Forsyth County fire Lt. Brian Gary (left) and Capt. Jason Shivers.

Java the Hut! Starbucks hits WTC

By PAUL D. COLFORD
 
Starbucks, which has 160 stores in Manhattan, will open a new one - just two short blocks from Ground Zero.
Banners with the Starbucks Coffee logo and the words "Coming Soon" mark the now-dark corner location at Washington and Carlisle Sts.

"I think it's great that new things are opening down here ... though there are other places to get a coffee," said Marla Goldwasser, who lives in the neighborhood but hadn't heard about the planned Starbucks until yesterday.

The immediate area is desolate and dominated by the empty Deutsche Bank tower. Opposite the planned coffee shop on Washington St. is a hole in the ground where an office building was recently torn down.

But Starbucks - which is taking over a former floral shop, at the back of the Marriott Financial Center Hotel - is raising its flag with an eye on the residential influx in the area and even busier days ahead.

It will join several other new businesses and restaurants that have popped up south of Ground Zero.

The deep hole is where developer Joseph Moinian plans to build a 53-story W Hotel and condominium tower.

The 40-story Deutsche Bank building, contaminated with asbestos and other materials from the collapse of the twin towers across the street, will be dismantled over the next year and eventually replaced by another office high-rise.

In addition, Ground Zero will buzz with hard hats in the months ahead as construction gets underway on the World Trade Center Memorial and the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower.

Nick Davis, a spokesman at Starbucks headquarters in Seattle, said the new store will be a licensed property - operated by the Marriott, not the coffee company - and is set to open in the next few months.

Hotel manager Roger Borsink cited nearby conversions, such as 90 West St. - a former office building damaged by the 9/11 terror attack and since turned into 410 apartments - and said, "We thought Starbucks would be a good business for the area, based on present circumstances alone."

There are currently 7,661 Starbucks stores nationwide.

 http://www.nydailynews.com/business/story/383839p-325834c.html

Space at Ground Zero, and Better Views

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

NEW vistas have opened at the World Trade Center site.

The architectural firm Snohetta has radically redesigned what was once to have been the cultural center at ground zero. The new version, occupying about 30 percent of the area of the original, will create an entry plaza at Fulton and Greenwich Streets that will guide visitors to the twin memorial pools beyond, rather than blocking the view from the north and the east.

It will also allow skylights, set in the plaza pavement, to illuminate the underground mezzanine of the PATH terminal and transportation hub designed by Santiago Calatrava.

The Snohetta building should be much easier to engineer - and therefore less expensive - with its bulk shifted away from a location directly over the column-free PATH mezzanine.

Absent the Drawing Center and the International Freedom Center museum, which have been removed from the project, the Snohetta building is expected to shrink to about 50,000 or 60,000 square feet from 250,000 square feet. It is to serve as a visitors' center, an orientation center and as a "center for Sept. 11," said John P. Cahill, who oversees downtown redevelopment as Gov. George E. Pataki's chief of staff.

"It is a building that will hopefully tell the story about Sept. 11, the uplifting stories of Sept. 11," Mr. Cahill said yesterday. "It will be a place where people can discuss the events of Sept. 11." In that way, he said, it will pick up where the underground memorial museum leaves off, by focusing on how New York, the nation and the world responded to and recovered from the attacks.

Craig Dykers, a founding partner of Snohetta, said the change in program permitted greater flexibility in locating the building on the site.

"We've attempted to create an open and welcoming atmosphere that will allow the memorial quadrant to complete itself toward the corner of Fulton and Greenwich Streets," Mr. Dykers said, "but will also allow for new and more open orientation space."

As originally envisioned, the cultural center would have run about 240 feet along Greenwich Street and 160 feet along Fulton Street, creating a wall between the memorial and the PATH terminal, the performing arts center by Frank Gehry and Tower 2 of the office complex, which is being designed by Norman Foster.

