policy." ... (Advance for Speech-Language Pathologists & Audologists (3/31/08)
  
• Ground Zero Ruling Could Cost City Billions of Dollars ... "This was the last legal obstacle standing between 10,000 people and their jury, their trial," a lawyer who represents many of the plaintiffs, David Worby, said. Mr. Worby claims that about 550 of those 10,000 have cancer related to their exposure to toxins at ground zero. The lawsuits claim that the city failed to ensure that ground zero was a safe workplace. High among the claims is the assertion that the city failed to enforce rules requiring laborers to wear respirators while working amid the toxins and rubble. New York City and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, both of which are defendants in the suits, have argued that they deserve immunity from the suits because the cleanup effort was part of a response to an unprecedented emergency. They say they should not be liable for paying potentially billions of dollars in damages. The city's corporation counsel, Michael Cardozo, said in a statement that he was "confident that as the facts unfold" the city would ultimately be found to be immune from the lawsuits. The first significant ruling in the case came in 2006, when a federal district judge in Manhattan, Alvin Hellerstein, found that the city was not liable for the conditions at ground zero in the days immediately after the terrorist attacks. But Judge Hellerstein ruled that the lawsuits could go forward against the city's wishes to give workers the chance to prove that ground zero remained an unsafe work environment weeks and months after September 11, 2001. The city and the Port Authority appealed to the 2nd Circuit, which yesterday denied their appeal in a highly technical ruling. The appeal was decided by Judges Jon Newman, Sonia Sotomayor, and Richard Wesley. (NYSun, by Joshep Goldstein, March 27, 2008)
  
• CITY STILL SITTING ON 9/11 CASH ... New York will hold on tight to a $1 billion fund to pay the claims of sick Ground Zero workers, despite a federal appeals panel's ruling yesterday that gave their case a boost. The city and the Port Authority had hoped an immunity claim would get them off the hook to compensate the ill emergency personnel and construction workers who cleaned up after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. But the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals said the 8,000 lawsuits can proceed until a final decision on the city's immunity. The city has tried to get all the suits tossed out. The ruling was a blow to the city, and good news for workers who say they have suffered from a host of respiratory ailments, cancer and other illnesses. ... (NYPost, by Leonard Greene & Susan Edelman, March 27, 2008)
  
• Sept. 11 cleanup workers hail federal court ruling ... About 8,000 trade center cleanup workers sued New York City, the Port Authority and almost two dozen contractors, charging they were made to work in unsafe conditions and demanding compensation. Claiming immunity from litigation, the city and the Port Authority asked federal judges to throw out the lawsuits. ... The Second Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday dismissed the request, giving hope to Klein, 49, who said he developed precancerous polyps and post-traumatic stress disorder from working at the trade center. ... (Newsday, by Carl Macgowan, March 26, 2008)
  
• Meet Avi Schick, New York's New Steamroller .... Officials and people who have worked with him, who insisted on anonymity given the powerful post Mr. Schick currently has and could have, point to his handling of downtown’s Deutsche Bank building deconstruction since a fatal fire last summer as an example of his unnecessarily argumentative nature. Over the months that followed the August fire, Mr. Schick engaged in numerous battles, often public, with the Environmental Protection Agency, repeatedly attempting to loosen the heavy regulations on the tower despite resistance from Mayor Bloomberg, U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler, members of the community and others. The E.P.A. held the line and ultimately won many of the fights, and those involved with the deconstruction say Mr. Schick’s resistance slowed the project down substantially. He once said deconstruction would begin by November 2007, but today the building still stands the same height as it did last summer, though abatement work is under way. “The prosecutorial lawyer’s approach has impeded the ability to reengage in the demolition of the Deutsche Bank building,” said an official involved in redevelopment downtown. Others say delays in downtown reconstruction, which happened both before and after Mr. Spitzer took office, are extremely frustrating, and the state has not done enough to avoid them. ... (The New York Observer, by Eliot Brown, March 25, 2008)
  
• 9/11 dogs seem healthy .... While evidence continues to suggest that ground zero rescue workers are suffering from their exposure to World Trade Center air, W.T.C. search and rescue dogs appear to be as healthy as the average canine, according to an ongoing study at the University of Pennsylvania. The American Veterinary Medicine Association News reports that there are no clinically obvious differences between the Downtown dogs and a control group. Thirty-five of the 97 rescue dogs under study have died compared to 15 in the smaller control group, but researchers say the difference is not statistically significant. (Downtown Express, March 21-27, 2008)
  
• New York landmark's storied past: The neighborhood surrounding the Deutsche Bank building near Ground Zero has a rich history. ... For all the delays in rebuilding New York's Ground Zero site and the tortured process to bring down the wounded tower that used to belong to Deutsche Bank (DB) (see related article), there are increasing signs of progress at the site. ... (Fortune/CNN, By Nicholas Varchaver, March 21, 2008)
  
• Delayed 9/11 Victim? Honor Para Who Died Young ... Ms. Reeve died on March 15, 2006 at age 42 from mesothelioma, a deadly cancer her friends and family believe was contracted during her time working at Ground Zero, where many responders, often lacking respirators, were exposed to toxins such as benzene, asbestos and pulverized concrete, in addition to particles of human remains. ... (Chief Leader, by Ari Paul, 03/21.08)
• The tombstone at Ground Zero: More than six years after 9/11, the toxic shell of the Deutsche Bank building remains standing. A tale of dysfunction that has cost taxpayers over $150 million - and taken the lives of two New York City firefighters. ... The deaths of two firefighters near hallowed ground prompted rage among residents and in the media. The news that emerged - that the fire had apparently been caused by a worker's cigarette and that a contractor had cut the standpipe - only stoked the fury and highlighted how unnecessary the deaths were. How could such a fire have occurred? More fundamentally, why was this wounded building still standing? Six months later those questions remain a subject of bitter dispute. The Manhattan district attorney has convened a grand jury as part of a broad investigation that is probing negligence and possible kickbacks or other financial chicanery. In the meantime the often delayed deconstruction of the 40-story office tower has been stalled since August, and the structure, now 26 floors tall, stands boarded up, a macabre and depressing contrast to the building foundations that are finally beginning to rise out of the Ground Zero pit. The story of the Deutsche Bank tower, gleaned from interviews with nearly 50 participants involved in every aspect of the process, is a tortured saga. It's a monumental environmental, technical, and political challenge that overwhelmed the public and private mechanisms charged with resolving the building's fate. From a dispute between Deutsche Bank and its insurers, to battles between an overmatched agency assigned to revitalize lower Manhattan and environmental regulators, to the pressure from residents, to the brief presence of a Mob-connected contractor that was followed by a shadowy replacement with a name borrowed from an Ayn Rand novel, it's been a miasma - a toxic project. It's also a case study in what happens when good intentions collide with a paralyzing fear of making mistakes. The paradoxes are endless. How did this project manage to be simultaneously hyper-scrutinized - with armies of regulators and monitors on the premises daily - and sloppy and out of control? And how is it that this skyscraper, the subject of tens of millions of dollars' worth of environmental studies, is today described by some as a toxic nightmare and by others as only marginally contaminated? Then there's this maddening bit of irony: Many of the calamities along the way were not only foreseeable but actually foreseen. ... Then came 9/11. The attack on and subsequent fall of the Twin Towers not only killed some 2,800 people, but caused a chain reaction of devastation. Five other office and residential buildings were destroyed or so badly damaged that they had to be demolished soon after; another 56 structures were damaged. The towers fell so violently that the nearest seismographs, 21 miles north of the site, registered earthquakes of 2.1 and 2.3 on the Richter scale, respectively. The collapse unleashed tornado-force winds, estimated between 158 and 206 miles an hour, which shattered some 1,500 windows in the Deutsche Bank building. ... A hazard to human health. Surviving was one thing. Reopening was another. Like other tenants in close proximity, Deutsche Bank was prohibited from, say, bringing workers to mount a major cleanup for two months after 9/11. The tower was simply too close to Ground Zero to allow actions that might interfere with the rescue and recovery operations. That meant that the World Trade Center dust, laden with everything from asbestos to mercury from the thousands of incinerated computers, simply sat, mixing with the rain that would occasionally blow in through the broken windows, for much of the fall. Toxic mold infested the structure. By the end of 2002, Deutsche Bank decided the building was unsalvageable. After spending $33 million to test roughly 60,000 samples throughout the building, the bank's experts, RJ Lee Group, concluded that, as a Deutsche Bank legal filing later put it, "a combination of contaminants known to be hazardous to human health, in quantities and concentrations unparalleled in any other building designed for office use, permeates the entire structure at levels which exceed by up to thousands of times the levels considered appropriate for Class A office buildings." The list was scary: asbestos, lead, mercury, dioxin, and other toxins. Even the mold, which Deutsche Bank had vanquished, reappeared. Deutsche Bank demanded that its four insurers pay its total policy value of $1.7 billion. Two of them, Chubb (CB, Fortune 500) and Zurich, quickly settled, but two others, Allianz (AZ) and AXA (AXA), resisted. Other buildings near Ground Zero had been cleaned and reoccupied. Why, they wondered, was the Deutsche Bank building beyond salvation? In August 2003, Deutsche Bank sued Allianz and AXA to force them to pay the full policy. The fate of the building now seemed destined to be yet another intractable fight disappearing into the maw of the courts. .... By the fall of 2003 the entire World Trade Center redevelopment was stymied by political, emotional, and design conflicts over various redevelopment plans. ... Sure enough, in February 2004, Mitchell announced a deal. The LMDC would buy the building for $90 million and assume responsibility for a $45 million contract to take it down. The insurers paid Deutsche Bank $140 million and agreed to cover 75% of any costs above the $45 million assumed by the LMDC. ... What had been a private failure was about to become a public liability. Meanwhile, on paper at least, the arrangement has proved to be lucrative for Deutsche Bank. Fortune's review of six years of SEC filings, including a footnote in one dated March 27, 2007, shows that Deutsche Bank "received aggregated payments from the four insurers and the [LMDC] totaling U.S. $1 billion" for its damaged building (and one much smaller satellite office behind it). ... The bank paid out massive costs for "write-offs of fixed assets, expenses incurred to replace fixed assets that were damaged, relocation expenses, and expenses incurred to secure and maintain the damaged properties." But the final tally resulted in a total "benefit" of 215 million euros from 2004 to 2006. ... 'No one is in charge' Deutsche Bank and its insurers receded from the stage in the summer of 2004, but they left one final delay behind: The insurers agreed to cover their share of costs only if the charges stemmed from legally mandated procedures to remove 9/11 contaminants. That meant the LMDC, which officially took possession of the building from Deutsche Bank on Aug. 31, 2004, had to launch a whole new study to determine the building's toxicity. The report found that the ubiquitous dust in the structure contained elevated levels of asbestos. That was only the beginning: 99% of the dioxin samples taken exceeded EPA levels that would mandate a residential cleanup, as did 97% of the lead samples. The news scared local residents. Indeed, the political climate had shifted dramatically in lower Manhattan. In the urgent days after 9/11, the authorities were willing to forgo certain regulations. There was no time, for example, to put contracts out to bid for the demolition companies that spent months removing debris from Ground Zero. But if people had been willing to err on the side of expediency shortly after the attack, by 2004 the opposite was true. The government unintentionally contributed to that feeling. The federal Environmental Protection Agency had made what became infamous statements; in particular, its Sept. 18, 2001, press release assured residents that "the air is safe to breathe" in lower Manhattan. As the veracity of that statement became increasingly dubious, the EPA was flayed by countless critics. By the summer of 2004 the EPA had lost the trust of many New Yorkers, especially those who lived near Ground Zero. But for all the resentment toward the EPA, people were even more afraid of seeing a contaminated building come down near their homes without strong government oversight. So they pushed the EPA to play a lead role. The local congressman, Jerrold Nadler, and a long list of community groups lobbied in every way they could. The campaign succeeded - and then some. The EPA signed on, along with eight other regulatory agencies from the city, state, and federal governments. Together they jumped right into the fray, greeting the LMDC's plan to decontaminate and demolish the building with 23 pages of comments and criticisms. The plan, the EPA wrote in January 2005, didn't ensure against a "significant potential for releases of contamination." Residents reacted even more harshly, and some of their ominous words would prove prescient. "LMDC is in over their heads," said Kimberly Flynn of activist group 9/11 Environmental Action at a public forum with the LMDC in January 2005. "The demolition is staggeringly complex and risk-ridden. Responsibility and accountability are currently diffuse, distributed across the patchwork of contractors and subcontractors and a list of regulators. Everyone is in charge, and no one is in charge." .... Who is John Galt? In fairness, the cleanup and demolition was a daunting project, especially for a government entity with no construction experience. "We were a planning agency," says Rampe, the LMDC president at the time. "This really didn't fall into our mission statement." But with Deutsche Bank, the insurers, and other government agencies backing away, the LMDC volunteered to tackle the myriad obstacles. For starters, the proximity of other structures meant the building would have to be taken apart piece by piece - "deconstructed" - rather than demolished or imploded. But that was simple compared with the cleanup. There are established protocols for removing asbestos in, say, pipe insulation. But how to remove the World Trade Center dust, laden with contaminants that had been blown into the walls, the elevator shafts, and the innards of the heating system, was quite another matter. It was something that neither the LMDC and the contractors nor the EPA knew much about. Not surprisingly, the process bogged down again. The first half of 2005 slipped by as the LMDC selected a new contractor for what was clearly going to be a more demanding mission than originally conceived. In August 2005, LMDC announced that Bovis Lend Lease, the U.S. subsidiary of the Australian property company Lend Lease, would lead the project. Bovis was no stranger to Ground Zero. It was one of four construction managers that oversaw the speedy dismantling of the colossal pile of debris. Soon after, a bizarre drama began to unfold. Bovis wanted to hire Safeway Environmental, a New York operation with experience in asbestos demolition, as its main subcontractor. It seemed a logical choice: The LMDC had already hired the firm to do asbestos-related preparatory work on the building. But a construction accident in July of 2005 brought intense scrutiny to Safeway, which was already under a monitoring agreement with the city's Department of Investigation (DOI). The terms required, among other things, that Safeway sever ties to a former owner who was a convicted felon. Safeway was later banned from city contracts for failing to abide by its agreement with the DOI, including the fact that the former owner was still a director and had been fingered in the trial of John Gotti Jr. as "an associate" of former Gambino family hit man Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano. (A lawyer for Safeway declined to be interviewed.) The DOI advised against hiring Safeway and suggested several alternatives. Finally, early in 2006, Bovis chose an unknown entity called John Galt Corp. Beyond the oddness of its name - John Galt is the protagonist in the Ayn Rand novel Atlas Shrugged - the company was little more than a shell. It did, however, have as two of its key figures executives who had until that moment worked for Safeway. And Galt would be leasing Safeway's construction equipment. To the DOI, Galt appeared to be Safeway (SWY, Fortune 500) in new clothing. (Greg Blinn, Galt's president, declined to be interviewed, as did a lawyer for the company.) But according to Bovis, Galt was the only bidder that fulfilled all qualifications, so Galt was in. The choice rankled residents, who marched in front of the LMDC in May 2006 carrying placards that read NO MOB ON THE JOB and WHO IS JOHN GALT? (the latter quoting the opening words of Atlas Shrugged). Meanwhile, tensions escalated between the regulators and the regulated. "It was like they were just talking past each other," says one source who represented a government entity other than the EPA. "To say it was antagonistic would be an understatement." ... The EPA had approved the LMDC's deconstruction plan in the fall of 2005, but now the two sides traded accusations. The "LMDC is now planning a deconstruction which apparently has significant differences since our review and acceptance of LMDC's abatement plan last September," the EPA wrote to the agency in March 2006. If anything, the Galt and Bovis team was more incensed than the EPA. In their view, the regulators weren't being clear about what they wanted. The contractors viewed the regulators as white-gloved butlers, ignorant of construction realities, scrutinizing every corner for stray dust specks and treating a demolition site as if it were a clean room in a microchip-manufacturing facility. The contractors were charged with cleaning all the World Trade Center dust from the building. But how do you define "clean"? The regulators insisted that the structure be completely free of dust. The contractors countered that there is no such thing as no dust when you are demolishing a 30-year-old building. Finally, the sides compromised on a so-called dime standard: A floor would be deemed acceptable as long as no spot of dust larger than a dime remained. But even that definition didn't solve the conflict, and time after time workers would be sent back to clean some more and win the regulators' blessing - sometimes despite the fact that air-testing revealed no dangerous levels of contaminants. Each time, as many as 50 workers on a floor, all of them in double-layer Tyvek suits with respirators, were deployed with toothbrushes and pipe cleaners to scrape away at every exposed inch of bolt, pipe, or conduit. While the regulators and the LMDC battled largely behind the scenes, unnerving accidents were occurring. At least twice, panes of glass fell from the tower, and in March 2006 a worker was injured after falling 40 feet. In April 2006 came new trauma: The entire project had to be halted when pieces of human bones were discovered on the roof. A handful of fragments had been found before. But a comprehensive search had never occurred. Now a team descended on the site in full Hazmat gear to comb through the dust for remains of 9/11 victims. By the fall, 784 bone fragments had been removed from the building. Start and stop - In September 2006 the country marked the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy. But the deconstruction of the Deutsche Bank building still hadn't begun. That month regulators approved a "revised implementation plan," and the full-fledged decontamination work finally got underway. But no sooner was the good news announced than yet another problem cropped up. Because of the stringent decontamination procedures (or perhaps because Galt had submitted an artificially low bid to win the job), Galt had to deploy many more workers than it had anticipated. That meant Galt's original fee - $60 million - wouldn't come close to covering the necessary man-hours. The company would go bankrupt, its president warned, unless the fee was increased. As the fall of 2006 progressed, the dispute intensified into a crisis. Officials from the LMDC, Bovis, Galt, the city, and the state shuttled into and out of meetings for weeks. To no avail: In December some 180 of the 200 Galt workers simply walked off the job. The warnings about Galt had long been forgotten, according to three people involved in the negotiations. Galt was viewed as doing a good job, they say, and officials were loath to let the company bow out. Once again, high-ranking officials were brought in: In January 2007, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and the state's then-new (and now former) governor, Eliot Spitzer, convened a meeting to hammer out an accord with the contractors. The resulting deal essentially deferred the argument till later: The LMDC agreed to raise Galt's compensation by $10 million, with the proviso that it could negotiate or sue at the end of the project to "recapture" any portion that it challenged. Galt returned to the job early in 2007 and the speed of work picked up. On March 19, 2007, the quest to bring the building down reached a milestone: Workers began disassembling the 40th floor. During the next four months, Galt removed 13 more. But accidents continued to occur. One of the most menacing came on May 17, when a 15-foot length of pipe fell from the 35th floor, plunged through the roof of the adjacent firehouse, and mildly injured two firefighters. The accident triggered a new round of bad press. That mishap and others caused the issuance of dozens of violations against the contractors. Of course, with multiple regulators combing the site every day, it wasn't entirely surprising that problems would be detected. New York's Department of Buildings, just to cite one example, had one or more inspectors on the premises every single day. The stream of violations - particularly for the fallen pipe - seemed like warnings. But the LMDC didn't appear to be troubled. Avi Schick, who was named chairman of the LMDC in April 2007, was pleased enough with the progress that he gave a tour of the building to a reporter from the New York Times in mid-August. The article was published one day before the blaze that killed two firefighters. Schick floated a trial balloon: Perhaps it would be worth testing the level of contaminants to determine whether a less demanding cleanup method might work? Depending on your point of view, that meant either a more rational, streamlined process (if you're the LMDC or a contractor), or an attempt to loosen the rules and raise the chances of a toxic emission (if you're a regulator or resident). The EPA's response was an unequivocal and absolute "no." The LMDC's proposal to "implement a new sampling plan to gather new data... and to revisit abatement procedures" is "unacceptable to EPA," the agency's top local official wrote on Aug. 29. Eventually realizing that the EPA wasn't going to back down, Schick began working with a total of 13 different regulators and government agencies through the fall and emerged with an approved new plan in early February. The result won plaudits even from some of the activists. It includes all sorts of fire protections and a change long pushed by local residents: Decontamination and deconstruction will no longer occur at the same time. A new subcontractor has been hired, and this time it's a well-regarded company: LVI Services, which worked on the cleanup of the Pentagon after 9/11. The Deutsche Bank building is now scheduled to be demolished by the end of 2008, a date that should be viewed with skepticism given the failure to meet virtually every other major deadline in the effort to retire it. ... Investigators are examining countless aspects, including who was responsible for the severed standpipe. "But even broader," says a source familiar with the investigation, "is how we got ourselves into this situation in the first place. What was John Galt doing on the job? Who is John Galt? How did they get the contract? Are there any irregularities in that?" Meanwhile, families of the dead firefighters have already filed suits, Galt has sued Bovis for payment of its full contract, and the chances of litigation between the LMDC and Bovis seem high. ... (CNN/Fortune, By Nicholas Varchaver, March 19, 2008)
• Health studies of Sept. 11 dogs ongoing ... To date, 35 deployed dogs and 15 control dogs enrolled in the study have died. The proportion of deceased deployed dogs to deceased control dogs is not significantly different than the control group, nor is the rate of cancer. ... (JAVMA News, March 15, 2008)
• Another Ghost of 9/11 Is Cleared for Demolition ... Fiterman Hall — a semi-ruin since 9/11 that still stands, like the former Deutsche Bank building, as a ghost on the edge of ground zero — is expected to be razed within a year, now that federal regulators have approved a decontamination plan. “This will enable this important project to move forward,” Matthew Goldstein, the chancellor of the City University of New York, said on Wednesday. Fiterman Hall, which stands 15 stories, is part of the Borough of Manhattan Community College, a unit of CUNY. About 30 decontamination workers are already in the building, said Marc Violette, a spokesman for the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York, which is overseeing demolition and construction for CUNY. It will take four to six months, he said, immediately followed by deconstruction, which will also last four to six months. The project cost is $16.3 million. The contractor is PAL Environmental Safety Corporation of Long Island City, Queens. ... (NYTimes, by David W. Dunlap, March 14, 2008)
• Federal Spending on WTC Responders' Treatment: $261 Million Plus ... A March 11 report from the Government Accountability Office to a congressional joint economic committee says NIOSH now has a good handle on estimated costs to treat thousands of firefighters, police officers, and others who responded to the World Trade Center site during and after Sept. 11, 2001. The report says federal funds spent from October 2001 to November 2007 totaled $261.1 million, which is money awarded and overseen by NIOSH. ... (Occupational Health & Safety, March 13, 2008)
• Fiterman Hall Sees Light at the End of the Demolition ... the smaller-scale demolition nightmare on the outskirts of ground zero — is a step closer to coming down, the chancellor of the City University of New York said, now that federal regulators have approved a decontamination plan. ... Fiterman Hall is a 15-story building at 30 West Broadway, north of 7 World Trade Center, which was converted to classroom and office space for the Borough of Manhattan Community College, a unit of CUNY. It was damaged on Sept. 11, 2001, and has been standing in its ravaged state ever since while battles were waged over insurance coverage, financing sources and the adequacy of protection from contaminants while the structure is being razed. Eventually, it is to be replaced by a new Fiterman Hall. ... Last Friday, the federal Environmental Protection Agency formally accepted a decontamination plan put forth by the dormitory authority. The plan focuses on “containment measures to control potential releases of contaminants, proper procedures for monitoring the work and waste disposal,” the agency said. The federal agency said adherence to the safeguards proposed in the plan “will help prevent the occurrence of a situation that may present an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health and the environment.” ... Bovis Lend Lease, the general contractor for the demolition project at 130 Liberty Street, and its former subcontractor, the John Galt Corporation, were accused last month by federal safety regulators of indifference or intentional disregard for dangerous conditions that led to a fatal fire there last August. Decontamination work was suspended. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which owns 130 Liberty Street, received approval last month to start decontamination work again. On March 3, workers from Bovis and its new subcontractor, LVI Services, arrived on the job. A spokesman for the development corporation said there was a crew of 76 workers during the day shift on Wednesday, followed by 46 for the night shift. (NYTimes, by David W. Dunlap, March 13, 2006)
• CUNY's Toxic Hall to Fall at Ground Zero ... After more than two years of delays, federal officials have finally approved plans to decontaminate and demolish City University's toxin-filled Fitterman Hall at Ground Zero, which has served as a grim reminder of the 9/11 terror attacks. The US Environmental Protection Agency approved the complex plan to clear the building of asbestos, mercury, dioxin and other toxins, setting the stage for decontamination crews to begin work inside Fitterman Hall yesterday. "We cleared the last regulatory hurdle," said Mark Violette, a spokesman for the New York State Dormitory Authority, which is in charge of the demolition and replacement of the former academic building at 30 West Broadway. The letter from the EPA arrived Friday, and Violette said the authority had its contractor, PAL Environmental, begin work as soon as possible. The cost of getting rid of the terror-scarred building is $16.3 million. Violette said a crew of 30 was inside Fitterman Hall yesterday, installing decontamination units at all the building's entrances, showers for workers and plastic sheathing over windows to keep toxins inside. The decontamination work will take four to six months. "As soon as the decontamination work is done, we'll roll out the deconstruction phase. which will take another four to six months," Violette said. The most recent delay in the project came after a fire at the Deutsche Bank building over the summer killed two firefighters. That building, south of the World Trade Center, was also undergoing a complex decontamination and deconstruction. ... (NYPost, by Tom Topousis, March 13, 2008)
• GAO: 9/11-Health Cost Estimates “Improved” Since Last Year .... GAO: NIOSH’s 9/11-Health Cost Estimates “Improved” Since Last Year -NIOSH Says that 9/11 Health Progs. Will Cost $218.5 Million in FY 2008, But Admin. Provides Only $25 Million in Budget- ... Washington, D.C. – Today, Senators Charles Schumer, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez and Reps. Carolyn B. Maloney, Jerrold Nadler, and Vito Fossella released a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report concluding that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) had improved the cost estimation process for World Trade Center health programs over the last year.  NIOSH estimates that the total cost for 9/11-related health care and medical monitoring programs in FY 2008 will be $218.5 million, compared with the agency’s cost estimate for FY 2007 of $230 to $283 million.  The GAO report (click here for a full copy) says that NIOSH’s cost estimates for this fiscal year are improved because they are based in large part on the average actual costs of screening and monitoring exams conducted in FY 2007. ... (Room Eight New York Politics, March 12, 2008)
• Closure eludes EMT's kin ... The family of a paramedic who worked for months in the Ground Zero morgue to give closure to the families of 9/11 victims is still looking for their own closure two years after her death. Emergency Medical Technician Deborah Reeve worked for several months sorting body parts at the morgue following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In addition to exposing herself to death on a massive scale, she breathed asbestos fibers that her doctors say killed her. On Tuesday, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta, dozens of her colleagues, her husband and fellow paramedic, David, and her two children, Elizabeth, 12, and Mark, 8, met at Jacobi Medical Center's EMT Station 20 to dedicate a plaque in her honor. ... The turnout impressed David Reeve, but the sentiments were not enough for the man who buried his wife of 14 years at age 41. Reeve fought for medical coverage during her last year of life as she battled mesothelioma, an aggressive form of lung cancer, and she was the first EMT worker to receive a $30,000-a-year disability compensation. Her funeral was paid for by the Fire Department - her death was classified as one in the administrative line of duty. But her husband and children were left $90,000 in debt from medical bills after she died. ... (Daily News, by Dorian Block, March 12, 2008)
• Dedication of plaque in memory of 9/11 paramedic who died in '06 ...A paramedic who worked at a morgue in the toxic dust of ground zero is being honored two years after she died of lung cancer. A plaque is expected to be unveiled in memory of New York Fire Department paramedic Deborah Reeve at a ceremony Tuesday at Station 20 in the Morris Park section of the Bronx. Reeve died on March 16, 2006, of mesothelioma, a lung cancer associated with exposure to asbestos. The 41-year-old developed a cough in late 2003 and retired about a year later, too ill to work. Her death has not been officially linked to exposure from the 9/11 attacks, though her family and doctors say her cancer was caused by her work at the World Trade Center. (Newsday, March 11, 2008)
• State Told: Ease 9/11 Disability Pension Rules; Panel: Hours, Areas Exclude Too Many; Mayor Supportive ... (The Chief-Leader, by Renven Blau, March 14, 2008)
• Judge: NYCOSH Not Entitled To City Injury Data ... A Manhattan Supreme Court Justice has tossed out a lawsuit against the Bloomberg administration brought by a labor group seeking information from the Mayor's Office on public employee work-related injury and illness data under the Freedom of Information Law. The New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health sued the city in October after filing a FOIL request in May regarding material not included in a city report about Workers' Compensation in order to advocate for risk-reduction programs, the group's attorney said. The request was denied by the city, as was an appeal. ... (The Chief-Leader, by Ari Paul, March 14, 2008)
• The bell tolls for another hero of 9/11 ... Thompson was a first responder from the Sixth Precinct, just up West Street from the attack site. He worked the bucket brigades in the days following the building collapses, sifting the debris in hopes of finding survivors. He'd develop a hacking cough later on. Something unusual for a nonsmoker, the doctors said. Then, in December, he was finally diagnosed. Cancer. ... (Staten Island Advance, March 10, 2008)
• Environmental Illnesses Haunt Some Who Covered 9/11 .... Between 2002 and 2004, The World Trade Center Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program surveyed 9,442 workers, including 81 who worked for news agencies. The survey found that this group was five times as likely as the general population to suffer from reduced breathing capacity. The NYPPA has been encouraging 9/11 journalists to fill out an anonymous online survey. By early February, the survey had logged 161 responses. Respondents reported a variety of breathing problems like asthma and persistent coughing, and symptoms of depression and PTSD. Thirty-six of them said post-9/11 health problems have affected their careers. When the Twin Towers collapsed, they kicked up a cloud of pulverized cement, glass, lead, asbestos, PCBs, pesticides and other chemicals. Some of the journalists now suffering from health problems feel angry that the government did little to warn people about these dangers. They now scoff at the early assurances that the air was safe ... (Media Channel, March 6, 2008)
  
