Edited by author 06-23-2005 10:24 PM
/m875
SOMETIMES it seems that the most important quality an architect can possess is optimism. For example, it took 12 years for the Jewish Museum I designed in Berlin to finally open to the public. A few hours later it had to close. The date: Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. That jarring confluence of events not only predated but also presaged my role in rebuilding ground zero. And the memories of what we went through in Berlin give me confidence that we will succeed in New York as well.

When I won the museum competition, Berliners were divided between those who felt my design would represent the new Germany and others who found it too prominent and unsuitable. Many said the building would never be built.

Once it was built, the naysayers said it would never be occupied. When the exhibitions were installed, they said no one would come. Since it re-opened the day after 9/11, it has become one of the most visited museums in Europe.
We persevered through seven governments, six name changes, five culture ministers, four museum directors, three mayors, two sides of a wall and one unification - with zero regrets. I was called naïve, foolishly optimistic and worse. Today, of course, the same charges echo in New York. Critics stress that it has been nearly four years since the attacks and claim that little progress has been made. They are wrong.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, chaos gave way to grief, which eventually turned into a burning determination to do the right thing - for the victims, the families, the city, the nation. Yet what was the right thing? Rebuild the twin towers? Preserve the 16 acres as an empty field of memory? The city and state rightly decided that the public should help answer these questions. A first series of designs was presented and rejected. A second planning effort, international in reach and wide-ranging in scope, led to a spectacular display of finalists at the rebuilt Winter Garden. I was fortunate enough to be selected as the winner.

It is worth remembering that it was only two years ago that the master plan contract was signed. The general agreement for the creation of land parcels and underground structures was accepted just 20 months ago. Measured against any reasonable standard, this project has come a long way in a very short time. (Recall that after the Oklahoma City bombing it took five years to complete the memorial and six years to finish the museum.)
Perhaps a detailed explanation of the status of the major facets of the project, and a reminder of what we will have in the end, will help allay New Yorkers' famous impatience.

The 9/11 memorial, designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker, set within a tree-filled park, will abut the old towers' exposed foundation, or slurry wall, which descends 75 feet down to bedrock. It will have two sunken pools in the footprints of the towers, 35 feet below the ground, with cascading waterfalls. A full-scale mock-up of the waterfalls is being tested now; construction of the memorial will begin next spring and it should be completed in September 2009.

The Freedom Tower - which will reach 1,776 feet into the sky - is being redesigned to make it the safest tower in the world. Yes, work has been delayed by security concerns, but we may make up for this with an expedited construction schedule and a simpler, more slender design. The new plans will be made public in a matter of weeks.
Other aspects of the effort are proceeding apace.

Groundbreaking for Santiago Calatrava's spectacular transportation center is set for late summer; work should be completed in 2009. The International Freedom Center and International Drawing Center will break ground on their shared cultural center in 2007; it too should open in 2009. And we will soon see Frank Gehry's design for the performing arts center, which should be completed in about three years.

At the center of all this will be the Wedge of Light Plaza, a public space the size of the Piazza San Marco in Venice. Its shape was inspired by the configuration of sunlight at the Trade Center at the times on that terrible morning when the first plane struck and when the second tower fell.

The master plan is not a straitjacket. For example, if a decision were made to convert some towers to residential instead of commercial use, the plan could accommodate that decision without compromising integrity or sacrificing light and air.

Some things, however, are inviolable. The Freedom Tower must remain the beacon around which the others cluster. It must stand 1,776 feet tall, and it should beckon toward the Hudson River. These are not simply hallmarks of a plastic keychain souvenir. Symbols matter - whether the slurry wall, the Wedge of Light Plaza or the luminous Freedom Tower itself. The quality of what we achieve at ground zero will, after all, define the New York skyline and give shape to our aspirations and dreams.

When I hear the naysayers carping about the supposed lack of progress, I like to think of a phrase written by George Washington in a letter during the bleak early days of the Revolutionary War: "Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages."

