3 charged over deaths related to 9/11 attack
Source: Agencies |
March 22, 2011, Tuesday
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FROM the instant the World Trade Center's south tower crumbled into it, the somber bank building next door began to extract a toll no one imagined.
Contaminated by toxic debris from the September 11 terror attacks, the former Deutsche Bank building took hundreds of millions of dollars and more than nine years to dismantle. And it claimed the lives of two firefighters who died in a blaze that exposed a litany of failures by a company and government agencies involved in what was supposed to be one of the most carefully scrutinized projects in the city.
After a costly, lengthy investigation that at one point directly pointed at the city, Manhattan prosecutors charged a construction company foreman and two supervisors with manslaughter in the 2007 blaze. Jury selection in their trial was expected to start late yesterday.
To the father of one of the slain firefighters, the trial seems to be about a drop of blame in a sea of responsibility. Joseph A. Graffagnino is disgusted by the charges, but he's also angry that the three construction officials are the only people facing them.
"If they did what the district attorney said they did, then they should be held liable to the umpteenth degree," he said. "But letting other people get away scot-free, the people who told them what to do... to me, that's criminally wrong."
Prosecutors say the men knew about, didn't fix and covered up a major break in a crucial firefighting water pipe that turned the burning building into a death trap. The men say they're being faulted for regulators' mistakes and a maze of barriers in the building that were meant to contain toxins, but made the fire worse.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers have been barred from speaking about the case outside court.
The city fire and building departments and the city-state agency that until recently owned the building declined to comment on the case this week.
The 2001 terror attack carved a 15-story slash in the 41-floor bank building, coated it with toxins and left tragic traces. While no one in the bank building died, more than 700 body parts of victims were eventually found there.
After disputes over what to do with the building and who should pay, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp - a young city-state agency created to help coordinate rebuilding - agreed in 2005 to buy the building, clean it and take it down.
Contaminated by toxic debris from the September 11 terror attacks, the former Deutsche Bank building took hundreds of millions of dollars and more than nine years to dismantle. And it claimed the lives of two firefighters who died in a blaze that exposed a litany of failures by a company and government agencies involved in what was supposed to be one of the most carefully scrutinized projects in the city.
After a costly, lengthy investigation that at one point directly pointed at the city, Manhattan prosecutors charged a construction company foreman and two supervisors with manslaughter in the 2007 blaze. Jury selection in their trial was expected to start late yesterday.
To the father of one of the slain firefighters, the trial seems to be about a drop of blame in a sea of responsibility. Joseph A. Graffagnino is disgusted by the charges, but he's also angry that the three construction officials are the only people facing them.
"If they did what the district attorney said they did, then they should be held liable to the umpteenth degree," he said. "But letting other people get away scot-free, the people who told them what to do... to me, that's criminally wrong."
Prosecutors say the men knew about, didn't fix and covered up a major break in a crucial firefighting water pipe that turned the burning building into a death trap. The men say they're being faulted for regulators' mistakes and a maze of barriers in the building that were meant to contain toxins, but made the fire worse.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers have been barred from speaking about the case outside court.
The city fire and building departments and the city-state agency that until recently owned the building declined to comment on the case this week.
The 2001 terror attack carved a 15-story slash in the 41-floor bank building, coated it with toxins and left tragic traces. While no one in the bank building died, more than 700 body parts of victims were eventually found there.
After disputes over what to do with the building and who should pay, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp - a young city-state agency created to help coordinate rebuilding - agreed in 2005 to buy the building, clean it and take it down.
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