• Environmental Illnesses Haunt Some Who Covered 9/11-- Rescuers and construction workers aren't the only ones sickened by exposure to World Trade Center dust and smoke. Journalists, including photographers, are also reporting health problems. ... New York Times staff photographer Keith Meyers loved to tackle rigorous assignments, like flying in military jets and scuba diving with astronauts in training. "He was almost hyper in terms of his energy level," says friend and fellow Times photographer Fred Conrad. "He could run circles around people." On September 11, 2001, Meyers cut short a vacation and raced to New York to help with coverage at Ground Zero. Four days later, Meyers climbed aboard a Coast Guard helicopter to shoot a series of historic pictures, the first aerial news photos of the still-burning World Trade Center site. As he leaned out of the helicopter, Meyers could feel the rising smoke. "It was like breathing fire, and I could feel my skin tingling and burning," he says. A doctor later told him he probably had been exposed to chemicals as caustic as Drano. Over the next two years, Meyers's health deteriorated. While covering the New York City blackout in 2003, he suffered several asthma attacks. His energy level diminished, and twice he nodded off behind the wheel while waiting at tollbooths. Now 59, Meyers suffers from serious breathing problems. Treatment keeps many of his symptoms in check, but he can no longer do his job. He went on indefinite medical leave from The Times last year. His diagnoses are like a catalogue of the illnesses that afflict 9/11 workers: asthma, rhinitis, sinusitis, gastroesophageal reflux disorder, paradoxical voice box disorder. On top of all that is a feeling of lost identity now that he has given up photojournalism. ... Meyers is not alone. Five other journalists have told PDN they suffer persistent health effects after working at the World Trade Center site, and a sixth has died of cancer. Two of them were unwilling to be named in this article, one for privacy reasons and another because of an ongoing lawsuit. David Handschuh, a photographer for the New York Daily News, has been working with The New York Press Photographers Association (NYPPA) to make sure these journalists aren't forgotten. Handschuh, 48, broke his leg covering the World Trade Center attack and was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. "It's not a New York problem. It's a nationwide problem," Handschuh says when discussing 9/11 health concerns, emphasizing that many out-of-town journalists were part of the coverage. First responders and construction workers who toiled in the toxic aftermath of 9/11 have been the subject of news reports, political speeches and prize-winning newspaper editorials. But little has been said about the journalists who were exposed to the same conditions. Handschuh and the NYPPA are advocating for legislation in New York State to extend the deadline for journalists to file 9/11-related workers compensation claims. Last year state lawmakers extended the filing deadline for rescue and recovery workers to August 14, but there is no similar extension for journalists. For environmental illnesses like asthma and cancer, proving a direct link between cause and effect is difficult. Certain cancers might not appear for decades. But right now, some journalists are convinced their health problems are the result of their work at Ground Zero. Keith Silverman, 49, a freelance camera operator who arrived at the World Trade Center the morning of September 11 and spent the next two weeks there for ABC, says he can no longer work in TV. He suffers from chronic sinus issues and is in remission from Hodgkin's lymphoma, problems he believes come from exposure to dust and smoke at Ground Zero. "They don't know what we breathed in because there were so many carcinogens in the air," he says. Philippe Gassot, 52, a Washington, D.C.-based correspondent for French TV and radio; Jim Purcell, 42, publisher of a weekly newspaper in Middletown, New Jersey; and another photo- journalist all say they suffer from worsening breathing problems after covering Ground Zero. A producer for a Canadian TV network spent a week at Ground Zero after 9/11. He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in June 2002 and died of lung failure in 2004. His wife (who requested that his name not be published) says she believes the World Trade Center dust acted as a trigger for this rare form of cancer. It is likely that there are more. Between 2002 and 2004, The World Trade Center Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program surveyed 9,442 workers, including 81 who worked for news agencies. The survey found that this group was five times as likely as the general population to suffer from reduced breathing capacity. .... (Photo Distric News, By Daryl Lang, March 03, 2008)
  
• Downtown: At the Site of Disaster, Dust and Dismay ... RETURNING in the evening to his loft on Murray Street in Lower Manhattan, Dr. Nathaniel Hupert, inspecting the paws of his Australian shepherd, often finds them coated in black dirt and dust. Dr. Hupert, a public health researcher and physician, is one of many local residents who worry about substances that may be emanating from the World Trade Center construction site, particularly along Church Street, where trucks leave at the intersection with Vesey Street, near St. Paul’s Chapel. “It’s been getting worse as the construction’s gotten more intense, and there are just a lot of unknowns about it,” Dr. Hupert said. When out with his 2-year-old daughter, he avoids Church Street altogether; other times, he holds his breath. Nor is he alone in his worries: According to Catherine McVay Hughes, chairwoman of the World Trade Center Redevelopment Committee of Community Board 1, possible health hazards from ground zero are the No. 1 complaint among Downtown residents. In response, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in two weeks will start using a new street sweeper to eliminate dust that might have migrated off the site and onto adjoining streets. According to Steve Coleman, an agency spokesman, the Port Authority will also install grates at entrances and exits of the site that will knock dust off truck wheels. “This will do a much better job in cleaning any of the dust that may have left the site,” Mr. Coleman said. ... While residents view the dust as a health hazard, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the city-and-state agency that monitors air quality at the construction site, sees success. Michael Murphy, a spokesman for the corporation, said that thousands of tests had been conducted, and their results showed that any contamination was below the levels that the federal Environmental Protection Agency considered potentially dangerous. Not all local merchants would agree. Shimon Zlotnikov, whose family owns Shimmie’s New York Outlet, a discount shop on Warren Street that sells everything from clothing to kitchen supplies, said that merchandise he placed on the sidewalk outside his store in the morning was caked with dust by the time he brought it back inside at closing time. “I’m having a big problem with the fact that they’re not doing everything they can possibly do about the dust,” he told community board members at a meeting Tuesday, his casual gray T-shirt standing out in a crowded room of dark suits. ... (NYTimes, by Gregory Beyer, March 2, 2008)
  

FEBRUARY

• Fine Contractors At Fatal Fire Building -- Assess $464G Penalty ... The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration Feb. 19 issued 44 citations to two contractors that worked on the demolition of the Deutsche Bank Building, where a fire killed two Firefighters last August. OSHA slapped Bovis Lend Lease, the primary contractor, and the John Galt Corporation with $464,500 in fines. Bovis said it would appeal the decision. Amazed by 'Breakdown' "It's incomprehensible to us that such violations would exist in one of the most highly-monitored work sites in the country," said Joel Shufro, the executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. "There's a breakdown in the overall administration of the site." The building's demolition is being overseen by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. The Fire Department determined that smoking by workers caused the fire. A broken standpipe in the building left firefighters without access to water and they encountered barriers to escape routes, a violation of the Fire Code. n response to both OSHA's findings about the Deutsche Bank fire and the recent death of a worker at the Trump Soho work site, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer announced the institution of the Borough Construction Watch. "Just as some communities have a Neighborhood Watch program that works with the Police Department and helps residents reduce crime in their neighborhoods, we need a neighborhood construction watch to work with the Buildings Department to help monitor safety issues at the many building sites on Manhattan streets," Mr. Stringer said in a statement. UFA Supports Effort Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy praised the Borough President's plan. "His creation of the task force can and should be a model for other boroughs to follow," he said in a statement. "As we have said all along, Firefighters' schedules are already overburdened and our proposal to create a dedicated FDNY building inspection task force have been rejected by the Fire Department for supposed budgetary reasons." Community Board 1 Vice Chair Catherine McVay Hughes will lead the group, and committees within it would oversee projects in conjunction with the Buildings Department, unions and other advocacy groups and meet regularly with contractors, Mr. Stringer's office said. ... .(The Chief, By Ari Paul, Feb. 29, 2008)
• Lawyer fired for talking to reporter wants $50G in Deutsche fire suit ... A lawyer is suing the widow and children of a firefighter killed last year in the toxic tower next to Ground Zero. Firefighter Joseph Graffagnino's widow, her two kids and their lawyer are being sued by Marc Fernrich, a Manhattan lawyer who was dropped from the family's case against the city and is now demanding a $50,000 payday. ... (NYDaily News, by Thomas Zambito & Jose Martinez, Feb. 28, 2008)
• DEUTSCHE LAWYERS IN FIERY FEUD ... A lawyer for a firefighter killed in the Deutsche Bank blaze has accused an attorney who worked with him on the case of trying to shake down the dead man's family. In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, John Meringolo said fellow lawyer Marc Fernich was "motivated by unbridled avarice" when he tried "to professionally extort . . . money from the widow and two infant children of fallen . . . Firefighter Joseph P. Graffagnino," who died in the Aug. 18 fire. Fernich did six months of work as Meringolo's co-counsel before Meringolo fired him for speaking to a Post reporter about the case. Last week, Fernich filed suit against Meringolo and the Graffagninos, looking to collect on the $50,000 he says they owe him. But he insisted his beef is with Meringolo only. "It's ironic that he stole my services and is accusing me of a crime" and "it's unfortunate that he's dragging his clients into this," Fernich said. (NYPost, by Dareh Gregoriani, Feb. 28, 2008)
  
