Designing for Safety
By Erika A. Parkins
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, LLP was the only architecture firm in New York to lose one of their employees in the World Trade Center attacks. They also won the bid to design Seven World Trade Center, the first building to be rebuilt on the site. But whether their model efforts will set the safety standard for the city remains to be seen.
“We've done all sorts of extremes to make this a building that is responsible in every possible way,” David Childs, an architect at SOM who worked on Seven World Trade Center, said on NPR shortly after it was built.
“It has all of the safety redundancy features that one can imagine, that is safe long enough for people to get out if there is a fire, or a hurricane that breaks glass, or whatever disasters could happen,” Childs said. “So I think we've made a tremendous leap forward for how we build skyscrapers in the United States.”
Architects have long been design innovators, exploring new ways to work with materials and structures to meet people’s basic needs for as long as the concept of shelter. From the use of masonry in the 12th century to steel in the 19th and 20th centuries, designers have helped to set the standard for the way we live and work.
The attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 were an opportunity for designers to innovate, once again, ideas about the way we work and live. The primary issues after the attacks were terrorism and safety. Yet, as the years increase between 2001 and now, it has become apparent that designers can consider safety but cannot work with fear.
“We, rank high in paranoia,” said Rick Bell, president of the Architectural Institute of America in New York. “Maybe not the highest in the world, but we are certainly up there. I see a diminishment of that over the past two years, though it intensified immediately after the attacks,” he said.
As far as continuing to innovate or design for safety: “I don’t see a competition. We’re nowhere on that.”
As many New Yorkers, the design community has effectively moved on from the issues of September 11, 2001 but, not without struggle and change.
The attacks on the World Trade Center helped push improved building codes through faster. The nexus of community activists in the public sphere, such as Sally Regenhard and the Skyscraper Safety Campaign; designer input such as the recommendations put forth by SOM and the AIA; and, government inquiry into the collapse of the World Trade Center, provided the impetus to seriously examine what could be done to improve safety standards in high-rise buildings. As the old saying goes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease: because of the confluence of concern from all corners, particularly the public sector, codes that had been in limbo for 10 years were reworked and passed into law in two years.
“If the public was more interested in the built environment and pressured and acted upon political leaders and the building industry to build better, buildings would be better,” said J.C. Calderon, an architect who was also an advisor to the Skyscraper Safety Campaign.
“But, the public does not consider themselves a part of the building process. It would be more beneficial if more people saw architecture as a public good.”
On July 1 of this year, New York City’s new building codes will go into effect. Unfortunately, all of the building code changes brought about by the World Trade Center attacks do not directly affect the buildings that will be rebuilt on the site.
The main reason the World Trade Center was not up to code was because it did not have to be. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey governs the World Trade Center site, and is not under New York City jurisdiction. The Department of City Planning, the Department of Buildings and the New York Police and Fire Departments could cite as many violations as they wanted, but it was always the Port Authority’s choice to comply.
“9-11 was not only a major failure on a federal level, a state level, a New York City level and certainly on the Port Authority level,” Regenhard said. “I’ve never known the Port Authority to be concerned about anyone’s safety, especially in connection to the World Trade Center. Those buildings were above the law.”
A system of checks and balances should exist among city agencies, developers, contractors, engineers and architects, so that no one arm in the process of making a building, has more control over critical aspects and functions than another. However, in New York, the system has been flouted through political connections, money and sheer oversight, as the recent resignation of New York City Department of Buildings commissioner, Patricia Lancaster, suggested.
“It’s about the money, that’s all it is,” said Frederic Schwartz, an architect who has worked with the city and other designers to think of ways to redevelop the World Trade Center site.
Money is very influential, and when it is time for a building to finally be erected, the developer calls many of the shots. They try to match the aesthetic mind of the architect to the desires of the public, in the most profitable way.
“It would always be beneficial if more people saw architecture as a public conversation it would inspire architects and developers to do better buildings,” Calderon said. “But since there is no critique, or very little critique, in the media or in the public as to the success of buildings the developers behind those buildings don’t get the impression that the public cares and won’t invest in their buildings to make them better.”
Calderon concluded, “Investors and developers won’t spend more money if they don’t have to and they won’t do it unless they think the public wants it.”
Developers in New York have been resistant since September 11, 2001, to including safety measures such as wider stairwells. According to the architects and engineers interviewed, the developers’ resistance is due to not wanting to lose square footage on rentable floor space. The image of developers and real estate investors could use a positive boost since they do not have the best public image; their concerns narrowly generalized to more profit and less on the bottom line on construction costs.
No developers were able to return comment in time for this publication.
In the end however, developers, outside of those on the former World Trade Center site, may no longer have a choice in whether or not to include some of the improved safety standards in the new building codes. New construction, at minimum, will be required to subscribe to minimum structural, accessibility, sustainability and fire protection standards such as requiring fire sprinklers and detectors in all buildings and improving escape routes. The code also allows more room for innovation with new materials and construction techniques as long as they meet the requirements of the building codes.
The draft outline of the new construction codes includes how a higher building standard can be achieved in a cost-effective manner. A number of agencies representing the real estate, design, construction, engineering and trade industries were a part of the process to update the codes and make them more tenable to the city’s needs. The dismissive claim of safety features being too expensive or extraneous should, in theory, no longer stand.
Older construction will also have to meet the new building code requirements in the next few years; no structure will be grandfathered in.
Structural engineers have been very instrumental in thinking about the design of buildings and creating safety measures for the structure and thinking about egress. Measures include, but are not limited to, the widening of stairwells, the introduction of sky lobbies, and elevators that firefighters can use in case of an emergency. However engineers are very cognizant of not working under the assumption of terror. First and foremost, the buildings have to function and they need to figure out the best ways that can happen.
In the seven years since the World Trade Center attacks, terrorism has taken a back seat within the design community, as other threats become more looming, such as global warming and the need for environmental preservation.
Designers and engineers have turned their attention to sustainable development- another tenet of the new building codes that also affects the way we all ultimately live. Though not mutually exclusive to the issue of safety, it is the more pressing, tangible threat the design community is thinking about and one in which the public can get behind and become involved.
“Global warming is another 9-11 because in a sense, global warming is the potential for many 9-11s and we need to prepare our buildings accordingly,” Calderon said. “What’s encouraging is that architecture is talking about these problems, now.”
“Safety is a basic requirement of a building,” said Calderon. “But building’s can’t just be safe, it has to be something more to have any value. Ideally it goes beyond and inspires us toward greater levels of happiness and grace.”
Sources consulted:
Frederic Schwartz, Architect
Rick Bell, President, AIA
JC Calderon, Architect and Advisor to the Skyscraper Safety Campaign
Carl Galioto, Architect, SOM
David Childs, Architect, SOM
Joe Tortorella, Structural Engineer
Sally Regenhard, Skyscraper Safety Campaign
New York Building Congress
Articles, documents and websites:
Nova transcript, “Building on Ground Zero,” PBS, September 5, 2006. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3311_wtc.html
“Lessons of 9-11 Alter Skyscraper Design,” Boston Globe. September 6, 2006.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/09/06/lessons_of_911_alter_skyscraper_design/
Draft Outline of New Building Codes
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dob/downloads/pdf/mc_report.pdf
Safety Library – Fire Safety
http://www.thesafetylibrary.com/sites/firesbudes.php
“A Nation Challenged”, New York Times, March 28, 2002
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9c06e6d7113bf93ba15750c0a9649c8b63#
“Sweeping Changes Pushed for Code on City High Rises”, New York Times, August 2, 2002
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9907E0D81E3BF931A3575BC0A9649C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Proposed Legislation to Improve Building Safety
http://wirednewyork.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-4032.html
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
Steagall Rough Draft With Sources
The Scaffold Law: Essential Protection or ATM for Trial Lawyers?
By Lance Steagall
New York, April 12 – “If there is a law that can help make less dangerous workplaces, why would you want to get rid of it?” asked Miguel Lagos, 32, a non-union construction worker in Downtown Brooklyn. He then offered an answer to his own question: “Money. Only money.”
In spite of the recent string of worker deaths in the city -- including four in Turtle Bay, two in Brooklyn and one in Soho -- there is a movement afoot to gut what many deem essential protection for workers: Section 240 of the Labor Law. Commonly known as the Scaffold Law, it requires that employers provide proper, functional safety equipment, and facilitates the pursuit of work-related injury cases.
The sides are largely drawn between pro-business, and pro-worker advocates. The former allege that the law puts undue burden on business owners, and negates their right to a fair trial. The latter sees it as a means of keeping employers vigilant on work site safety. Both sides accuse the other of distorting the facts.
Mike Elmendorf, the New York State Director of the National Federation of Independent Business, said “this isn’t about trying to erode protection for workers, it’s about fairness. It’s about an antiquated statute that’s been perverted into a cash machine for trail lawyers.”
His statement expressed a common concern; that business owners are liable to any injured worker, regardless of the circumstances of the accident. “Under this statute,” said Elmendorf, “you could show up to work drunk, go up on a beam, dance a polka, swan dive into the ground, and it isn’t your fault.”
Paul Fernandes, the Chief of Staff at the Building and Construction Trades Council, said that simply isn’t the case.
“The Scaffold law simply says the contractor is absolutely responsible for providing a safe workplace,” said Fernandes. “If you remove that responsibility from the contractor, that gives them a crack that allows them to open the door to unsafe job sites. We have a hard enough time getting compliance as it is.”
Despite what either would have you believe, the law isn’t so black and white. The case history illustrates Section 240’s contentious past.
In a case from 2001, Sergeant v. Murphy Family Trust, D.R. Casey Construction Corp, employed Kevin Sergeant as a roofer. As the court overview described it, “Plaintiff [Sergeant] stepped onto yellow insulation where a roof panel had been removed. The insulation had no underlying support, and plaintiff fell at least 21 feet to the floor below. At the emergency room, a blood test revealed that plaintiff’s blood alcohol level was .27.”
While a .27 blood alcohol level is enough to warrant a drunken driving arrest, it was not enough to throw out the case; Sergeant won the case without it ever being sent to a jury. Because the proper safety devices were not provided, thee defendant was entitled to damages regardless of his intoxication.
In 2003, Blake v. Neighborhood Housing Services of New York, a sober worker, Rupert Blake, was injured while scraping rust from a window. The jury found that all proper safety equipment had been provided in working order, and Blake had only personal negligence to blame. Neighborhood Housing Services was not held liable.
As pro-business advocates point out, adverse economic effects of the Scaffold Law are not limited to lawsuit settlements. According to the NFIB, New York has the second highest cost of doing business in the United States (behind Hawaii), and high rates of insurance are to blame. There’s no consensus, however, on the cause of those high rates.
“The Scaffold Law is driving up the cost of liability insurance and in some cases making it impossible to even secure liability coverage,” said Edelman. “By some estimates, it adds $10,000 to the cost of building a house in upstate New York.”
Ari Gross of Gross & Co. Insurance agreed that premiums for liability insurance can be “prohibitively expensive.”
“I’ve tried to get quotes,” he said, “and the replies were ‘the minimum insurance premium is $50,000.’” That is in contrast to something like painter’s insurance, which Gross said is typically around $3,500.
Although Gross acknowledged that “one claim under the Scaffold Law can be disastrous for an insurance company,” he could not say if the Scaffold Law itself was responsible for the high price of liability insurance.
Paul Fernandes of he Building and Construction Trades Council is sympathetic to contractors coping with high premiums, but believes those who hold the Scaffold Law responsible are misguided.