Now, the Snohetta building will have only 65 feet of frontage on Greenwich Street and none on Fulton Street. It will also be shorter than the original, said Stefan Pryor, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

Its long axis, perpendicular to Greenwich Street, will align with the angle of Dey Street, with one edge of the PATH terminal and with the north end of the memorial museum entrance building, also being designed by Snohetta. Mr. Dykers said these three buildings would form "a string of pearls: smaller, pavilionlike structures that filter across from West to Church Street.

"They allow the memorial quadrant not only to have an identifiable form but to connect it to the surrounding urban character."

The newly created open space is one of the first recent design refinements that actually pushes the trade center project a bit closer to the master plan laid out three years ago by Studio Daniel Libeskind, which showed a "Sept. 11 Place" at that intersection. Mr. Libeskind said yesterday that he thought the latest Snohetta design was a "very, very good solution."

So did Raphael Samach, a principal in DMJM Design, which is associated with Mr. Calatrava and STV in the PATH terminal project for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. "We're obviously delighted by this," Mr. Samach said of the revised Snohetta design. "It is a very good thing from an urban planning perspective, as well as functionality."

State officials and the project architects would not discuss the aesthetics of the new design - nor provide a rendering - reserving that for what will undoubtedly be a ceremonial debut in the near future.

But they agreed to describe the structure in broad outlines after Governor Pataki's announcement last week that he would set aside $80 million for the visitors' and orientation center. That announcement meant either that the building was being redesigned to fit a predetermined budget or that the redesign - which has been kept under wraps for months - was in fact far enough advanced to yield a meaningful construction budget.

Four companies have submitted proposals to serve as construction manager for the memorial and memorial museum, the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation announced this week. They are Bovis Lend Lease, Turner Construction Company and Sciame-Skanska, a joint venture of F. J. Sciame Construction Company and Skanska USA Building. The selection will be made in early February, a foundation spokeswoman said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/nyregion/19blocks.html

ARCHITECTURE
A Great Park chill brings on cold feet
After appearing to settle on a designer, board members in Orange County seem to be reconsidering.

...

It is one thing, given the scope and complexity of this project, to choose one winner and then ask that team to enlarge its ranks. That's what happened when Michael Arad prevailed two years ago in a high-profile competition for the World Trade Center memorial. Then a 34-year-old architect with virtually no record of built work, Arad was convinced by the jury to add the Berkeley firm Peter Walker and Partners to help flesh out and execute his design.

But it is quite another to ask the finalists suddenly to embrace one another as collaborators and meld their very different schemes into one. That notion is a recipe for infighting and inefficiency. Even worse, it essentially precludes a strong central design vision shaping the new park. Imagine if jurors for the National Book Award, unable to pick a winner in the fiction category, asked three finalists to sit down in a locked room and not emerge until they'd produced a single novel.

...

http://www.calendarlive.com/galleriesandmu...-home-more-channels

Although there was a previous post concerning the LMDC reversal on winter operation of the fountain at /m2042, this article has some more technical information. Of some concern is that the LMDC does not plan on prototype testing under freezing conditions.

http://www.archpaper.com/news/01_18_06_waterfall.html

WTC Foundation To Keep Fountain
Flowing Year-Round

01.18.2006

Despite recent reports that the waterfalls in the World Trade Center Memorial will be turned off during the winter, the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation recently announced that the water will indeed run all year round. On January 10, the foundation, which will build, operate, and own the memorial, allocated $300,000 to adjust the design for cold-weather modifications and another $750,000 per year for operational costs. This decision is a reversal from the foundation’s December declaration that the waterfalls would not run in the winter months.

Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) Memorial Design Director Anne Papageorge was quoted in the December 9–15 issue of Downtown Express as saying “The fountain will not run in the winter months.” She explained that visitors “will not only be cold, but wet. The wind will blow water into the galleries” and winter operational costs will be “extremely expensive by factors of four or five.”

The waterfalls are an integral part of the initial design Reflecting Absence, by Michael Arad and Peter Walker, and were to cascade year-round into reflecting pools where the names of the victims of the 1993 and 2001 attacks are engraved. In December, after months of testing a $175,000 memorial prototype in Ontario, Canada, the LMDC concluded that the waterfalls could not function through winter in its current design state, due to the cold Northeastern climate, threat of ice expansion and the high cost of operation.

Foundation spokesperson Lynn Rasic asserted that the design change was largely due to the leadership of construction consultant Peter Lehrer, who has been working with Arad and the other designers to come up with a resolution. “It’s something that we’ve been looking to change for some time,” said Rasic.

The modified design includes four additional heat exchangers and pumps which will warm the circulating water during periods of freezing temperatures. Additionally, computerized controls for the central building management system will activate and monitor the heating of water in response to falling temperatures. Also, exterior edges and overhangs of the memorial will be heated as well, in order to prevent the formation of icicles, which are often formed by droplets and mist.

When asked about previously stated concerns of water intruding into galleries and frigid visitor experiences, Rasic said, “We don’t anticipate the spray to create an uncomfortable visitor experience, and the waterfalls will not affect the museum.”

The additional funding adds to the current cost of $330 million for the memorial. A heated prototype is not planned, as the WTC Foundation believes extensive testing has been completed. Construction is slated to begin in Spring 2006 and is scheduled for completion in 2009.
TERESA HERRMANN

Wife of Trade Center Victim Verbally Confronts Judge
By Julia Preston
New York Times


An attempt to forge an agreement over the handling of debris from the World Trade Center became a raw, sorrowful exchange yesterday between relatives of Sept. 11 victims and a federal judge.

The relatives sued in August to try to force the city to separate at least 360,000 tons of finely filtered debris, known as "fines," from the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, and to create a formal burial place for it.

The judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court in Manhattan, has adopted an unorthodox approach to the suit. He discouraged the two sides from filing the usual contentious motions and offered instead to hold a public discussion in his courtroom between the families and the city's lawyers, to try to resolve the painful issue of the remains without a drawn-out fight.

Judge Hellerstein sought to summarize the city's position yesterday by saying it hoped to turn "what we thought of as a garbage dump" into a "beautiful park."

In a startling break from normal courtroom decorum, however, Laura Walker, the wife of a victim, jumped up from her seat in the gallery.

"Are you crazy?" she asked the judge. She had to support the lawsuit, she said, "so my children don't have to think that their father is buried in a garbage pile."

"You should be ashamed of yourself," she told the judge, leaving the courtroom. Mrs. Walker's husband, Benjamin J. Walker, was an insurance broker at Marsh & McLennan, whose offices were at the trade center. Another victim's relative, Rose Foti, also walked out.

Rather than gavel the session to order, Judge Hellerstein apologized.

"I'm trying to deal with this as a human problem," he said, confiding: "I only lost friends and associates at the World Trade Center. I did not lose family."

If the suit has to be handled as formal litigation, he said, he will be bound by cold "statutes and technicalities," and the outcome may be worse for the families. He appealed for "a little slack."

The judge had invited the relatives to his courtroom yesterday to watch two videotapes presented by lawyers for the city. One, prepared by the Army Corps of Engineers, showed the careful process of sifting and sorting of huge steel beams and mountains of wreckage at the landfill after Sept. 11. The other showed drawings of a 2,200-acre park that the Bloomberg administration plans to create on the landfill, which has been closed.

While the city, at the judge's request, has not filed formal papers in the suit, the video of the sorting operation seemed intended to show that a meticulous effort had been made to recover any human remains that could be found.

Norman Siegel, the civil rights lawyer who represents the families' group, World Trade Center Families for Proper Burial, said he was encouraged by Judge Hellerstein's response. "Having a federal judge demonstrate that he cares and is willing to listen is positive and needed more in federal court," Mr. Siegel said. He said some relatives remained angry at the city, and so he was not surprised by their reactions.