The record of achievement in America then and now affirms my optimism and sustains my resolve.
Daniel Libeskind is the master planner of the World Trade Center site.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/23/opinion/23libeskind.html

WTC investigators issue skyscraper recommendations
Goal: to create buildings that achieve 'burnout without collapse'

NEW YORK (AP) -- The United States should update fire standards for skyscrapers in light of the World Trade Center collapse and develop new materials that can better protect tall buildings in an inferno, investigators said Thursday.

Engineers with the National Institute of Standards and Technology also urged installation of "fire-protected and structurally hardened elevators" to improve emergency response in tall buildings.

"Such elevators should be installed for exclusive use by emergency responders during emergencies," NIST said in its draft recommendations on the twin tower collapse, released at a news briefing in Lower Manhattan.

NIST, a federal agency, does not have the authority to change building codes to institute the changes, but hopes to persuade local authorities to change their building codes.

"We believe that the recommendations are realistic and achievable," said Shyam Sunder, who led the NIST investigation.

The three-year probe gathered reams of data on everything from fire tests on steel to office worker behavior in evacuating to create an exhaustive sequence of exactly how the towers fell.

The analysis has not blamed the collapse on the steel or design of the 110-story towers: NIST engineers have concluded the towers probably would have remained standing, if the impact of the airplanes had not stripped away fireproofing material on steel columns. Without that fireproofing, fires continued to burn inside offices, weakening the building's skeleton until it collapsed under its own weight.

The ultimate goal of the agency's recommendations, Sunder said, is to create buildings that can achieve "burnout without collapse," so a major fire doesn't bring down the entire structure. The report calls for "the development and evaluation of new fire resistive coating materials, systems and technologies with significantly enhanced performance and durability to provide protection following major events."

The agency's report also examined emergency response efforts after the attack. It concluded that some of the 2,749 lives lost at the World Trade Center might have been saved with stronger evacuation systems and better communication among rescuers.

Emergency workers need to change how they coordinate rescue efforts, the investigators concluded. The report recommended that much of the intelligence-gathering and decision-making done onsite during such rescue efforts should be transmitted outside the building. Investigators suggested keeping a "black box," like the ones in airplanes, to record critical information for study after a major incident.

On Sepember 11, 2001 the New York City fire department had located its command centers in the buildings' lobbies, and many personnel died when the towers collapsed.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/06/23/wtc.collapse.ap/

From the Ashes
      
By DANIEL LIBESKIND
Published: June 23, 2005
SOMETIMES it seems that the most important quality an architect can possess is optimism. For example, it took 12 years for the Jewish Museum I designed in Berlin to finally open to the public. A few hours later it had to close. The date: Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. That jarring confluence of events not only predated but also presaged my role in rebuilding ground zero. And the memories of what we went through in Berlin give me confidence that we will succeed in New York as well.

Forum: Redeveloping the World Trade Center Site
When I won the museum competition, Berliners were divided between those who felt my design would represent the new Germany and others who found it too prominent and unsuitable. Many said the building would never be built. Once it was built, the naysayers said it would never be occupied. When the exhibitions were installed, they said no one would come. Since it re-opened the day after 9/11, it has become one of the most visited museums in Europe.

We persevered through seven governments, six name changes, five culture ministers, four museum directors, three mayors, two sides of a wall and one unification - with zero regrets. I was called naïve, foolishly optimistic and worse. Today, of course, the same charges echo in New York. Critics stress that it has been nearly four years since the attacks and claim that little progress has been made. They are wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/23/opinion/....html?hp&oref=login

WHO NEEDS CONEY ISLAND?
 
Late last week, while the eternally kvetching "9/11 Families" took up arms yet again to stop yet another memorial plan, Gov. Pataki announced that $3.5 million will be spent on creating two interim memorials near the World Trade Center site. The idea is to provide tourists with something other than souvenir vendors to look at when they go downtown to see the big hole, as well as to act as placeholders until the real memorial is completed 2009, eight years after the fact, and two years after anyone will remember what it is supposed to be memorializing, exactly.