“There’s a legitimate gripe out there,” he said. “The premiums have been skyrocketing, so I can understand why contractors would go up to Albany and ask for things that they think will reduce their premiums. But, on this issue, there’s been a lot of heat and not too much light.”
Fernandes is looking for hard evidence that the Scaffold Law is, in fact, causing the elevated premiums. “We’ve waited 5-7 years for the insurance industry to provide it,” said Fernandes, “and they can’t provide a single shred.”
While interested parties point fingers, Scaffold Law reform has been a non-starter.
During Elliot Spitzer’s 2006 campaign for Governor, he spoke of a repeal or significant reformation of the law. Elmendorf and the NFIB thought they had an ally in Albany.
But, prior to the prostitution scandal that prompted his premature exit from office, Spitzer did little to address complaints over the Scaffold Law. The opinion of Governor David Paterson, Spitzer’s replacement, is a question mark.
“Obviously, he [Spitzer] is gone, and we don’t know where Governor Paterson stands on this,” said Elmendorf. “Frankly, that’s a point of concern.”
Paul Fernandes, the Chief of Staff at the Building and Construction Trades Council, believes Governor Spitzer himself had no intention of touching the Scaffold Law, and said “I don’t expect it to be a priority for Governor Paterson either.”
Indeed, priorities seem to be working against any reform of the Scaffold Law. In a February 29 press release, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg directed the following comment to the Department of Buildings; “I’m expecting you to focus first, last, and always on your most critical and fundamental responsibility – rigorously, thoroughly, and aggressively protecting the lives and safety of our city’s more than 125,000 construction workers.”
Interviews used:
Ari Gross -- 212-620-4040
Mike Elmendorf – 518-434-1262
Paul Fernandes – 212-647-0700
Miguel Lagos – mlagos@gmail.com
Websites:
Bloomberg quote:
http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4ef3daf2f1c701c789a0/index.jsp?pageID=mayor_press_release&catID=1194&doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ci.nyc.ny.us%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fhtml%2F2008a%2Fpr073-08.html&cc=unused1978&rc=1194&ndi=1
Brooklyn Scaffold: http://www.ibrooklyn.com/site/newsevents/brooklynprogressonline/42007/article/767
Safe at Any Height: New York’s State Scaffold Law Saves Lives,” New York State Trial Lawyer’s Association (May 2004), Glenn Von Nostitz
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:4GEI3HIcWFcJ:www.law.nyu.edu/realestatecenter/CREUP_Papers/cost_study_2005/chapter13.pdf+Glenn+Von+Nostitz,+%E2%80%9CSafe+at+Any+Height:+New+York+State%E2%80%99s+Scaffold+Law+Saves+Lives,%E2%80%9D+New+York+State+Trial+Lawyer%E2%80%99s+Association+(May+2004)&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a
New York Scaffold Act Claim Costs, American Insurance Association Memorandum: http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:4GEI3HIcWFcJ:www.law.nyu.edu/realestatecenter/CREUP_Papers/cost_study_2005/chapter13.pdf+New+York+Scaffold+Act+Claim+Costs,%E2%80%9D+American+Insurance+Association+Memorandum,+November+6,+2001&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a
Lexis Nexis: Legal
Section 240 Overview: http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2076/us/lnacademic/mungo/lexseestat.do?bct=A&risb=21_T3523485680&homeCsi=6320&A=0.5295272357523444&urlEnc=ISO-8859-1&&citeString=N.Y.%20LAB.%20LAW%20240&countryCode=USA
Blake v. Neighborhood Housing: http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2076/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?risb=21_T3523499537&format=GNBFI&sort=BOOLEAN&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T3523499540&cisb=22_T3523499539&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=9096&docNo=1
Sergeant v. Murphy Family Trust:
http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2076/us/lnacademic/mungo/lexseestat.do?bct=A&risb=21_T3523488208&homeCsi=9101&A=0.9322861121618766&urlEnc=ISO-8859-1&&citeString=284%20A.D.2d%20991&countryCode=USA
By Lance Steagall
New York, April 12 – “If there is a law that can help make less dangerous workplaces, why would you want to get rid of it?” asked Miguel Lagos, 32, a non-union construction worker in Downtown Brooklyn. He then offered an answer to his own question: “Money. Only money.”
In spite of the recent string of worker deaths in the city -- including four in Turtle Bay, two in Brooklyn and one in Soho -- there is a movement afoot to gut what many deem essential protection for workers: Section 240 of the Labor Law. Commonly known as the Scaffold Law, it requires that employers provide proper, functional safety equipment, and facilitates the pursuit of work-related injury cases.
The sides are largely drawn between pro-business, and pro-worker advocates. The former allege that the law puts undue burden on business owners, and negates their right to a fair trial. The latter sees it as a means of keeping employers vigilant on work site safety. Both sides accuse the other of distorting the facts.
Mike Elmendorf, the New York State Director of the National Federation of Independent Business, said “this isn’t about trying to erode protection for workers, it’s about fairness. It’s about an antiquated statute that’s been perverted into a cash machine for trail lawyers.”
His statement expressed a common concern; that business owners are liable to any injured worker, regardless of the circumstances of the accident. “Under this statute,” said Elmendorf, “you could show up to work drunk, go up on a beam, dance a polka, swan dive into the ground, and it isn’t your fault.”
Paul Fernandes, the Chief of Staff at the Building and Construction Trades Council, said that simply isn’t the case.
“The Scaffold law simply says the contractor is absolutely responsible for providing a safe workplace,” said Fernandes. “If you remove that responsibility from the contractor, that gives them a crack that allows them to open the door to unsafe job sites. We have a hard enough time getting compliance as it is.”
Despite what either would have you believe, the law isn’t so black and white. The case history illustrates Section 240’s contentious past.
In a case from 2001, Sergeant v. Murphy Family Trust, D.R. Casey Construction Corp, employed Kevin Sergeant as a roofer. As the court overview described it, “Plaintiff [Sergeant] stepped onto yellow insulation where a roof panel had been removed. The insulation had no underlying support, and plaintiff fell at least 21 feet to the floor below. At the emergency room, a blood test revealed that plaintiff’s blood alcohol level was .27.”
While a .27 blood alcohol level is enough to warrant a drunken driving arrest, it was not enough to throw out the case; Sergeant won the case without it ever being sent to a jury. Because the proper safety devices were not provided, thee defendant was entitled to damages regardless of his intoxication.
In 2003, Blake v. Neighborhood Housing Services of New York, a sober worker, Rupert Blake, was injured while scraping rust from a window. The jury found that all proper safety equipment had been provided in working order, and Blake had only personal negligence to blame. Neighborhood Housing Services was not held liable.
As pro-business advocates point out, adverse economic effects of the Scaffold Law are not limited to lawsuit settlements. According to the NFIB, New York has the second highest cost of doing business in the United States (behind Hawaii), and high rates of insurance are to blame. There’s no consensus, however, on the cause of those high rates.
“The Scaffold Law is driving up the cost of liability insurance and in some cases making it impossible to even secure liability coverage,” said Edelman. “By some estimates, it adds $10,000 to the cost of building a house in upstate New York.”
Ari Gross of Gross & Co. Insurance agreed that premiums for liability insurance can be “prohibitively expensive.”
“I’ve tried to get quotes,” he said, “and the replies were ‘the minimum insurance premium is $50,000.’” That is in contrast to something like painter’s insurance, which Gross said is typically around $3,500.
Although Gross acknowledged that “one claim under the Scaffold Law can be disastrous for an insurance company,” he could not say if the Scaffold Law itself was responsible for the high price of liability insurance.
Paul Fernandes of he Building and Construction Trades Council is sympathetic to contractors coping with high premiums, but believes those who hold the Scaffold Law responsible are misguided.
“There’s a legitimate gripe out there,” he said. “The premiums have been skyrocketing, so I can understand why contractors would go up to Albany and ask for things that they think will reduce their premiums. But, on this issue, there’s been a lot of heat and not too much light.”
Fernandes is looking for hard evidence that the Scaffold Law is, in fact, causing the elevated premiums. “We’ve waited 5-7 years for the insurance industry to provide it,” said Fernandes, “and they can’t provide a single shred.”
While interested parties point fingers, Scaffold Law reform has been a non-starter.
During Elliot Spitzer’s 2006 campaign for Governor, he spoke of a repeal or significant reformation of the law. Elmendorf and the NFIB thought they had an ally in Albany.
But, prior to the prostitution scandal that prompted his premature exit from office, Spitzer did little to address complaints over the Scaffold Law. The opinion of Governor David Paterson, Spitzer’s replacement, is a question mark.
“Obviously, he [Spitzer] is gone, and we don’t know where Governor Paterson stands on this,” said Elmendorf. “Frankly, that’s a point of concern.”
Paul Fernandes, the Chief of Staff at the Building and Construction Trades Council, believes Governor Spitzer himself had no intention of touching the Scaffold Law, and said “I don’t expect it to be a priority for Governor Paterson either.”
Indeed, priorities seem to be working against any reform of the Scaffold Law. In a February 29 press release, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg directed the following comment to the Department of Buildings; “I’m expecting you to focus first, last, and always on your most critical and fundamental responsibility – rigorously, thoroughly, and aggressively protecting the lives and safety of our city’s more than 125,000 construction workers.”
Interviews used:
Ari Gross -- 212-620-4040
Mike Elmendorf – 518-434-1262
Paul Fernandes – 212-647-0700
Miguel Lagos – mlagos@gmail.com
Websites:
Bloomberg quote:
http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4ef3daf2f1c701c789a0/index.jsp?pageID=mayor_press_release&catID=1194&doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ci.nyc.ny.us%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fhtml%2F2008a%2Fpr073-08.html&cc=unused1978&rc=1194&ndi=1
Brooklyn Scaffold: http://www.ibrooklyn.com/site/newsevents/brooklynprogressonline/42007/article/767
Safe at Any Height: New York’s State Scaffold Law Saves Lives,” New York State Trial Lawyer’s Association (May 2004), Glenn Von Nostitz
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:4GEI3HIcWFcJ:www.law.nyu.edu/realestatecenter/CREUP_Papers/cost_study_2005/chapter13.pdf+Glenn+Von+Nostitz,+%E2%80%9CSafe+at+Any+Height:+New+York+State%E2%80%99s+Scaffold+Law+Saves+Lives,%E2%80%9D+New+York+State+Trial+Lawyer%E2%80%99s+Association+(May+2004)&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a
New York Scaffold Act Claim Costs, American Insurance Association Memorandum: http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:4GEI3HIcWFcJ:www.law.nyu.edu/realestatecenter/CREUP_Papers/cost_study_2005/chapter13.pdf+New+York+Scaffold+Act+Claim+Costs,%E2%80%9D+American+Insurance+Association+Memorandum,+November+6,+2001&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a
Lexis Nexis: Legal
Section 240 Overview: http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2076/us/lnacademic/mungo/lexseestat.do?bct=A&risb=21_T3523485680&homeCsi=6320&A=0.5295272357523444&urlEnc=ISO-8859-1&&citeString=N.Y.%20LAB.%20LAW%20240&countryCode=USA
Blake v. Neighborhood Housing: http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2076/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?risb=21_T3523499537&format=GNBFI&sort=BOOLEAN&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T3523499540&cisb=22_T3523499539&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=9096&docNo=1
Sergeant v. Murphy Family Trust:
http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2076/us/lnacademic/mungo/lexseestat.do?bct=A&risb=21_T3523488208&homeCsi=9101&A=0.9322861121618766&urlEnc=ISO-8859-1&&citeString=284%20A.D.2d%20991&countryCode=USA
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Something is Rotten in City’s Building Inspections Plan.