Some progress has been made in the talks, Mr. Siegel said. On Wednesday, he said, he identified a site in the landfill park area that does not contain garbage, to which the fine debris could be moved. James E. Tyrell, a lawyer for the city, said the site was not acceptable, but he did not dismiss the idea of recovering the fine debris.

http://www.voicesofsept11.org/artman/publi.../article_002401.php

Downtown arts groups make their case for L.M.D.C. dough

By Ronda Kaysen

When Michael Dorf heard that $35 million was available for cultural organizations Downtown, he jumped in line with more than 100 other cultural groups for a chance for the money.

The founder of the Knitting Factory in Tribeca penned an application for a $2.5 million grant to build a 30,000 sq. ft. performance space and cafe Downtown called the Art Exchange. He describes his creation — at the moment little more than a proposal — as Carnegie Hall Downtown with a great wine list.

“They better give it to me because we are the most worthwhile of all,” said Dorf in a telephone interview. Art Exchange, which would have a 900-seat theater and a 250-seat club, currently has no home, although Dorf is considering a site in the South Street Seaport and another on Wall Street.

Dorf is one of more than 100 organizations that applied by the Dec. 22 deadline for $35 million in cultural enhancement grants from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the agency steering the World Trade Center redevelopment.

L.M.D.C. announced the grants, available to programs below Houston St., last November, making good on a promise to support culture in Lower Manhattan. The agency expects to announce the first round of winners in the spring.

For Downtown arts organizations that have waited in vain for the past four and a half years for L.M.D.C. money, the November announcement was welcome news.

“Part of the pressure on L.M.D.C. is to acknowledge that there are Downtown organizations that have the support that they should have,” said Lisa Ecklund-Flores, director and co-founder of Church Street School for Music and Art, the only non-profit community music school in Lower Manhattan.

Ecklund-Flores requested $500,000 for a plan to expand her school — which is actually on Warren St. — into an adjacent building. The expansion would triple the size of the 2,900 sq. ft. school.

Church Street’s enrollment dropped by 75 percent after the disaster. Now, four and a half years later, the school has 450 students and is near capacity, despite an expansion to the second floor completed last January. “The only silver lining in all this is that we came out the other side with even stronger student enrollment.”

Ecklund-Flores applied for a $50,000 grant from L.M.D.C. for the first expansion, but was denied. She ended up dipping into the school’s operating budget to cover the costs.

She hopes this time L.M.D.C. will turn its attention to locally grown organizations. “There’s got to be something that acknowledges the people that hung on,” she said.

Competition for the funds is stiff. Major institutions are lining up for the money, including New York City Opera, which launched a school program at the High School of Economics and Finance last year. The opera company applied for $125,000 to expand its program, which provides artist residencies in the Trinity St. school. “We want [the students] to know that the arts is a career available to them,” said Talena Mara, director of education for City Opera. The teachers “are trying to expand their horizons so they don’t think the only thing out there is to be a stockbroker.”

City Opera famously applied for a spot in the Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center that Frank Gehry is supposed to design, but didn’t make the cut. “There are a lot of great opportunities,” said Mara. “That one we’ve put behind us now.”

Community Board 1 has long advocated bringing art and culture to this increasingly residential neighborhood. Last month, the board threw its weight behind City Opera’s application, along with a handful of other applicants, including the Church Street School; Manhattan Youth, a non-profit after-school and summer program for children that is building a new community center on Warren St.; the Poets House, a Soho-based poetry center that is moving to a new 10,000 sq. ft. facility in Battery Park City on Murray St.; and the River Project, a marine science center that is planning to build a temporary aquarium in Hudson River Park.

“All the cultural organizations that we supported are very worthwhile,” said Harold Reed, chairperson of the board’s Arts and Entertainment Committee. “The bottom line is that we must have more culture Downtown… the arts act as an economic engine.”

