The story of the Deutsche Bank building following the NYC 9/11 attacks is a study in bureaucratic incompetence…but more importantly it’s an ongoing experience in human tragedy and loss.
There’s a great deal to sort out. This piece, “The tombstone at Ground Zero,” does a good job introducing the issues.
The article begins with an introduction into the fire at the building site in August of last year:
…Thick black smoke was pouring out of the shell of what used to be the Deutsche Bank building. The structure had been badly damaged in the terrorist attack when portions of the collapsing south tower dug a 15-story gash and propelled toxic dust into it. Six years later the bank building was finally being taken down.
The fire quickly spread to 13 floors. The 100 firefighters inside the building couldn’t douse the flames because, as would become clear later, the basement standpipe that should have supplied water to the floors above had been disconnected. The scene was chaotic. Firefighters couldn’t see through the dense smoke and found their retreat blocked by a mazelike series of plywood walls and polyethylene sheeting that made it nearly impossible to locate exits. Panic was audible in the voices on the firefighters’ radios.
Eventually some 275 firemen used ropes to hoist hoses up the scaffolding on the building and tamed the seven-alarm conflagration around 10:30 that night, seven hours after the blaze began. But the struggle to extinguish the flames had cost two lives. Firefighters Robert Beddia, 53, and Joseph Graffagnino, 33, were found lying on the 14th floor near a hose line and pronounced dead at a local hospital. The cause: smoke inhalation.
Here’s a picture of the building when it was on fire:
