Wiltermuth Draft Story-FDNY Fire Inspection Schedule

In a racketing up of the tensions, Stephen J. Cassady, President of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, said the Fire Department was guilty of improper practice and retaliation, following an incident whereby UFA Health and Safety Officer, William Romaka, was excluded from certain Fire Department meetings. Cassady said Romaka was excluded due to union activity.

The firefighter’s union and Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta have been engaged in a bitter dispute following the August 18, 2007, fire at the former Deutsche Bank building, which killed firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino.
An investigation following the incident concluded that the two firefighters were left in the building for over an hour without water, due to dismantled fire connections and a broken standpipe in the basement.

In February, Beddia’s sister, Barbara Beddia Crocco, filed suit in the State Supreme Court in Manhattan against the LMDC and several private companies in charge to the Bank’s demolition. According to the New York Times, “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.”

Five days following the fatal blaze, the UFA disclosed the lack of proper Fire Department inspections at the forlorn site, which had not been inspected since March 2006. Cassidy said Scoppetta was made aware of the dangerous Deutsche Bank conditions as far back as three years prior, when Chief William Siegel recommended a specific fire and inspection plan for the site.

Three months prior to the blaze, while the Bank was undergoing demolition, a 22-foot length of steel pipe fell from the building onto the roof of local Fire Engine 10/Ladder 10. While no one was injured at the time, the accident failed to produce requested safety measures at the site.

Mayor Bloomberg weighed in on Sept. 8 and three Chief firefighters were reassigned and the 15-day inspection schedule came under close scrutiny. In November, Cassady said the Commissioner knew the Deutsche Bank was a toxic mess and that the inspection cycle was unfeasible, but that month, Scoppetta’s added a third day to the firefighter’s building by-monthly inspections.

In January, Battalion Chief John J. McDonnell told the New York Times that it would be impossible to check every construction or demolition project under the 15-day schedule, even though the city had increased the time from six to nine hours each week, in which firefighters are given to perform inspections.

Cassady said, “In an obvious attempt to gloss over their 
failures, the Department leadership has decided to add a 
third day of building inspections to an already 
overburdened firefighter's workload.” “This fiasco is called 
’Building Inspection Safety Program (BISP),’” he said.

The backdrop to this ongoing battle is a fight for high-rise safety and accountability in the shadows of the
September 11, 2001, when the lives of 341 firefighters were taken.

While New York City is experiencing its largest construction boom in decades, fire chiefs said the inspection rule has been one of the hardest to enforce for decades. One persistent issue is that fire commanders are not officially notified when the city issues permits for construction or demolition. Instead, local engine companies drive around to determine which buildings need to be inspected.

On December 12, the City Council’s Fire and Criminal Justice Services Committee requested an oversight hearing with respect to the Fire Department’s building inspection program. The Committee said they wanted to determine the staffing levels of these units, the training and qualifications of the inspectors, the equipment available to the inspectors, and the universe, scope and frequency of inspections being conducted.

The Committee inquired how the level of inspections had varied in recent years, the scope and frequency of the inspections being conducted, how and why the decision was made to increase the level of inspections and the impact that decision may have had on response times and safety. Scoppetta testified that fire response times had actually decreased since the new inspection plan was instituted, but provided no supporting data or statistics.

In December, Cassidy said the number of fire engines on building inspections increased by 50 percent. While the acknowledging the Fire Department’s responsibility to manage the City’s building inspection program, Cassidy said, “Every firefighter knows that his response times are negatively impacted.”

Glen Corbett, a professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the New York City fire department’s 15-day building inspection schedule has since become a hot-button issue. Days after the blaze, he said, “due to the scrutiny of this building, the lack of a pre-fire plan is unbelievable.”

Cassady said, “Rest assured, the Department’s actions will not stop the UFA from shining the light of truth on the Department when their policies endanger our members.”