• Council Bill Would Cover Health Care Costs For Ground Zero Workers ... The city would foot the cost of health care for city workers suffering illnesses related to toxin exposure at ground zero until they can receive disability payments, if a bill by a City Council member, Michael McMahon of Staten Island, passes. "I was shocked when I learned that our heroes of 9/11 were not receiving the health care they needed after becoming ill as a result of their work at ground zero," Mr. McMahon said yesterday in a statement. "The city has an obligation to these men and women to ensure that they receive the best health care possible in their time of need. These are the people who served the city in our time of need without regard to their own health and safety." Mr. McMahon will announce the introduction of the bill today at City Hall along with the head of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, Patrick Lynch, and representatives from the firefighters and emergency workers unions. (The NY Sun, Feb. 27, 2008)
• Sick 9/11 workers rally in rainy D.C. for more help ... Chanting "$25 million isn't enough!" dozens of sick 9/11 first responders stood in the rain on Capitol Hill Tuesday and urged President Bush to restore funding to help pay their medical bills. Joseph Zadroga, whose son James died of lung disease after working 100 hours at the site for the NYPD, said the government needs to help those who helped the city get back on its feet after the towers fell. ... (NYDaily News, by Stephanie Gaskell, Feb. 27, 2008)
  
• 9/11 responders demand health care funding ... WASHINGTON - Gregory Quibell already suffered from pulmonary fibrosis last October when he was diagnosed with leukemia. He said yesterday he at first didn't think that the cancer was related to his cleanup work at the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. But his doctor said it was, and now Quibell, 53, of North Babylon, wants the federal government to help him. ... (Newsday, by Carl Macgowan, Feb. 27, 2008)
• Council Bill Would Cover Health Care Costs For Ground Zero Workers ... The city would foot the cost of health care for city workers suffering illnesses related to toxin exposure at ground zero until they can receive disability payments, if a bill by a City Council member, Michael McMahon of Staten Island, passes. ... (NYSun, Feb. 27, 2008)
  
• LMDC and New Contractor Resume Work at 130 Liberty -- Time and Cost Expected to Double -- COMPANY THAT BLEW UP SANDS AND STARDUST CASINOS WILL NOW TAKE APART DEUTSCHE BANK TOWER NEW CONTRACTOR’S “CULTURE OF SAFETY” TOUTED? ... One of the principal changes implemented since August has been the hiring of a new subcontractor, LVI Environmental Services Inc., to complete the project. Known for its expertise in imploding large buildings, including several Las Vegas casinos, LVI had been one of the finalists for the original contract in 2005, but it withdrew its bid after another company on the short list received anonymous threats warning it not take on 130 Liberty. This paved the way for the hiring of the John Galt Corporation, which was removed from the project by the LMDC after the August fire, and which has subse-quently been alleged to have ties to a company believed by some investigators to be linked to organized crime. LVI prides itself on its “culture of safety,” having logged nearly 200,000 hours of abatement work at the Pentagon since September, 2001 without incident. Last month, however, one worker was killed and several injured, during LVI’s decontamination and demolition of a power plant in San Francisco. The strategy for taking 130 Liberty apart has also changed. Instead of simultaneously decontaminating and demolishing the remaining 26 stories the procedure until the August fire, LVI will (pending approval of this process from regulators) remove all the toxins from the building before resuming deconstruction. The negative air pressure system used to keep contaminants like asbestos inside while work proceeds not only made the building difficult for firefighters to navigate, but it may well have fed fresh air to the August 18 blaze. Bovis Senior Vice President Frank Voci explained that a replacement system is linked to a master switch that will allow negative pressure to be shut down immediately across the entire worksite. The standpipe system, which failed to function during the fire, has been repaired and extended, according to Bovis, with a total of five connections from which water can be drawn in case of fire. Additionally, Mr. Voci explained, “we have a detector so that if there is a drop in air pressure, or the [standpipe] system is compromised in any way, an alarm will go off.” (Battery Park Broadsheet, by Evan Simko-Bednarski, Feb. 2008)
  
• Officials hope Deutsche demo can resume late this year .. . In politics they say the cover-up is always worse than the crime and in toxic demolitions, apparently the cleanup takes longer than the deconstruction. So said David Emil, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is hoping to begin dismantling the former Deutsche Bank building later this year. Emil — who did not use the political metaphor — told Downtown Express last week that the abatement work ridding the building of toxic chemicals is only in its preliminary stages and once it begins fully, it will take much longer to do than the physical removal of the building structure at 130 Liberty St. “The abatement definitely should take more than the actual deconstruction,” he said Thursday after the L.M.D.C.’s board meeting. ... Emil said he was confident the abatement work would not take the rest of the year, but the original work plan he laid out suggested that it would be longer. Emil, through a spokesperson, amended his remarks this week and laid out a work plan that could begin in mid-March and be completed in about eight months under a best case scenario. If so, the physical removal of the building severely damaged by the collapsing Twin Towers would resume toward the end of November and could be done in about 75 days. ... Galt was issued three “willful” and 22 serious violations and was fined $271,500. Bovis got two willful violations and 17 serious ones for a total of $193,000. ... Frank Voci, Bovis’ senior vice president, who was transferred to 130 Liberty after the fire, told Community Board 1 members and residents last month that Bovis wanted “to regain your trust and confidence.” Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau is investigating the contractors and government officials who worked on the Deutsche project. Emil told Downtown Express last week that work decontaminating the area near slabs that have to be removed is currently underway on the building’s top floor, 19. Once the slabs are removed, a decontamination chamber will be built allowing the full abatement of the top floors to begin. Officials hope this decontamination begins in mid- or late-March. LVI Environmental Services, Inc., the new subcontractor, can decontaminate floors in blocks of two or three, but has chosen to do two, Emil said. Each two-floor block will take about 60 days to decontaminate. Through his spokesperson this week, Emil said a new block could be started every two or three weeks, which suggests the decontamination work could be done in just under eight months. Emil originally said only three blocks would be worked on at the same time — and two of them would be only for the final or first few days of the decontamination work. He also said there would be a few days of preparation before the 60-day process could begin on each block. Under this work plan, which Emil subsequently amended, the dismantling of the building would not have resumed until the summer or fall of 2009. Community and environmental groups successfully pressed the L.M.D.C. to complete the decontamination work before demolition resumes for safety reasons. Emil said another advantage to this new procedure is that without having to worry about contaminated materials on lower floors the deconstruction can be done more quickly without sacrificing safety.... (Downtown Express, by Josh Rogers, Feb. 22-28, 2008)
  
• Letters to the editor: Deutsche Mistakes II ... Downtown residents, office workers and many community, labor, and environmental organizations have repeatedly pressed the L.M.D.C./Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center for careful, transparent planning on the demolition. In 2004, we warned that the project was uncoordinated and that responsibility and accountability were diffuse. We called for the hiring of competent contractors, pre-planning for a range of disasters, a robust community notification plan, and an L.M.D.C. responsive to the regulators. We met with stonewalling at every turn. Red flags raised repeatedly were ignored. By 2006, the incompetence and integrity problems of the contractors made headlines. The deaths of firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino were all the more tragic because the institutional failures that contributed to their deaths were foreseeable. ... As your editorial (Feb. 15 – 21, “What Downtown needs from the L.M.D.C.”) advises, L.M.D.C. should enter into a genuine working relationship with the community, especially since a number of gaps remain, not least the underdeveloped emergency community notification plan. ... And, we must have a transparent public process going forward. L.M.D.C. must regularly hold two types of meetings: working meetings with adequate time for detailed discussion of the plans, and public meetings in the evening that allow the community and independent experts to voice their concerns at an open mic. Implementing this public process would be the surest sign that L.M.D.C. has begun to learn from the mistakes of the past. ... (Downtown Express, by Josh Rogers, Feb. 22-28, 2008)
  
• Trade center screening ... Nassau University Medical Center is encouraging more participation in its free medical screening and monitoring program for rescue and recovery workers at the World Trade Center following the 2001 terrorist attacks. Dr. Asok Karnik, chief of division of pulmonary and critical care medicine at NUMC, directs the hospital's World Trade Center program. The program started soon after Sept. 11, 2001, and people who worked at the trade center that day but haven't sought medical screening are urged to do so. Karnik said NUMC in East Meadow and Stony Brook University Medical Center are partners in the federally funded Long Island World Trade Center Monitoring and Treatment Program. So far, about 2,600 patients have been screened at NUMC and 400 to 500 have received treatment, Karnik said. Karnik said that the medical center believes some people haven't sought screening for breathing disorders and other illnesses. Others who were initially screened haven't returned for follow-up visits. "There are some people who have not taken advantage of this program," Karnik said. NUMC is offering physical exams, routine blood and urine tests, breathing tests and mental health assessments through the program. Screening, prescriptions, medical treatment and psychiatric counseling are free to those eligible for the program, which is not limited to Long Island residents. For more information, call 516-572-1303. (Newsday, Feb. 27, 2008)
  
• WTC First Responders To Rally In Washington D.C. ... World Trade Center first responders and their families are heading to D.C. to continue fighting for health care. Nearly 200 first responders are heading to Capitol Hill to hold a rally Tuesday protesting major cuts to their health care. They say the government slashed the budget for 9/11 health care from $108 million to $25 million for the next fiscal year. The workers say they deserve better care after exposing themselves to toxic air. "We're not going to stand for being cut out of the budget by 77 percent,” said John Feal, founder of the Fealgood Foundation. “It's not adequate and it’s an insult.” “If I got hurt in Afghanistan, my family and I would be covered, but since I got hurt in Manhattan we're not,” said WTC construction worker Thomas Magee. Many first responders are also pushing congress to pass the James Zadroga bill which would ensure that everyone exposed to toxins at Ground Zero has proper medical care. (NY1, Feb. 25, 2008)
  
• For Engineer, a Cloud of Litigation After 9/11 ... To hear Ramon Gilsanz speak — voice calm and measured, even on a day when travel plans are tied in a knot by a snowstorm — you would never guess that he is being sued by thousands of people. And that does not count the man who is suing him on behalf of everyone in the United States. What did he do to deserve this? Mr. Gilsanz, a structural engineer with a small firm in Manhattan, was one of the legions of people who just showed up downtown after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack to help. Some made sandwiches. Others dug. Mr. Gilsanz engineered. The two colossal towers had been turned into three and half billion pounds of rubble, piles that reached 12 stories high and 8 stories deep. Buildings had partially collapsed. Any search for survivors would require heavy cranes set on treacherous ground. Someone had to figure out how and where to put them. Fragile walls had to be shored up. Led by Mr. Gilsanz, a group of structural engineers talked their way past the barricades. They became indispensable in a world that suddenly had no recognizable geometry. Nine months later, the debris was cleared. Despite the fast pace and cruel terrain, no workers died because of structural failures or accidents during the recovery. Now, however, thousands of people have filed lawsuits claiming that they became ill by breathing the air at the World Trade Center site while working on the recovery. Still others have sued not because they worked there, but because they had jobs in places where the debris was stored. They say the exposure made them sick. Finally, one man has sued on behalf of the United States, claiming that Mr. Gilsanz is part of a vast conspiracy to cover up the truth about 9/11, including the “so-called building failures.” The lawsuit maintains that exotic weaponry actually destroyed the buildings, and that the airplanes were mass psychological trickery.... Mr. Gilsanz is one of about 130 structural engineers from 30 firms who have been named as defendants in an enormous cloud of litigation that drifts, year by year, through the federal court. The engineers turned up at the trade center site as volunteers, but after a few days, the city established formal arrangements, and they were signed up as subcontractors. “We did not want to get paid for this work, but we were told we had to be paid in order to participate,” said Joseph Tortorella, a former president of the Structural Engineers Association, who is also being sued. “Many of us ended up giving the money to charity.” Both Mr. Tortorella and Mr. Gilsanz say they had nothing to do with monitoring the air. “Air quality is out of our realm as structural engineers,” Mr. Gilsanz said. “We were in the same atmosphere, exposed to the same substances. I took the training with all the workers. Everyone was told to wear the respirator. It was hard.” ... (NYTimes, by Jim Dwyer, Feb. 23, 2008)
  