By Joy Wiltermuth
The Deutsche Bank building stands as an abandoned, gloomy hulk that was badly damaged and filled with toxic debris during the collapse of 2 World Trade Center. After a 22-foot length of steel pipe fell from the building while it was being torn down last year, and landed onto the adjacent roof of the local firehouse, it sparked fire department protests and calls for additional safety measures.
Three months later, a fire broke out in the partly demolished building that led to the deaths of two firefighters. An investigation following the blaze concluded that firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino were left in the burning building for more than an hour without water, due to a dismantled fire connection and broken standpipe. Several fire exits were barricaded, when the subcontractor attempted to limit asbestos exposure in the floor-by-floor deconstruction.
The tragedy set off a bitter fight between the firefighter’s union and the Fire Commissioner over accountability in the lapsed fire inspections and the hazardous conditions at the site. “Smoke and mirrors seems to be the Department’s response to this department-created situation that has eroded over the years,” said William Romaka, the Uniformed Firefighters Association Health and Safety Officer.
Stephen J. Cassidy, President of the UFA, called for Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta to accept responsibility for department failures following the blaze and requested an independent investigation. Cassidy said the higher echelons knew of the dangers, which plagued the Deutsche Bank, when Chief William Siegel recommended a targeted fire inspection plan for the toxic site three years earlier.
Siegel’s plan addressed hazards posed to firefighters that included exposure to asbestos, dioxins and heavy metals released during abatement. Aware of such conditions at the former bank building, the union disclosed the lack of proper fire inspections that had ceased a year prior to the fatal fire.
Glen Corbett, a professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the New York City fire inspections program became a hot-button issue. In the days following the fire, he told the New York Post, “due to the scrutiny of this building, the lack of a pre-fire plan is unbelievable.”
Scoppetta and Mayor Bloomberg weighed in on the tragedy and three high-ranking firefighters were taken out of the field and reassigned. Bloomberg called for strict enforcement of the fire department’s building inspections schedule, which required bi-monthly, spontaneous visits by local fire companies to all buildings undergoing construction or demolition in their area.
Scoppetta announced a new Building Inspection Safety Program (BISP) in November and added a third day to the current 15-day building inspection cycle. Inspections are completed during the firefighter’s regular workday and, under the BISP, the hours each week reserved for completion of inspection duties were increased, from six to nine. Visits to local buildings begin in the morning and continue throughout the day until, or unless, the unit is called to respond to a fire emergency.
Cassidy called the BISP was “an obvious attempt to gloss over the failures of Department leadership, who knew the Deutsche Bank was a toxic mess.” He said the new inspection program would not resolve the problems of an unfeasible inspection cycle, which added to an already overburdened firefighter's workload.
Battalion Chief John J. McDonnell said, “The additional inspection period is a ‘band-aid’ approach to an ever-growing problem. McDonnell, President of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association and one of the reassigned officers, said it would be impossible to check every construction or demolition project under the current schedule and told the New York Times that city regulations did not take into account New York’s recent construction boom.
The department later agreed to cut back on fire inspections to buildings less than 75 feet high, to every 30 days. An attempt to modernize the city’s firefighting capabilities was put forth in March, the first comprehensive revision of the city's fire code proposed in nearly a century. It is slated to go into effect in July and will bring the Code in line with international standards.
While part of the proposed Fire Code Law focuses on fire safety technology, some have called it “a sprinkler system law.” Deputy Assistant Chief Ronald R. Spadafora worked on the Fire Code and said it addressed some of the major issues that faced the Fire Department following the World Trade Center collapse.
Spadafora called it particularly strong in areas of interdepartmental information sharing and said it improved and integrated computer systems. But, he said the offset to technological improvements was a compromise of practical aspects of fire prevention. “Some would say there are areas of the code that have not gone far enough,” he said.
The proposed Fire Code Law does not directly address the disputed fire inspections building program. Romaka said, “While the new Fire Code might, and could be beneficial, the real problem deals with an untrained inspection protocol that does little to correctly respond to the challenges we find ourselves in.” He said the lack of proper training for the vast majority of firefighters in the field has not been addressed.
The UFA called for a separately trained and staffed task force to remedy the growing need for professional fire inspectors, who can identify and report back to local units about dangerous or hazardous conditions. While new probationary firefighters are given increased building construction and inspection training, Romaka said, “In the past we had dedicated task forces that were allowed to be cut from the budget under the guise of doing more with less.” Spadafora said, “In a perfect world, there would be a separate task force, but that involves a budget and we have to work with the workforce we already have.”
Weighing in on the added third day of inspections, Romaka said, “Being judged on hours does not improve the quality of the inspection.” He said it detracted from the bonding between companies “that generally occurs at lunch time, at a time when we have so many new members that we strive to pass on traditions to.”
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 inspections program. The Committee wanted to determine the staffing levels, training, equipment and qualifications of the inspectors. They also looked at the increase in levels of inspections and the impact that had on response times and safety. Scoppetta testified that fire response times had actually decreased since the new inspection plan was instituted, but Cassidy said the Commissioner provided no supporting data or statistics for his conclusion.
Cassidy said the number of fire engines on building inspections increased by 50 percent since December. While acknowledging the Fire Department’s responsibility to manage the city’s building inspection program, he said, “Every firefighter knows that his response times are negatively impacted.” A fire company out conducting routine building inspections is required to regroup and deploy when a fire emergency calls, sometimes to distant locations.
In a recent ratcheting up of the tensions, Romaka was excluded from certain departmental meetings, which related to technology oversight, and the UFA said he was targeted due to union activity. Cassidy 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.”
Sources:
Scopetta Nov. 7, 2007, BISP Announcement
http://www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/html/pr/2007/110707_8507.shtml
UFA Nov. 20, 2007 Ltr to Members and Public
http://ufalocal94.org/pdf/db11_20.pdf
UFA Oct. 12, 2007 Charge of Cover-Up
http://ufalocal94.org/press/100907.php
Dec. 5, 2007 FDNY Proposed Fire Code
http://www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/html/pr/2007/120507_9107.shtml
Glen Corbett: 212-237-8092
William Romaka: 212-683-4832
Ronald R. Spadafora: 917-418-8653
The Deutsche Bank building stands as an abandoned, gloomy hulk that was badly damaged and filled with toxic debris during the collapse of 2 World Trade Center. After a 22-foot length of steel pipe fell from the building while it was being torn down last year, and landed onto the adjacent roof of the local firehouse, it sparked fire department protests and calls for additional safety measures.
Three months later, a fire broke out in the partly demolished building that led to the deaths of two firefighters. An investigation following the blaze concluded that firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino were left in the burning building for more than an hour without water, due to a dismantled fire connection and broken standpipe. Several fire exits were barricaded, when the subcontractor attempted to limit asbestos exposure in the floor-by-floor deconstruction.
The tragedy set off a bitter fight between the firefighter’s union and the Fire Commissioner over accountability in the lapsed fire inspections and the hazardous conditions at the site. “Smoke and mirrors seems to be the Department’s response to this department-created situation that has eroded over the years,” said William Romaka, the Uniformed Firefighters Association Health and Safety Officer.
Stephen J. Cassidy, President of the UFA, called for Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta to accept responsibility for department failures following the blaze and requested an independent investigation. Cassidy said the higher echelons knew of the dangers, which plagued the Deutsche Bank, when Chief William Siegel recommended a targeted fire inspection plan for the toxic site three years earlier.
Siegel’s plan addressed hazards posed to firefighters that included exposure to asbestos, dioxins and heavy metals released during abatement. Aware of such conditions at the former bank building, the union disclosed the lack of proper fire inspections that had ceased a year prior to the fatal fire.
Glen Corbett, a professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the New York City fire inspections program became a hot-button issue. In the days following the fire, he told the New York Post, “due to the scrutiny of this building, the lack of a pre-fire plan is unbelievable.”
Scoppetta and Mayor Bloomberg weighed in on the tragedy and three high-ranking firefighters were taken out of the field and reassigned. Bloomberg called for strict enforcement of the fire department’s building inspections schedule, which required bi-monthly, spontaneous visits by local fire companies to all buildings undergoing construction or demolition in their area.
Scoppetta announced a new Building Inspection Safety Program (BISP) in November and added a third day to the current 15-day building inspection cycle. Inspections are completed during the firefighter’s regular workday and, under the BISP, the hours each week reserved for completion of inspection duties were increased, from six to nine. Visits to local buildings begin in the morning and continue throughout the day until, or unless, the unit is called to respond to a fire emergency.
Cassidy called the BISP was “an obvious attempt to gloss over the failures of Department leadership, who knew the Deutsche Bank was a toxic mess.” He said the new inspection program would not resolve the problems of an unfeasible inspection cycle, which added to an already overburdened firefighter's workload.
Battalion Chief John J. McDonnell said, “The additional inspection period is a ‘band-aid’ approach to an ever-growing problem. McDonnell, President of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association and one of the reassigned officers, said it would be impossible to check every construction or demolition project under the current schedule and told the New York Times that city regulations did not take into account New York’s recent construction boom.
The department later agreed to cut back on fire inspections to buildings less than 75 feet high, to every 30 days. An attempt to modernize the city’s firefighting capabilities was put forth in March, the first comprehensive revision of the city's fire code proposed in nearly a century. It is slated to go into effect in July and will bring the Code in line with international standards.
While part of the proposed Fire Code Law focuses on fire safety technology, some have called it “a sprinkler system law.” Deputy Assistant Chief Ronald R. Spadafora worked on the Fire Code and said it addressed some of the major issues that faced the Fire Department following the World Trade Center collapse.
Spadafora called it particularly strong in areas of interdepartmental information sharing and said it improved and integrated computer systems. But, he said the offset to technological improvements was a compromise of practical aspects of fire prevention. “Some would say there are areas of the code that have not gone far enough,” he said.
The proposed Fire Code Law does not directly address the disputed fire inspections building program. Romaka said, “While the new Fire Code might, and could be beneficial, the real problem deals with an untrained inspection protocol that does little to correctly respond to the challenges we find ourselves in.” He said the lack of proper training for the vast majority of firefighters in the field has not been addressed.
The UFA called for a separately trained and staffed task force to remedy the growing need for professional fire inspectors, who can identify and report back to local units about dangerous or hazardous conditions. While new probationary firefighters are given increased building construction and inspection training, Romaka said, “In the past we had dedicated task forces that were allowed to be cut from the budget under the guise of doing more with less.” Spadafora said, “In a perfect world, there would be a separate task force, but that involves a budget and we have to work with the workforce we already have.”
Weighing in on the added third day of inspections, Romaka said, “Being judged on hours does not improve the quality of the inspection.” He said it detracted from the bonding between companies “that generally occurs at lunch time, at a time when we have so many new members that we strive to pass on traditions to.”
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 inspections program. The Committee wanted to determine the staffing levels, training, equipment and qualifications of the inspectors. They also looked at the increase in levels of inspections and the impact that had on response times and safety. Scoppetta testified that fire response times had actually decreased since the new inspection plan was instituted, but Cassidy said the Commissioner provided no supporting data or statistics for his conclusion.
Cassidy said the number of fire engines on building inspections increased by 50 percent since December. While acknowledging the Fire Department’s responsibility to manage the city’s building inspection program, he said, “Every firefighter knows that his response times are negatively impacted.” A fire company out conducting routine building inspections is required to regroup and deploy when a fire emergency calls, sometimes to distant locations.
In a recent ratcheting up of the tensions, Romaka was excluded from certain departmental meetings, which related to technology oversight, and the UFA said he was targeted due to union activity. Cassidy 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.”