UFA Ltr re Failure of FDNY Leadership: http://www.ufalocal94.org/pdf/db11_20.pdf

City Council Oversight Hearing re: FDNY Building Inspection Program: Dec. 12, 2007
http://webdocs.nyccouncil.info/attachments/81351.htm?CFID=1569427&CFTOKEN=55706348

NYT: Feb, 14, 2008 Beddia lawsuit: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/nyregion/14deutsche.html?_r=1&scp=9&sq=deutsche+bank+fire&st=nyt&oref=slogin

Site to check out

I came across a site that might be helpful background info for a lot of people, The Safety Library

The site has information on:
Disasters (disaster safety, emergency management, terrorism)
Hazards and controls (biological safety, chemical safety, environmental safety, fire safety, physical hazards, etc.)
Industry Safety
Laws and Regulations
Safety Management

In addition to compiling research, the site also has a great number of links updated constantly on the issues listed above and others (the list is pretty long, but I selected the most relevant ones for the list above).

Giambusso Budget Line

WHO'S PAYING ATTENTION? (Giambusso): In the rush to build new housing, stores, and community spaces are politicians and developers ignoring important safety precautions? Environmentalists, safety experts and advocacy groups have called for caution in the rush to build, but their voices are often drowned out by business friendly city agencies and political leaders eager to point to construction as a sign of progress. Only six years after 9/11 what lessons have we learned about building safety and environmental impact? Are those lessons being heeded by our political leaders? Through an examination of specific sites targeted for development, the piece will examine the political battles and interplay between pressure groups that brought these sites to bear.

(good article!) Reconstructing New York’s Building Code Overhaul

This is the article about the building cord written in 2007.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg propsed a massive overhaul of the city's building code, the first in nearly 40 years in 2007.

Under the proposed regulations, for example, all new buildings over 55 feet tall, which would include the Bronx home, would be required to have a more fire-resistant stairway, automatic sprinkler systems, and hardwired smoke alarms that sound in every room.
Also still there are issue of cost of construction and in turn, increase the cost of housing.

link.
http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/issueoftheweek/20070514/200/2181

Giambusso Memo

Building Battles:

OVERVIEW:

I am attempting to examine the political battles that go into building and development. I hope to examine specific sites and demonstrate how the pressures of City Council, Congress, developers, community groups etc, shape building safety. I would like to look at a development that has been finished, one that is being constructed and ne that is in the planning stages.

I am looking specifically to examine how the race to develop may be having a deleterious effect on building safety. Politicians and developers are often involved in projects that garner government funds (affordable housing, brownfield development) making enterprises more lucrative for builders.

The question I hope to raise is how safe are these projects, what are the standards and what have been the real-life consequences of projects that perhaps moved too quickly for political economic expediency while ignoring safety standards.


FIRST SITE: Gowanus Canal, “Public Place”
Lede(?)

Along the trendy restaurants of Cobble Hill and the nouveau-chic bars of Park Slope, underneath the lacquered hardwood walkups, where hipsters, yuppies and trustafarians, meet, live, and raise their young, between two lands conquered by the inexorable armies of gentrification, there runs a river of poison--a mile and half of putrid waterway that once served the factories and chemical plants lining its banks.

For over a century the Gowanus Canal has acted as an industrial sewer, suffering the runoff of tanneries, machine shops, and factories churning soap, paint, ink, and sulfur. The waterway, which connects Upper New York Bay to the neighborhoods of Red Hook, South Brooklyn, and Park Slope, runs along a flood basin of toxicity.

In the eyes of politicians, the banks of the Gowanus are a fertile ground for green spaces and affordable housing. In the eyes of developers, the Gowanus valley is a gold prospect promising government funding and quick profits. For the starry-eyed denizens of the outlying neighborhoods, the land along the Gowanus is another chance to recreate the city’s landscape in their own image--complete with coffee shops, dog runs, and tree lined walkways through which to push the seemingly endless stream of baby carriages that follows the march of young urban affluence.

