Three construction supervisors were indicted on manslaughter charges yesterday for their roles in the deadly 2007 fire at the former Deutsche Bank building – but the city avoided prosecution for its failure to inspect the site.
EDITORIAL: Too Little, Too Late
Two employees of the mob-linked John Galt Corp. and a safety manager with the contracting firm Bovis Lend Lease were arraigned on charges of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment in the deaths of firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino Jr.
Beddia, 53, and Graffagnino, 33, died on the 14th floor of 130 Liberty St., trapped without any water in a warren of blocked passageways while battling an Aug. 18, 2007, blaze sparked by a worker’s careless smoking.
No charges were filed against the city, despite extensive evidence that Fire Department and Buildings Department personnel failed to conduct proper inspections.
“Everyone who could have screwed up did screw up. It’s just amazing the amount of mistakes that were made here,” said Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.
He added that charging the city would have been “tilting at windmills” because of a centuries-old legal doctrine shielding governments from most criminal charges.
Mitch Alvo, director of abatement for John Galt Corp., Salvatore DePaola, a Galt foreman, and Jeffrey Melofchik, a site-safety manager for Bovis, all pleaded not guilty and were released on bail. The three are accused of dismantling the building’s standpipe – which supplies firefighters with water – to speed up the abatement.
The John Galt Corp., a subcontractor for the project, was also indicted.
“Three people indicted is a joke,” fumed Joseph Graffagnino Sr., who lost his 33-year-old son in the blaze. “The city seems to go after the little guys. They could have done this from the second day after the fire.”
In the fall of 2006, Galt asbestos workers removed fasteners from the basement standpipe to make it easier to scrub it clean. When a 42-foot-section of the pipe then crashed to the floor, Alvo, DePaola and Melofchik allegedly decided to cut the pipe into pieces and let the work continue without an operational standpipe.
Bovis Lend Lease, an Australian-based firm, agreed to implement new fire-safety practices and pay $10 million to the victims’ families. The city agreed to overhaul the way it inspects sites under construction, demolition and abatement.