Gimme shelter from that bus shelter!
Two sparkling new bus shelters on the Upper West Side spontaneously shattered, showering people with a cascade of broken glass, according to pending lawsuits.
Two victims say they have no idea why the shelters broke. But an engineer who helped install them is offering a shocking explanation: His former company screwed the city by using bolts that are too small to bear the 900 pounds of glass at each three-sided structure.
Engineer Volkan Akkurt claims that standing under the shelters isn’t safe, according to his lawsuit against Cemusa, the Spanish firm that paid the city $1 billion for the right to install the snazzy-looking shelters in return for selling ads on them.
A construction worker and a baby sitter each say they were hurt by the new bus shelters.
Victoria Brito, 47, was waiting with the two girls she baby-sat in March 2009 when a glass panel on Amsterdam Avenue and West 98th Street suddenly “fell on top of me,” she said in a deposition. The glass cut her hands and arms as she covered the heads of the kids.
Construction worker Herman Huggins, 45, also suffered a shard shower while eating a sandwich at the bus shelter on Columbus Avenue and 110th Street in January 2008.
“The glass just shattered on me,” he told The Post. He said his knees buckled under the weight of the glass and he suffered a concussion. He has since needed shoulder surgery — and lost his job because of his injuries, he said.
The two victims are suing the city, Cemusa, and subcontractor Shelter Express.
The city Department of Transportation learned in April 2008 about the shorter screws.
But Cemusa told DOT that Akkurt was just a “disgruntled employee” and there was no danger in using a 2.75-inch bolt instead of a 3.5-inch bolt to secure the lower beam that holds the glass.
“We conclude there was never a public safety concern,” Cemusa official David Yagnesak wrote DOT in April 2008.
The DOT took Cemusa at its word, according to a letter from the agency.
DOT and Cemusa said they were unaware of any shattering problem or of the incidents involving Brito or Huggins. Akkurt’s $17 million suit claims that he was fired after he told top Cemusa officials that he was worried about the danger posed by the bus shelters and of electrical wiring on the newsstands that the
Cemusa was installing.