One part of the plan involves the StoryCorps oral history project, which will allow people to record their own memories of the attacks. The other part, called the Tribute Center, is to be built inside a vacant storefront and will offer a gallery, an information center, educational programs and a gift shop. Volunteers will also be on hand to provide guided tours of Ground Zero.

The oral history project will open in the PATH station this July, and the museum is scheduled to open next March.

Shortly after that, work will begin on the water slide, the go-kart track, skating rink and carousel—as well as a 9/11-themed restaurant and a wide array of officially sanctioned souvenir shops. That way, when tourists buy their 9/11 baseball caps, snow globes and novelty sun-glasses, they'll know they're getting the Real Deal.


 http://www.nypress.com/18/25/pagetwo/newshole3.cfm

This may be my favorite post of all time.

Daniel Libeskind's Last Stand

Libeskind's Last Stand: Avert Your Eyes

Generally when we read something this clotted by narcissism it is a work from our own hands, and we lovingly peruse and re-peruse it, satisfying ourselves with its perfection, and, we suppose, by extension, ours. So it is for several reasons that we find ourselves disappointed with Daniel Libeskind's amazingly self-loving (and, assuming great gullibility in the world beyond this keyboard, self-serving) Op-Ed in today's New York Times. First, it gives hubris a bad name. Second, it is full of lies. Third, as political speech, political maneuvering, it is incompetent. And though we abide so many things, the public passing of counterfeit rhetoric is not among them.

One might think, for instance, that a man, a small man, say—a small man who already a full year ago was declared yet more shrunken in his duties (a hit that, legions will attest, came many months late)—might be more careful with image and fact when he (and we can assume his close counsel) contrived in their Rector Street aerie a retort to the massing, and indeed already rather massive, CW: despite its pokey rate, the Ground Zero redevelopment whizzed by Libeskind a long time ago. But here we have him declaring his relevance unchanged in the obliging pages of the Paper of Record (a paper, all should remember, that endorsed his scheme two-and-a-half years ago, breaking with its critic, himself soon to be left standing on the local platform endeavoring ineffectually to wave down an express). All that is gone is born again: The "Wedge of Light" (died: January 2004) still lives; the pit's exposed retaining walls (died: November 2003) still somehow sing their songs of democracy; the puissance of the Freedom Tower's height, the lazy symbol 1776 (d.o.a.), still works the magic it did when it was first proposed, and ridiculed by all but those elected, thirty-one months ago. For the hardcore solipsist, unable to gauge his motion as the world passes him by, time stands still.

That the architect has carted out these arguments before should surprise no one; skipping records have more variation than Libeskind on the stump. And as many close to the problem have been heard repeating in their beer, he has no incentive to shake things up. His plan was dismembered a long time ago, yet his fame and reputation rest on preserving the myth of his centrality. So we should just inure ourselves to the occasional peep of this sort; that's what they do at the LMDC, at Larry Silverstein's office, and, for the last two years at least, in Albany. What is interesting is to examine the thing as craft, however botched. Why now? Libeskind telegraphs the timing—"the new plans [for Freedom Tower] will be made public in a matter of weeks"—but even here he gets it wrong. As we will all see, when the follies continue (sans Danny), soon enough.


http://gutter.curbed.com/archives/2005/06/...avert_your_eyes.php

Twin Towers report urges changes
By Jeremy Cooke
BBC News, New York
 
The report follows a three-year study into the towers' collapse
A federal inquiry into the 11 September collapse of the World Trade Center calls for major changes in the safety specifications of US skyscrapers.
One of the key recommendations of its report is for all new tall buildings to have better emergency exits.

Just under 2,750 people died when the Twin Towers came down.

Some 12,000 more would have died had the towers been full, partly because of poor emergency exits, says the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Only about a third of the World Trade Center employees had arrived at their desks when the buildings collapsed.

'Resistance'

One of the key findings of this three-year investigation is that wider exits must be provided, with entrance doors on every floor.

Other recommendations include the need to construct skyscrapers to withstand what is called progressive collapse - in other words to avoid the sort of cascade effect which ultimately brought down the Twin Towers.

These new federal recommendations will not be binding and they will certainly be resisted by many in the construction industry.

The improved specifications would add an estimated 5% to the cost of building a new skyscraper.

Some engineers are warning that it is practically impossible to build a structure capable of withstanding the sort of catastrophe which befell the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001.
 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4121702.stm

9/11 memorial takes shape

By Jeff Shields

Inside the Argos Art Foundry near Brewster, N.Y., a deformed 15-foot steel beam hangs above the shop floor, a bent and rusted relic of the World Trade Center's North Tower.

The symbol of destruction will be reborn this fall in Norristown as the centerpiece of Montgomery County's emphatic 9/11 memorial - a giant pair of bronze hands lifting the I beam to the sky.

For some families of 9/11 victims, the sculpture - the 7-foot-tall, aged hands and the 1,400-pound, ruined beam - may be too much.

"I wish it were made more of a life-affirming thing," said Helen McIlvaine of Oreland, whose son Bobby was killed at the trade center. "This smacks right back to 9/11."

But the panel that chose the design saw hope and solace in it. And most families of victims with ties to Montgomery County, although they were not included in the selection process, say they are grateful.

"We appreciate the gesture," said Ralph Maerz of Lansdale, whose son, Noell, was on the 84th floor of the South Tower when the plane struck. "The whole position of the hands holding it upward, giving it comfort - I like it."

"There was a spiritualness to it," said Janet Clarke, who raised her son, Christopher "Buddha" Clarke, in Devon and now lives in Lower Merion. Her son also was killed in the World Trade Center. "It's amazing that the county that I'm in is doing it."

Most 9/11 victims' families have received a small piece of a girder from the World Trade Center as a grim keepsake. Beams also will be used in memorials in Bucks County and New Jersey.

Those memorials will be quiet, pastoral places of refuge, intended for families. Norristown's, on the other hand, promises to be a provocative, decidedly urban monument, surrounded by cement and granite at the county courthouse. It will also be the first major public 9/11 memorial in the Philadelphia region.

The artist behind the memorial, Israeli-born sculptor Sassona Norton, said the beam affected her instantly with a terrible beauty. Norton had the beam hauled up to Argos, where the hands were cast in sections. They are now being assembled.

"When I saw the I beam for the first time... there was something so vulnerable about it, you really wanted to get down on your knees and touch it," she said.

The tragedy that contorted the piece of metal also gave it a strange, dynamic, poetic movement, Norton said. The beam seems to be reaching out for comfort, she said.

Norton wanted large, strong, weathered hands to be the refuge for the beam, seeing strength, action and transcendent expression in them.

"By having the hands touching the I beam," she said, "you put yourself in a place where you can transform the experience, that you can deal with the pain and say, 'It is OK to survive it.' "

Montgomery County Sheriff John Durante witnessed the magnetism of the beam on July 31, 2002, when he was hauling it back from Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island.

Durante and his crew stopped for gas and grub on the New Jersey Turnpike. People gathered around the flatbed truck, asking to touch the wrecked steel.

"People just walked up to it and knew what it was," he said.

The beam was part of a one-year anniversary ceremony hosted by Montgomery County. It lay in storage for a year until the county announced a competition to design the memorial and a selection committee was formed to chose the winner.

Norton was in London in September 2003 when she read about the competition for the memorial in Sculpture magazine. The ads drew about 40 entries, which were narrowed down to six finalists. Norton's design was a unanimous choice.

She captured the selection committee both with her design and her passion.

"Hers had the strongest sense of what happened that day and the need for remembrance and uplifting, instead of the negativity of all that happened," said Fran Doyle, executive director of the Montgomery County Cultural Center, a member of the six-member selection committee.