In the fever to develop this infamous stretch, though, some in the community have raised the unwelcome flag of caution and warned that we may not know exactly what has been created underneath these banks. There is skepticism that a layer of sod and some shrubberies may only mask the feet of sledge and chemical waste that have built up over the last one hundred years. Some warn that the consequences of living among these noxious deposits may be dire…

SECOND SITE: Atlantic Yards

THIRD SITE:


LINKS:

http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=5&id=18585

http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=27&id=18300

http://www.gowanus.org/gowanus.htm

http://www.waterfrontmuseum.org/dredgers/links/voice.html

http://www.gowanusartists.com/home.html

http://www.plannyc.org/project-75-Gowanus-Development

CONTACT:

Jessica Pozzuoli: Television Producer, Environmental Activist, Urban Planner
Sarah Ryley: Reporter, Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Bill deBlasio, NYCity Council
David Yassky, NYC Council
Jim Brennan, NYS Assembly
Nydia Velazquez, U.S. House of Reps, 11th District. (The fightin 11th!)
Toll Brothers Development Co.
A.J. Carter, press person at the Empire State Development Corporation
Bob Zuckerman, GCCDC
Patricia Culligan, Professor Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University
NYC D of Buildings
DEP
Seth Donlin, spokesman, Department of Housing Preservation and Development (NYC DHPD)
Bette Stoltz, executive director of the South Brooklyn Local Development Corporation (SBLDC)

TO DO:

GOWANUS
• Get a copy of Culligan’s report/conduct interviews to learn what clean up methods are used in brownfields.
• Also from Culligan, where else have cleanup methods been used and what have been the consequences.
• Contact policymakers, agencies, advocates to determine who is pro, who is against Public Place (GCCDC, SBLDC, EDC, NYS DEP, HPD, D of B, Yassky, Brennan, Velazquez)
• Determine how much Public Place will cost: cleanup, design, construction commercial rent, residential rent, government funding
• Visit other Toll Brothers sites. Do they usually flip brown fields? What do residents say of their developments what is their reputation, who are the architects?
• Visit sites listed in Culligan’s report

21 Recommendations of Task Force

As recommended in class, we should all be familiar with these

21 Recommendations from the Department of Buildings Task Force

1. Publish structural design guidelines for optional application to enhance robustness and resistance to progressive collapse.
2. Prohibit the use of open web bar trusses in new commercial high-rise construction over 75 feet in height, pending the development of an appropriate standard recommended by NIST.
3. Encourage use of available impact resistant materials in the construction of stair and elevator shaft enclosures until appropriate standards can be developed.
4. Work with the Department of City Planning to exempt floor area of stairwells above minimum requirements from zoning Floor Area Ratio (FAR) calculations to encourage the inclusion of more stairwells or wider stairwells in buildings.
5. Prohibit the use of scissors stairs in high-rise commercial buildings with a floor plate of over 10,000 square feet.
6. Improve marking of the egress path, doors and stairs with photo-luminescent materials and retrofit existing exit signs with either battery or generator backup power.
7. Mandate a full building evacuation plan for non-fire related events.
8. Work with the Department of City Planning to exclude floor area of "fire towers" from Floor Area Ratio (FAR) calculations to encourage their use.
9. Mandate protected vestibules at elevator lobbies in newly constructed occupancy group E buildings greater than 75 feet.
10. Require controlled inspections to ensure that fireproofing is fully intact on all structural building members exposed by subsequent renovations to ensure continued compliance with applicable code requirements.
11. Require all high-rise commercial buildings over 100 feet without automatic sprinkler protection to install a sprinkler system throughout the building within 15 years.
12. Require all occupancy group E buildings to maintain a Building Information Card (BIC) listing a building's vital features.
13. Enhance Fire Department emergency response communications in high rise commercial buildings.
14. Provide additional training for Fire Safety Directors.
15. Limit diameter of fuel oil transfer piping in systems using day tanks.
16. Implement standards for piping that is utilized to distribute fuel oil to equipment without the use of a day tank.
17. Exclude floor drains for elevator vestibule and shafts from being counted as fixtures in calculating normal waste water pipe capacity.
18. Require air intakes in all new construction to be located at least 20' above grade and away from exhaust discharges or off street loading bays.
19. Require controlled inspections of HVAC fire dampers in newly constructed occupancy group E buildings.
20. Wait for the recommendation of Mayoral Commission on adoption of national model code and incorporate Task Force recommendations into any locally specific modifications.
21. Encourage buildings within NYC geographic boundaries and subject to other jurisdictional authority comply with NYC Building Code through collaborative agreements.