The board also requested that Reed be appointed to the L.M.D.C. grant review board.

Two arts organizations that lost their homes in the Trade Center Disaster —the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, which was in the Trade Center and 3-Legged Dog, which was in the severely damaged Fiterman Hall on West Broadway—both also applied for funding.

Three-Legged Dog, a nonprofit performing arts group, is in the midst of building a $4.6 million gallery and performance space on Greenwich St., three blocks south of the Trade Center site. The first phase—a 6,000-square-foot, 280-seat theater and rehearsal space—will open next month.

The center’s new home is in the ground floor of a Metropolitan Transportation Authority-owned parking garage that L.M.D.C. would like to see razed as part of a Greenwich Street South revitalization effort.

Instead of requesting capital funds from the agency that would like to demolish his building, executive director Kevin Cunningham requested $2.5 million for operating and recovery funds. “We are still trying to dig our way out after 9/11,” said Cunningham, who hopes to open the 2,200 sq. ft. gallery in April. (The Greenwich Street South plans are in preliminary stages and the M.T.A. insists it has no plans to sell its building to the city.)

Cunningham, like all of the applicants Downtown Express spoke with for this story, is confident his organization will stand out from the crowd. “They say that they want to help us and I believe them and I hope they do quickly because we’re ready to open soon,” he said.

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_141/downtownartsgroups.html

New Castle resident pushes to include relics in WTC memorial
By ELIZABETH GANGA

NEW CASTLE — Pieces of steel from the wreckage of the World Trade Center are either disturbing, divisive reminders of terrorism or evocative, stirring memorials to the people who were lost.

The Town Board has made up its mind, voting in December not to include two pieces of the steel in a memorial to New Castle victims. But Michael Wolfensohn, who has pushed for more than three years to create a memorial with steel he acquired from New York City, wants people to see the steel for themselves.

Wolfensohn will bring the steel to the Duck Pond, where the memorial will be built, tomorrow from 1 to 4 p.m. He hopes people who see it will help him push the Town Board to reopen its decision. The Duck Pond is at Route 120 and Douglas Road in Chappaqua.

"There's still people who think this thing is 20 feet high," he said. "Literally it's two tiny pieces of steel. That's all it is."

Wolfensohn proposed a memorial at the Duck Pond after his friend, Louis Inghilterra, was killed in the attacks. Two other New Castle residents, George Morell and Allan Shwartzstein, were also killed. Though the Town Board initially approved Wolfensohn's memorial, it later took over the process of designing and choosing a site for the monument. The board reopened the site-selection process in early 2004 but, after months of debate, decided the Duck Pond was the right place for the memorial.

Wolfensohn has criticized the three board members who voted for a memorial without the metal for never coming to look at it. The Town Board voted 3-2 on Dec. 20 for a design that will include a deck looking out at the park's waterfall and a memorial rail that will hold the plaques.

Michael Brown, who has fought against including the steel in the memorial, which will be near his house, said the board made the right decision.

"The Town Board deserves the support and praise from all residents for their December decision regarding the memorial," he said.

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dl...1200387/1026/NEWS10

GLEN RIDGE, NJ - Steve Plate, the last mayor of Glen Ridge, has been tapped to become the director of priority programs for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and in so doing, takes on one of the biggest and most ambitious projects of our time.

Through the promotion, Plate, 51, will be overseeing the World Trade Center redevelopment project through to its completion, currently projected to be somewhere around 2010.

It has been a long and rewarding climb to the top for Plate, who said he worked his way “up the ranks” in private industry with such companies as Exxon after getting his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Manhattan College.

By the time he left the private sector, he had made his way through different cultures and locations, and was ready for something more challenging.

He remembers the exact date he went to work for the Port Authority: June 10, 1985. And within about 20 years, he completed various important projects, which became more and more ambitious, like a rail project in Harrison.

