The Freedom Tower

The city of New York has lifted a stop-work order at a condemned skyscraper across the street from ground zero, according to press reports, an order that had been in effect since a fire there killed two firefighters in August. The Times and other newspapers say the Department of Buildings removed the order after contractors spent weeks building new fire control systems at the 26-story former Deutsche Bank building.
The building was heavily damaged on Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center’s south tower collapsed into it, leaving a trail of toxic debris. The remains of many victims of the terrorist attacks were found there in the past two years, while regulators battled over how to dismantle the building and remove the debris.
The fire on Aug. 18, 2007, believed to have been started by a construction worker’s discarded cigarette, led to a grand jury criminal investigation and shut down work on the building.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the state agency that owns the building, said 300 workers would begin six-day-a-week shifts to clean 19 floors of toxic material.
Schedules call for the building to be dismantled by the end of the year, more than two years after the original date.

A five-judge panel of the New York state Supreme Court unanimously agreed with a lower court judge who had refused to set aside a jury verdict that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was negligent and more than 50 percent liable in the 1993 terrorist attack at the World Trade Center, according to press reports.

“The PA is the agency that owned the World Trade Center when terrorist bombed an underground parking garage that killed six people.
The State Supreme Court is an appeals court and it ruled against the PA in a decision made on Tuesday.

In an earlier decision, a Manhattan jury found in 2005 that the agency had not properly protected its underground public parking garage, where terrorists blew up a rental van loaded with explosives on Feb. 26, 1993.

The blast killed six people and injured almost 1,000 others. It also blew out a crater about six stories deep that covered an area the size of a football field under the building complex, the appellate judges said.

The appeals court noted the Port Authority did not argue that the bombing was unforeseeable, since the bombing method was not only foreseen but was brought to executives’ attention by the agency’s own internal study group.”

The National September 11 Memorial and Museum does have one exhibit in place, the New York Times and the Gothamist say its the the 62 foot by 64 foot foundation wall, commonly known as the slurry wall. It comes from the original World Trade Center. Now, the shrine offers a big construction challenge now — securing it.

“The Port Authority and the memorial’s builders are reinforcing it with “steel caisson cores,” a “new concrete liner,” and a “pilaster wall,” an effort that will cost $11 million. The idea to showcase the wall started with World Trade Center master planner Daniel Liebeskind’s 2002 proposal.

The Times spoke to the memorial and museum’s president Joseph Daniels, who said visitors to the museum may be able to touch the wall, “We think the slurry wall could take on the resonance of the Wailing Wall. The idea of being able to get that connection, which will link you to the past, is important.”

And eight NYPD cops who died from September 11 attacks-related illnesses will be memorialized at police headquarters. The Post New York reports the police officers’ names will be put on a memorial at One Police Plaza, with a ceremony on May 7. Those honored include police officers James Godbe, Thomas Brophy, Ronald Weintraub and Angelo Peluso and Detectives James Zadroga, John Young, Kevin Hawkins and Robert Williamson.

Zadroga’s father, who waged a very public fight with the city over the classification of his son’s death, said, “We are happy about it, but it’s been a long battle.”

When two planes were flown into the World Trade Center, it brought down the Twin Towers and rocked a trendy New York neighborhood called Tribeca.
The Reuters News Service now says now the area has “become a bazaar for movies about and from the Muslim world.

The Tribeca Film Festival, started after the September 11 attacks in 2001 to try to rejuvenate lower Manhattan, has become the key destination in North America for films from Muslim countries or about the Islamic faith seeking distribution deals, says artistic director Peter Scarlet.

This year, 19 films related to Islam, making up 10 percent of the program, will be shown at the seventh annual festival.

Scarlet, who has been working with the festival since 2003, said he was shocked when in his second year he was asked by a journalist if Tribeca would continue to show films “from the people who brought us 9/11.”

“Even in as wealthy and as big a country as the United States people know very little about the rest of the world,” he said. “Films are the last chance we have to understand what we as human beings have in common.

“The real function of a film festival is to open our windows, open our eyes and open our minds,” he said. “Films might be our only chance to understand people who may look different, whether they live on the other end of the world or maybe they moved in across the street or across the hall.”

The films at this year’s festival, which began on Wednesday, include “Football Under Cover,” the story of a German women’s soccer team that heads to Iran after hearing their counterparts there had never been allowed to play a game, and “Headwind,” which shows efforts by Iranians to stymie government censorship of media and information.”