Norton's commitment to the project goes beyond art. She has overspent the $100,000 allotted by the county, spending $90,000 of her own money, she said. County officials said she has not asked for extra money.

"I feel blessed and fortunate to do it," said Norton, 63, of Bedminster, N.J. "I'm so excited about it that the issue of losing money is secondary."

Montgomery County did not include the victims' families in the selection process, contrary to what has been done in New York; Shanksville, Bucks County; and New Jersey.

Besides Doyle, the six-member jury included an artist, landscape architect, museum curator, county planner and a volunteer fireman.

Artist Frederic Schwartz, who has won competitions to design Empty Sky, New Jersey's memorial on New York Harbor, and The Rising for Westchester County, N.Y., said Montgomery County took a risk with its selection committee.

"Absolutely, the families come first," Schwartz said. Without involving them, "the risk is obvious - that you hurt somebody. And why should somebody be hurt one more time?"

Maerz said the county "could have asked for our suggestion - just to make us feel better."

Helen and Robert McIlvaine say the memorial offers only renewed grief.

Their 26-year-old son, Bobby, died outside the towers. The falling beam in the memorial, they say, could have been the one that killed their son.

"I won't go there because of the beam," Robert McIlvaine said. "I'll just sit there and think about that morning."

Norton has already considered that scenario. But as she sees it, the World Trade Center debris was an unwitting accomplice in death. Although she is not religious, Norton compared the beam to a cross - a simple structure once used as a killing machine that became a symbol of redemption.

"This is not the source of the tragedy, this is the instrument of the tragedy that became a victim the same way people became victims," she said.

Montgomery County Commissioner Jim Matthews, who has reached out to several of the families, said he never even thought of involving the families.

"I have tried to more leave them alone than exclude them," Matthews said. "I didn't want to trouble troubled people."

Susan Mathes, a clinical psychologist from Rosemont, leads a 9/11 family support group that meets monthly in Conshohocken. The group has been frustrated that Philadelphia doesn't have its own memorial, although at least four Philadelphia families lost sons, daughters, or spouses, she said.

"I think, in the long run, people will appreciate it - I really do," Mathes said.

Ruth and John Sigmund of Wyndmoor, whose daughter, Johanna, was killed by falling debris, said they were too numb for the job of choosing a memorial and happy that someone "ran with the ball."

"I'm very positive that Montgomery County is doing something - I think it's a wonderful thing," Ruth Sigmund said. "There's been such a lot on us. Maybe right now I've been spared one more thing "

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/breaking_news/11961189.htm

Camera-equipped balloon surveys skyline from WTC site

By PAT MILTON
Associated Press Writer
June 21, 2005, 4:13 PM EDT

NEW YORK -- With redesign plans for the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site up in the air, architects Tuesday sent up a balloon with a dangling camera to take panoramic views of New York's skyline to attract prospective tenants.

The mushroom-shaped helium balloon, tethered to the ground by a cable, was manipulated 1,400 feet above ground zero by a team of specialists who used remote control to snap photographs with a 360-degree lens from a camera affixed to a tail on the balloon.

"We are trying to see (from) what floors one sees water," said Curt Westergard, a landscape architect hired by Silverstein Properties, the developer of the site in Lower Manhattan.

The photographs are to be used in marketing and publicity to show prospective tenants precisely what views they will see from each floor of the tower.

The 1,776-foot tower, set to open in 2009 at the earliest, is to be the tallest structure in the world and the signature building at the trade center site.

Last May, Gov. George Pataki ordered a redesign of the tower to address police security concerns, including that the structure would be too vulnerable to truck bombs. Redesign plans are expected to be unveiled later this month.

The balloon and camera technique, created by Westergard seven years ago, has been used for surveillance missions as well by the Department of Homeland Security and police agencies.

"It can show what a sniper would be able to see," said Westergard, of Digital Design and Imaging Services of Virginia.