Sources:
Scopetta Nov. 7, 2007, BISP Announcement
http://www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/html/pr/2007/110707_8507.shtml
UFA Nov. 20, 2007 Ltr to Members and Public
http://ufalocal94.org/pdf/db11_20.pdf
UFA Oct. 12, 2007 Charge of Cover-Up
http://ufalocal94.org/press/100907.php
Dec. 5, 2007 FDNY Proposed Fire Code
http://www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/html/pr/2007/120507_9107.shtml
Glen Corbett: 212-237-8092
William Romaka: 212-683-4832
Ronald R. Spadafora: 917-418-8653
Chad's final-stages rough draft
Bank of America Picks up Department of Buildings’ Slack [WORKING TITLE]
By Chad Smith
For the past five years, the New York City Department of Buildings has continually updated and revised its laws on skyscrapers, driven partly by lessons learned on safety after 9/11.
And each year, it has had a chance to make two revisions, which many firefighters, architects, professors, 9/11 survivors and engineers have long said could save more lives in a skyscraper catastrophe: wider staircases and more sets of them.
Each year, on the issue, the Buildings Department has done nothing.
“Wider staircases can mean the difference between life or death," according to Vincent Dunn, a retired, 42-year veteran of the New York City Fire Department. "These are people's lives, and you have a Department of Buildings interested in doing frills."
Over a dozen calls were put in to the Department of Buildings on the staircase issue over the last two weeks; spokespeople there promised to get back with answers. As of Friday, the department hasn’t returned a single call.
Walk into almost any skyscraper in this city and the staircases will be 44 inches wide, with three sets of major staircases. Experts say this width and this number of staircases don’t offer enough room for the quick, efficient evacuation of thousands of tenants — when seconds are crucial — and cite much of what was learned in September 11th’s aftermath.
New laws on the issue haven’t been passed, the Buildings Department has said, because the department can’t gain “consensus” on the issue from those representing owners and developers, who stand to lose money on potential real-estate space if staircases are given more prominence.
But one building owner, Bank of America, and its developer, the Durst Organization, are doing things differently. They are taking the lead on staircase safety, surpassing city codes and forgoing the profit that could be made if they simply built to code.
Bank of America’s new 54-story headquarters near Bryant Park will have an ideal staircase when it comes to safety, many experts believe.
Larry Grayson, a Bank of America spokesman, said his company had employees who died and survived 9/11 in mind when the bank decided to build the building and staircases this way.
One of those employees might have been Chris O’Driscoll, a former high level Bank of America manager who was on the 82nd floor of the north tower when the first plane hit. O’Driscoll escaped that day and in an e-mail message had this to say about wider staircases and his ordeal:
“If you wanted to evacuate a 100-plus story building in a hurry, then two abreast” — which is barely what 44 inches affords — “is not going to be sufficient. I believe if we had been aware of the possibility that the [north tower] was going to collapse, it would have been much more difficult to escape within the confined space of the staircase. Any additional space would assist in the evacuation of a tall building.”
The staircases at the new Bank of America headquarters will be 66 inches wide, or 33% wider than what the city code requires, according to Jordan Barowitz, director of external affairs at the Durst Organization, the building’s developer.
According to experts, that’s enough room for three people to descend comfortably side by side and provides enough room for “counterflow.” An ideal example of this concept is one in which firefighters can efficiently move up the staircase with heavy equipment as tenants fleeing walk down. This way, tenants won’t be forced into a slow, single file as they were in the twin towers on 9/11 when firefighters, understandably, began taking up much of the room in the 44-, and some cases, 56- [OR 54? TK], inch staircases.
Bank of America’s staircases will be encased by two and a half feet of steel reinforced concrete walls. After 9/11 the Buildings Department did mandate stronger materials be used for the encasing of new city skyscrapers' staircases. (The twin towers’ were made of lightweight gypsum board and didn’t stand a chance on impact.)
Dunn, the retired fire chief, said that there’s no higher standard than steel reinforced concrete. He called Bank of America and Durst’s choice “impressive.”
The reinforced staircase will be located at the building’s center, its “core,” according to Barowitz. The core is one of the strongest parts of the building, meant to better preserve life-saving infrastructure, like the staircases, in case of disaster. It’s a reaction to what happened on 9/11, Barowitz said.
“Our staircases in the core will be able to withstand a massive impact,” he said.
Furthermore, the Bank of America staircases will be air pressurized, which means that if heavy smoke is circulating on a particular skyscraper’s floor it won’t get trapped in the staircases when a person opens the staircase door to escape. The air in the staircase is maintained at a higher pressure than general floor’s and will, essentially, push the smoke out of the staircase when its door opens. [REWRITE]
Air pressurized stairs are not required by the city’s building code.
Barowitz said there will also be “safe havens” in the staircases. That is, at each floor, there will be an extra large landing. Disabled people or those who need to rest can take breaks as they evacuate while not holding anyone else up.
This extra measure is crucial, according to Glenn Corbett, professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“You need a place to attend to someone who can’t egress as quick,” Corbett said. “It’s not fair for one person to put others in the worst kind of danger when it can be avoided.”
Asked how many separate sets of staircases there will be at the Bank of America tower, Barowitz didn’t have an exact number. He said there will be “many, many sets of staircases. The number exceeds what’s required, I can tell you that.”
Bank of America and the Durst Organization wouldn’t say how much money they could have made if the space devoted to more staircases was used for rentable space. Grayson did say this:
“One of our core values at Bank of America is ‘Do the right thing.’ The value of square footage potentially devoted to rentable space was far outweighed by the added safety afforded by the staircases designed wider than code requirements.”
With many voices lined up for wider staircases, it may be hard for some to imagine why they haven’t been mandated in this city. But there are reasons, and those opposing wider staircases may not be as devious as one might want to believe.
The counter belief to wider staircases and more of them [CLEAN] is a fire-fighting strategy called “defend in place,” which essentially means, "if there’s an emergency, stay put.” If there’s a fire on the fifth floor of a skyscraper, tenants on 25 need not evacuate and potentially expose themselves to unnecessary risk, like, being trampled, let’s say, as they evacuate.
Accordingly, many of the buildings in New York City were built to contain fires to a single floor. The staircases were not meant to accommodate a large percentage of the building’s population, as they were forced to do September 11.
"If you have a building filled with 50,000 people, I don't care how wide your stairways are or if you have two or three major staircases,” said Ron Burton, vice president of codes, standards and regulatory affairs at Building Owners and Managers Association International. “It’s going to take a heck of a long time to get everyone out. We still, as we always have, believe in defend in place.”
Burton’s organization, which represents thousands of building owners, has been pointedly criticized in the past by fire safety experts, and has been accused of standing in the way of wider staircases.
“I don’t think it’s fair to say we’re ‘standing in the way of wider staircases,’” he said. “This is an ongoing, complex issue, and we’re all still exploring it. Obviously, we care about people’s safety or we wouldn’t be in this business.”
Still, Burton said, his building managers association believes that 44 inches is wide enough. His organization also believes that three staircases in skyscrapers are adequate, that every person shouldn’t be in those stairways anyway, because, again, of the defend-in-place strategies.
Dunn disagreed.
"Stair design and capacity still is based on the [belief]…that fire will be confined to one floor; therefore, stairs need not have to have capacity to hold all the people of the building," Dunn said.
"Stairs are designed to allow only a limited number of people to leave a building. Remember the Titanic and the limited number of lifeboats? The rest must stay in place during the fire….Defend in place is based on the building being fire resistive [proof], which many in the fire service believe is no longer true."
Burton said that the only way his association would change its beliefs is if there were "cross-benefit analysis" — authoritative sources and many of them — proving that wider staircases and more sets of them are worth the extra financial and structural burden and make skyscrapers safer, which he is yet to see.
Dunn said that it’s about more than such analysis and the laws, “The current New York City codes are just the letter of the law. Not the spirit.”
###
By Chad Smith
For the past five years, the New York City Department of Buildings has continually updated and revised its laws on skyscrapers, driven partly by lessons learned on safety after 9/11.
And each year, it has had a chance to make two revisions, which many firefighters, architects, professors, 9/11 survivors and engineers have long said could save more lives in a skyscraper catastrophe: wider staircases and more sets of them.
Each year, on the issue, the Buildings Department has done nothing.
“Wider staircases can mean the difference between life or death," according to Vincent Dunn, a retired, 42-year veteran of the New York City Fire Department. "These are people's lives, and you have a Department of Buildings interested in doing frills."
Over a dozen calls were put in to the Department of Buildings on the staircase issue over the last two weeks; spokespeople there promised to get back with answers. As of Friday, the department hasn’t returned a single call.
Walk into almost any skyscraper in this city and the staircases will be 44 inches wide, with three sets of major staircases. Experts say this width and this number of staircases don’t offer enough room for the quick, efficient evacuation of thousands of tenants — when seconds are crucial — and cite much of what was learned in September 11th’s aftermath.
New laws on the issue haven’t been passed, the Buildings Department has said, because the department can’t gain “consensus” on the issue from those representing owners and developers, who stand to lose money on potential real-estate space if staircases are given more prominence.
But one building owner, Bank of America, and its developer, the Durst Organization, are doing things differently. They are taking the lead on staircase safety, surpassing city codes and forgoing the profit that could be made if they simply built to code.
Bank of America’s new 54-story headquarters near Bryant Park will have an ideal staircase when it comes to safety, many experts believe.
Larry Grayson, a Bank of America spokesman, said his company had employees who died and survived 9/11 in mind when the bank decided to build the building and staircases this way.
One of those employees might have been Chris O’Driscoll, a former high level Bank of America manager who was on the 82nd floor of the north tower when the first plane hit. O’Driscoll escaped that day and in an e-mail message had this to say about wider staircases and his ordeal:
“If you wanted to evacuate a 100-plus story building in a hurry, then two abreast” — which is barely what 44 inches affords — “is not going to be sufficient. I believe if we had been aware of the possibility that the [north tower] was going to collapse, it would have been much more difficult to escape within the confined space of the staircase. Any additional space would assist in the evacuation of a tall building.”
The staircases at the new Bank of America headquarters will be 66 inches wide, or 33% wider than what the city code requires, according to Jordan Barowitz, director of external affairs at the Durst Organization, the building’s developer.
According to experts, that’s enough room for three people to descend comfortably side by side and provides enough room for “counterflow.” An ideal example of this concept is one in which firefighters can efficiently move up the staircase with heavy equipment as tenants fleeing walk down. This way, tenants won’t be forced into a slow, single file as they were in the twin towers on 9/11 when firefighters, understandably, began taking up much of the room in the 44-, and some cases, 56- [OR 54? TK], inch staircases.
Bank of America’s staircases will be encased by two and a half feet of steel reinforced concrete walls. After 9/11 the Buildings Department did mandate stronger materials be used for the encasing of new city skyscrapers' staircases. (The twin towers’ were made of lightweight gypsum board and didn’t stand a chance on impact.)
Dunn, the retired fire chief, said that there’s no higher standard than steel reinforced concrete. He called Bank of America and Durst’s choice “impressive.”
The reinforced staircase will be located at the building’s center, its “core,” according to Barowitz. The core is one of the strongest parts of the building, meant to better preserve life-saving infrastructure, like the staircases, in case of disaster. It’s a reaction to what happened on 9/11, Barowitz said.
“Our staircases in the core will be able to withstand a massive impact,” he said.
Furthermore, the Bank of America staircases will be air pressurized, which means that if heavy smoke is circulating on a particular skyscraper’s floor it won’t get trapped in the staircases when a person opens the staircase door to escape. The air in the staircase is maintained at a higher pressure than general floor’s and will, essentially, push the smoke out of the staircase when its door opens. [REWRITE]
Air pressurized stairs are not required by the city’s building code.
