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[Add this to Americas' Mayors' list of dubious accomplishments. Apart from Giulianus' completely useless 13 million dollar bunker set up in the US building complex most expected to be attacked by terrorists, WTC 7 housed CIA, FBI and other Federal offices. I guess if you want to destroy some incriminating evidence there's nothing like 6,000 gallons of fuel oil to do the trick. For the real story on the "Giuliani Legacy" see http://baltech.org/lederman/ ]
NY TIMES
City Had Been Warned of Fuel Tank at 7 World Trade Center
December 20, 2001
By JAMES GLANZ and ERIC LIPTON
Fire Department officials warned the city and the Port
Authority of New York and New Jersey in 1998 and 1999 that
a giant diesel fuel tank for the mayor's $13 million
command bunker in 7 World Trade Center, a 47-story
high-rise that burned and collapsed on Sept. 11, posed a
hazard and was not consistent with city fire codes.
The 6,000-gallon tank was positioned about 15 feet above
the ground floor and near several lobby elevators and was
meant to fuel generators that would supply electricity to
the 23rd-floor bunker in the event of a power failure.
Although the city made some design changes to address the
concerns - moving a fuel pipe that would have run from the
tank up an elevator shaft, for example - it left the tank
in place.
But the Fire Department repeatedly warned that a tank in
that position could spread fumes throughout the building if
it leaked, or, if it caught fire, could produce what one
Fire Department memorandum called "disaster."
Putting a tank underground typically protects it from
falling debris, and impedes leaks or tank fires from
spreading throughout the building.
Engineering experts have spent three months trying to
determine why 7 World Trade Center, part of the downtown
complex that included the 110-story towers, collapsed about
seven hours after being damaged and set on fire by debris
from the damaged landmark buildings.
Some of the experts, who said that no major skyscraper had
ever collapsed simply because of fire damage, have recently
been examining whether the diesel tanks - there were others
beneath ground level - played an important role in the
building's stunning demise.
The Port Authority, which owns the land on which the
building stood and issued the building permit for the tank
and its fireproof enclosure, said yesterday that it
believed the structure had in fact met the terms of the
city's fire code. Though the tank was on a tall fireproof
pedestal, it was still effectively on the lowest floor of
the building, as the code requires, said Frank Lombardi,
the Port Authority's chief engineer.
The authority also worked with Fire Department officials to
eliminate the department's original objections, Mr.
Lombardi said.
"We made sure that it was in agreement with the code," Mr.
Lombardi said, adding that the tank was placed in an
eight-inch- thick masonry enclosure.
A spokesman for the Fire Department said yesterday that he
could not authoritatively say whether all the concerns of
its officials had been addressed by the Port Authority. But
when reached yesterday, the department official who wrote
several of the warning memorandums said he regarded the
Port Authority's interpretation of the code to be "a
stretch." The official, Battalion Chief William P. Blaich,
said he still considered the tank's placement to have been
unsafe.
The Port Authority has long held that, as a matter of law,
it does not have to abide by city fire codes. But after the
1993 bombing of the towers, the Port Authority signed a
memorandum of understanding with the city pledging to not
only meet the city's fire codes, but also to often take
additional precautions.
A spokesman for the city's office of emergency management,
Francis E. McCarton, said the city accepted the Port
Authority's determination that the tank and its placement
were properly safe. He said it was essential that the
mayor's command center have a backup energy source and
placing it on ground floor was unacceptable because the
area was deemed to be susceptible to floods.
"We put it in the area where we needed to put it," Mr.
McCarton said. Any suggestion that the tank's position was
a factor in the collapse of the building was "pure
speculation," he said.
He added that the tank had fire extinguishers and was
surrounded by the thick, fire-resistant containment system,
and that the fiery collapse of the towers could never have
been anticipated in the city's planning.
No one is believed to have died in the collapse of 7 World
Trade Center. But its collapse did further complicate the
rescue and recovery efforts under way at the scene.
The engineering and fire experts who have been examining
the collapse of 7 World Trade Center have not settled on
the final cause of the disaster. But they have seen
evidence of very high temperatures typical of fuel fires in
the debris from the building and have raised questions
about whether the diesel accounted for those conditions.
At least two firefighters who were at the scene, Deputy
Chief James Jackson and Battalion Chief Blaich, said that
the southwest corner of the building near the fuel tank was
severely damaged, possibly by falling debris, and that the
tank might have been breached.
Mr. Jackson said that about an hour before the building's
collapse, heavy black smoke, consistent with a fuel fire of
some sort, was coming from that part of the building.
The Port Authority said it was unlikely the heavy masonry
surrounding the tank could have been breached, and its
officials have raised the possibility that the two diesel
tanks buried just below the ground floor of the building
might have contributed to the fire. They have also asserted
that structural damage from falling debris is a more likely
culprit in the collapse.
Several fire experts said that, whatever the questions
surrounding the city's code, installing giant fuel tanks
above the occupied spaces of a building posed serious
risks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/20/nyregion/20DIES.html?ex=1009874853&ei=1&en=b
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