The 13-foot-long balloon has a nylon cover that can be changed to camouflage for surveillance, green for the forest, or brown for the desert, he said.

He said the sky-blue color used Tuesday was intended to blend in with a perfect first day of summer.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/new...ny-region-apnewyork

Federal panel to release final recommendations for evacuating skyscrapers
June 22, 2005, 1:52 AM EDT

NEW YORK (AP) _ A federal panel investigating the World Trade Center collapse will reportedly recommend new safety standards for tall buildings, including construction of sturdier elevators and stairways and changes in evacuation strategies.

The recommendations by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to be officially released Thursday, are the culmination of a three-year study of tall buildings meant to help occupants survive terrorist attacks or natural disasters. They were first reported in Wednesday editions of The New York Times.
 
The panel recommended that evacuation plans be changed to provide faster escape routes for occupants of high floors, who investigators said tend to be isolated during emergencies and often do not have immediate access to help.

The three-year, $16 million investigation also recommends that elevators be built with stronger shaft walls and equipped with wiring that won't short-circuit if they get wet _ thereby providing an alternate escape route to stairways.

Standards for ensuring that steel is fireproof also should be stricter, the panel said, and sprinklers should have an backup supply of water.

The death toll from the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was 2,749. Limited evacuation capacity at the World Trade Center could have led to 12,000 more deaths if the twin towers had been fully occupied at the time of the attacks, the panel said.

The panel said that if the towers had been full, it would have taken four hours to evacuate them _ twice as long as either tower stood.

Structural engineers estimated the proposed changes would increase development costs for most buildings by about 2 to 5 percent, the Times reported.

"The recommendations will be reasonable and achievable," S. Shyam Sunder, an engineer who oversaw the investigation for NIST, told the paper.

The International Building Code Council and the National Fire Protection Association, representing the insurance industry, will review the recommendations.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/new...ny-region-apnewyork

Bush, Congress snatch funds from injured 9/11 workers
By Bill Van Auken
22 June 2005

Ever since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has invoked the mass killings of that day and, in particular, the heroism of firefighters and other workers who responded to the catastrophe to promote a policy of global militarism and attacks on democratic rights.

Now, nearly four years later, the administration and Congress are preparing to take back $125 million previously appropriated to aid workers who suffered disabling injuries in the rescue and recovery operation at the World Trade Center site.

Last Thursday, the House Appropriations Committee beat back by a vote of 35 to 28 an attempt by legislators from New York to pass an amendment that would have left the funding in place.

The congressional committee decided to let New York state keep a separate portion of workers compensation funding totaling $44 million. Initially, the Bush administration had demanded the return of that money as well as part of its fiscal 2006 budget plan. The Republican congressional leadership, however, backed off after it became clear that the funds would have to be pried back from the surviving families of 9/11 victims.

Congress had approved a total package of $175 million to assist the state of New York in compensating emergency responders, volunteers and construction workers injured at “ground zero.” A report issued last year by the Government Accounting Office concluded that the $44 million had not been used as specified in this legislation.

The New York State government had funneled it through a crime victims program and a state insurance fund covering public employees as the fastest means to provide aid. In part, the money went to pay for medical and funeral expenses.

The administration and its supporters argue that the $125 million should be returned because the New York state government’s failure to spend money for two years proves it doesn’t need it.

“The need is not as great as originally feared and those funds are no longer needed,” declared Bush budget spokesman Scott Milburn.

“I don’t understand why they are sitting on the money if they’ve got the money,” said Congressman Ralph Regula, an Ohio Republican who sits on the Appropriations Committee.

The principal reason that more money has not been spent by the state of New York is that employers—including government agencies—are systematically opposing workers compensation claims filed by those who suffered injury and illness related to conditions at the Trade Center site. In addition, many others, knowing the long delays, harassment and humiliation routinely inflicted on workers seeking such compensation, don’t even bother to apply.

