Illegal NYC apartment walls create firetraps - Life- msnbc.com

Illegal NYC apartment walls create firetraps - Life- msnbc.com

NEW YORK - The firefighters were trapped in what amounted to a burning maze: a Bronx apartment illegally divided into extra rooms for the sake of making a buck in this cramped city.

With flames licking at their bodies and black smoke making it nearly impossible to see, the men had little choice but to jump from a fourth-floor window. Two were killed and four others were hurt in the January 2005 fire.

"Next thing you know, that I remember, is hitting the ground 40 feet below," firefighter Jeffrey Cool testified recently in court. "I was in a world of hurt. I was in the worst pain I've ever found myself in."

The former owner of the building, the current owner and two tenants are being tried on manslaughter and other charges, accused of allowing illegal construction that prosecutors say turned the building into a deathtrap.

The case highlights the persistent fire hazard of using temporary walls for illegal apartment conversions — a common problem in a city where rents are high and space is always in demand.

Across the city, such makeshift warrens can be found in neighborhoods popular with college students, recent graduates on their first jobs and immigrants. A lock is often slapped on the extra rooms so they can be rented for extra money.

"Owners complain to me, every door of every bedroom has a padlock on it," said Frank Ricci of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents 25,000 property owners in the city. "It's tremendously difficult for them to gain access to their apartments."

Permit required for walls
To build such walls, a permit is needed from the city's Department of Buildings. If any electrical wiring is installed, an electrical permit is also needed. And the agency recommends working with an architect.

"Illegal walls can put tenants and first responders' lives in danger. Owners and tenants must obtain a permit to safely install a wall," said agency spokeswoman Kate Lindquist, whose department gets thousands of complaints annually related to illegal conversions.

Apartment owners often plead ignorance, saying they have little control over tenants because they rarely see what goes on within the apartments. But renters say owners are just as guilty.

In one example, tenants at Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town, a massive rent-regulated complex in Manhattan, complained to city fire and buildings officials about owner Tishman Speyer Properties advertising "convertible" apartments.

The firm purchased the complex in 2006 for a record $5.4 billion, setting off fears among tenants and some public officials that it was hoping to make a profit by seeking to charge market rates for the rent-stabilized apartments.

Jim Roth of the tenants association said he remembered the deadly fire in the Bronx when the association filed the complaint. "I thought, can they do this? The answer was no, not without a permit," he said.

City officials told the company it couldn't advertise apartments with the suggestion that it was OK to add so-called pressurized walls, and that permits were needed for any changes. Since then, Tishman Speyer has obtained permits, and it declined to comment further.

In the last six weeks of the year, the city vacated at least four buildings in Chinatown because of building and fire safety violations, mostly because the floors were divided into single-room units that had blocked sprinklers and exits and little or no ventilation.

As a result, many of the tenants, mostly immigrants from China, were displaced, though some were relocated by the city. Both owners and tenants are pointing fingers, each claiming the other was responsible for the illegal construction.

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Inspections after WTC fire uncover 120 plus violations

Inspections after WTC fire uncover 120 plus violations -- Newsday.com
The Fire Department has found dozens of fire hazards at construction sites - including broken water pipes and elevators - in stepped-up inspections following a deadly blaze at a ground zero skyscraper that it hadn't inspected for more than a year.

After visiting hundreds of sites around the city, the department has uncovered more than 120 violations since the Aug. 18 fire at the former Deutsche Bank building. The inspections have caused the city to shut down construction sites at a rate twice as high since the fire, compared with the months before, according to city records.

Some of the sites - close to 500 - are being inspected for the first time, despite city law requiring inspections every 15 days. The lapse in visits to the former Deutsche Bank tower failed to uncover a broken standpipe that supplies water to fire hoses, complicating firefighting efforts in the blaze that killed two firefighters.

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Secret Apartment Discovered Inside Shopping Mall

Secret apartment found inside shopping mall
Talk about a void space....Click the picture to view the video or the link to read the story.

Firefighters Bid One of Their Own Farewell

Firefighters Bid One of Their Own Farewell - New York Times
RIP

The firefighters in crisp blue uniforms stood in formation for the second successive day, for the second funeral of a fallen comrade, a day after two more of their colleagues were injured at the same site where these two had perished.