Barowitz said there will also be “safe havens” in the staircases. That is, at each floor, there will be an extra large landing. Disabled people or those who need to rest can take breaks as they evacuate while not holding anyone else up.
This extra measure is crucial, according to Glenn Corbett, professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“You need a place to attend to someone who can’t egress as quick,” Corbett said. “It’s not fair for one person to put others in the worst kind of danger when it can be avoided.”
Asked how many separate sets of staircases there will be at the Bank of America tower, Barowitz didn’t have an exact number. He said there will be “many, many sets of staircases. The number exceeds what’s required, I can tell you that.”
Bank of America and the Durst Organization wouldn’t say how much money they could have made if the space devoted to more staircases was used for rentable space. Grayson did say this:
“One of our core values at Bank of America is ‘Do the right thing.’ The value of square footage potentially devoted to rentable space was far outweighed by the added safety afforded by the staircases designed wider than code requirements.”
With many voices lined up for wider staircases, it may be hard for some to imagine why they haven’t been mandated in this city. But there are reasons, and those opposing wider staircases may not be as devious as one might want to believe.
The counter belief to wider staircases and more of them [CLEAN] is a fire-fighting strategy called “defend in place,” which essentially means, "if there’s an emergency, stay put.” If there’s a fire on the fifth floor of a skyscraper, tenants on 25 need not evacuate and potentially expose themselves to unnecessary risk, like, being trampled, let’s say, as they evacuate.
Accordingly, many of the buildings in New York City were built to contain fires to a single floor. The staircases were not meant to accommodate a large percentage of the building’s population, as they were forced to do September 11.
"If you have a building filled with 50,000 people, I don't care how wide your stairways are or if you have two or three major staircases,” said Ron Burton, vice president of codes, standards and regulatory affairs at Building Owners and Managers Association International. “It’s going to take a heck of a long time to get everyone out. We still, as we always have, believe in defend in place.”
Burton’s organization, which represents thousands of building owners, has been pointedly criticized in the past by fire safety experts, and has been accused of standing in the way of wider staircases.
“I don’t think it’s fair to say we’re ‘standing in the way of wider staircases,’” he said. “This is an ongoing, complex issue, and we’re all still exploring it. Obviously, we care about people’s safety or we wouldn’t be in this business.”
Still, Burton said, his building managers association believes that 44 inches is wide enough. His organization also believes that three staircases in skyscrapers are adequate, that every person shouldn’t be in those stairways anyway, because, again, of the defend-in-place strategies.
Dunn disagreed.
"Stair design and capacity still is based on the [belief]…that fire will be confined to one floor; therefore, stairs need not have to have capacity to hold all the people of the building," Dunn said.
"Stairs are designed to allow only a limited number of people to leave a building. Remember the Titanic and the limited number of lifeboats? The rest must stay in place during the fire….Defend in place is based on the building being fire resistive [proof], which many in the fire service believe is no longer true."
Burton said that the only way his association would change its beliefs is if there were "cross-benefit analysis" — authoritative sources and many of them — proving that wider staircases and more sets of them are worth the extra financial and structural burden and make skyscrapers safer, which he is yet to see.
Dunn said that it’s about more than such analysis and the laws, “The current New York City codes are just the letter of the law. Not the spirit.”
###
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Final Draft
On
After
High-rise fires have their own challenges that must be met with new tools to conquer them. “High-rise fires are very hot and difficult fires,” retired FDNY Chief Riches said, “Water is a necessity, blankets, thermal, over windows to prevent wind driven fire.” Riches also stressed the need for “radios to communicate any pertinent information” and “fans to pressurize stairs.”
“High rise fires have been around for years, and the FDNY has been battling them the entire time, usually with success,” retired FDNY firefighter John T. Vigiano, “The entire world is nearly plastic and in an office building is nearly everything has a plastic base. Polymers break down and melt, giving off noxious fumes when at a certain temperature ignite into a fire ball.” Vigiano was a firefighter for 36 years.
Lehman Brothers Director of Life Safety Gaudiosi said other tools needed in a high-rise fire are thermal imaging, cameras, search ropes, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), personal removal device, and radios with a repeater system, SCBA, and rabbit tool. Anzelone also outlined the need for quality radios as well as “knowledge of the building, and working standpipes.”
Steven Mormino has been a career FDNY firefighter for 20 years. Mormino emphasizes the importance of “larger SCBA breathing bottles, improved radio communications, thermal imaging cameras, Haz Mat suits, decontamination trailers
Radio repeaters handi talkie recorders” for FDNY firefighters.
“Firefighters adjust to anything,” Nicholas C. Gaudiosi said. Gaudiosi is VP Director of Life Safety at Lehman Brothers global investment bank and former FDNY firefighter who retired in 2003 as Captain of Ladder 7.
Newly retired FDNY Chief Jim Riches was a firefighter for 30 years and agrees with Gaudiosi. “Firefighters are more than willing to adapt to any new technology.”
Not all firefighters believe that the transition is that effortless. FDNY firefighter Anzelone said the transition to new technology is going “slowly. We like to test things out before we go in to battle with them.”
Anzelone will retire this year due to repertory illness from 9/11. By January 2002, 300 firefighters went on leave for repertory problems. From January 2001 to July 2001, there were 274 FDNY retirements; compared to 661 FDNY retirements from January 2002 to July 2002.
“From my own experience and listing to firefighters,” retired firefighter Vigiano said, “I do not think this generation is adequately adjusting to some of the innovations that were introduced prior to 9/11.”
FDNY firefighter Mormino said that firefighters adapt to new technology “very well as long as there is sufficient training.”
Some firefighters do not see any progress being made. “Fires in high rise buildings are dangerous,” retired Chief Riches said, “Studies are being conducted to help in fire safety in these buildings, but we are still equally in danger before 9/11 and thereafter.” Anzelone said there are no positive changes and the “radios still suck.”
Radios are one of the most important devices a firefighter carries with him. Retired Captain Gaudiosi said radios are “Everything, communication of changing situation so that firefighters can adjust strategy and tactics, request for help, etcetera.”
“Radio communication is critical,” Retired Chief Riches concurs with Gaudiosi, “Evacuation orders must be heard, changing situations, location of civilians, wind changes, and ventilation, both planned and unplanned. An order which is not heard can be fatal.”
“Radios are one of the best tools a firefighter has,” William G. Dennis said. Dennis was a firefighter who retired five days before
Radios are so useful that each firefighter should carry one. “I worked in a Rescue Company and each man carried a radio before it was allowed,” retired firefighter Vigiano said, “and when I was promoted to Captain, I made sure each man carried a radio in my ladder company before it was allowed. To me, radios were the most significant tool we had in my career.”
The FDNY’s radios have not changed since the events of September 11. “Firefighter radios still are not able to transmit messages in high-rise buildings, subways, and tunnels,” retired FDNY Deputy Chief Vincent Dunn wrote in his report named, Three Years Later: What has Changed Since 9/11. “Battalion chiefs may carry portable booster radios (each weighing 22 pounds) that enhance communications between the fire ground commanders and firefighters’ portable radios,” Dunn wrote, “This so-called ‘quick fix’ is nowhere near complying with the recommendation of the McKinsey and Co. consulting report.” The McKinsey report, Increasing FDNY’s Preparedness, detailed New York City building owners’ responsibility by recommending that they “install and maintain permanent equipment (an in-building repeater) that picks up and amplifies walkie-talkie signals.”
One of the reasons for this lack of progress is Motorola Corp. In March 2001, Motorola sold FDNY radios with a no bid contract, which is illegal. “Motorola is a very sore subject,” firefighter Dennis said, “I remember the day the FDNY gave us the new Motorola radios. We were never trained on them.” Dennis went on to say that with the FDNY’s old radios, “as soon as you pushed the button your transmission would start immediately. These new radios had some sort of repeater in them so you had to wait two seconds before you could transmit. Messages were being cut short.” Denis’ friend, firefighter Luke Healy, became lost in the basement of a house fire in Richmond Hill Queens. This was the reason why the radios were taken out of service after just one day. “He gave a mayday and not one of the units in the fire building heard it,” Dennis said, “Yet units responding from a mile away heard it on their radios. They issued the new radios to us without field testing them.”
Moreover, “Motorola got this as a no bid contract,” Dennis said. This means that there was no competition for Motorola’s agreement with the FDNY. “The then fire commissioner Thomas Von Essen was given a loan by Motorola in excess of $60,000,” Dennis said.
“Motorola and Commissioner Tom Von Essen of the FDNY made a critical mistake and cost many firefighters their lives at the World Trade Center,” firefighter Mormino said, “The new radios was released to the field units without being tested and failed. Many Firefighters who were killed at the World Trade Center never heard the order to withdraw due to a lack of repeaters. This was known before the radios were issued but were pushed into service.”
Firefighter Anzelone is baffled by Motorola’s incompetence. “They do try to innovate for us,” Anzelone said, “but it is hard to believe we can have cell phones and GPS systems with pinpoint accuracy and clarity and all we get is static.”
Retried Chief Riches recalls his experience with Motorola radios on September 11, 2001. “Motorola radios were ineffective on 9/11,” Riches said, “and many firefighters in the North Tower never heard the call to evacuate after the South tower had collapsed. They had two evacuation calls one full hour and one half hour before the North Tower collapsed.”
Motorola’s digital radios failed within one week of operation. The 20-year-old radios were then redistributed to the firefighters which were used on September 11 and failed the fire fighters. “The city of New York and Motorola have had a very friendly and questionable relationship,” Riches said, “No contract, no field test and lies that other cities, Boston and Chicago, had ordered them and used them.”
Motorola’s relationship with the New York City government angers some firefighters. Firefighter Anzelone said that when it comes to the New York City government, “it is all about cost. The government cares nothing about human life.”
Firefighter Vigiano blames the government over the company. “Remember, the city always set the standard and always went with the low bid,” Vigiano said, “I am sure if the city paid more, they would have gotten a better radio.”
Retired firefighter Gaudiosi said the “government can provide the funds to research new technology and purchase equipment. Firefighters should decide what is necessary to do the job.” The government “sometimes red tape at city level will lead to bad purchases,” said retired Chief Riches.
Retired FDNY firefighter Vigiano said New York City government is not helping. “The salaries are too low; the manpower is too low,” Vigiano said, “Give the firefighters a decent wage. Maintain a high standard for entry and promotion. Then you will get the better firefighter.”
The Motorola company officials stood by their radios and blamed the problem on the overloaded communications network on September 11, 2001. “If you have 400 or 500 people trying to talk at once, it's a wonder anyone heard the transmissions,” said John McFadden, a company spokesman.
As for lessons people should learn from September 11, 2001, “the best recipe,” former Chief Riches said to prevent tragedy, “is fire drills and planning so that everyone knows what the whistles and orders mean and how to get out.”
Molly Stark Dean
On
After
High-rise fires have their own challenges that must be met with new tools to conquer them. “High-rise fires are very hot and difficult fires,” retired FDNY Chief Riches said, “Water is a necessity, blankets, thermal, over windows to prevent wind driven fire.” Riches also stressed the need for “radios to communicate any pertinent information” and “fans to pressurize stairs.”
“High rise fires have been around for years, and the FDNY has been battling them the entire time, usually with success,” retired FDNY firefighter John T. Vigiano, “The entire world is nearly plastic and in an office building is nearly everything has a plastic base. Polymers break down and melt, giving off noxious fumes when at a certain temperature ignite into a fire ball.” Vigiano was a firefighter for 36 years.