The state has confirmed that more than 10,000 people have filed workers compensation claims, but will not say how many of these applications have been denied.

A document released last week, however, indicates that 9/11-related claims are 10 times more likely to be challenged by employers than other claims. The Injured Workers Pharmacy, a firm that supplies medicine to workers waiting for decisions on compensation claims, provided the figure. The company, which negotiates payments with insurance companies and charges a fee after claims are confirmed, said that it had been forced to turn away 9/11 rescue and recovery workers because so many of their claims had been blocked.

Moreover, there is every indication that the $125 million is wholly inadequate to cover the long-term needs of workers who suffered injury to both their bodies and minds on September 11 and in the months that followed.

Approximately 40,000 participated directly in the initial rescue efforts following the attacks and in the protracted cleanup operation conducted in the smoldering ruins of the toppled twin towers. Another 100,000 people worked in the immediate area, with many of them exposed to the toxic cloud of dust and debris—including asbestos, lead and mercury—that enveloped lower Manhattan after the attacks of September 11.

Doctors working with the World Trade Center Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program, which has examined approximately 12,000 ground zero workers, estimate that fully half suffer from respiratory problems as a result of their work at the site. A similar percentage of those involved in the initial response to the attacks have experienced post-traumatic stress stemming from what they saw and experienced on September 11, 2001. Many diseases—including cancer from toxic exposure—may not develop until many years later.

“There are many workers who are sick as a result of the events of 9/11 who have not received the medical care and medicine that they desperately need,” said Joel Shufro, executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH). “Not only is this money needed to provide for them, but there is a great need for government agencies to consider the extraordinary circumstances when making eligibility determinations for compensation.”

Several of these workers traveled to Washington last Thursday to participate in an unsuccessful lobbying effort to convince Congress to leave the funding in place.

Marvin Bethea is a hospital ambulance paramedic who was covered in dust and debris while trying to aid people at the World Trade Center. “It was like a big bucket of dirt thrown down your throat,” he recalled. As a result, he developed severe asthma and high blood pressure and suffered a stroke within weeks of the attack. He has been denied compensation.

“People say 9/11 is four years old and people need to move on. How can we move on when we’re not being taken care of?” Bethea asked at a press conference outside the Capitol building. “President Bush, remember we were already victims of September 11 once,” Bethea added, “Please don’t make us victims twice.”

John Feal, a construction supervisor, lost half of his foot in an accident at ground zero, but was denied a victim’s assistance claim. “This shouldn’t even be an issue,’’ Feal said. “This is wrong. We shouldn’t have to beg and scrape and plead for workers compensation. The White House is wrong. The administration is wrong. Shame on the president.”

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, Bush used ground zero as a photo opportunity, posing with a firefighter atop a wrecked fire truck and vowing vengeance over a bullhorn. In 2004, he shocked and offended families of firefighters and others who died at the World Trade Center by airing television campaign ads featuring footage of two firefighters carrying out a stretcher bearing human remains.

A speech given by Bush on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks, as his administration was preparing the war on Iraq, was typical of the president’s hypocritical rhetoric. “We’ve seen the greatness of America in rescuers who rushed up flights of stairs toward peril,” he declared, “and we continue to see the greatness of America in the care and compassion our citizens show to each other.”

The “care and compassion” shown these rescuers and recovery workers has found its realization in the administration’s depriving them of promised money to compensate them for injuries that in many cases have left them unable to continue working.

The money that is being snatched away from injured workers amounts to less than half of what Washington is spending daily on its war in Iraq. In terms of the $2.57 trillion federal budget for fiscal 2006, the $125 million does not even approach a drop in the bucket.

Yet the treatment being meted out to the ground zero workers is only the most blatant example of the attacks that the administration, Congress and state governments are carrying out all over the country. In state after state, “workers compensation reform” legislation is being rammed through state legislatures with the aim of boosting corporate profits by slashing benefits for workers disabled on the job.