There was grief today at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, and even some laughter at a few memories of Firefighter Robert Beddia, a 23-year-veteran of the department who died on Saturday doing the work he loved.

The Rev. John Delendick, a fire department chaplain, told the mourners gathered at the ornate church that Mr. Beddia, 53, “didn’t become a firefighter for the money, he didn’t become a firefighter for the glamour.”

“He became a firefighter because of certain values,” the chaplain said.

But along with the grief there was weary frustration and simmering anger at the circumstances that had claimed Firefighter Beddia’s life.

He died on Saturday along with a colleague, Joseph Graffagnino, while battling a seven-alarm fire in the former Deutsche Bank building in Lower Manhattan, which was in the process of being dismantled. Both were assigned to Engine 24 and Ladder 5, based at a firehouse at Avenue of the Americas and West Houston Street in SoHo.

The fire raised troubling questions about why it had taken so long to bring down the 41-story building that was damaged beyond repair in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.

On Thursday, as Firefighter Graffagnino’s funeral was taking place in Brooklyn, two more firefighters were injured at the building when a worker lost control of a small forklift on the 23rd floor of the building, sending it tumbling down 200 feet to the ground.

The forklift crashed through a construction shed on the ground level, and part of the shed collapsed on the two firefighters.

Both firefighters, Neil Nally, 35, and William Carbettis, 51, of Engine 258 in Long Island City, Queens, were listed in stable condition today at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan. They both sustained head injuries.

Firefighter Carbettis had his spleen removed. Firefighter Nally also had an injured back and right hand, according to a fire official, and could be allowed to leave the hospital today, fire officials said.

At today’s funeral for Firefighter Beddia, there were echoes of the funeral on Thursday for his colleague, Firefighter Graffagnino.

At both, bagpipers played “Amazing Grace” for a crowd of mourners that again included Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta.

And as a backdrop for both funerals, there were thoughts about the troubled building where all four fighters had been harmed, and about why city officials and building owners can’t seem to get to the bottom of the task of bringing down the condemned building.

Mayor Bloomberg, who said he had never met Firefighter Beddia, said he had been described to him by others as a dedicated professional.

“For 23 years he was a quiet hero,” the mayor said at the Mass. “He rarely spoke, but when he did others listened.”

The mayor also talked about the fire that took Firefighter Beddia’s life.

“This fires raised a lot of difficult questions,” the mayor said, adding that city and fire officials would “investigate to get to the bottom of what happened.”

Such an inquiry, he said, would hopefully “lead to actions to make the Fire Department stronger and safer.”

Firefighter Beddia often drove the fire truck for Engine 24, a post referred to as the chauffeur, but when he was not behind the wheel, he was working with the younger men, firefighters said.

Lt. Richie Quinn of the Fire Department spoke to reporters outside St. Patrick’s today about Firefighter Beddia.

“He was our chauffer, he knew every building inside and out, which was extremely helpful for us,” he said.

Firefighter Beddia’s sister, Susan Beddia Olson, spoke about him before his flag-draped coffin, in the form of a letter to him, which she began by saying, “Dear Bobby,” the name those close to him called him.

“Remember walking me down the aisle?” she asked. “Remember dancing with me at my wedding?

“You are my friend, you are my brother,” she said. “You are my hero.”

Two hours after the funeral mass had begun — as the family and other mourners accompanied the coffin out of the cathedral, from where it will be taken to a cemetery in Staten Island for burial — hundreds still lined Fifth Avenue.

A church bell tolled, and the crowd went silent as Firefighter Beddia was led out of Manhattan, a borough whose streets he knew so well, for the last time.

Critics Say Lessons From 9/11 Were Not Followed in Deutsche Bank Blaze

After the Sept. 11 attack at the World Trade Center, an independent consultant studied the Fire Department’s performance and identified a number of lapses amid all the undeniable valor of that day. It said that too many men rushed into the buildings before anyone realized the danger they were in, contributing to the staggering death toll.

The consultant, McKinsey & Company, said the Fire Department needed to use more caution and preparation when it approached such a major, complicated fire, and not send too many men in before it knew what it was dealing with.

Saturday’s fire at the former Deutsche Bank building, which left two firemen dead, presented its own set of challenges, but it also bore similarities to Sept. 11 that went beyond geography, including the fact that the building was a high-rise.

