[NYTr] Blaze at Hyper-Polluted Ghost Deutsche Bank Bldg Kills 2 Firefighters

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[This building has been one of the largest mega-messes of Ground Zero,
simply so loaded with dioxin, asbestos, melted PVC and many other toxic
substances that it could not be cleaned up, re-ventilated, re-insulated
or rehabilitated and has been on the condemned list for years. It is
also where numerous body bits were found years after the obsessionaly
meticulous search for "remains" was thought to be finished. -NYTr]


The New York Times - Aug 19, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/nyregion/19fire.html

Ground Zero Blaze Kills 2 Firefighters

By RAY RIVERA and FERNANDA SANTOS

Two firefighters were killed yesterday battling a blaze in the Deutsche
Bank skyscraper, a vacant relic of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack that
was in the process of being dismantled.

The firefighters were among hundreds who poured into ground zero all
afternoon to fight the high-rise fire, which was finally brought under
control after seven hours.

At least five others were hospitalized with smoke-related injuries that
were not believed to be life threatening.

The building, at 130 Liberty Street, had stood as a ghost since parts
of the World Trade Center towers came crashing into it nearly six years
ago, leaving it severely damaged and filled with toxic debris,
including asbestos, dioxin, lead and chromium.

For residents in the area, the acrid smoke brought back memories of the
toxic dust clouds that lingered after the attacks.

The demolition work created difficulties for firefighters trying to
reach and put out the blaze, which started on the 17th floor, allowing
the fire to mushroom out of control, fire officials said. The building
did not have a working standpipe, which runs through high-rise
buildings to provide a source of water for firefighters.

This was “a truly difficult fire,” Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta
said. “We had to lift lines from the street, with ropes in order to get
it up to the 17th floor.”

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said the building was structurally sound and
not in danger of collapsing. He also said preliminary air-quality tests
showed an increase in particulate matter but no hazardous contaminants,
though he warned that results of more complete tests would not be
available until this morning.

“Air quality and the environmental impact, as you might imagine, are a
top concern to us and we are monitoring the situation very closely,”
the mayor said at a news conference last night.

All civilians working in the building got out unharmed when the fire
was reported at 3:36 p.m. There were no evacuations of adjacent
buildings, the mayor said.

Mary Costello, a spokeswoman for Bovis Lend Lease, the construction
company in charge of the building’s dismantling, deferred all comments
to the Fire Department.

The cause of the fire was under investigation, though officials ruled
out acetylene torches, which were not in use Saturday by workers
dismantling the building. Investigators are looking into whether the
fire was started by a worker smoking, an official said.

The two firefighters became trapped in the building and died of what
appeared to be cardiac arrest resulting from exposure to carbon
monoxide, Mr. Bloomberg said. They were Joseph Graffagnino, 33, of
Brooklyn, who had been with the department for eight years, and Robert
Beddia, 53, of Staten Island. An official said he had been with the
fire department 23 years and was the senior firefighter on the scene.
They were taken to NYU Downtown Hospital, where they died.

They were assigned to Engine 24 and Ladder 5 of Battalion 2, which are
housed together at Sixth Avenue and Houston Street. Eleven firefighters
from that station house died on Sept. 11.

The two men were found on the 14th floor close to a hose line. An
official said they ran out of air.

Mr. Scoppetta said the fire was discovered when workers at the site saw
smoke and notified an elevator operator. The workers went down out of
the building with him and they notified the fire department, which
responded to the scene within 3 1/2 minutes, Mr. Scoppetta said.
Eighty-seven units and 475 firefighters responded, he said.

City, state and federal officials also rushed to the scene, some
wearing protective masks over their mouths and noses.

Witnesses at the scene described one of the injured firefighters being
pulled from the fire as about a dozen of his colleagues swarmed around
and helped carry him into an ambulance.

“Give him air, give him air!” one firefighter yelled. It was unclear if
the injured firefighter was one of the men who died.

Friends and neighbors gathered at Mr. Graffagnino’s parents’ home in
Brooklyn last night, where they sat on the stairs outside.

“Everyone is in shock,” said one neighbor, who did not want to give her
name. “It doesn’t get worse than this. He was the best father. The best
husband. The best nephew there ever was.”

Another neighbor, Alexis Trapani, 41, said: “He was a baby when he
moved here. He was the nicest person. He seemed so happy. He came from
a very close-knit family.” She said she believed he had two children.

Officials said that in addition to the nonfunctioning standpipe,
fighting the fire was made difficult by the asbestos removal, which
created “maze-like conditions.”

Many areas were partitioned off with plastic, and hallways and walls
one would find in other buildings had been torn out.

Workers told officials they had been stripping asbestos from beams, and
the fire spread quickly through gaps and holes in the structure.

The blaze spread through spots on 10 different floors through those
pockets and voids. It went as high as the 26th story, which is now the
top floor of the building.

Demolition of the building, which once stood at 41 stories, had been
delayed for years because of environmental concerns, labor and contract
disputes, and to accommodate the search for human remains from the
terrorist attacks. The chief medical examiner’s office said in February
that 766 body parts had been found in the building. Most were fragments
less than four inches long.

Demolition finally began in February, but because of the hazardous
materials inside, the building had to be taken apart piece by piece,
all of the work closely monitored by environmental officials. Workers
had dismantled about 15 floors as of Tuesday.

Bonnie Bellow, a spokeswoman with the federal Environmental Protection
Agency, said there was work being performed at the building yesterday,
as on most Saturdays; a shift ended at 3:30 p.m., right around the time
the Fire Department received the first reports of a fire at the
building.

Ms. Bellow said there are 12 air-quality monitors installed in and
around the building. “At this point, we’re gathering whatever results
we can from these monitors,” Ms. Bellow added. “For some of the
contaminants, we can get instant readings, but other contaminants
require further analysis of the monitors’ readings at a laboratory.”
She could not provide more specifics.

Burning debris flew from the building to the street below as dark
plumes of smoke billowed over Lower Manhattan in a scene eerily
reminiscent of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“The air smells bad,” said Catherine McVay Hughes, a member of
Community Board 1 and chairwoman of its World Trade Center
redevelopment committee, which has been monitoring the dismantling of
the Deutsche Bank.

“The question we have right now is, what is it that caught fire at the
Deutsche Bank? Was it the debris? Was it the boxes containing the
asbestos?” asked Ms. McVay Hughes, who lives one block east of the
site. “The community is devastated that this happened, and we want to
know what will be done to prevent this from happening again.”

Mayor Bloomberg called the fire and the deaths of the firefighters
“another cruel blow to our city and to the Fire Department, and
specifically to the house that Engine 24, Ladder 5 and Battalion 2 are
in.”

Some residents in the neighborhood surrounding ground zero said they
weren’t surprised that a fire occurred at the black-draped building,
given the problems that delayed its demolition for years.

Viktoria Baklanova, 40, a resident of 90 West St., a 24-floor
residential building that overlooks ground zero on its north side, said
that the fire evoked scary memories of Sept. 11, especially since
firefighters died. “It’s very sad,” she said. “A lot of people died in
the area. They just keep dying.”

They should have removed the building much faster, she said. “It just
took too much time.”

[Reporting was contributed by Sewell Chan, Annie Correal, John Eligon,
Jason Grant and Colin Moynihan.]

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company