• Over 'Deutsche' Death Fireman's Family Sues LMDC ... Michael Barasch, one of the attorneys for the Beddia family, inspected the Deutsche Bank Building in November with a group of other lawyers and insurance investigators. He recalled seeing the broken standpipe, which left firefighters no access to water during the fire, and the letters "R-I-P" written in red paint on the 15th floor. ... The suit alleged that the contractors at the Deutsche Bank Building allowed workers to smoke at the site and they created illegal impediments to escaping from a fire in the building. ... 'DEBRIS EVERYWHERE': Attorney Michael Barasch inspects the ruins of the Deutsche Bank Building, where two Firefighters were killed in the line of duty Aug. 18. Mr. Barasch represents the family of the late Robert Beddia, and filed a lawsuit against the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and private contractors. ... While the lawsuit does not name the Bloomberg administration, Mr. Barasch said that it was still possible his firm would add it to the list of defendants. The main purpose of the lawsuit, he said, was to force the agencies and businesses who oversaw the building's demolition to disclose evidence. (The Chief-Leader, by Ari Paul, Feb. 22, 2008)
  
• For Ill WTC Workers Council Urges Feds To Okay 9/11 Aid ... The City Council unanimously passed a resolution Feb. 13 urging Congress to approve the James Zadroga Act, which would secure permanent Federal funding for medical monitoring and treatment for workers and residents suffering from 9/11-related illnesses and injuries. .... Workers and residents were exposed to toxins such as benzene and asbestos in addition to pulverized concrete and particles of human remains. In addition, 12.4 percent of 9/11 responders have post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and 9/11 workers are more likely to develop asthma. ... (The Chief-Leader, by Ari Paul, Feb. 22, 2008)
• Manhattan Borough President Vows To Crack Down On Site Safety ... Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer announced the creation of the Borough Watch Construction Working Group Wednesday to oversee site safety at city construction sites. Stringer says the number of safety violations at high-rise locations more than doubled last year. The group will help monitor construction areas to make sure contractors are following regulations. The borough president is asking everyone to get involved. "We're now going to mobilize our neighbors and families to go out and see what's actually going on,” said Stringer. “So if you see a crane hanging off a building and you see something that shouldn't be happening, the working group is going to get on the case." The watch group formation comes one day after the federal government fined two contractors at the former Deutsche Bank building for safety and health violations following the fire that killed two firefighters in August.... (NY1, Feb. 21, 2008)
  
• As Fire Inquiry at Ground Zero Grows, So Do the Legal Bills ... The Bloomberg administration and the state-run Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, both under scrutiny in the criminal investigation into the fatal Deutsche Bank fire, have incurred more than $2.2 million in fees for outside lawyers to defend their roles in the events that led up to the blaze, officials said this week. The outside lawyers have done a range of work, from advising the agencies and representing witnesses and potential targets of the inquiry to shepherding many of the two million documents subpoenaed in the investigation, according to city and development corporation officials, and other people with knowledge of the matter. The investigation, by the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, began in the days after the Aug. 18 fire and initially focused on the deaths of two firefighters at the former bank tower, which sits on the edge of ground zero and is being torn down to clear the way for a new office tower. But it has swiftly and steadily broadened into a vast inquiry. Today, according to officials involved in the undertaking, more than a dozen prosecutors, investigators and forensic accountants are examining not only the fire, but also the conduct of the contractors hired to demolish the building; the performance of city, state and federal regulators who oversaw the demolition and asbestos removal; and the awarding of the $60 million contract. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the state authority that is overseeing the rebuilding effort at ground zero, owns the former Deutsche Bank building and is overseeing the deconstruction project. It awarded the contract to Bovis Lend Lease, one of the world’s largest construction management companies. ... The prosecutors in Mr. Morgenthau’s office have focused on the conduct of a range of government officials, from the city as well as the development corporation, and contractors who were responsible for inspecting the site and ensuring the safety of workers and others there, said the officials familiar with the inquiry. One central question is how the city’s Buildings Department inspectors — four of whom were assigned to the project, along with a supervisor — failed to notice or report that a 42-foot section of the standpipe was missing from the basement, officials said. The standpipe caries water from street to the building’s upper floors, and officials have said the missing section caused critical delays in getting water to the firefighters battling the blaze. Also under scrutiny is why the Fire Department never inspected the building, or the standpipe, as it was required to do. ... Tensions between the city and the district attorney’s office, which reached a high point when city lawyers sought to question firefighters before they were interviewed by prosecutors, have largely eased, in part as a result of the involvement of knowledgeable criminal defense lawyers, one official said. The city, which hired the criminal defense firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel about a month after the August fire, paid more than $693,000 for the roughly six-week period ending in October, according to Kate O’Brien Ahlers, a spokeswoman for the office of the city’s corporation counsel, Michael A. Cardozo. Mr. Cardozo’s office of the corporation counsel has been billed nearly $679,000 for the months of November and December, bringing the total to $1,372,040. That amounts to more than $90,000 a week, though Ms. Ahlers said city officials expect that rate to decrease. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which also hired a prominent criminal defense firm, Dechert LLP, has spent about $900,000, according to a spokesman for that agency. Both firms agreed to discount their normal fees by about 20 percent, city and development corporation officials said. The lawyers who are heading up each legal team — Gary P. Naftalis, a partner at Kramer Levin, and Edward A. McDonald, a partner at Dechert — are both highly regarded criminal defense attorneys. Both declined to comment yesterday. For the development corporation, the legal fees, which are expected to continue to climb, will add to the already staggering price tag for the demolition project. The original cost of cleaning and deconstructing the former bank tower was estimated at $75 million in the summer of 2005. By January 2007, the cost had risen to $90 million. Officials now estimate that the final cost could exceed $170 million. ... Michael Murphy, a spokesman for the development agency, said it would seek to recover the costs of the outside legal counsel through insurance policies on the project, and through claims stemming from its contract with Bovis. But other potential costs — and more work for the outside lawyers — loom. ... (NYTimes, by William K. Rashbaum & Charles V. Bagli, Feb. 21, 2008)
• Bank Tower Contractors Accused of 44 Violations ... Federal safety regulators have accused the contractors who were taking down the former Deutsche Bank tower in the summer of indifference or intentional disregard for dangerous conditions that led to a fatal fire there, and of a host of other serious safety violations, officials said on Tuesday. The regulators cited the project’s general contractor, Bovis Lend Lease, an international construction management company, and its former subcontractor, the John Galt Corporation, for 44 safety violations, and proposed fining them nearly half a million dollars. Most of the violations, cited by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration as a result of an inspection it began after the Aug. 18 fire, were classified as serious, and five were listed as willful, the agency’s most severe category. ... OSHA also cited the companies for hazards like blocked and unmarked exits, a lack of fire extinguishers, and allowing smoking — which fire investigators have said was the likely cause of the blaze. The contractors exposed workers “to death or serious injury from falls, falling objects, electrocution and the inability to exit the tower swiftly and safely” in the event of a fire, the agency said. “Employers must adhere to safety and health standards, and prepare completely and effectively for workplace emergencies,” said Richard Mendelson, OSHA’s area director in Manhattan, who oversaw the investigation. “Failure to do so can — and, in this case, did — cost lives,” he said. Bovis fired the Galt company in the days after the fire. Both Bovis and Galt have filed papers with the agency contesting the citations and, in statements, said that they would vigorously fight the accusations. The breadth and scope of the accusations provide the most detail to date of the systemic failure of oversight at what is arguably the most regulated demolition and asbestos abatement site in the country. They also raise questions about the role of an alphabet soup of local, state and federal agencies, from the city’s Buildings and Fire Departments and the federal Environmental Protection Agency to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the state authority overseeing the rebuilding effort at ground zero. Several agencies had inspectors assigned to the site all day, every day — there were four Buildings Department inspectors and a supervisor whose only responsibility was the bank tower — while city officials have said that the Fire Department failed to inspect the building at all, as it was required to do. “How is it possible that these violations occurred?” said Joel Shufro, executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, a nonprofit coalition of unions and health professionals that has long been critical of the project’s contractors and the demolition project. “Clearly, there was a systematic failure of oversight.” Although OSHA’s findings suggest that the myriad violations occurred under the noses of all those inspectors and other private contractors, including a construction company, URS, hired by the development corporation to oversee the job, the safety agency regulates only private contractors. ... The office of the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, however, is conducting a broad criminal investigation into the deaths and the entire project, which was mired in delays, multimillion-dollar cost overruns and regulatory red tape long before the fire halted the deconstruction of the tower. The criminal inquiry is focused in part on failures by the city, including the Fire and the Buildings Departments, and prosecutors in Mr. Morgenthau’s office have begun presenting evidence to a grand jury. They are also examining how the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and Bovis selected Galt, a company that had never before performed such work. City investigators had cautioned development officials against hiring Galt; the company was an arranged marriage of sorts between a scaffolding company with no demolition experience and executives from a company called Safeway Environmental, which city officials suspected of having ties to organized crime. ... OSHA cited the two contractors for a total of $464,500 in proposed fines. It listed 3 willful and 22 serious violations by Galt, carrying fines of $271,500, and 2 willful and 17 serious violations by Bovis, with $193,000 in fines. The contractors, which were formally served with the citations on Friday, have 15 days from then to request an informal conference or fight the allegations before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. According to the OSHA citations, which covered the four-day period before the fire, Bovis willfully failed to inspect the building’s standpipe and to maintain it in operating condition and willfully failed to ensure there was an adequate water supply for firefighters to operate their equipment. OSHA said the other willful violations included Galt’s failure to enforce no-smoking regulations, and the blockage of access to the building’s stairwells by both Galt and Bovis. The agency defines a willful violation as one committed “with plain indifference to or intentional disregard for employee safety and health.” A serious citation, according to the agency, is one in which “death or serious physical harm is likely to result from a hazard about which the employer knew or should have known.” ... Galt, in a statement, rejected the accusations and vowed to defend itself. The company contended that the government agencies overseeing the site often issued conflicting directives that resulted in “massive slowdowns and cost overruns.” “Every detail of the work was scrutinized, criticized and finally approved before it could be done," the statement said. "It is inconceivable that these agencies, including OSHA, whose trained inspectors were present at the site on a daily basis, could not detect, or were oblivious to the alleged ‘serious and willful’ violations that supposedly existed prior to the fire." The statement said that if government regulators, including OSHA, failed to discover the alleged violations before the fire, they should be the ones charged with failing to do their duty. ... (NYTimes, by William K. Rashbaum & Charles V. Bagli, Feb. 20, 2008)
• Health Department Begins New Study of Residents and Area Workers ... In collaboration with physicians at Bellevue Hospital Center, the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene recently began a new, in-depth respiratory health study to learn more about the different kinds of World Trade Center (WTC)-related exposures that may have affected the health of people who lived or worked in Lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001, and the months that followed. Included as part of Mayor Bloomberg's $100 million initiative to expand New York City's response to 9/11-related illnesses, the study's participants are being recruited from the more than 71,000 individuals enrolled in the federally funded WTC Health Registry. Although this critical research effort is not designed to treat individuals with respiratory problems, treatment is available at the WTC Environmental Health Center. ... (NYCDOH, Feb. 20, 2008)
• Contractors fined for Deutsche fire ... Contractors accused of turning the Deutsche Bank building into a deathtrap where two firefighters were killed were fined $464,500 Tuesday for 44 federal safety violations. Two companies were cited for hazards such as a missing section of standpipe to bring water to firefighters, failure to mark exits and letting workers smoke inside the Ground Zero tower. ... (Daily News, by Brian Kates, Feb. 20, 2008)
• Contractors Fined In Connection With Deutsche Bank Fire ... The Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Bovis Lend Lease and John Galt Corporation for 44 safety and health violations Tuesday. The violations include: a broken standpipe, not enough water pressure or water to fight fires inside the tower, and smoking in work areas. The contractors were hired for asbestos removal and demolition of the building. It was damaged in the September 11th attacks. Investigators say workers smoking in the building caused the fire. The August 18th fire killed two firefighters. Bovis Lend Lease responded to the citations saying, it "has worked with city, state, and federal agencies in planning for the resumption of work. In the past month, working with these agencies, Bovis has successfully developed a revised health and safety plan for the rest of the abatement and demolition project." ... (NY1, Feb. 20, 2008)
  
• Deutsche Bank Building Decontamination to Happen First .... Even as work on the building begins again, however, the aftermath of the fire continues to have consequences for the LMDC. Last month Barbara Beddia Crocco, the sister of Robert Beddia, one of the two firefighters to die in the fire, filed suit against the LMDC and some of its contractors, charging that they knew of the dangerous conditions at the building but did nothing. A lawyer representing the family of the other fallen firefighter, Joseph Graffagnino, said they plan to sue the agency as well. LMDC officials made no mention of the suits when their board of directors met Feb. 14, but they did vote to extend the agency’s contract with it’s lawyers, Dechert LLP, by $2,500,000 to $3,500,000 overall. The LMDC is also increasing its budget for legal document management by a quarter of a million dollars to $350,000. The board also approved a motion to pay the Battery Park City Authority for a full year’s work by it’s employee Kevin Finnegan as Acting Senior Project Manager at the Deutsche Bank building. Finnegan’s post at the LMDC was initially expected to end last year with the completion of the deconstruction. Finnegan’s salary could add up to $170,000. (Tribeca Trib, by Nick Pino, Feb. 19, 2008)
  