13 Recommendations Adopted. Proposed in Legislation September 23, 2003 and Passed June 24, 2004

• Full Sprinkler Protection for Office Buildings. Owners of all existing office buildings 100 feet or greater in height which are not already fully sprinklered will be required to fully sprinkler their buildings on or before January 1, 2019. Owners may apply for an extension of the sprinkler installation deadline in cases of hardship and partial waivers where installation would be impracticable due to structural conditions or interior Landmark designations.
  
  
• Improved Markings, Exit Signage, and Back-up Power to Exit Signs. Exit stairs and doors in new or existing high-rise office buildings will be required to have glow-in-the-dark markings. New and existing high-rise (75 feet or greater) office buildings will be required to install additional signs where exit stairs have horizontal extensions, where stairwell re-entry doors are recessed to assist egress. Existing high-rise office buildings with grandfathered exit signs will be required to provide back-up power to those signs.
  
  
• Restrict the Use of Open Web Steel Joists. The failure of open web steel joists under extreme heat and fire are prime suspects in the WTC collapse. (A possible related cause for the collapses was the failure of spray-on fireproofing to remain adhered to these joists.) This recommendation will prohibit the use of open web steel joists in all new, non-residential high-rise buildings until appropriate fireproofing standards are developed and promulgated by the Commissioner of the Department of Buildings.
  
  
• Inspection of Sprayed-on Fireproofing. Spray-on fireproofing is only effective when it remains on the steel structure to which it was applied. This recommendation mandates that controlled inspections be performed to assess the integrity of spray-on fireproofing during building alterations where such fireproofing is exposed.
  
  
• Impact-Resistant Stair and Elevator Enclosures. In many accounts of the WTC tragedy, the drywall encasing the stairwells in the impact area disintegrated, blocking egress for some. This recommendation would require the use of more impact-resistant stair and elevator enclosures in high-rise office buildings constructed or altered after January 1, 2006. The Commissioner of the Department of Buildings will promulgate appropriate standards by July 1, 2005.
  
  
• Restricted Use of Scissor Stairs. “Scissor” stairs are two intertwining sets of staircases separated by a common wall and floors. While this allows for more square footage in a building, it concentrates the number of exit stairs in one area of the building – which may prevent occupants from escaping during an emergency (for instance, if a fire is blocking the only stairway entrance on a floor.) Under this recommendation, scissor stair assemblies will be prohibited in new high-rise office buildings with relatively large floor plates (over 10,000 square feet).

Other Task Force’s recommendations include:

• Full Building Evacuation Planning. High-rise office buildings will be required to have plans for full building evacuation for events other than fires.
  
  
• Smoke Stop Elevator Vestibules. In new high-rise office buildings, elevators serving four or more stories will be required to have smoke stop elevator vestibules, which will help to prevent smoke from spreading throughout a building during a fire.
  
  
• Controlled Inspections of Fire Dampers. Currently, mechanical ductwork is required under the Building Code to have “dampers,” which close shut to prevent fires from spreading. A specific controlled inspection of these dampers will be required when new ventilation systems are installed.
  
  
• Raising Air Intake Locations. Current code calls for air intakes for mechanical ventilation systems to be a minimum of six feet above ground level. That minimum would be increased to 20 feet above ground, and existing requirements that such air intakes be located away from exhaust discharges and off-street loading bays will be clarified.
  