This culminated in his leadership of the John K. Kennedy International Airport’s “Air Train.” The $1.9 billion project now moves more than 12 million passengers to and from the airport each year, with a fully-automated system which is run by a computer. And, as Plate points out, the whole project came in “on schedule and under-budget.”

“I guess they moved me over because of that success,” Plate said.

It was also because of his success that Plate had been sought after by the Civic Conference Committee to become a councilman in the borough.

It was during his second term on council that Mayor Tom Langton resigned his post because of his imminent move to Washington, D.C. Plate, as president of the council, immediately took over the top position.

He served out the half-term left by Langton, and then served another complete term of his own.

“The mayor doesn’t get paid, it’s non-partisan; it’s really a labor of love,” Plate said, of his years in the position.

It was this ‘labor of love’ which Plate said spurred him on to several of his proudest accomplishments as mayor. He points to the construction of the pool, the clean-up and restoration of several parks, and also the hiring of such employees as Administrator Michael Rohal and Director of Planning and Development Michael Zichelli as the most important contributions that he helped to make.

Plate said his job and specialty is relating the engineering aspects of a project to the lay people who depend on it getting done.

“Even though I’m an engineer, I kind of have a broader perspective on things. Engineers tend to have the stigma that they have the focus on technical issues, and less on business and personal issues,” he explained.

Rohal said Plate’s combination of engineering prowess and public management skills came as no surprise to him.

“I was delighted to hear that Steve accomplished two of his career goals, by overseeing the World Trade Center redevelopment and becoming the director for the Port Authority,” Rohal stated. “I believe that — with his technical knowledge, work ethic, and dedication — he will do an exemplary job.”

Plate’s task with the new World Trade Center will be another “labor of love,” as he describes it. There will be more than 10 million square feet of the office towers, a half-million square feet of retail, a performing arts center, a PATH terminal, and a memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack.

That memorial, in particular, means much to Plate, who narrowly missed being on the 72nd floor of the first Trade Center tower on the morning of Sept. 11. He missed his morning train out of the Ridgewood Avenue station that morning, and watched from afar as the second plane hit the other tower. Eighty-four of his Port Authority colleagues died in the attack.

So, the new Trade Center has become something of a personal quest and a way to leave his last engineering statement, as well as honoring those who were lost.

“There’s no other job as exciting as this is,” Plate said.

Monday, January 23, "EPA to New York City: Drop Dead!" on WBAI

WBAI’s weekly Health Action will look at how the EPA has wasted two years in producing a "plan" to sample for 9/11 contamination that has nothing to do with science and even less to do with protecting the health of workers in residents in Lower Manhattan and areas of Brooklyn and New Jersey. To make matters worse, it has abandoned any attempt to examine and make recommendations address the unmet health needs of those whose health is already compromised as a result of its earlier coverup of the environmental threats people faced immediately following the destruction of the WTC.

On WBAI 99.5-FM, Monday, January 23, 1- 1:30. Also webcast at www.wbai.org

With Lainie Kitt, Teamsters Local 237 representative on the 90 Church Street Coalition, and Rachel Lidov, Co-Coordinator of 9/11 Environmental Action. Hosted by Jonathan Bennett, New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health.


******

9/11 and the Environment: A Failed Government Response

A Panel Discussion

 Tuesday, January 24th -- 4:00-5:00 PM

Cardozo Law School
12th St and 5th Ave

 Moot Court Room
on the first floor

with


Suzanne Mattei, Executive, New York City Office of the Sierra Club
Kimberly Flynn, Co-Coordinator, 9/11 Environmental Action
Joel Kupferman, NY Environmental Law and Justice Project
Moderator: J.P. Harpignies, Associate Producer, Bioneers

to subscribe or unsubscribe to News&Alerts,
write to: clearinghouse@911ea.org

for more information:
9/11 ENVIRONMENTAL A CTION
www.911ea.org
9/11 ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION is a community-based organization of residents, parents and occupational safety, public and environmental health advocates, formed in April 2002 to end the federal Environmental Protection Agency cover-up, fight for a comprehensive clean-up, and demand medical monitoring and health care for everyone harmed by WTC contamination.