A letter has just been published in The Open Civil Engineering Journal published by bentham.org -OCIEJ is a mainstream, peer-reviewed scientific engineering journal. This event is significant because the authors, Dr. Steven E. Jones, Dr. Frank M. Legge, Kevin R. Ryan, Anthony F. Szamboti, James R. Gourley are known for hypothesizing that on 9/11 WTC 1, 2 & 7 were destroyed by controlled demolition. In their open letter they seek to reach agreement on grounds for “productive discussion” on the subject of the destruction of WTC 1, 2 & 7, based on the 14 points outlined in the letter Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction, which in turn are based on assertions of fact already made by NIST and FEMA.

16 percent of Americans speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets, were the real reason the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed.

Lahore, Pakistan (PRWEB) April 22, 2008 — Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction, The Open Civil Engineering Journal, 2008, 2, 35-40, published by Bentham.org
http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCIEJ/2008/00000002/00000001/35TOCIEJ.SGM

DIGG.com: Fourteen Points of Agreement: World Trade Center Destruction
http://digg.com/general_sciences/Fourteen_Points_of_Agreement_World_Trade_Center_Destruction

A letter has just been published in a mainstream, peer-reviewed scientific engineering journal; this is significant because the authors, Dr. Steven E. Jones, Dr. Frank M. Legge, Kevin R. Ryan, Anthony F. Szamboti, James R. Gourley are known for hypothesizing that on 9/11 WTC 1, 2 & 7 were destroyed by controlled demolition. In their letter they seek to reach agreement on grounds for “productive discussion” on the subject of the destruction of WTC 1, 2 & 7, based on the 14 points outlined in the letter Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCIEJ/2008/00000002/00000001/35TOCIEJ.SGM, which are in turn based on assertions of fact already made by NIST and FEMA.

Given that the authors agree with the NIST and FEMA reports on all 14 points listed in the article, what’s the issue? The issue is that the NIST and FEMA reports appear to be grossly inadequate, contradicting both their own conclusions and established facts. Read and see for yourself whether or not you agree; now that this has been published, the scientific community will be debating it.

Coinciding with the publication of Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction in the Open Access OCIEJ, Dr. Jones published it in full with commentary at 911Blogger.com http://www.911blogger.com/node/15081 . Dr. Jones notes:

“With publication in an established civil engineering journal, the discussion has reached a new level - JREF’ers and others may attack, but unless they can also get published in a peer-reviewed journal, those attacks do not carry nearly the weight of a peer-reviewed paper. It may be that debunkers will try to avoid the fourteen issues we raise in the Letter, by attacking the author(s) or even the journal rather than addressing the science - that would not surprise me.

Professor Chomsky wrote to several, who passed it on to me: “You, or anyone who agrees with you, has a very simple task. Since the evidence is so obvious and compelling, submit an article about it to Science, or Nature, or even Scientific American, or more technical journals, say those in civil engineering, where your article can refute the conclusions of the professional society of civil engineers… To date, no one has been willing to submit an article — at least, after probably hundreds of inquiries to Truth Movement advocates, no one has been able to mention one…”

Would someone who has received this note from Prof. Chomsky please send him a copy of the downloaded paper? Perhaps we can build a bridge with him. You might note that the paper is published in a “technical journal [one of those in civil engineering,” to use his own words, which I took as sort of a challenge. I have published before in Nature (e.g., May 1986 and April 1989) AND Scientific American (July 1987), and this paper in a civil engineering journal I consider to be a very significant step in the history.”

A September 6, 2007 Zogby Poll found 67% fault the 9/11 Commission for not investigating the anomalous collapse of World Trade Center 7
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1354

August 1, 2006 Scripps News Poll “16 percent of Americans speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets, were the real reason the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed.”
http://www.scrippsnews.com/911poll

You can read more about the theories of the authors at:
Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice
STJ911.org

The federal government should be paying the medical bills of World Trade Center rescue workers and New York City residents sickened because of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday. In a story posted on The NewsInferno.com., Bloomberg says he wants the US government to spend at least $150 million a year to help these people, many of whom are still suffering health problems because of toxic dust that blanketed lower Manhattan for weeks following the collapse of the twin towers.

Many World Trade Center rescue workers and other people in the vicinity of the 9/11 attacks have been a reporting a host of health problems since the tragedy. A study by the Mt. Sinai Medical Center found that of 9,000 emergency workers, 70-percent had suffered some type of lung ailment after the attacks, and that 60-percent still faced respiratory problems. In May the FDNY reported that cases of the rare lung disease sarcoidosis had risen dramatically among firefighters and EMS workers who had spent time at Ground Zero.

World Trade Center sickness have not just been restricted to emergency responders. The New York City Department of Health last year found that one in eight first responders still suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Even children have not been immune from the effects of the deadly dust, as a recent report said that of 3,100 children enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Registry; nearly half had developed breathing problems three years after the attack.

Unfortunately, many of these people have had little help in dealing with their illnesses. The federal government created a $1 billion insurance fund to help ground zero workers sickened by the toxic fumes and dust released when the World Trade Center was destroyed. The fund, however, has been beset by lawsuits and criticized for the lack of payments to sick workers.