Now, some are questioning Saturday’s response, noting that, at one point, more than 100 firefighters were inside the building even though the fire was out of control and wildly unpredictable — and that those men had to be called out. And they were inside even though, unlike the situation in the twin towers, no workers were trapped.

“Clearly firefighters were sent into a deathtrap,” said Stephen J. Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association. “I think the Fire Department’s position is they didn’t know how bad it was. We certainly need to find out why they didn’t know.”

Yesterday, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta directed his investigators to determine why the department did not have a plan in place to fight a fire in the building.

Mr. Cassidy made his remarks as the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, announced that his office had opened an investigation into the fire to determine if any crimes had been committed. The move extends the prosecutors’ subpoena power to the fire marshals who are working with the district attorney’s office.

Mr. Cassidy also called for an independent investigation of the fire by the state attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, who said last night that his office had begun reviewing the circumstances of the fire. Mr. Cassidy said the department was “not capable” of doing its own investigation because of its own involvement and its relationship with other city agencies involved.

In a way, it is a debate that goes to the heart of Fire Department culture — rushing into burning buildings, after all, is what firefighters do. And for their part, fire officials said they believed that Saturday’s fire was well managed, and that the department’s response could not be compared to its actions on 9/11.

“This is a fire in a high-rise building; it is not a terrorist attack,” said Francis X. Gribbon, the department’s chief spokesman. “They see the fire, they know where the fire is. They use the protocols in place to fight the fire.”

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg defended the department’s decision to send the more than 100 firefighters up into the building to fight the blaze, saying they bravely improvised in a crisis.

The Deutsche Bank building is being dismantled. Sheathed in black netting and plywood, the floors where the men were trapped had been sealed off with plywood and plastic sheeting, creating a maze that became especially daunting as the building filled with wind-fanned black smoke.

Radio transmissions captured the moment when high-ranking officials ordered all the men out — a striking echo of Sept. 11. With two men down and 29 Maydays coming from hellishly fire-engulfed floors, commanders wanted to do a head count.

The priorities of those in charge of the fire response are crystallized in one transmission: A senior official cursed as he said he did not care about the building, and shouted, “Where are my men?”

Firefighters were trapped without water because the standpipe system — plagued by a shut valve, cracks and a broken pipe — malfunctioned. The two firefighters who died, Robert Beddia, 53, and Joseph Graffagnino, 33, ran out of air. Investigators are focusing on a discarded cigarette or faulty electrical panel as the cause of the blaze.

“This was an unoccupied building,” said a former fire official. “On 9/11 we sent too many people in. McKinsey said that we should not rush men in and, even though the investigation is ongoing, it seems obvious at this point that we still have not learned the lesson that if you’re going to send people in, there should be adequate time and means to get them out.”

Charles R. Blaich, a retired deputy chief who was in charge of safety for the Fire Department at the ground zero site, said the McKinsey report changed how the department managed disasters.

“After 9/11 there were directions that came out from the chief of department that we never get ourselves into a position at these huge disasters where we just blindly assign assets without reasonably assessing what risks we face and what benefits we will achieve,” Mr. Blaich said. “What are we going to achieve by doing this?”

Thomas Von Essen, the fire commissioner on Sept. 11, said he had had many conversations with firefighters who responded on Saturday. He said many felt the operation had moved too quickly.

Mr. Von Essen said it was widely known that the bank building was undergoing a complex and dangerous demolition. He said fire officials should not have been surprised by what the firefighters encountered.

John J. McDonnell, the president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, said he believed the lessons of Sept. 11 had been learned “to some extent.”

“I don’t know if the upper echelons of the Fire Department were aware of the complex nature of the abatement within the building, I mean everyone from the fire commissioner to his staff,” said Mr. McDonnell, whose union represents 2,450 members.

“Were they aware of the complex nature?” he asked. “If they were aware prior to that, maybe there would have been a different fire plan in place.”

He added, “Under a hazardous materials condition, you approach things on a much more cautious level. ”

Firefighters at the scene checked in with commanders, said Mr. Gribbon, the department spokesman. “They were given assignments and they went to work.”

Mr. Gribbon declined to release a minute-by-minute breakdown of the department’s response because he said the department was conducing an internal review that involved listening to radio transmissions, transcribing the tapes, interviews and re-interviews, among other things.