Lehman Brothers Director of Life Safety Gaudiosi said other tools needed in a high-rise fire are thermal imaging, cameras, search ropes, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), personal removal device, and radios with a repeater system, SCBA, and rabbit tool. Anzelone also outlined the need for quality radios as well as “knowledge of the building, and working standpipes.”
Steven Mormino has been a career FDNY firefighter for 20 years. Mormino emphasizes the importance of “larger SCBA breathing bottles, improved radio communications, thermal imaging cameras, Haz Mat suits, decontamination trailers
Radio repeaters handi talkie recorders” for FDNY firefighters.
“Firefighters adjust to anything,” Nicholas C. Gaudiosi said. Gaudiosi is VP Director of Life Safety at Lehman Brothers global investment bank and former FDNY firefighter who retired in 2003 as Captain of Ladder 7.
Newly retired FDNY Chief Jim Riches was a firefighter for 30 years and agrees with Gaudiosi. “Firefighters are more than willing to adapt to any new technology.”
Not all firefighters believe that the transition is that effortless. FDNY firefighter Anzelone said the transition to new technology is going “slowly. We like to test things out before we go in to battle with them.”
Anzelone will retire this year due to repertory illness from 9/11. By January 2002, 300 firefighters went on leave for repertory problems. From January 2001 to July 2001, there were 274 FDNY retirements; compared to 661 FDNY retirements from January 2002 to July 2002.
“From my own experience and listing to firefighters,” retired firefighter Vigiano said, “I do not think this generation is adequately adjusting to some of the innovations that were introduced prior to 9/11.”
FDNY firefighter Mormino said that firefighters adapt to new technology “very well as long as there is sufficient training.”
Some firefighters do not see any progress being made. “Fires in high rise buildings are dangerous,” retired Chief Riches said, “Studies are being conducted to help in fire safety in these buildings, but we are still equally in danger before 9/11 and thereafter.” Anzelone said there are no positive changes and the “radios still suck.”
Radios are one of the most important devices a firefighter carries with him. Retired Captain Gaudiosi said radios are “Everything, communication of changing situation so that firefighters can adjust strategy and tactics, request for help, etcetera.”
“Radio communication is critical,” Retired Chief Riches concurs with Gaudiosi, “Evacuation orders must be heard, changing situations, location of civilians, wind changes, and ventilation, both planned and unplanned. An order which is not heard can be fatal.”
“Radios are one of the best tools a firefighter has,” William G. Dennis said. Dennis was a firefighter who retired five days before
Radios are so useful that each firefighter should carry one. “I worked in a Rescue Company and each man carried a radio before it was allowed,” retired firefighter Vigiano said, “and when I was promoted to Captain, I made sure each man carried a radio in my ladder company before it was allowed. To me, radios were the most significant tool we had in my career.”
The FDNY’s radios have not changed since the events of September 11. “Firefighter radios still are not able to transmit messages in high-rise buildings, subways, and tunnels,” retired FDNY Deputy Chief Vincent Dunn wrote in his report named, Three Years Later: What has Changed Since 9/11. “Battalion chiefs may carry portable booster radios (each weighing 22 pounds) that enhance communications between the fire ground commanders and firefighters’ portable radios,” Dunn wrote, “This so-called ‘quick fix’ is nowhere near complying with the recommendation of the McKinsey and Co. consulting report.” The McKinsey report, Increasing FDNY’s Preparedness, detailed New York City building owners’ responsibility by recommending that they “install and maintain permanent equipment (an in-building repeater) that picks up and amplifies walkie-talkie signals.”
One of the reasons for this lack of progress is Motorola Corp. In March 2001, Motorola sold FDNY radios with a no bid contract, which is illegal. “Motorola is a very sore subject,” firefighter Dennis said, “I remember the day the FDNY gave us the new Motorola radios. We were never trained on them.” Dennis went on to say that with the FDNY’s old radios, “as soon as you pushed the button your transmission would start immediately. These new radios had some sort of repeater in them so you had to wait two seconds before you could transmit. Messages were being cut short.” Denis’ friend, firefighter Luke Healy, became lost in the basement of a house fire in Richmond Hill Queens. This was the reason why the radios were taken out of service after just one day. “He gave a mayday and not one of the units in the fire building heard it,” Dennis said, “Yet units responding from a mile away heard it on their radios. They issued the new radios to us without field testing them.”
Moreover, “Motorola got this as a no bid contract,” Dennis said. This means that there was no competition for Motorola’s agreement with the FDNY. “The then fire commissioner Thomas Von Essen was given a loan by Motorola in excess of $60,000,” Dennis said.
“Motorola and Commissioner Tom Von Essen of the FDNY made a critical mistake and cost many firefighters their lives at the World Trade Center,” firefighter Mormino said, “The new radios was released to the field units without being tested and failed. Many Firefighters who were killed at the World Trade Center never heard the order to withdraw due to a lack of repeaters. This was known before the radios were issued but were pushed into service.”
Firefighter Anzelone is baffled by Motorola’s incompetence. “They do try to innovate for us,” Anzelone said, “but it is hard to believe we can have cell phones and GPS systems with pinpoint accuracy and clarity and all we get is static.”
Retried Chief Riches recalls his experience with Motorola radios on September 11, 2001. “Motorola radios were ineffective on 9/11,” Riches said, “and many firefighters in the North Tower never heard the call to evacuate after the South tower had collapsed. They had two evacuation calls one full hour and one half hour before the North Tower collapsed.”
Motorola’s digital radios failed within one week of operation. The 20-year-old radios were then redistributed to the firefighters which were used on September 11 and failed the fire fighters. “The city of New York and Motorola have had a very friendly and questionable relationship,” Riches said, “No contract, no field test and lies that other cities, Boston and Chicago, had ordered them and used them.”
Motorola’s relationship with the New York City government angers some firefighters. Firefighter Anzelone said that when it comes to the New York City government, “it is all about cost. The government cares nothing about human life.”
Firefighter Vigiano blames the government over the company. “Remember, the city always set the standard and always went with the low bid,” Vigiano said, “I am sure if the city paid more, they would have gotten a better radio.”
Retired firefighter Gaudiosi said the “government can provide the funds to research new technology and purchase equipment. Firefighters should decide what is necessary to do the job.” The government “sometimes red tape at city level will lead to bad purchases,” said retired Chief Riches.
Retired FDNY firefighter Vigiano said New York City government is not helping. “The salaries are too low; the manpower is too low,” Vigiano said, “Give the firefighters a decent wage. Maintain a high standard for entry and promotion. Then you will get the better firefighter.”
The Motorola company officials stood by their radios and blamed the problem on the overloaded communications network on September 11, 2001. “If you have 400 or 500 people trying to talk at once, it's a wonder anyone heard the transmissions,” said John McFadden, a company spokesman.
As for lessons people should learn from September 11, 2001, “the best recipe,” former Chief Riches said to prevent tragedy, “is fire drills and planning so that everyone knows what the whistles and orders mean and how to get out.”
People:
William G. Denis, FDNY NYCFirefyr@aol.com
Nicholas C. Gaudiosi, VP Director of Life Safety Lehman Brothers 745 Seventh Avenue, 12th floor
212-526-1118 917-209-4137 ngaudios@lehman.com
Vincent Anzelone, FDNY VINFIRE@aol.com
Chief Jim Riches, FDNY 917-692-1199 fdny290cap@aol.com
John T Vigiano, FDNY JJVIG176@aol.com
Steven Mormino, FDNY SKIPPY170@aol.com
Chief Al Santora, FDNY Home: 718-626-4215
Cell: 917-309-7901 almau12345@aol.com
Sally Regenhard, Chairperson, Skyscraper Safety Campaign
B: 718-671-7326
Cell: 646-266-1987
Wayne Barrett wbarrett@villagevoice.com
Books:
Radio Silence FDNY: The Betrayal of New York’s Bravest
by John Joyce & Bill Bowen
"Grand Illusion: the untold story of Rudy Giuliani & 9/11." By Wayne Barrett
“High-Rise Security and Fire Life Safety”
by Geoff Craighead
Websites:
http://www.firerescue1.com/gear-gadgets/
http://www.secprodonline.com/articles/58921/
http://www.allsafetyproducts.biz/
http://nymag.com/news/articles/wtc/1year/numbers.htm
http://vincentdunn.com/Changes-9-11-04.pdf
http://www.firehouse.com/news/2002/8/5_APradios.html
Gear Up Foundation
Phone: (631) 869-5607
Toll Free: (800) 601-3493
http://www.gearupfoundation.org/contact.php
Friday, April 25, 2008
Galyean stairs - draft in progress
There are a lot of numbers, but the math doesn’t work.
The minimum width for an exit stairwell in a New York high-rise is 44 inches. That has been the width since the 1938 building code. That was the width of the stairwells in the World Trade Center (WTC), and that is the width required in the 2008 building code. And in between, there are a lot of other numbers.
The current New York City Building code has been in effect since 1968. When the WTC towers collapsed after the attacks on September 11, 2001, new scrutiny was focused on the standards, and the Buildings Department began an overhaul of the code.
In 2002, Congress asked the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) to analyze the structural and building evacuation failures in the WTC collapse. The final NIST report, which cost over $30 million, was released in 2005 and included over 10,000 pages and 30 specific recommendations about how high-rise buildings might be stronger, safer, and easier to get out of. In turn, the Buildings Department, according to a 2005 press release, “requested NIST’s input and expertise in five specific areas: impact resistance, open web steel joists, progressive collapse, stair widths and fuel oil storage.”
Some of the WTC lessons are reflected in the new building codes for high-rises. These include requirements for impact-resistant stair and elevator enclosures and full sprinkler protection. However, the recommendation that stairwells be made wider to accommodate a full building evacuation was not included.
In a high-rise, as in most multi-story buildings, emergency evacuation means stairs. But for the evacuation to work, everyone in the building has to be able to get to the stairs and get down them before fire, smoke or structural collapse block their escape.
The number of exit, or egress, staircases required for a building is figured based on the number of occupants and the width of the stairs. Building codes include formulas to determine the appropriate number of stairways. However in most high-rises the number and width of the stairs is based on the assumption that they would only be needed for a partial evacuation – as if there were a fire that only affected a few floors.
During the September 11 evacuation, when the WTC was less than half full, 15,400 people escaped from the north and south WTC towers. That event demonstrated how the building code calculations translated into real-life – and the results were not good. People took twice as long as previously estimated to get down the stairs and NIST investigators concluded that if the towers had been fully occupied, up to 14,000 people would have died before they could escape.
John Labriola, a WTC survivor who used the stairs to escape from the 71st floor of the north tower, contributed his recollections of that day to the Smithsonian Museum’s 2002 exhibit, September 11: Bearing Witness to History. “We walked down two by two,” Labriola said in his statement. “Whenever necessary we would press ourselves into a single file line to let [injured] people get by… Around the 35th floor we started meeting a steady stream of firefighters walking up and had to press into single file again.”
Labriola also took photographs during the evacuation. One of the most famous, taken within the stairwell, shows civilians flattened against the wall as firefighters pass. NIST investigators cited Labriola’s photographs and testimony from him and other survivors in recommending that high-rise buildings use wider stairwells. The idea that incoming firefighters might have to share the stairs with evacuees had not been factored into evacuation scenarios, but a former WTC director told the 9/11 Commission in 2004 that the stairwells should have been wider for faster evacuation.
To Glenn Corbett, a fire sciences professor at Manhattan’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a consultant to the New York Department of Buildings, the message was clear. "Out of all the issues, one of the no-brainers was the issue of stairway width," said Corbett.
