US News

BANK-RAZE BIZ’S HISTORY OF HORROR

When Michelle Smith heard that two firefighters were killed in a burning building that was undergoing demolition by general contractor Bovis Lend Lease, she thought, “My God, it’s happened again.”

“Somebody else has gotten hurt or died because of their lack of following protocol and directions and doing things the proper way,” she said.

Smith’s daughter, McKenzie, 3, died Christmas Eve 2001 at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia from an infection linked to aspergillus, a mold often found in dirt kicked up by construction.

Bovis was building the new Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital next door – and dust coated McKenzie’s room, her mom said.

The deaths of four other children were blamed on the mold – and the failure to keep it out of adjacent hospital rooms where kids were ill or undergoing cancer treatment.

Bovis, along with the upper Manhattan hospital, settled a suit with the parents of Grace Murphy, 5, a cancer patient who died in November 2002 of a lung infection caused by aspergillus, said their lawyer, John Dearie.

At about the same time children were falling ill from aspergillus, Bovis was leading the cleanup of Ground Zero. And it stayed for the redevelopment phase of the area – as the company in charge of razing the toxin-filled Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty St.

In November 2005, Bovis was handed that $45 million contract – which eventually ballooned to $86 million – by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., plus a $6 million incentive if it finished work before 2008. Bovis was selected despite objections from the city Department of Investigation over two of its subcontractors, and earlier criticism from agencies of its safety record at Ground Zero.

An LMDC spokesman said he couldn’t comment on Bovis or the contractor’s role in the Aug. 18 fire at the Deutsche Bank building, in which two firefighters, Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino, ran out of air and died after getting lost amid the maze of blocked-off stairwells and thick smoke.

But Bovis is already in hot water over worker-safety failures at Ground Zero.

It was one of four main contractors hired to do post-9/11 cleanup, getting $10 million from the city and another $277.2 million in federal aid. In January 2002, it became the sole construction manager at Ground Zero, in charge of worker safety.

Now it’s named in lawsuits by thousands of 9/11 recovery workers suffering respiratory disease, cancer and other illnesses. They say the city and its contractors neglected to protect them from toxic exposure at the heavily tainted site.

A Jan. 3, 2002, memo by the city’s Department of Design and Construction cited a “lack of commitment” by Bovis to environmental, safety and health programs.

That month, the department said safety meetings were canceled because “no safety officers were present” for Bovis and other contractors.

Meanwhile, “as few as 20 percent” of workers in the rubble wore respirators required by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

In Feb. 13, 2002, a department memo again faulted Bovis: “The overwhelming consensus of many parties (e.g. OSHA, FDNY, Liberty Mutual, etc.) is that the safety job is not getting done. Project management appears to only address safety issues when convenient for the schedule of the project.”

But the city is fighting the Ground Zero worker lawsuits and, last week, the Construction Department changed its tune on Bovis, calling the company’s safety record during the World Trade Center cleanup “exemplary.”

A Bovis spokeswoman said the company’s safety record “is one which we can be proud of.”

susan.edelman@nypost.com