• LMDC and New Contractor Resume Work at 130 Liberty ... (BPC Broadsheet, Feb. 7-21, 2008)
• Contractors Fined in Deutsche Bank Demolition ... Federal regulators said today that they have cited the general contractor taking down the former Deutsche Bank tower and its former subcontractor for dozens of safety violations at the building where two firefighters died, proposing nearly half a million dollars in fines against them. The citations, by the United States Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, against Bovis Lend Lease and the John Galt Corporation focused on fire-related hazards, including a missing section of standpipe that left firefighters without water to battle the Aug. 18 blaze, and insufficient water supply and water pressure. The agency also cited Bovis and the Galt company for numerous other safety hazards, from blocked and unmarked exits to a lack of fire extinguishers and allowing smoking, which fire investigators said was the cause of the fatal blaze. The hazards, OSHA said in a news release, exposed workers “to death or serious injury from falls, falling objects, electrocution and the inability to exit the tower swiftly and safely” in the event of a fire. Bovis fired the Galt company in August. “Employers must adhere to safety and health standards, and prepare completely and effectively for workplace emergencies,” said Richard Mendelson, OSHA’s area director in Manhattan who oversaw the investigation that resulted in the citations. “Failure to do so can — and, in this case, did — cost lives,” he said. Bovis said it strongly disagreed with the citations and would vigorously fight them. A spokesman for the Galt company, which is no longer operating, could not be reached for comment, but one construction executive who worked with the company on the project said that Galt was cited, in some instances, for actions they had taken at the behest of safety regulators. The citations stem from OSHA’s inspection following the fire, which left Firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino dead. The contractors, which were formally served with the citation on Friday, have 15 days from then to either request an informal conference or fight the allegations before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. The office of the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, is conducting a broad criminal investigation into the deaths and the entire project, which had been mired in delays and regulatory red tape long before the fire shut down the deconstruction of the black tower. That inquiry is focused on how the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and Bovis selected the Galt company, as well as failures on the part of the city, including the Fire Department and the Buildings Department, which were responsible for inspecting the site. ... Among the issues cited by OSHA were: — Failing to inspect and maintain firefighting equipment to ensure that the standpipe system was operational, and that sufficient water supply and water pressure were available for firefighting. — Obstructed emergency exit access (including sealed emergency stairwells, emergency stairwells blocked by construction and unlighted stairwells). — Inadequate emergency escape procedures.— Unmarked exits. — Lack of fire extinguishers, emergency alarm procedures and fire cutoffs. — Failing to develop and follow a fire protection program. — Smoking permitted in work areas. — Temporary structures inside the building made of combustible materials. — Scaffolds erected too close to power lines. — Unprotected sides and edges of work areas, unprotected floor openings, missing or broken guardrails and missing stair rails. — Exposed live electrical parts, electric panel boards in wet locations and other electrical hazards. ... (NYTimes, by William K. Rashbaum & Charles V. Bagli, Feb. 19, 2008)
  
• Leavitt's broken record ... Providing health care to World Trade Center rescue and recovery workers has never been high on President Bush's priorities list. So it shamefully remains in the last budget proposal of his White House tenure. He and Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt have refused to take the lead in allocating money for treatment. Worse, Leavitt has obstructed efforts by his own agency to do right by the 9/11 responders. Bush included in his $3.1 trillion spending plan all of $25 million for the Ground Zero brigade. That's less than one-sixth of the projected $165 million cost of maintaining services at specialized New York health centers and establishing a national clinical network. Once again, it will fall to Sen. Hillary Clinton, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, Rep. Vito Fossella and the rest of the New York congressional delegation to fight for additional monies to keep programs at Mount Sinai Medical Center, the Fire Department and elsewhere in business. They will also have to keep pressuring Leavitt, who appears bent on working against the responders. In December, he killed a plan by his own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to hire a company to coordinate care for 8,000 9/11 workers across the country. After Leavitt stonewalled demands for an explanation, CDC Director Julie Gerberding sent a letter to Maloney on Feb. 5, stating, "We are committed to maintaining continuity in services to responders" and "will report back soon with our determination about how best to proceed." Gerberding cannot be taken seriously. Leavitt has made the same commitment over and over and over - and each time he has broken his word. (NYDaily News, Feb. 18, 2008)
  
• Editorial: What Downtown needs from the L.M.D.C. ... This is one of the few times in the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s six-year history that we have heard no rumors of its imminent demise. Gov. Eliot Spitzer appears to be solidly behind the corporation created by his predecessor. Since it’s going to stick around and since it’s one of the key players in Downtown’s ongoing rebuilding efforts, it is essential that its performance improves. The L.M.D.C. was given nearly $3 billion of federal money after 9/11 to help Manhattan south of Houston St., thus tying much of Lower Manhattan’s successful recovery to the success of the agency. ... Perhaps the biggest L.M.D.C. failure under Pataki was at the former Deutsche Bank building — a damaged structure which took the lives of two brave firefighters last year and which continues to plague the Downtown community. Spitzer, Avi Schick, the corporation’s chairperson, and their team have not learned the right lessons from their mistakes and those of their predecessors. L.M.D.C. officials pooh-poohed the warnings of community and environmental activists, hired inexperienced contractors with alleged mob ties, and did not do enough after glass fell from the building. By the time Spitzer’s team took over last year, the project somehow appeared to be righting itself. But when a large pipe fell from the building and injured two firefighters, when the head of the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center admitted the rush to take the building down led to the pipe crash, when safety and fire violations continued, those were the points that things should have been rethought — a decision that might have saved two men’s lives. The lesson should have been that public input is vital. Questions about what is being planned should be answered, not ignored. Giving the public and independent experts chances to review draft plans while there is still a realistic chance to change them is smart. The Deutsche deconstruction plan is still not ready five months after the fire and like the recent decontamination plan, we expect it will also be sprung onto the public at the last minute. We continue to hear from dedicated community people and others who are frightened to say anything the L.M.D.C. won’t like. These people should be fully included because they often have good solutions to problem ... A smart local agency that listens to the community can develop more and better solutions. That’s what Downtown needs the L.M.D.C. to be. (Downtown Express, Feb. 15-21, 2008)
  
• Deutsche cleanup approved, demo plan still not ready ... Local activists are cautiously optimistic about a newly approved plan for the decontamination of the former Deutsche Bank building. In the plan, announced Feb. 7, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation committed to clean up the entire building before continuing to demolish it, a course community members have been advocating for months. ... In terms of notification, Hughes, of C.B. 1, was surprised not to find out about the new abatement plan directly from the L.M.D.C. “One of the things we’ve been asking for is a clear and transparent process,” she said. “Deutsche Bank is clearly a building that demands an open process. We need to have an open meeting on this so people can find out what’s going on.” The L.M.D.C. declined an invitation to attend the W.T.C. Committee Monday evening. Dave Newman, industrial hygienist with New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, said the L.M.D.C. was disingenuous in not releasing details of the plan earlier, since it has clearly been under discussion for months. “They’ve kept all of this a secret from the community,” Newman said. “There’s no transparency, no give and take, and that continues to be unacceptable.” Newman was most concerned about the plan’s details, which he said show sloppy planning. For example, some parts of the plan prohibit workers from using elevators, while other parts say elevators will be used to remove material from the building, Newman said. ... Corbett praised the L.M.D.C.’s decision to decouple the remaining work, though he said he couldn’t understand why the corporation ever tried to do both steps at once in the first place. Abatement requires large amounts of combustible materials, like plywood, which are used to contain the contamination. Meanwhile, demolition involves torches and molten metal. With the two processes going on in close proximity, Corbett said, “you end up in a situation where a fire can occur.” Corbett added, though, that decoupling provides no guarantees, referring to reports from fire investigators that the blaze was started by a worker’s cigarette. ... (Downtown Exprss, by Julio Shapiro, Feb. 15-21, 2008)
  
• CUNY hopes Fiterman demo will begin this year ... Fiterman Hall, which was contaminated and damaged on 9/11 during the fire that destroyed 7 W.T.C., is a classroom building for the City University of New York. Located on the block bounded by Barclay St., Greenwich St., Park Place and W. Broadway, Fiterman Hall is part of the Borough of Manhattan Community College and several blocks south of the school’s main building. Work on Fiterman Hall has been delayed in the past while CUNY waited for funding, partly from insurance money, but the project will soon be moving steadily forward, said Benn Lewis, vice president of Airtek Environmental Corp., the owner representative on the site. On Jan. 9, Airtek submitted its final decontamination plan to the Environmental Protection Agency and other government regulators. “We’re really close, we hope, knock on wood, to getting approval,” Lewis told C.B. 1. “We thought we were days away when Deutsche Bank happened,” he added, referring to the fire last August at that contaminated building, which killed two firefighters and made officials more cautious about other demolition projects Downtown. As a result of the fire, decontamination projects undergo intense scrutiny. Lewis needs to get approval from a large group of agencies and attends biweekly meetings with them at the Office of Emergency Management.... (Downtown Exprss, by Julio Shapiro, Feb. 15-21, 2008)
  
• Ground Zero gets a safety chief ... With several construction projects simultaneously taking shape at the World Trade Center site over the next few months, the owners of the site have created a new post for someone to oversee all safety issues and prevent accidents. Joseph Schwed of Honeywell International started as safety director of the World Trade Center site last week. Previously, the Port Authority of New Jersey and New York had separate safety managers for each construction project. Schwed, 40, will oversee all of the safety contractors and coordinate all activities on the 16-acre site. Work at the site began in 2005 and construction is underway for the Sept. 11 memorial, a transit hub, the Freedom Tower and towers 2, 3 and 4. The entire project is scheduled for completion in 2012, Port Authority officials said."It's of the utmost concern that the safety of the employees and the general public are all taken into account and that this unprecedented project is being done in a safe manner," Schwed said. Schwed, who worked for the Port Authority from 1993 to 1997, said he will also maintain a close relationship with Silverstein Properties and their contractors and insurance representatives. Port Authority officials said there have been no fatalities at the World Trade Center site. In recent years, high-rise construction accidents have more than doubled at other city sites, prompting a new set of safety rules. Officials said the position was necessary to prevent accidents at the site for workers and the general public. .... (Newsday, by Brondon Bain, Feb. 15, 2008)
  
• Council to Pass Motion on 9/11 Treatment Aid; Compels U.S. Funding; EMS Officers Want FDNY Alternative ...  FREEDOM OF CHOICE: EMS retiree advocate Marianne Pizzitola (center), urged that the Zadroga Act be changed to allow firefighters and EMS workers to seek medical monitoring and treatment outside the FDNY program. Joining her is former EMT Stephen Hess, left, and Tom Eppinger, president of EMS Officers Local 3621 of District Council 37. ... (The Chief-Leader, by Ari Paul, February 15, 2008)
  
• Agency Sued Over Death of Firefighter at Tower ... The sister of one of the two firefighters killed in August fighting a fire at the former Deutsche Bank building sued the government agency that owns the building and several contractors on Wednesday, charging they knowingly created dangerous conditions that led to her brother’s death. The sister, Barbara Beddia Crocco, contends in the suit that her brother, Robert Beddia, 53, died because of conditions caused during the dismantling of the building, including piles of combustible debris, dismantled fire connections, compromised stairwell walls and barricaded exits. The lawsuit says the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which owned the building, and several private companies knew of the potentially fatal conditions before the fire. But in a striking omission, Ms. Crocco did not sue New York City or the city’s Fire Department, even though city officials relieved three senior fire officers of their posts about 10 days after the Aug. 18 fire. Aryeh Portnoy, a lawyer for Ms. Crocco, said his client had not ruled out suing the Fire Department, “at the right time.” “Tragically,” according to the papers filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, “the conditions created by the defendants were too much for Beddia to withstand, and he was killed by toxic smoke, unable to escape because of the stairwell barricades erected by the defendants.” Mr. Portnoy said that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the contractors at the site “knowingly created those conditions.” He added, “They had a responsibility to let the firefighters know, and they failed to do that.” ... The suit seeks unspecified punitive and compensatory damages. Mr. Beddia and a second firefighter, Joseph Graffagnino, 33, died when a broken standpipe in the basement could not deliver water to the fire, which fire marshals said was probably started by a cigarette. At a news conference in August, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said three senior fire officials had been stripped of their command during an investigation into the fatal fire. The mayor said the local firehouse had failed to conduct any required inspections of the building, which was on the edge of ground zero, since 2006. John C. Meringolo, a lawyer representing the family of Mr. Graffagnino, said on Wednesday that he intends to file suit as well. (The New York Times, by Anemona Hartocollis, Feb. 14, 2008)
  
• Firefighter's family files wrongful-death suit ... "They did things that violated rules and laws and regulations, and they put people in danger and people died," said Aryeh Portnoy, of Manhattan, an attorney for the Beddia family. There are a dozen defendants in the lawsuit, including city-state entities such as the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and private firms such as contractor Bovis Lend Lease. .... (Newsday, by Zachary R. Dowdy, Feb. 14, 2008)
  
