All of New York City was saddened to hear about two of NY's finest who lost their lives battling the blaze at the partially demolished Deutsche Bank building next to the World Trade Center this past weekend. Now as we are a few days past, details are coming out that the pipe caring the water was broken and the valve shut. Due to that, there was no water for firefighters to use inside the building, and ultimately led to their deaths.
From the Gothamist:
Not only was a standpipe valve shut off (NY Times: "effectively cutting off the only source of water for firefighters battling" the fire), but even if the valve was open, water wouldn't have been able to travel through the pipes because there were many cracks. Wait, actually it wasn't just shut - a piece of the pipe was actually found in the basement. Seriously, WTF.
The News also reports that stairwells were "sealed" and that the "supposedly 'fire-retardant plywood' used to build decontamination chambers on the floors for workers clearing asbestos and other toxic substances quickly went up in flames." A source told the Post that the contractors could be possibly be charged with criminally negligent homicide. Needless to say, there's a stop-work order at the building.
Mayor Bloomberg said, "We are using every possible resource to find out how this fire started and what went wrong. Certainly, we owe that to Firefighters Beddia and Graffagnino." And here's the city's response to the situation so far - downtown residents, the city still says the air is clear (grain of salt not included).
Oh and Bloomberg said he does not want to look into charges of criminal negligence at the time. Who the F are you Bloomie to say that? There have been so many mishaps at the WTC already, now is not the time to add more of them to the heap. Of course, who is the Mayor to listen to me or anyone else that cares about justice for the men that died or the air quality downtown with burning asbestos a couple days ago.
The city's response is indeed terrible. Wouldn't it be nice if we had an independent commission to investigate everything from September 11th, 2001 until now? Make sure you click that last link and sign the petition.
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