  
• Prohibition of Oversized Fuel Oil Transfer Piping. To help prevent unauthorized storage of fuel oil, oversized fuel oil transfer piping will be prohibited for all new installations and alterations.
  
  
• Excluding Certain Floor Drains from Normal Fixture Counts. Water that is used to fight fires in high-rises may end up draining into elevator shafts, causing elevator equipment to malfunction. To allow that problem to be avoided, this recommendation will exclude floor drains in elevator shafts and vestibules from wastewater capacity calculations.
  
  
• Setting Standards for Fuel Oil Transfer Piping. New minimum technical standards will be required for fuel oil transfer piping to generators where there is no storage tank above the lowest floor for all new installations and alterations.

Some updates: construction safety & Triangle Shirtwaist history

Two things.

1) Here are two e-mails I got today and yesterday from the Department of Buildings. Forgive the basic nature of the questions I ask. I actually asked them about a week ago but they've been slow to reply ("Hi! I'm Andrew, from the Washington Square News!"). Included is a link to Patricia Lancaster's testimony in the first graf.

---- email 1, begin ----

In [DoB Comish. Patricia Lancaster's] testimony [on Feb 4th, the topic of the NYT article we read last week], the Commissioner recommends the City pursue three pieces of legislation: 
  
 1) a law for general contractors to be licensed through a
registration requirement, 
  
 2) a law for concrete contractors to be licensed through a
registration requirement, and 
  
3) a law requiring a concrete safety manager to oversee
concrete operations on high-rise construction sites. 
  
The impetus here is the absence of an accountability scheme
amongst the contractors on a job site. 
  
A registration requirement for GCs and concrete contractors
would obviously provide sharper enforcement teeth, as there would be the threat of revoking the registration if contractors are found after to due process to routinely violate or disregard safety rules and regulations. 
The registration requirement would also empower the Department to track contractors’ performance across job sites. Currently, this is nearly impossible to do because a corporation can change its name from
job site to job site. For recent example, you can look at the permits issued for the new building under construction at 525 Clinton Street, the site in Brooklyn where the scaffold worker died last week. A general contractor called Clinton Court Development LLC pulled the permits issued for that job site. When we search our data as it relates to Clinton Court Development LLC, we find only violations and permits issued related to work at 525 Clinton Avenue. It is possible the owners of Clinton Court Development LLC also own corporations that are building developments in other parts of the borough or the city, but there is no way to know for sure. With the infrastructure we have in place today, we cannot holistically track contractors’ performance across job sites and hold them accountable, unless the general contractor retains the same name across job sites. 
  
 As the Commissioner said in response to a question at the
hearing, it is surprising that in this day and age, of the 29 trades licensed by the Buildings Department, general contractors are not one of them. Requiring a general contractor to register would empower the Buildings Department with a tool to track a contractor’s performance across job sites and hold him accountable for his actions. 
 
Carly Sullivan
Assistant Press Secretary
NYC Department of Buildings
T: (212) 566-3473
F: (212) 566-3865
 
www.NYC.gov/buildings

---e-mail 1 ends -----

---e-mail 2 begins ---

Andrew:  See Below.  Let me know if you have any questions.  Thanks.
 
On Background:
  
RE: Who has the DOB consulted in creating this new proposed set of regulations? Labor? Industry? Immigrant groups? Builders who use non-union workers? Other jurisdictions?
  
Please specify which regulations you are referring to.
  
RE: Who has opposed this new set of regulations, and who is for?
  
Please specify which regulations you are referring to.  
  
RE:  Was the DOB planning on making these changes beforehand?
  
Since November, the Buildings Department has been working to devise legislative and non-legislative solutions to address the problem of concrete operations on high-rise construction sites.  On January 23, 2008, Commissioner Lancaster sent a memo to the industry outlining best practices to avoid concrete-related accidents. 
 
RE: Unions say that non-unionized work is to blame for the majority [73%] of accidents during construction. Is this true?
 
