Safety rules were broken with impunity at the Deutsche Bank building because tipped-off supervisors had workers hide violations from inspectors, asbestos-removal crew members said yesterday.
“Whenever an inspector would arrive, you could hear them on the radio saying, ‘There is a cat in the building. There is a cat in the building.’ It was like a game of cat and mouse,” said a 40-year-old asbestos worker who was employed by the John Galt Corp. at the structure.
“Then we would have to clean up the area where we weren’t supposed to be working,” the worker said outside the downtown headquarters of Asbestos Workers Local 78. “Whenever the inspectors would leave, we would just operate like we used to.”
Still, even with the warnings that inspectors were on the way, John Galt, the subcontractor, was hit with 19 violations and six stop-work orders at the Deutsche Bank building along with federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration fines for unsafe conditions.
There was no work at the Deutsche Bank building yesterday, except for Department of Buildings and FDNY investigators trying to determine what sparked the blaze last Saturday that killed firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino.
Meanwhile, Bovis Lend Lease, the main contractor, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., owner of the tower, were scrambling yesterday to find a replacement asbestos-removal company.
The Deutsche building is contaminated with asbestos and other toxins from the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11.
Bronx-based John Galt was fired on Wednesday, but was still on site Thursday, when one of its workers dropped a 300-pound pallet jack from the 23rd floor that nearly killed two firefighters below.
William Corbetis, 50, of Engine Co. 258 in Long Island City, Queens, remained in the intensive-care unit of St. Vincent’s Hospital yesterday but is now breathing on his own.
Neil Nally, 35, who suffered head injuries, was discharged yesterday.
Additional reporting by Heidi Singer, Samuel Goldsmith and Tim Perone