The NIST report concluded that building standards should reassess their calculations based on the WTC experience. “To achieve a significantly faster total evacuation at full capacity would have required increases in egress capacity (number and width of exits and stairways),” lead NIST investigator Shyam Sunder said in 2005.
Jake Pauls, an internationally recognized fire safety specialist from Silver Springs, Maryland, has also scrutinized the WTC and other high-rise evacuations and concluded that wider stairwells are needed. In a 2005 report, Pauls said that the 44-inch minimum width “was flawed, and known to be flawed a few decades ago.” Indeed, a report sponsored by NIST in 1995 found evidence that the assumptions about how long it takes people to get out of a skyscraper were wrong. That assessment was based on a different high-profile evacuation: the escape from the World Trade Center after it was bombed in 1993.
Based on multiple studies and the NIST evidence, Pauls proposed that the new requirements for exit stairs in high-rise buildings be changed to a minimum 56-inch width. His proposal was adopted by the National Fire Protection Administration and has been supported by building safety experts and firefighters’ groups as overdue. As Corbett explained, "56 inches gives you the ability for counterflow, the ability for people to pass. It's an obvious solution. Any four-year-old can figure that out."
The Buildings Department agreed – for a while. As late as May 2007, the proposed code revisions included wider stairwells, but the final version returned to the old, narrow 44-inch standard. What happened? This is where the numbers change from inches and people to square footage and cash.
The Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) and the Real Estate Board of New York lobbied the Building Commission task force to keep the old width rather than give up floor space for stairs. Patricia Lancaster, the city’s former Building Commissioner, explained the developers’ position in a Sept. 9, 2006 article in the New York Times: “If you increase a stairwell by one inch at the top of a 90-story building, you are giving up dozens and dozens of square feet of rentable space."
And that rentable space is worth a lot. A check of available offices in Wall Street high-rises shows luxury buildings renting at several hundred thousand dollars to as high as $1,080,000 per square foot per year. That may explain why an advocacy memo to BOMA members encourages them to keep “abreast of legislative and regulatory action at the state and local level to ensure that the NIST recommendations are not used as justification for introducing unnecessary new requirements in state and local building codes.”
The fight about square footage in stairwells in New York is just a skirmish in the national battle between the NFPA, which is made up largely of fire safety advocates, and a rival code-making body, the International Code Council (ICC), which is supported primarily by developers and real estate managers - including BOMA.
[TK: para about ICC and NFPA fight - New York City adopted ICC standards]
Members of BOMA and the Real Estate Board of New York served on city committees that approved the egress requirements for the new building code and, according to Corbett, who served as an advisor to the Buildings Department, “they blocked every attempt” to raise the minimum stair width. “BOMA and the Real Estate Board [of New York] resisted anything that’s going to impact their bottom line,” he said.
Rick Arbeb, the legislative director for New York City Councilman Erik Martin Dilan, who chairs the City Council’s Housing and Buildings Committee, agreed. “ There was an issue with the size of the stairs; basically if the stairs were wider, the rooms would be smaller.”
[TK: summary of change to require additional stairwell, including WTC history]
Frederic Schwarz, a Manhattan-based architect and who designs high-rises, said, "There's nothing preventing wider stairs and concrete stairs, except money." He was one of the leaders of the early efforts to rebuild the WTC site designs and is familiar with the challenges of balancing safety and revenue.
So the new building code going into effect on July 1 will ask only 44 inches for egress stairs. While developers can allocate more space if they want, Schwarz said he doesn’t even try to propose anything wider. "Forget it,” he said. “That's not even a conversation. You're fighting for every inch."
###
Sources named:
- Glenn Corbett: c: 201-993-2814; gcorbett1@ix.network.com
- Jake Pauls: w: 301-933-5275; bldguse@aol.com
- Frederic Schwarz: 212-741-3021; fschwartz@schwartzarch.com
- Rick Arbeb @ Councilman Dilan’s legislative office: 212-788-7284
Additional sources:
- Steve Scotford, Bluerock Real Estate, c:917-340-1187
- Councilman Erik Martin-Dilan’s district office: 718-642-8664
Documents cited:
- New York Times, “9/11 Has Spurred Only Modest Changes in New York City and National Building Codes,” by Sewell Chan, September 6, 2006
- “Minimum Stair Width for Evacuation, Overtaking Movement and Counterflow Technical Bases and Suggestions for the Past, Present and Future,” by Jake L. Pauls, John J. Fruin, and Jeffrey M. Zupan, June 2005
- 2008 New York City Building Codes, Chapter 10, “Means of Egress”
- Gotham Gazette, “Reconstructing New York’s Building Code Overhaul,” by Mark Berkey-Guard, May 14, 2007
- “Statement from John Labriola, World Trade Center, September 11, 2001,” by John Labriola, courtesy of the Smithsonian Museum of American History, September 2002
- Statement by NYC Building Commissioner Patricia J. Lancaster, regarding NIST’s Recommendations, June 23, 2005
- The Study of Occupant Behavior During the [1993] World Trade Center Evacuation, by Rita Fahey, September, 1995
- NIST NCSTAR 1: Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster: Final Report of the National Construction Safety Team on the Collapses of the World Trade Center Tower, September, 2005
- NIST NCSTAR 1-7: Occupant Behavior, Egress, and Emergency Communication, September 2005
Web sites consulted:
- http://www.boma.org - Building Owners and Managers Association (Advocacy, Codes & Standards, and back issues of "Up to Code" magazine)
- http://www.bomany.org - Building Owners and Managers Association of New York
- http://www.nist.gov - National Institute of Standards and Technology
- http://www.nfpa.org - National Fire Protection Association
- http://americanhistory.si.edu/september11/collection - Smithsonian Museum of American History, September 11 special collection
- http://www.iccsafe.org - International Code Council
- http://www.nyc.gov/html/dob - New York City Department of Buildings
The minimum width for an exit stairwell in a New York high-rise is 44 inches. That has been the width since the 1938 building code. That was the width of the stairwells in the World Trade Center (WTC), and that is the width required in the 2008 building code. And in between, there are a lot of other numbers.
The current New York City Building code has been in effect since 1968. When the WTC towers collapsed after the attacks on September 11, 2001, new scrutiny was focused on the standards, and the Buildings Department began an overhaul of the code.
In 2002, Congress asked the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) to analyze the structural and building evacuation failures in the WTC collapse. The final NIST report, which cost over $30 million, was released in 2005 and included over 10,000 pages and 30 specific recommendations about how high-rise buildings might be stronger, safer, and easier to get out of. In turn, the Buildings Department, according to a 2005 press release, “requested NIST’s input and expertise in five specific areas: impact resistance, open web steel joists, progressive collapse, stair widths and fuel oil storage.”
Some of the WTC lessons are reflected in the new building codes for high-rises. These include requirements for impact-resistant stair and elevator enclosures and full sprinkler protection. However, the recommendation that stairwells be made wider to accommodate a full building evacuation was not included.
In a high-rise, as in most multi-story buildings, emergency evacuation means stairs. But for the evacuation to work, everyone in the building has to be able to get to the stairs and get down them before fire, smoke or structural collapse block their escape.
The number of exit, or egress, staircases required for a building is figured based on the number of occupants and the width of the stairs. Building codes include formulas to determine the appropriate number of stairways. However in most high-rises the number and width of the stairs is based on the assumption that they would only be needed for a partial evacuation – as if there were a fire that only affected a few floors.
During the September 11 evacuation, when the WTC was less than half full, 15,400 people escaped from the north and south WTC towers. That event demonstrated how the building code calculations translated into real-life – and the results were not good. People took twice as long as previously estimated to get down the stairs and NIST investigators concluded that if the towers had been fully occupied, up to 14,000 people would have died before they could escape.
John Labriola, a WTC survivor who used the stairs to escape from the 71st floor of the north tower, contributed his recollections of that day to the Smithsonian Museum’s 2002 exhibit, September 11: Bearing Witness to History. “We walked down two by two,” Labriola said in his statement. “Whenever necessary we would press ourselves into a single file line to let [injured] people get by… Around the 35th floor we started meeting a steady stream of firefighters walking up and had to press into single file again.”
Labriola also took photographs during the evacuation. One of the most famous, taken within the stairwell, shows civilians flattened against the wall as firefighters pass. NIST investigators cited Labriola’s photographs and testimony from him and other survivors in recommending that high-rise buildings use wider stairwells. The idea that incoming firefighters might have to share the stairs with evacuees had not been factored into evacuation scenarios, but a former WTC director told the 9/11 Commission in 2004 that the stairwells should have been wider for faster evacuation.
To Glenn Corbett, a fire sciences professor at Manhattan’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a consultant to the New York Department of Buildings, the message was clear. "Out of all the issues, one of the no-brainers was the issue of stairway width," said Corbett.
The NIST report concluded that building standards should reassess their calculations based on the WTC experience. “To achieve a significantly faster total evacuation at full capacity would have required increases in egress capacity (number and width of exits and stairways),” lead NIST investigator Shyam Sunder said in 2005.
Jake Pauls, an internationally recognized fire safety specialist from Silver Springs, Maryland, has also scrutinized the WTC and other high-rise evacuations and concluded that wider stairwells are needed. In a 2005 report, Pauls said that the 44-inch minimum width “was flawed, and known to be flawed a few decades ago.” Indeed, a report sponsored by NIST in 1995 found evidence that the assumptions about how long it takes people to get out of a skyscraper were wrong. That assessment was based on a different high-profile evacuation: the escape from the World Trade Center after it was bombed in 1993.
Based on multiple studies and the NIST evidence, Pauls proposed that the new requirements for exit stairs in high-rise buildings be changed to a minimum 56-inch width. His proposal was adopted by the National Fire Protection Administration and has been supported by building safety experts and firefighters’ groups as overdue. As Corbett explained, "56 inches gives you the ability for counterflow, the ability for people to pass. It's an obvious solution. Any four-year-old can figure that out."
The Buildings Department agreed – for a while. As late as May 2007, the proposed code revisions included wider stairwells, but the final version returned to the old, narrow 44-inch standard. What happened? This is where the numbers change from inches and people to square footage and cash.
The Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) and the Real Estate Board of New York lobbied the Building Commission task force to keep the old width rather than give up floor space for stairs. Patricia Lancaster, the city’s former Building Commissioner, explained the developers’ position in a Sept. 9, 2006 article in the New York Times: “If you increase a stairwell by one inch at the top of a 90-story building, you are giving up dozens and dozens of square feet of rentable space."
And that rentable space is worth a lot. A check of available offices in Wall Street high-rises shows luxury buildings renting at several hundred thousand dollars to as high as $1,080,000 per square foot per year. That may explain why an advocacy memo to BOMA members encourages them to keep “abreast of legislative and regulatory action at the state and local level to ensure that the NIST recommendations are not used as justification for introducing unnecessary new requirements in state and local building codes.”
The fight about square footage in stairwells in New York is just a skirmish in the national battle between the NFPA, which is made up largely of fire safety advocates, and a rival code-making body, the International Code Council (ICC), which is supported primarily by developers and real estate managers - including BOMA.
[TK: para about ICC and NFPA fight - New York City adopted ICC standards]
Members of BOMA and the Real Estate Board of New York served on city committees that approved the egress requirements for the new building code and, according to Corbett, who served as an advisor to the Buildings Department, “they blocked every attempt” to raise the minimum stair width. “BOMA and the Real Estate Board [of New York] resisted anything that’s going to impact their bottom line,” he said.
Rick Arbeb, the legislative director for New York City Councilman Erik Martin Dilan, who chairs the City Council’s Housing and Buildings Committee, agreed. “ There was an issue with the size of the stairs; basically if the stairs were wider, the rooms would be smaller.”