N EWS&A LERTS' frequent bulletins come to you free of charge. Nonetheless, we always appreciate contributions of any amount to support 9/11 EA's daily work. Please visit http://www.911ea.org and click on the "Make a Donation" link, or write to Rachel@911ea.org to find out how to send one. We are very proud to announce that as of mid-December, 2005:

9/11 ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION is a 501(c) nonprofit organization and all contributions are tax deductible in accordance with IRS regulations.

for more information:
9/11 ENVIRONMENTAL A CTION
www.911ea.org

   
By Jim Schlosser

GREENSBORO -- David Griffin Jr. and his crew have been breathing easy for more than four years, but Wednesday's newspaper headline made them skip a breath or two.

"Workers at ground zero might be dying of toxicities," it read and included a reference to what's been dubbed "the trade center cough" that many who worked or lived near the World Trade Center in New York City still experience.

Griffin, a leader in his family's D.H. Griffin Wrecking Co. of Greensboro, probably spent more time than anyone at the site where on Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists crashed two jet airliners into the centers, which toppled. On that day, 2,801 people were killed, 2,261 injured.

"You worry about it but it ain't nothing that consumes you," Griffin said of health dangers that might loom. "You trust in the Lord and get up and go to work and hope everything works out."

He said he and other Griffin employees go to the doctor annually for respiratory monitoring. None has shown any signs of illness, Griffin said.

Susan Smith, a Red Cross worker from Greensboro who spent a month at the site, said her initial reaction to Wednesday's story was "scary," especially the part about a worker coughing up gravel. She could relate to what's been dubbed "trade center cough." She had it awhile after returning home.

She says at the Red Cross's urging she went through a battery of respiratory tests at Duke University Medical Center about a year later. She checked out fine. A few years later she was offered a chance later to repeat the tests, but declined.

"I'm really not worried," she said. "I don't live my life that way."

But the article made her think of the many people she met at the site. She wonders what has become of them. One worker sticks out in her mind. He came into the Red Cross facility "covered from head to toe in dirt and dust." He rested, then returned to the site. Has he suffered any from the experience?

She observed that some workers wore respirators, others didn't. Everyone, including herself, was thinking of the moment, not the future.

Smith's and the Griffin crew's good health appears to buck a trend. Wednesday's story cited three men who worked at the site and who all had died within the past seven months. They had complications that reportedly included bronchitis, emphysema and possibly cystic fibrosis, black lung disease and mercury poisoning. Two of the three had never smoked.

Their families and colleagues blame dust and particles ingested at the ruins. The story said thousands of others who worked or lived near the site have reported respiratory problems.

The story cited doctors who said it would take decades of monitoring to determine what permanent effect, if any, exposure to ground zero had on the 71,000 who worked there after the attack.

Griffin said his crew began medical screening about 18 months ago at the request of New York City health officials.

D.H. Griffin supervised 2,000 people in New York, but most weren't on the company payroll. Griffin declined to say how many of the company's workers were in New York. A story in the News & Record in May 2002, when David Griffin was still in New York, put the figure at about two dozen.

The younger Griffin, whose father, D.H. Griffin Sr., founded the company, said the trade center assignment was the most dangerous in the company's 45-year history.

The history includes demolition and implosion of more than 12,000 buildings. A recent job was the implosion of the 452,000-square-foot former Burlington Industries headquarters on West Friendly Avenue.

After the two hijacked airliners struck the World Trade Center, the remains of the towers burned for 100 days, Griffin said. The ashes and dust contained human remains and asbestos.

"We tried to be very adamant about wearing respirators," Griffin says.

But he conceded that he and others often worked without masks. They made communications impossible. Words sounded garbled. He said good communications trumped constant wearing of a respirator.

