One has the feeling there is already in the making Ghost Busters III or
is it IV? And think, John O'Neill, lost the plans for all the
underground tunnels of New York City and defensive "terrorist" plans in
Florida? Florida? And ends up working for Larry Silverstein for one
day.....
What is lovely here - seems to me to be okay to issue a warning of a
possible flood, where people could build an Ark, but to describe the
territory further explaining the how to and how not to about repair of
this potential threat ....well stupid is as stupid does. The KGB
through another FBI Agent already has all the tunnel plans for the City
of Washington DC. Always love these Florida connections - could it be
the mob is planning an invasion of Cuba again?
A better name for this story would be Save the Titanic.....but the
Titanic too was insured? Now comes the flood?
Job, chapter 28
"11": He bindeth the floods from overflowing; and the thing that is hid
bringeth he forth to light.
OSaba
March 21, 2002
A Rush to Fix Ground Zero's Damaged Dike
By JAMES GLANZ and ERIC LIPTON
workers are hurrying to shore up and patch a 90-foot-wide gash in the
below- ground retaining wall that encircles much of the World Trade
Center site after discovering that groundwater, fed by the Hudson River,
is only a precarious foot below the lower rim of the damaged area.
Engineers working at ground zero yesterday said there was no imminent
danger of a collapse of the wall, which is called the bathtub, or of an
inundation of the pit that has been dug at the site.
But they are already digging wells outside the gash — in effect a bite
taken out of the eastern side of the bathtub — to relieve the pressure
of the groundwater on the wall.
And they are designing a giant steel-and- concrete patch, to be anchored
in bedrock.
The damage in the bathtub wall occurred on Sept. 11, when the upper
floors of the south tower toppled toward the southeast and tore the huge
gash. But until recently, this damaged area had been buried beneath
debris.
Only now that crews are excavating the southeast corner of the site —
one of the last spots at ground zero to be cleared — did they discover
just how seriously the wall had been compromised, and how close it had
come to allowing a major flood.
"The damage to the wall was known; the extent is now more clear," said
Matthew Monahan, a spokesman for the Department of Design and
Construction, the city agency overseeing the cleanup.
Richard Perry/The New York Times
The south tower's collapse tore a huge gash out of the retaining wall,
called the bathtub, around the trade center site. Groundwater is one
foot below the bottom of the gash.
The retaining wall has numerous small leaks, and water constantly seeps
up into the bathtub from cracks in the bedrock deep below.
But if the wall were to crumble further or if the water level were to
rise slightly, "water would start going over the wall," said Dan Hahn,
an engineer at Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers, which is designing
the repairs to the wall. "It wouldn't be a leak; it would be a flow."
Mr. Hahn said any major leak was unlikely if the patchwork went ahead as
planned. Paul Ashlin, a senior vice president at Bovis Lend Lease, which
is managing the cleanup work for the city, agreed, saying,
"I can hardly imagine that happening."
Still, he said, "this is the first time we've encountered any water
problem" except for the small leaks.
No structure like the bathtub, a steel-reinforced concrete wall reaching
down 70 feet from street level, had ever been built on such a large
scale before construction at the trade center began in the 1960's.
When the twin towers collapsed on Sept. 11, much of their debris formed
super-compressed piles within the bathtub. Now the wall looms, rough and
dirty, over a legion of heavy equipment involved in cleaning up debris
far below street level.
(saba note: according to one report, the World Trade Center was built
on "landfill"?)
Over the last 10 days, workers have begun excavating the southeast
corner of the site. "We've got to dig it very gingerly," George Tamaro,
an engineer and partner at Mueser Rutledge, said last week. "Unknowns
are always a problem."
Workers have already begun digging a pair of wells just outside the gash
so pumps to lower the groundwater level can be installed.
A set of cable supports called tiebacks, like hundreds that have been
installed around the site already, are being threaded through the wall
just above an embankment that has recently been yielding human remains.
The cables are anchored into the bedrock.
Water streaming through tieback holes before they were sealed gave one
indication of how close the water was to the bottom of the gash.
Although installing the tiebacks has become routine in many ways, Mr.
Tamaro said that the southeast corner presented some special problems:
part of the bedrock there, gouged out by a glacier, has left only loose
rocks and boulders behind, making the anchoring of the tiebacks more
challenging than elsewhere.
The actual patching will begin with splicing new steel reinforcement
onto existing steel inside the wall to create a mesh over the opening,
Mr. Tamaro said.
Then concrete will be poured around both the mesh and a set of flanges
to hold new tiebacks. Finally the tiebacks will be threaded through to
brace the patch.
-30-
Saba Note:
The King James Bible
"25": And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew,
and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a
rock.
"26": And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them
not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the
sand:
"27": And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew,
and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.
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