Galyean Pitch

Galyean - pitch
Galyean PITCHFIRE SAFETY: WORDS VS. ACTIONS:Nothing spurs a call to action like a catastrophe. Tragedy on a grand scale is almost immediately followed by promises to learn from the losses and to prevent "something like this from ever happening again." But does anything really change?The 2001 collapse of the World Trade Center demonstrated several fatal flaws in fire safety and evacuation procedures in the buildings. Many of these flaws had already been identified in a 1995 report on the 1993 WTC bombing. However, of the nineteen recommendations made in the 1995 report, only a handful were implemented by 2001.This is consistent with the history of the Port Authority, which owns and manages the WTC but is exempt from city and state building requirements. The agency began circumventing building safety standards even before the towers were built. Despite the agency's professed desire to meet or exceed applicable NYC building safety standards, the Port Authority has only sporadically attempted to do so. A 1970 Fire Commission demand for sprinklers in the WTC stairwells was ignored until a fire spread through several floors of the North Tower in 1975.The Port Authority's resistance, though, is reflected by that of the local real estate lobby, which has opposed most of the fire safety revisions due to both immediate costs and the potential of lost rental revenue (if floor space was dedicated to escape routes, additional stairwells, etc.).I'd like to write a 1,500 word investigative article that assesses the cooperation of the Port Authority and other NYC building developers in implementing fire safety recommendations resulting from the 1993 WTC bombing and the 2001 attacks. For technical information, I will rely primarily on the 1995 report by the U.S. Fire Administration, the 2005 report by the National Institute for Standards and Technology, and the 2001 and 2008 New York City Building Codes. I will interview staff from the New York City Department of Buildings and the Port Authority regarding the integration of previous fire safety recommendations into the WTC prior to 2001 and the integration of the 2005 recommendations into the new NYC Building Code and the construction of the new buildings at the WTC site. Additional interviews with fire safety specialists, FDNY staff, and real estate leaders will help to fill out the story.
Posted by Andrea at 3:55 PM

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