"You could get killed if you didn't communicate," he said, referring to the huge beams being cut up around him.

He said despite the shock of Wednesday's story, he believes various factors unrelated to ground zero might figure into the chances of becoming ill. A person who inhaled some asbestos dust and other toxic particles and who also smoked two packs of cigarettes daily might be more prone to sickness than a nonsmoker.

Firefighters face similar environmental dangers, he said, when they confront out-of-control fires. But they are only exposed for a few hours at a time and not every day. He said, during one stretch, his crew worked 16 hours a day for five months.

"You get more exposure in that time than a firefighter might get in a 35-year career," he said.

But he knew the risks in New York and elsewhere he works. He said the only occupation more perilous than demolition work is the opposite: erecting steel beams that wreckers remove decades later.

"In New York," he said, "you were doing what you had to do. Everything in life has certain levels of danger. We're in a dangerous business."

And the work goes on. His company is now taking down the 6-million-square-foot former Cannon Mills plant in Kannapolis.

http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...07/1001/NEWSREC0201

Residents fight to include WTC steel in 9/11 memorial
By MICHAEL GANNON

Jason Klein saw the flier handed to him at the Chappaqua train station last week. He also passed the children holding the "Honk to save the steel" signs at the edge of Bicentennial Park yesterday as he drove to get his hair cut.

He had not, however, actually seen the object of the bitter controversy that has divided this affluent hamlet for 2 1/2 years: two small remnants of twisted steel support beams from the World Trade Center. After stopping on his way home to see the steel on display at the park, he couldn't understand why the New Castle Town Board would not include the pieces in a memorial to three town residents killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"We're talking about excluding the most meaningful piece of the memorial," he said after signing a petition urging the town to reconsider its decision.

The debate over whether to include the steel in a memorial planned for this quaint, passive park, known colloquially as the "Duck Pond," has raged since the idea was first floated in the summer of 2003.

The Town Board last month voted 3-2 to build a memorial in the park that did not include the steel. The decision was influenced by neighbors of the park who have fought the plans, arguing that the small, steel pieces — slightly larger than twin toolboxes — are disturbing reminders of a horrific day.

Michael Wolfensohn, a town resident who conceived the memorial and has fought to include the steel, says he respects the concerns of neighbors. But what he cannot understand, he said yesterday, is why anyone would object to including the steel in the manner proposed: shielded in the middle of the park, inconspicuous to anyone except those who take the time to visit the immediate vicinity.

"If you don't want to see the steel, you don't have to — unless you hang-glide over the place," he explained, in an animated conversation with Klein.

Wolfensohn has raised some $26,000 for the memorial, which was inspired by the death of his friend and neighbor, Louis Inghilterra, in the attacks. New Castle residents George Morell and Allan Shwartzstein also died.

Wolfensohn said he would continue to pressure the town to include the pieces in the memorial. He organized yesterday's event as a way to demonstrate what he calls widespread public support for his position. After about three hours at the park yesterday afternoon, about 165 people signed a petition and hundreds of passing cars on Quaker Road honked their horns in response to the sign.

While opponents to the steel by and large avoided the park yesterday, signs of the acrimony were visible — literally.

Russell Leto, a homeowner who has lived on Quaker Road opposite the park for two years, yesterday hung a sign in his yard that read, simply, "No Steel."

Leto said he did not object to the steel being displayed publicly in a more appropriate venue, such as Town Hall. A passive park in a residential neighborhood, however, to which people come for quiet reflection, is not an appropriate place, he said.

"Both my wife and I lived and worked in Manhattan on Sept. 11," he said. "It's not something we want to be reminded of every day."

Not all neighbors, however, agree. "I think it's kind of a small thing to be focusing on," said Jim Harrison, who lives on a hill overlooking the park from the opposite side, who visited the park yesterday. "It's such an unobtrusive thing."

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dl...1220304/1018/NEWS02