That the 9/11 workers, whom the administration opportunistically paraded before the country as heroes, are being abused in the same way is an unmistakable expression of the essential policy of both the Republican administration and the Democratic Party leadership. Nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of the enrichment of the financial elite, and war abroad must be paid for through cutting the living standards and basic benefits of workers at home—including those whose sacrifices were falsely exploited in an attempt to sell the war itself.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jun2005/wtc-j22.shtml

Skyscrapers Advised to Move Command Posts

By DEVLIN BARRETT
The Associated Press
Wednesday, June 22, 2005; 3:17 PM

WASHINGTON -- Investigators probing the collapse of the World Trade Center are suggesting that rescuers responding to future emergencies in skyscrapers should not set up command posts in the lobby.

The recommendations from a federal engineering agency are to be released Thursday in New York. People familiar with the work by the National Institute of Standards and Technology spoke Wednesday on condition of anonymity because the report's release was still pending.
 
The NIST engineers have been examining the emergency response and evacuation of the towers after they were struck by hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001.

The New York City Fire Department set up its command post in the lobbies of the towers, a common practice to quickly monitor the condition of elevators, stairs and sprinkler systems.

Two people involved in the NIST discussions said investigators have decided that such a large-scale command operation would be better placed outside a high-rise to give commanders better protection and a clearer picture of a crisis hundreds of feet above them.

After the attacks, many rescue workers complained that they could have gotten better information about the disaster by watching live television reports.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...R2005062200301.html

House Approves Bill to Protect Flag
Senate Expected to Vote on Measure After Holiday
By LAURIE KELLMAN, AP

WASHINGTON (June 22) - The House on Wednesday approved a constitutional amendment that would give Congress the power to ban desecration of the American flag, a measure that for the first time stands a chance of passing the Senate as well.

By a 286-130 vote - eight more than needed - House members approved the amendment after a debate over whether such a ban would uphold or run afoul of the Constitution's free-speech protections.

Approval of two-thirds of the lawmakers present was required to send the bill on to the Senate, where activists on both sides say it stands the best chance of passage in years. If the amendment is approved in that chamber by a two-thirds vote, it would then move to the states for ratification.

Supporters said the measure reflected patriotism that deepened after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and they accused detractors of being out of touch with public sentiment.
 
AP"It's time to stand up for our symbol. I consider defecating on the flag, urinating on the flag, burning the flag with contempt -- just to mention three -- to be offensive conduct, not speech."
-- Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah

"The reason our flag is different is because it stands for burning the flag. The Constitution this week is being nibbled to death by small men with press secretaries."
-- Rep. Gary L. Ackerman, D-N.Y.

Source: nytimes.com
   
"Ask the men and women who stood on top of the (World) Trade Center," said Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham, R-Calif. "Ask them and they will tell you: pass this amendment."

But Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said, "If the flag needs protection at all, it needs protection from members of Congress who value the symbol more than the freedoms that the flag represents."

The measure was designed to overturn a 1989 decision by the Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 that flag burning was a protected free-speech right. That ruling threw out a 1968 federal statute and flag-protection laws in 48 states. The law was a response to anti-Vietnam war protesters setting fire to the American flag at their demonstrations.

The proposed one-line amendment to the Constitution reads, "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States." For the language to be added to the Constitution, it must be approved not only by two-thirds of each chamber but also by 38 states within seven years.

Each time the proposed amendment has come to the House floor, it has reached the required two-thirds majority. But the measure has always died in the Senate, falling short of the 67 votes needed. The last time the Senate took up the amendment was in 2000, when it failed 63-37.
   
But last year's elections gave Republicans a four-seat pickup in the Senate, and now proponents and critics alike say the amendment stands within a vote or two of reaching the two-thirds requirement in that chamber.

By most counts, 65 current senators have voted for or said they intend to support the amendment, two shy of the crucial tally. More than a quarter of current senators were not members of that chamber during the last vote.

The Senate is expected to consider the measure after the July 4th holiday.

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