[TK: summary of change to require additional stairwell, including WTC history]
Frederic Schwarz, a Manhattan-based architect and who designs high-rises, said, "There's nothing preventing wider stairs and concrete stairs, except money." He was one of the leaders of the early efforts to rebuild the WTC site designs and is familiar with the challenges of balancing safety and revenue.
So the new building code going into effect on July 1 will ask only 44 inches for egress stairs. While developers can allocate more space if they want, Schwarz said he doesn’t even try to propose anything wider. "Forget it,” he said. “That's not even a conversation. You're fighting for every inch."
###
Sources named:
- Glenn Corbett: c: 201-993-2814; gcorbett1@ix.network.com
- Jake Pauls: w: 301-933-5275; bldguse@aol.com
- Frederic Schwarz: 212-741-3021; fschwartz@schwartzarch.com
- Rick Arbeb @ Councilman Dilan’s legislative office: 212-788-7284
Additional sources:
- Steve Scotford, Bluerock Real Estate, c:917-340-1187
- Councilman Erik Martin-Dilan’s district office: 718-642-8664
Documents cited:
- New York Times, “9/11 Has Spurred Only Modest Changes in New York City and National Building Codes,” by Sewell Chan, September 6, 2006
- “Minimum Stair Width for Evacuation, Overtaking Movement and Counterflow Technical Bases and Suggestions for the Past, Present and Future,” by Jake L. Pauls, John J. Fruin, and Jeffrey M. Zupan, June 2005
- 2008 New York City Building Codes, Chapter 10, “Means of Egress”
- Gotham Gazette, “Reconstructing New York’s Building Code Overhaul,” by Mark Berkey-Guard, May 14, 2007
- “Statement from John Labriola, World Trade Center, September 11, 2001,” by John Labriola, courtesy of the Smithsonian Museum of American History, September 2002
- Statement by NYC Building Commissioner Patricia J. Lancaster, regarding NIST’s Recommendations, June 23, 2005
- The Study of Occupant Behavior During the [1993] World Trade Center Evacuation, by Rita Fahey, September, 1995
- NIST NCSTAR 1: Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster: Final Report of the National Construction Safety Team on the Collapses of the World Trade Center Tower, September, 2005
- NIST NCSTAR 1-7: Occupant Behavior, Egress, and Emergency Communication, September 2005
Web sites consulted:
- http://www.boma.org - Building Owners and Managers Association (Advocacy, Codes & Standards, and back issues of "Up to Code" magazine)
- http://www.bomany.org - Building Owners and Managers Association of New York
- http://www.nist.gov - National Institute of Standards and Technology
- http://www.nfpa.org - National Fire Protection Association
- http://americanhistory.si.edu/september11/collection - Smithsonian Museum of American History, September 11 special collection
- http://www.iccsafe.org - International Code Council
- http://www.nyc.gov/html/dob - New York City Department of Buildings
Liability or the Deepest Pocket- Will Post 9/11 Suits Help Anyone but the Plaintiffs?
While one might dispute the matter of guilt and disparage the idea of gaining money or recognition from tragedy, the reality is that not all the information was given out after 9/11. While no lawsuit will change what happened that day one thing that can change is how a government treats its citizens- whether it trusts them with their own health decisions or not .
9/11 brought more than death, destruction and sadness. It brought up a number of questions. Questions ranged from whether or not the government knew about the attacks, to questions that are much more banal, at least to people not directly affected by the tragedy. These are matters of seeming minutiae that profoundly affect the victims, their families, the first responders, and the residents of lower Manhattan. When there are questions, there are lawsuits.
“The system is full of holes to this day,” says Stephen Gale, counterterrorism expert, of the
If safer way of flying was available, but not implemented, should airlines be held accountable for deaths from hijackings that may have been preventable?
Lawsuits brought to light the complicated nature of building safety and liability in the wake of 9/11. Contractors, airlines, the city of New York, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Port Authority, the Federal Aviation Administration and the government of Saudi Arabia have all been litigants in claims brought by victims, their families, and workers in the 95 complaints which were filed after 9/11. Of the original 95 lawsuits on behalf of 96 victims, 53 cases were settled right away. Others, including the large class-action suits by first responders, against the city, Port Authority and EPA, remain unresolved.
In one major case against the city, which has more than 4,000 plaintiffs, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld an earlier decision by
For some victims and some attorneys involved in 9/11 cases the court that matters most now for them is that of public opinion. Others simply feel that their exclusion from the compensation fund was unfair and are seeking a legal route to recompense.
For Joel Kupferman of the Environmental Law and Justice Project, the goal of the suits is noble, not predatory. “I don’t want the head of the EPA lying to us. I don’t want bad people promoted for leaving a disaster like this. I want medical monitoring and proper clean up for people” at risk for dust inhalation, he says.
Kupferman says toxic tort cases, while vitally important to improving safety, sadly often carry a gag order. This prevents others whom the toxins might effect from learning about the situation and about the legal and environmental remedies available to hem.
The city has admitted that the World Trade Center has sent aloft dust that has made people sick. Mayor Bloomberg has asked that the compensation fund be re-opened to allow first responders to be compensated for their suffering as well.
Only families of victims who opted out of the compensation fund offered by the government and responding workers, who were excluded from the fund, are able to bring suits because the terms of the pay-out from the government gave airlines and the government immunity. The fund was established by Congress to compensate the victims of the attack or their families and was closed in December 2003. In accepting money from the fund, the victim automatically relinquished any right to sue the city, any branch of government or the airlines.
Although it was drafted very quickly after the disaster, it was decisively immunizing for any remotely liable party. The effect has been that those left out of the fund have ignited a debate as to their legitimacy as 9/11 victims and as recipients of payouts, either from lawsuits or from the compensation fund. Many of these are first responders, but this also includes residents of lower Manhattan who claim the city should have advised them not to return to their homes while toxic dust billowed in the air.
The city has been sued by thousands of responding workers in various capacities. The contractors the city employed to assist fire fighters by assessing the buildings’ structural integrity were sued for negligence because under a New York law there is “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,” according to attorney Paul DiNapoli.
The EPA is also a litigant in a suit. However, are government entities just the deepest pocket in a web of liability surrounding the kind of unprecedented event that people are not prepared for legally? Or, does the logic of the law help us carve out where the oversights, assumptions, laziness and disorganization that conspired to allow such a tragedy to happen were located, and thus, help us prevent the next one?
The attorneys in the cases not only think otherwise, but firmly believe that litigation is the only real way to navigate safety jurisdiction. Kupferman believes that laziness, incompetence and greed were the real issues. Kupferman claims that internal correspondence at city government shows that economic interests pushed the re-opening of lower Manhattan, and that warnings from the EPA were ignored by the city. He also alleges that hired experts, such as doctors and structural engineers, were told to not to find the area to be dangerous by city officials so that business could re-open quickly.
In contrast, DiNapoli, a lawyer assisting in the first-responders’ case, has recently come under scrutiny because of alleged abuse of settlement funds dispersed after he won his first big class-action suit- the “fen-fen” diet pill case. Although the actual numbers are protected by gag order, many believe that suit resulted in a pay-out of over $1 billion. DiNapoli has said publicly that he wants settlements for his clients in the 9/11 case. Napoli,
Michael Eatroff worked on the first responders’ case against the city and the Port Authority. He says his firm “represented different workers from different agencies,” in a class action against the city “for all emergency workers who worked at the site after it fell and within the first two years.” But most of them were people who were there that fateful day. They claim to suffer from respiratory problems, and allege that the problems will become more problematic over time because they were caused by asbestos or another toxin, not the dust that the city said was, in Rudy Giuliani’s words, “just the 9/11 cough.”
While it might not seem at all relevant to 9/11 if you have trouble breathing and you lived in lower Manhattan as long as two years after the towers fell, some evidence shows the contrary. Lower Manhattan should not have been called in habitable for some time, according to Kupferman. The city is now liable for failing to give residents, workers, and students at Stuyvesant High School the appropriate information to make adequately informed decisions about their health.
Whistleblowers from government agencies, the Department of Health and research physicians all admit that asbestos, dust and fiberglass could still have been an issue for as long as 2 years. And that it could be an issue even if everyone followed proper safety regulations, which, there is evidence, many private contractors hired to remove 9/11 debris did not.
During three and four hour depositions Eatroff saw workers thoroughly questioned about physical symptoms, mental and emotional problems, and respiratory problems. “City attorneys wanted to show that there were other causes of our clients’ respiratory problems. Emotional problems were discussed also; spouses were asked how their relationships had changed,” said Eatroff. The city did not issue protective gear, and the vast majority of the people involved in the suit were city employees. Kupferman says that masks were denied because “the city did not want to alarm people.”
The question of whom to sue when a building falls on you or poisons you with asbestos and particulate matter as it crumbles is profound, as are questions about why the victims have chosen the defendants they have. No one has sued the FBI, because it is known to be very difficult to do so, however, the FBI would technically be as culpable as the FAA, according to attorney Mark Conlin, as quoted in Salon.com.
Similarly, whether or not to sue at the federal level or the city level is a difficult decision. Kupferman felt federal jurisdiction was the easiest to go after, but, as he says, “there are 3 or 4 different layers of government here” that one could construe as responsible for your safety in an event such as 9/11. “You would think that would help you be safer,” says Kupferman, “but it was the opposite.”
In the wake of the tragedy, logistical concerns quickly arose that the city had to manage. Among them was removing all the actual debris from the site. They selected a private contractor for this duty, representatives of whom would later state at a public meeting that they needed to have “workers' mother on site to admonish them to comply,” with the safety regulations the city stipulated.
Students at Stuyvesant High School were allowed to return to school in October, although studies have shown lower Manhattan may have been a toxic site for up to two years after 9/11 in particular places, especially the elementary school that the trucks drove past with debris from the site. Independent testing has shown that the material the trucks carried contained levels of asbestos and fiberglass that were unlawful to transport through public streets. Responsibility for the procedure is shared by Port Authority, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the City and the EPA.
“The real problem with port authority is that they are being lax right now during reconstruction,” says Kupferman. The Port Authority and LMDC are unique entities: hybrids of the public and private, staffed and funded by both. This causes jurisdictional conflicts and difficulties in assigning culpability. Activist Sally Regenhard, of the Skyscraper Safety Coalition, says was “a massive failure at the federal, city, state and definitely the Port-Authority level.”
All that was decided in the most recent legal episode was that in fact the city’s immunity would have to be decided on a case by case basis. How other entities will fare, and /or if they will be subsumed legally under the category of “city government” is left to be seen.
Detective James Zadroga died in 2006 from respiratory failure linked to his work at the World Trade Center site. Mention of him still incites immediate controversy. Many claim that it cannot be proven that he died from 9/11 dust. But are people skeptical because they think his family is in search of the deepest pocket or because they are afraid to acknowledge how massive a public safety failure post-9/11 clean-up may eventually prove to be?
Kupferman says the firemen he represents only wanted one thing. “They want someone to have told them ‘Don’t wash your clothes with your kids’ clothes,’” says Kupferman. “What cuts across the left and the right is that people want the government to give the correct information.” And that seems reasonable. People want to be able to make decisions for themselves and their families independently, with all the available information.
Sources-
Michael Eatroff, Attorney- Patton Boggs LLP
Joel Kupferman,
Stephen Gale, Associate Professor University of Pennsylvania- Department of Political Science, as quoted by salon.com
Paul DiNapoli, Attorney- Napoli, Bern, Ripka, LLP
Sally Regenhard, CEO- Skyscraper Safety Campaign
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