New York City is also facing hundreds of lawsuit filed by sick World Trade Center rescue workers. The city, along with the Port Authority, had tried to convince the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to give them immunity from nearly 8,000 workers’ claims. But in March that panel ruled against the city, after having determined the immunity claims raised by the city were so complex that they could only be resolved by further litigation.

New York city Fire Chief
Recalls 911 to Charlotte Audience

An emotional speech by New York Fire Chief Richard Picciotto drew a packed house of more than 1,100 Friday morning at the Charlotte Convention Center.
Picciotto is the highest-ranking firefighter to survive the World Trade Center collapse on Sept. 11, 2001. The Hood Hargett Breakfast Club brought him to Charlotte in its effort to raise more than $100,000 in scholarship money for the children of local public-service professionals such as firefighters and police officers.
During his speech was published in the Charlotte Business Journal. Picciotto described his experience in the North Tower as he and colleagues rushed in to locate trapped individuals in the burning skyscraper.
Picciotto said he had to make the difficult decision to turn his men around on the 35th floor of the 110-story building and save those they could from that floor down.
“I’m responsible for my men,” he said. “We take risks, but those risks are calculated, and we knew the people above those floors probably did not survive. It was probably the toughest decision of my life.”
Picciotto stopped at each floor on his way down, shouting into his bullhorn to get people to move toward the stairwells. There were only three stairwells in the building and 99 unusable elevators. He was trapped in stairwell C when the building began to collapse in a fiery heap.
“The shaking was unbelievable, everything went black and the air started to compress,” Picciotto says. “The wind was like a hurricane typhoon in there, and it was actually picking people up and throwing them around.”
Each floor measured more than an acre, but it took only eight seconds for the tower to fall. In those few seconds, Picciotto says he felt super-humanly aware of his surroundings.
“I accepted what was happening but I prayed, ‘Please, God, make it quick,’ ” he says. “The floor I was on disintegrated, and I began free-falling until everything was silent and black.”
Picciotto says he and a group of 13 men and one woman were trapped miraculously in a pocket of debris. However, he couldn’t feel his body, and for a moment he thought he was dead.
An emotional speech by New York Fire Chief Richard Picciotto drew a packed house of more than 1,100 Friday morning at the Charlotte Convention Center.
Picciotto is the highest-ranking firefighter to survive the World Trade Center collapse on Sept. 11, 2001. The Hood Hargett Breakfast Club brought him to Charlotte in its effort to raise more than $100,000 in scholarship money for the children of local public-service professionals such as firefighters and police officers.
During his speech, Picciotto described his experience in the North Tower as he and colleagues rushed in to locate trapped individuals in the burning skyscraper.
Picciotto said he had to make the difficult decision to turn his men around on the 35th floor of the 110-story building and save those they could from that floor down.
“I’m responsible for my men,” he said. “We take risks, but those risks are calculated, and we knew the people above those floors probably did not survive. It was probably the toughest decision of my life.”
Picciotto stopped at each floor on his way down, shouting into his bullhorn to get people to move toward the stairwells. There were only three stairwells in the building and 99 unusable elevators. He was trapped in stairwell C when the building began to collapse in a fiery heap.
“The shaking was unbelievable, everything went black and the air started to compress,” Picciotto says. “The wind was like a hurricane typhoon in there, and it was actually picking people up and throwing them around.”
Each floor measured more than an acre, but it took only eight seconds for the tower to fall. In those few seconds, Picciotto says he felt super-humanly aware of his surroundings.
“I accepted what was happening but I prayed, ‘Please, God, make it quick,’ ” he says. “The floor I was on disintegrated, and I began free-falling until everything was silent and black.”
Picciotto says he and a group of 13 men and one woman were trapped miraculously in a pocket of debris. However, he couldn’t feel his body, and for a moment he thought he was dead.

No new requirements for larger stairwells in the wake of 9/11 and a host of other problems, in part, have paved the way for the sudden departure of the New York commissioner in the Department of Buildings.
Commissioner Patricia Lancaster stepped down from her post yesterday in a swirl of criticism over lack luster building safety and few improvements in the building code after the World Trade Center disaster.
The New York Times says not an inch of new space for exit stairs has been required in the office buildings that have gone up in New York since Sept. 11, 2001. The World Trade Center towers were only one-third occupied that morning. Had they been full, the stairways in each tower would have gotten so crowded that 14,000 more people probably would have died, a federal study determined.
The real world had shown that the old standards for exits would not hold up in a mass emergency.
In early 2002, a new city buildings commissioner, Patricia Lancaster, set up a group to find lessons for safety in high-rise buildings from the 9/11 calamity. The report from the World Trade Center Building Code Task Force made 21 recommendations — among them, better signs for exits, inspections of fireproofing, enhanced evacuation plans and fire drills.