• Deutsche firefighter's sister sues over 'death trap' building ... The sister of a firefighter killed in the fire at the Deutsche Bank building overlooking Ground Zero sued the site's contractors Wednesday - accusing them of turning the partially demolished tower into a "veritable death trap." Barbara Beddia Crocco's suit spreads the blame for Firefighter Robert Beddia's death, targeting a host of companies that worked at the site, along with the state agency in charge of rebuilding the area after the 9/11 attacks. "They owed these firefighters a safe place to work," said Michael Barasch, a lawyer for Crocco. "And they gave them a place that was a mess, an absolute debris mine field." ... A criminal investigation into their deaths is ongoing. The 91-page suit in Manhattan Supreme Court alleges that the contractors, despite being paid "tens of millions of dollars," took "deadly risks" by hiring inexperienced workers and failing to tell the FDNY about hazards at the tower. ... (Daily News, by Jose Martinez, Feb. 14, 2008)
  
• Firefighter's kin sue gov't, contractors over ground zero fire ... Galt, the main subcontractor, allowed its workers to smoke, while Bovis and other contractors, including URS Inc., failed to fix fire hazards and give firefighters floor plans or other information to be able to safely fight the blaze, the lawsuit said. "If not for defendants' wanton, willful and reckless conduct, Bobby Beddia would be alive and would still be fighting fires with New York City's Bravest today," it said. The suit also named the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, a state-city agency that oversaw demolition of the building, which had been damaged on Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center collapsed into it. A spokesman for the agencies declined comment Wednesday. Bovis, the main contractor still on the job, doesn't comment on pending litigation, spokeswoman Mary Costello said. A spokeswoman for Galt, which was fired from the job a week after the fire, declined comment. An e-mail to URS wasn't immediately returned. (amNY, by Amy Westfeldt, Feb. 13, 2008)
  
• Family of Deutsche Blaze Victim Sues ... The family of one of the firefighters who died in a massive blaze in the former Deutsche Bank building last summer has filed a sweeping lawsuit against more than nine government agencies and construction companies involved in the demolition of the building. The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court this morning, alleges that the defendants' "wanton, willful, and reckless conduct" was responsible for the death of Firefighter Robert Beddia, 53, whose family is named as the plaintiff in the lawsuit. Another firefighter, Joseph Graffagnino, 33, was also killed in the fire on August 18. In the lawsuit, which seeks punitive and compensatory damages for Beddia's pain and suffering, lawyers for Beddia's family allege that the defendants "were responsible for numerous and serious safety lapses that converted the building into a veritable death trap for firefighters." The defendants include the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, a state agency that owned the building, and the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, which oversaw construction at ground zero. They also include the construction contractor, Bovis Lend Lease, Inc., which was overseeing the demolition, the John Galt Corporation, a construction company that was contracted by Bovis, TRC Environmental Corporation, which was monitoring the air safety as the toxic building was dismantled, the URS Corporation, a construction company contracted by the state agencies to oversee the safety at the site on their behalf. Other construction companies named in the lawsuit that were involved at different points in the project include Gilbane Building Company, Safeway Environmental Corporation, Regional Scaffolding and Hoisting Co., Inc., and Regional Scaffolding/Safeway Environmental, NY Joint Venture, LLC. A spokesman for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Warner Johnston, said the agency could not comment on pending litigation. A spokeswoman for Gilbane, Kristy Dosreis, said: "We haven't seen the lawsuit yet, so we don't have a comment at this time." A spokeswoman for Bovis, Mary Costello, said: "By policy, Bovis does not comment on lawsuits." ... (NYSun, by Sarah Garland, Feb. 13, 2008)
  
• CHIEF POSTED AT DEUTSCHE ... The FDNY will station a high-ranking officer at the fire-ravaged Deutsche Bank building until the complicated job of decontaminating and dismantling the toxic tower is done, The Post has learned. "A battalion chief is there and will continue to be there until the building is down," a Department spokesman said yesterday. Two firefighters died last summer battling a blaze inside the lower Manhattan tower that has sat vacant and damaged since the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The City Council's Committee on Lower Manhattan held hearings on the dismantling late last month, and Chairman Alan Gerson said the long-term assignment of a battalion chief was one of the primary concerns. (NYPost, Feb. 12, 2008)
  
• NYers Blast Admin. Foot-Dragging on 9/11 Health -- Senators, Representatives Decry Delays as Health Care for Thousands of 9/11 Heroes Nationwide Set to Run Out ... (News Release, Feb. 12, 2008)
  
• New Plan for Former Deutsche Bank ... REPORTER: Instead of removing contaminants and dismantling the structure at almost the same time, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation will start with the asbestos abatement. Then, after returning for more approvals, it will demolish the structure. Catherine McVay Hughes, vice chairwoman of Community Board 1, says the decision and its approval by regulators is an important step. HUGHES: A safe project is a speedy project. There will be less people being hurt and there will be less fines and the process will go quicker. REPORTER: The demolition stopped last August after 2 firefighters died in a blaze at the building. The LMDC hasn't set a date to resume work, but says it will finish taking down the building by the end of the year. (WNYC, by Matthew Schuerman, Feb. 8, 2008)
  
• LMDC Receives Approval For Demolition Plan For Deutsche Bank Building ... A new plan to demolish the former Deutsche Bank building was approved Thursday. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation received approval for an amended plan that permits the new subcontractor, LVI Services, to proceed with demolishing the building. The amended plan will see the building being abated first and then taken down. There will also be safety enhancements, such as chemical fire suppression systems and fire hardening of all decontamination chambers. These safety revisions come after two firefighters were killed in a fire at the building last August. (NY1, Feb. 8, 2008)
  
• Deutschte To Undergo 'Detox".... Workers will clean toxic dust out of the problem-plagued Deutsche Bank building before taking it down, the government agency in charge of the demolition announced yesterday. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. released new plans on dealing with the long-delayed dismantling of the building, which was badly damaged on 9/11 and where two firefighters were killed in an August blaze. Responding to concerns that the building be made safe in case of future emergencies, the plans call for round-the-clock safety managers and a strict no-smoking policy. Contractors will first clean several floors of the 26-story tower of toxic dust. Two stairwells will remain accessible to firefighters and be cleaned later. ... (NYPost, Feb. 8, 2008)
  
• Bush cuts residents, others out of 9/11 health budget ... President Bush’s final budget proposal reduces 9/11 health funding by 77 percent and restricts the money to first responders, cutting out residents, office workers and students. Local elected officials responded angrily to the cuts, which leave only $25 million for health programs. Bush also allocated $25 million for 9/11 health last year, but he later signed legislation that bumped the total up to $108 million. Bush’s decision to slash funding for residents is “absolutely outrageous,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney said in a statement. “It’s shocking that the president would use his final budget to take an axe to 9/11 healthcare programs,” she added. “The administration has failed in every single one of its budget proposals to deliver adequate help to the heroes of 9/11.”  In December, the government cancelled a plan for a national 9/11 health center, saying the plan needed funding. But now the administration released a budget “that doesn’t even ask for the money they said they needed,” Maloney said. Rep. Jerrold Nadler called Bush’s budget cut “nothing less than an absolute betrayal.” “In his final State of the Union, President Bush yet again invoked the memory of 9/11 to score political points,” Nadler said in a statement. “But yet again, his budget request of a paltry $25 million fundamentally insults the heroes of that day.” Senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer and Rep. Vito Fossella, a Staten Island Republican who joined his Democratic colleagues, also denounced the $25 million allocation. They said 9/11 clinics would need at least $200 million this upcoming fiscal year. ... Gov. Elliot Spitzer released a statement critical aspect of Bush’s budget but did not mention 9/11 healthcare. (Downtown Express, Feb. 8-14, 2008)
  
• Deutsche razing to be completed ... The decontamination and demolition of the former Deutsche Bank building will be conducted separately, but the two-step process won’t cause any delay in tearing down the tower, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. said Thursday. The LMDC, which owns the building that was irreparably damaged in the Sept. 11 attacks, says the tower will be demolished by the end of the year. Deconstruction ceased last August after two firefighters died battling a blaze in the tower. Before work stopped, ridding the building of contaminants such as asbestos was conducted in tandem with the deconstruction. John Galt Corp., which was demolishing the building, was fired after the blaze, and LVI Services Inc. was hired last month to replace it. (Crain's NY, Feb. 7, 2008)
  
• 9/11 health cuts may keep coming, advocates warn ... Joseph Libretti doesn’t call himself a hero. The ironworker from Pennsylvania, who searched for survivors and worked on the pile after 9/11, says that word belongs to those who died, not those who lived. The word belongs to his brother, Daniel, a firefighter killed in the North Tower collapse. Libretti considers himself not a hero but an American. And as an American, he believes the government owes him protection. “I just want to be taken care of the way I tried to take care of other people [on 9/11],” Libretti testified at a U.S. House of Representative subcommittee hearing held in Lower Manhattan last week. Libretti suffers from chronic lung disease and post-traumatic stress disorder. He is unable to work, leaving his family with reduced income and no healthcare ... (Downtown Express, by Julie Shapiro, Feb. 1-7, 2008)
  
• E.P.A. says it waited 5 months for Deutsche demo plan ... Just over five months after the fatal blaze at the former Deutsche Bank building, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation submitted its first official plan for the building to the Environmental Protection Agency. The E.P.A. has been criticized in some quarters for delaying the resumption of the work, but the agency says it didn’t get a final plan to approve until last week, and that was changed two days later. Pat Evangelista, the E.P.A.’s World Trade Center coordinator, told Downtown Express that the L.M.D.C. gave the plan to the E.P.A. Jan. 21, then revised and resubmitted it Jan. 23. The L.M.D.C., charged with decontaminating and demolishing 130 Liberty St., has floated other plans in the past, but this was “the first ‘plan’ plan,” Evangelista, said. The L.M.D.C. submitted the plan to several other government agencies as well, Evangelista said. After a community meeting Jan. 24, Evangelista said he had started reviewing the plan but couldn’t comment on specifics. He did not say if the L.M.D.C.’s plan would abate the entire building before starting demolition, a choice E.P.A. would support. Avi Schick, L.M.D.C. chairperson, has long been leaning toward abating before demolishing. He and L.M.D.C. president David Emil came close to committing to that course at the community meeting. Emil said the L.M.D.C. is working on an abatement plan and will come up with a deconstruction plan while the building is being abated. Schick hurried to add that the corporation hasn’t decided on anything yet. ... Dave Newman, industrial hygienist for New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, accused the L.M.D.C. of hiding information. Newman later provided Downtown Express with copies of freedom of information law requests he sent to the L.M.D.C. Among other documents, Newman wanted a copy of the fire safety agreement between the city and L.M.D.C. from last September, shortly after the fire that killed two firefighters. In a reply this month, Irene Chang, counsel for L.M.D.C., told Newman the document does not exist. However, Newman also provided Downtown Express with a copy of a fire safety agreement, in the form of a Sept. 11, 2007 letter by Schick and Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler to the E.P.A. An L.M.D.C. spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. Several people, including Newman, mentioned the L.M.D.C.’s Community Advisory Council, which L.M.D.C. all but disbanded early last summer. Schick told the audience L.M.D.C. has been meeting with community members in Silver’s office regularly since the fire, but several people called out, “That’s not the same thing.” Schick said he didn’t understand the difference. Julie Menin, C.B. 1’s chairperson, suggested including Community Advisory Council members at Silver’s meetings in the future. ... (Downtown Express, by Julie Shapiro, , Feb. 1-7, 2008)
  
• City Council backs James Zadroga bill to help sick 9/11 responders ... City Council Speaker Christine Quinn pushed Wednesday for speedy passage of a federal bill to help sick 9/11 responders and other victims of its "toxic cloud." The bill is named for the late James Zadroga, 34, the former NYPD detective who died of lung and brain damage that a New Jersey medical examiner "directly" linked to his more than 450 hours of work at Ground Zero. City officials dispute that Zadroga's death was caused by inhaling dust at Ground Zero after 9/11. He died in January 2006. Quinn said the Council was set to pass a resolution calling on Congress to swiftly enact "this lifesaving piece of legislation." "It isn't just something we want," Quinn said. "It's something we need and it's something we deserve." Supporters of the resolution include Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan, Brooklyn) and Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan, Queens), chief sponsors of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. They contended Washington has "a national responsibility" to care for ongoing victims of "a national attack." The legislation would pay for the monitoring and treatment of anyone - including volunteers, residents, area workers and others - who is ill, or becomes ill, as a result of exposure to the toxins of Ground Zero. It would also reopen the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund. ... (NYDaily News, by Frank Lombardi, Feb. 7, 2008)
  