The Buildings Department does not track this data.  Buildings data shows that construction incidents on high-rise construction sites, which comprise union and non-union labor sites, increased 49% over the last year, from 69 in CY 2006 to 103 in CY 2007
 
RE: Do you have any data that bears this out, or disproves it? How does the DOB intend on tackling this issue?
 
See above.
 
RE: Does the DOB see illegal immigrant and non-English workers as a major concern for construction safety?  How does the DOB intend to address these issues, if so?
 
In 2006, the Buildings Department, Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs and Occupational Safety and Health Administration convened a Scaffold Worker Safety Task Force after a series of scaffold-related incidents.  The Task Force found speaking English as a second language or speaking a language different than that spoken at the job site was often a factor in fatal construction accidents.  Since 2006, Buildings, MOIA and OSHA have conducted outreach events across the five boroughs to distribute safety information in multiple languages to day laborers and discussed with workers how to stay safe on the job. Under the Task Force, the training requirements for suspended scaffolds are being streamlined, the Buildings Department and OSHA are conducting cross-trainings and performing joint inspections, and a Scaffold Safety Team, which proactively inspects scaffold, was created at the Buildings Department in August 2007. 
 
RE: Why were concrete workers not required to register with the City in the past? 
There was no law requiring them to do so.  
 
RE: What problems do you foresee in this registration process? (For example, I hear that the DCA sometimes has problems registering home renovation contractors to any effect because businesses appear and disappear to evade accountability.)
 
First of all, the Commissioner has recommended the Council seek legislation requiring concrete contractors to register. She has expressed her support for such legislation. But let’s be clear, the legislation hasn’t been proposed yet or signed into law. We are well aware of the issue you bring up here with the HIC contractors. The Department is exploring ways in which it can avoid this evasion of responsibility and accountability.  

---- end e-mail ----

2) Here's an e-mail from Prof. Richard Greenwald, NYU grad and professor at Drew University in Madison, NJ. He's an expert on the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Of course this is just an overview: most important is his contact information, below. The NYU History faculty has not been so helpful. The link to his book on the fire is below.

---- begin e-mail. -----

>> Could you please describe very briefly the significance of the 1911 fire, and what it helped change in city government and regulations in the following years?

The Triangle Fire, which was the subject of my 2005 book, had an enormous effect on both labor policies and regulations over building in NYC and beyond. After the fire, the state of NY created the Factory Investigating Committee, a committee chaired by Al Smith and Robert Wagner, then leaders of both the state assembly and senate repressively. Smith and Wagner were joined by public members of the FIC. From 1911-1915, the FIC rewrote NYS factory regulations, including occupancy rules, fire safety rules and significant labor regulations. The uproar in the city and state and the death of so many mostly young immigrant women, created a political atmosphere where quick action was possible. Part of the answer is that Tammany Hall, then in firm control of both the state and city government was moved by the fire and working-class political action. Many scholars look at the fire as one of the moments in the creation of modern liberalism.. Frances Perkins, then a lead investigator for the FIC, later a New deal Sec of Labor, said that the new deal was born on March 25, 1911. So, part of the reason for the change was a change in political sensibilities.

Richard Greenwald, Dean Caspersen School of Graduate Studies Director, Business, Society & Culture Program Associate Professor of History Drew University Madison, NJ 07940 Ph: 973/408-3958 Email: rgreenwa@drew.edu 

----- e-mail done----

City Hall Hearing: Department of Buildings

Hi All,

Attached (finally) is the little report thing I did for my policy class last semester. It's a report on a hearing for the Department of Buildings chaired by James Oddo (R-STaten island). Pretty interesting for our purposes (totally uninteresting for others). Also attached is the audio recording if ur interested (i.e., if you have 2 hours to spare listening in on a City Council hearing...).

Enjoy!

Andrew


http://saveandrewgarib.com/externalarticles/07.10.17-wagner-cityhallhearing.doc
http://saveandrewgarib.com/audio/CityHallHearing-DoB-2007-10-16_14h55m34s.mp3