The Queens Ledger reports that Lancaster is stepping down as the number of construction deaths in the city are on the rise and there is growing criticism for the agency as a whole.
“Controversy surrounding the department came to a head last month, when a large crane toppled on e 51st Street in Manhattan last month killing seven. Lancaster admitted at a City Council hearing that the crane did not meet building codes, and should have never been issued a permit. In fact, the inspector who signed off on the crane never actually inspected it.
There have already been 13 construction-related deaths in New York City so far in 2008, more than occurred in all of 2007. The tragic spike even earned Lancaster a rare rebuke from her boss, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who publicly stated that he was displeased with how DOB was operating.
The furor over Lancaster may have increased with the crane collapse, but Councilman Tony Avella has long been an outspoken critic of Lancaster, and has repeatedly called for her resignation. He called the move much needed and long overdue.
“While I thank her for her efforts to reform Building Code, her administration was riddled with sheer incompetence and an absolute neglect of building construction and safety enforcement issues,” he said in a statement.
Councilwoman Jessica Lappin from Manhattan said that Lancaster had served the city forthrightly, but that is was indeed time for her to step down.
“Given the magnitude of the issues currently facing DOB, something clearly needed to change,” she said. “New leadership is essential to restore faith in what appears to be a broken system.”
A replacement has not been named for Lancaster, but Avella said he hoped the mayor would pick a strong-willed person and then grant them the power to enact change.
“I hope that whomever the mayor appoints to lead the agency has the necessary leadership skills and determination to overhaul this agency,” he said. “The mayor must also grant the new commissioner the political power to enact building and construction enforcement reforms that his office, DOB, and the speaker of the City Council have blocked for some time.

A federal appeals court says that people exposed to World Trade Center dust after the 9/11 terrorist attacks can’t sue former Environment Protection chief Christine Todd Whitman.
This ruling handed down yesterday by a federal appeals court ruled comes despite the fact that Whitman made public and private assurances that “their air is safe to breathe.”
According to hundreds of press reports, the ruling contradicts a federal judge who had refused to dismiss the lawsuit in 2006, finding that Whitman had “made misleading statements … and may in fact have created the danger” to residents, students and workers near Ground Zero.
The appeals court said Whitman was drawing from conflicting information and her “poor choice” was not sufficient to prove liability.
Yet Whitman had made this choice when EPA tests showed hazardous levels of asbestos, PCBs and other contaminants in the air and in the dust, according to agency documents obtained by the New York Environmental Law & Justice Project.
The Project also uncovered a memo written by a city Health Department commissioner in response to a warning letter from the EPA. “The risk of serious injury or death to civilians in high,” it said.
The new decision was “disappointing,” said Project attorney Joel Kupferman, co-counsel for the plaintiffs with Philadelphia law firm Berger & Montague.

There are calls Monday for the NYPD to get involved in protecting the new Freedom Tower buildings in lower Manhattan, according to press reports. The demands for action come after two separate plans for the new buildings were found in a garbage can.

Eyewitness News reporter Nina Pineda of New York station WABC and others have reported this story.

Pineda says the incident has the families of firefighters and 9/11 victims calling for the NYPD to take over the security during construction and as the complex opens. In the meantime, Port Authority officials say they are conducting an investigation to determine who put the plans out with the trash.

Stamped “confidential” and “secure,” two separate sets of Freedom Tower blueprints were trashed in a SoHo trash can on Houston Street and in discarded boxes behind the Port Authority office at Ground Zero.
A homeless man, who found one set, alerted the New York Post about the blueprint bungle. It is an outrage for families of 9/11 victims, who are pushing for the NYPD to oversee security. They also want greater accountability for the Port Authority, which is currently in charge of safety and security protocols at the World Trade Center site. Since it is immune and exempt from New York City building and fire codes, skyscraper safety advocates see repeat vulnerabilities in the future structure.

“If a terrorist is to get down there, or any other kind of emergency down below, we’re going to have to move large numbers of people out of that sub-terrain area,” said Glenn Corbett, of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign.

“It’s tremendously ironic that an area as important as Ground Zero is legally immune to those requirements,” architect J.C. Calderon said.

As a former FDNY fire chief, whose firefighter son died in the attacks, Frank Riches worries for his remaining sons’ lives, should they have to run in again to try and save lives.

“We know they’re gonna come back,” he said. “They’ve promised to come back again. It’s the biggest security place in the country. Let’s get it done right. Let’s inspect these buildings and make sure they do them right.”

The Port Authority responded by saying that the plans will meet and exceed all New York City building codes. Critics say the problem is that the promises are not binding.