• Govt releases new plans to take down WTC tower after fatal fire ... The owner of a toxic, condemned skyscraper damaged in the Sept. 11 attacks released new plans to clean the building of contaminated waste and take it down, nearly six months after a fatal fire halted most work there. Round-the-clock safety managers, accessible stairwells and a strict no-smoking policy are among dozens of additions to the government owner's plans for the former Deutsche Bank tower announced Thursday. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. had sought approval from many government regulators who wanted to make sure the building would be safe for first responders and a community worried that toxic debris left there since Sept. 11, 2001, could pollute the air. The new plan would allow contractors to first clean several floors of the 26-story tower of toxic dust before taking the building down. Contractors will wait to clean two stairwells dedicated for firefighters so that the stairwells remain accessible during the project, the LMDC said. The agency had been cleaning lower floors of toxic debris while dismantling the building in an attempt to bring it down sooner. Removing the tower has been delayed by years while the owners sought approval to take it down and by labor disputes. The building, originally 40 floors, has been condemned since the World Trade Center's south tower collapsed into it on Sept. 11. Hundreds of body parts were discovered in the building over the past two years. An Aug. 18 fire, believed to be started by careless smoking, killed two firefighters and stopped the dismantling project again. Prosecutors investigating the blaze have empaneled a grand jury to consider criminal charges. LMDC officials say they hope to take the building down this year; a new subcontractor, hired to replace the fired John Galt Corp., has several weeks of preparatory work before cleanup can resume. The general contractor in charge of the project, Bovis Lend Lease, has replaced all its supervisors on the job since the fire. (Newsday, by Amy Westfeldt, Feb. 7, 2008)
  
• Rep. Maloney Testifies on 9/11 Health Before New York City Council  - Council to Consider Resolution Supporting 9/11 Health & Compensation Act ... (News Release, Feb. 6, 2008)
  
• Boost Sought In Post-9/11 Health Care ... Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney will testify at City Hall today that Congress and the president need to increase the scope and amount of health care funding for first responders, residents of Lower Manhattan, and others affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The representatives are seeking to drum up support for a bill they are sponsoring that would mandate that medical monitoring be given to anyone exposed to toxins from the World Trade Center site, and that treatment be provided for those who became ill as a result. It would also revive the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund and allow individuals who became sick after the 2003 deadline to apply for payouts. "Congressional action is needed because the Bush administration continues to fail to act," Mr. Nadler said yesterday in a statement. "Six years later and there is still no comprehensive mechanism to ensure proper screening, monitoring, and medical treatment, and provide compensation for those individuals affected by the 9/11 attacks." ... (NYSun, by Benjamin Sarlin, Feb. 6, 2008)
• NYC to track contractor safety records ... City buildings officials want to register contractors to track their safety records and say concrete firms should have safety managers on the job after a spate of accidents at high-rise construction projects. The Department of Buildings' proposals Monday to make construction sites safer focused on the concrete industry, which Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster said contributed to more than 60 percent of construction accidents last year. A partial concrete collapse was blamed for the death last month of a construction worker who fell more than 40 stories off a Donald Trump tower. "The construction industry in general, and concrete operations in particular, need more regulation," Lancaster testified at a City Council hearing. The city will propose legislation requiring general contractors and concrete makers to register for any kind of construction job, so the department could better track its compliance with codes, issue fines or deny permits to unregistered contractors. High-rise construction accidents more than doubled last year compared with the year before, from 24 to 51, city officials said. U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration area director Richard Mendelson said that most accidents that happen in the city are preventable and are on nonunion sites. ...(AP, by Amy Westfeldt, Feb. 5, 2008)
• Study Finds Prior Trauma Raised Children’s 9/11 Risk ... Preschoolers who witnessed the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center or saw its victims were at high risk of developing lingering emotional and behavior problems if — but only if — they had had a previous frightening experience, like seeing a parent fall ill, researchers are reporting Tuesday. The study, the first of its kind among such young children in the wake of the attacks, found that more than 40 percent who had such sequential traumas suffered from depression, emotional outbursts, poor sleep or some combination three years later. By contrast, children who saw the attack or its victims but had no earlier trauma showed few if any psychologically scars. The study, appearing in The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, suggests that very young children respond to trauma in the same ways that adults do. If they are nursing a previous emotional wound, the impact of some new scare or crisis is multiplied. The findings “make a lot of sense, given what we know about how the brain becomes sensitized to a traumatic event, and how there can be a cumulative effect,” said Dr. Bruce McEwen, director of the neuroendocrinology laboratory at Rockefeller University, who was not involved in the research. ... (NYTimes, by Benedict Carey, Feb. 5, 2008)
  
• WTC lawsuits scaring off engineers ... Hundreds of structural engineers say they're reluctant to respond to a terrorist attack or another national emergency because they're being sued by sick workers who claim the engineers didn't do enough to keep them safe at Ground Zero. "There are an enormous amount of people who will not volunteer," said Joseph Tortorella, an engineer with Robert Sillman Associates, one of about two dozen structural engineering firms being sued by more than 8,000 sick workers, including dozens of cops and firefighters. "Everyone's going to think twice now," Tortorella said. Tortorella was among the hundreds of structural engineers who raced to the World Trade Center on 9/11 to help firefighters, cops and construction workers navigate the mountain of burning debris as they searched for survivors and the dead. The engineering firms were paid by the city, leaving them ineligible for protection under good Samaritan Laws. They now find themselves being dragged into court with the city and four major contractors by sick workers. City lawyers argue that the engineering firms are protected by federal and state immunity laws that protect companies responding to an emergency. "Long before 9/11, federal and state governments passed laws granting immunity to those who helped the government respond to an enemy attack or a natural disaster," said Kenneth Becker, the city lawyer in charge of all WTC-related litigation. "These responders - whether they are private citizens, small businesses or government workers - should be able to respond to such a crisis without hesitation or fear of being sued." A lawyer representing many of the sick workers insists the engineers should be held responsible because they "directed the work at the World Trade Center, providing safety support, doing structural and environmental testing, controlling various aspects of work at the site." "The law in New York implies an obligation on all contractors, including engineers, who direct workers to perform jobs in and around contamination to provide those workers with personal protective equipment," said Paul DiNapoli, a senior partner at Napoli Bern Ripka LLP, which is representing the ailing workers. Tortorella said he agrees that anyone who got sick at Ground Zero should get help from the government, but he says the engineers "were just there to answer a firefighter who wanted to go into the debris." "We advised them on how stable The Pile might be at that point," he said. Faced with the lawsuits, engineering firms are now unwilling to step forward after a disaster, believing no good deed goes unpunished. "Three years ago, when I was president of the Structural Engineers Association of New York, someone called from New Orleans looking for volunteers," Tortorella recalled. "I sent out an e-mail to the entire membership, about 500 members. Only 13 people responded." He said the engineers told him their bosses wouldn't allow them to help out "because of the lawsuits." The suits are in discovery in Manhattan Federal Court under Judge Alvin Hellerstein. The city and the engineers are pushing Congress to strengthen immunity laws and to reopen the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund to care for ailing workers. The fund, established by Congress after 9/11 to compensate the victims of the attack or their families in exchange for their agreement not to sue the airlines, was closed in December 2003. "What's fueling many of these lawsuits is that 9/11 responders have nowhere else to turn for help," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan, Queens). Maloney said reopening the fund would "dramatically reduce the need for lawsuits against structural engineering and other firms that helped New York in its hour of need." "Responding to disasters is difficult and dangerous work, and the federal government must make sure that responders and the firms that employ them are covered," she said. (NYDaily News, by Stephanie Gaskell, Feb. 3, 2008)
  
• Preschoolers' exposure to terrorist attacks, other trauma linked to more severe behavioral problems ... Preschool children exposed to both the World Trade Center attacks and another traumatic event were more likely to experience behavioral problems than children exposed only to one event or to none, according to a report in the February issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Young children may be especially vulnerable to the adverse psychological consequences of trauma, according to background information in the article. However, little is known about the effect of terrorism on preschoolers. Claude M. Chemtob, Ph.D., of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, and colleagues studied 116 preschool children (average age 3.9) directly exposed to the World Trade Center (WTC) attacks. Between March 2003 and December 2005—an average of 35 months after the attacks—the parents of children who lived or attended preschool in lower Manhattan filled out a questionnaire about their children, providing information on demographics, level of exposure to the attacks, occurrence of other traumatic events (such as the death of a family member, being in a natural disaster or seeing a serious accident) and emotional and behavioral factors. Of the children participating, 23 percent were exposed to one or more high-intensity WTC events, meaning that they saw the towers collapse, saw injured people, saw dead bodies or saw people jumping out of buildings. Overall, these children had nearly five times the odds of having trouble sleeping and had almost three times the odds of being depressed and anxious than those who were not exposed. These behavior problems appeared more severe among children who had also experienced another traumatic event. Compared with children who were not exposed to high-intensity WTC events or to other trauma, those who were exposed to both had 21 times the odds of having emotional problems or being anxious or depressed and 16 times the odds of having attention problems. Those who were exposed only to high-intensity WTC events and not to other traumatic events were not significantly more likely to have behavioral problems than those with only less intense exposure to the attacks. The findings are consistent with an allostatic load theory of stress, which holds that accumulated exposure to difficult events increases the risk of psychological effects, the authors note. “Physicians seeking to assess the impact of terrorism and disaster on very young children should assess for disaster-related exposure and for other trauma,” they write. “More vigorous outreach to trauma-exposed preschool children should become a post-disaster public health policy.” (Feb. 4, 2008)
  
• Kids Near Ground Zero on 9/11 Prone to Behavioral Problems ... Preschoolers who saw the collapse of the World Trade Center or other high-intensity events on Sept. 11, 2001 were at increased risk of behavioral problems long afterwards, especially if they'd experienced other traumatic events, researchers found. .... (Feb. 4, 2008)
  
• Impact of Conjoined Exposure to the World Trade Center Attacks and to Other Traumatic Events on the Behavioral Problems of Preschool Children .... Results  Preschool children exposed to high-intensity WTC attack–related events were at increased risk for the sleep problems and anxious/depressed behavioral symptom clusters. Conjoined exposure to high-intensity WTC attack–related events and to other trauma was associated with clinically significant emotionally reactive, anxious/depressed, and sleep-related behavioral problems. Children without a conjoined lifetime history of other trauma did not differ from nonexposed children. Risk of emotionally reactive, anxious/depressed, and attention problems in preschool children exposed to conjoined high-intensity WTC attack–related events and other trauma increased synergistically. Conclusions  Conjoined other trauma exposure seems to amplify the impact of high-intensity WTC attack–related events on behavioral problems. Preschool children exposed to high-intensity events who had no other trauma exposure did not have increased clinically significant behavioral problems. The additive effects of trauma exposure are consistent with an allostatic load hypothesis of stress. More vigorous outreach to trauma-exposed preschool children should become a postdisaster public health priority. ... (Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2008;162(2):126-133.)
  
• Bush Budget Cuts 9/11 Health Funding by 77% ... (News Release, Feb. 1, 2008)
  
• Safety Pledged for Deutsche Demolition ... Five months after a fire at the former Deutsche Bank building claimed the lives of two firefighters, work on decontaminating and disassembling the building is finally resuming.At a special meeting of Community Board 1 on Jan. 24, officials of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which owns the site, said work to remove floor slabs damaged in the fire would begin in a matter of days, continuing for eight to 10 weeks before the building’s remaining floors are cleaned of toxins and dismantled, with the entire project complete by the end of the year. The work will be performed by LVI Group, Inc., hired last month by the project’s main contractor, Bovis Lend Lease. LVI replaces the inexperienced and little-known John Galt Corp., which was fired after a string of safety lapses culminating in the August disaster. At the meeting, LMDC Chairman Avi Schick said many safety improvements are already in place, including the removal of wooden barriers and hatches—meant to keep contaminants inside the building—that made it difficult for firefighters to navigate through the structure. At the Fire Department’s request, he said, fire-safe entrance and exit routes to the building and two access stairs up to the 20th floor were put in place. Bovis and LVI are to add a fire suppression system in the building and a mechanism to detect any breach in the standpipe, which allows firefighters to pump water to upper floors. A partially dismantled standpipe contributed to the deaths of two firefighters at the scene. Five fire-fighting water connections from the street have been installed. Because the positive-pressure air system, designed to keep contaminants inside the building, exacerbated the August fire, there will now be a ground-floor master switch to shut it down. Schick also touted the reassignment of Bovis’s regional safety director to focus only on the Deutsche Bank building project, and praised the hiring of LVI, a remediation firm with a good safety record and years of experience, including work at the Pentagon since Sept. 11. Bovis and LVI executives pledged to make sure cleaning and deconstruction happens without a single safety incident. (Five days after the hearing, Newsday reported that three workers were trapped and one killed when a San Francisco power plant LVI was deconstructing collapsed. An LVI spokeswoman said the event does not affect the company’s work on the Deutsche Bank building.)  Safety advocates were concerned that although Schick repeated that the LMDC is “leaning towards” completing the clean-up of the building before deconstruction resumes, he refused to commit to doing so, citing the complicated and ongoing back-and-forth between his agency and government regulators. David Newman, an industrial hygienist with the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, complained that the LMDC remains too closed off to the community. “LMDC has yet to take seriously its obligations to be honest and open with the public,” Newman said. “[Freedom of Information Act] requests go unanswered. The LMDC has held only one community advisory meeting since June of 2007.” ... (Tribeca Trib, by Nick Pinto, Feb. 1, 2008)