Mr. McDonnell said no one had been prepared to find the stairwell landings blocked by the heavy plywood boards used to compartmentalize buildings where asbestos was being removed. Firefighters had to use an exterior elevator and scaffolding stairs to get up and down.

Jerome M. Hauer, director of the city’s Office of Emergency Management from 1996 to 2000, said it was “unfair” to contrast the department’s operations on Saturday with the findings of the McKinsey report because “I don’t feel that the report was accurate in some of its assessments.”

He said the accountability for what occurred “has to rest” with the building owner and the demolition operators, not with the Fire Department.

Subcontractor at WTC site dropped after fire

The abandoned Deutsche Bank building was filled with hazardous chemicals, holes in the floors and a maze of plastic sheeting that made it a virtual death trap for firefighters.

Yet the New York City Fire Department did not have a contingency plan for fighting a fire there, as is required for every building in the city, city and fire officials said Wednesday.

The building's central water pipe, which was disconnected on Saturday, the day of the fire, and is one of the factors being blamed for the deaths of two firefighters, also was not being inspected regularly as the law requires, city and fire officials said.

"Things didn't go right," Steve Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association said Tuesday. "In the end, we lost two firefighters in a toxic building that's about to be torn down. It's unacceptable that it happened."

Both Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo launched investigations into the fire this week.

Meanwhile, a controversial subcontractor in the project, the John Galt Corp., was let go Wednesday, days after it was revealed that both the city and federal governments had issued it numerous violations for problems including holes in the floor, falling debris and sparks flying near combustible material.

The Fire Department is still investigating how the deadly blaze started Saturday afternoon, city officials said Wednesday.

The firefighters killed, Joseph Graffagnino, 33, of Brooklyn, and Robert Beddia, 53, of Staten Island, will be buried Thursday and Friday, respectively.

Cassidy said for more than a year before the fire, local firefighters were not allowed into the building to do regular inspections because of the poor air quality there. He is asking who was doing the inspections, if not the local firehouse.

Fire Department spokesman Jim Long said the department is looking into why there was no pre-fire plan for the building and why the department was not inspecting the water pipe regularly.

However, even if the fire department was not doing regular inspections of the water pipe, the city building department was, city officials said. According to building department records, only the day before the fire, an inspection showed that the pipe was assembled properly and seemed to be working.

When it was taken apart -- part of the pipe was found lying on the floor after the fire -- remains a mystery, city officials said.

Work on deconstruction of the building was stopped immediately after the fire, and now that John Galt has been taken off the project, it isn't likely to resume soon.

In a letter to John Galt explaining why the company's contract is in default, James Abadie, the principal-in-charge of Bovis Lend Lease, the primary contractor, said: "The numerous citations issued with respect to employee safety and the failure to properly maintain all required site safety precautions are only some areas of concern."

Fire at WTC was hard to fight

Air-quality tests on asbestos negative
A fire that killed two firefighters in an abandoned skyscraper near ground zero may have been harder to fight because of the protective polyurethane on several floors in the building, Gov. Eliot Spitzer said Sunday.

The former Deutsche Bank office building has been a toxic site since it was damaged on the morning of the 2001 World Trade Center attack, and was in the process of being disassembled. The federal Environmental Protection Agency had required the polyurethane sheets to prevent asbestos and other harmful debris from leaking out, Spitzer said.

The polyurethane in the building "may in fact have made this fire harder to fight," Spitzer said.

Questions about other complications were emerging on Sunday, including why the building's standpipe, or source of water, did not work, forcing firefighters to run hoses up to the 17th floor, where the fire started.

"The standpipe was not operating. We don't know why yet," fire department spokesman Frank Gribbon said.

Home inspection nightmares

Home Inspection Nightmares IV

http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/gallery

Check out these pictures of disasters found by home inspectors. They will surprise you!!

The top photo shows some extreme whittling of a floor joist to accommodate a bathtub drain, along with telephone wire supporting drain pipes. The other picture is of a window in an addition...built against a brick wall...makes it kind of hard to escape! The rest of the photos are just as interesting!

Remember....these were all found in homes....where most fires occur! There are safety issues here for both the occupants AND the responders! What's in YOUR home?