In the decade and a half since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Downtown Manhattan community has endured civic calamities large and small: the DeutscheBank fire of 2007, Hurricane Irene in 2011, and Hurricane Sandy in 2012. There have also been more than a few near misses, consisting mostly of construction accidents that could have taken many lives, but damaged only property.
There was briefly reason to hope, on Friday morning, when a crane collapse sent debris raining down onto a two-block stretch of Worth Street, that this episode would be similar. Tragically, Downtown’s total of non-fatal, cautionary tales remains unchanged, while its list of lethal mishaps has grown by one. David Wichs, a 38-year-old trader for a Tribeca financial firm, was killed when the crane’s massive steel arm fell on top of him. Three others were injured.
When the 550-foot tall rig failed, it literally shook the ground nearby, but also reverberated in other, less obvious ways. Edward Youkilis, owner of Edward’s Diner, on West Broadway, one block away from the incident on Worth Street, said, “people in buildings nearby called or stopped by and thought that it was either an explosion or an earthquake. Mostly people didn’t know what happened. Nobody really knew that it was the crane that had fallen until they saw the news.”
Although Edward’s was affected and couldn’t open their restaurant until 2:00 pm, when the barricades on their block were removed, Mr. Youkilis felt that the police and other city agencies responded well. “We weren’t affected by it physically but the police wouldn’t allow people in,” he recalled. “But everyone couldn’t have been more helpful. “I think from a City standpoint, it was handled pretty well. It’s just, for a small business it’s hard because they weren’t allowed to let people in here.”
Karen Barwick, owner of Boomerang Toys, which is located on West Broadway, two blocks south of the incident, said it still affected her store, because pedestrian volume was far lower than on a typical Friday. “The subway being closed and then, just people not wanting to be around was significant in the loss of foot traffic that we normally would see,” Ms. Barwick said.
In some ways, the Friday accident was a close parallel to a nearly forgotten, 2007 incident in Battery Park City, at the Goldman Sachs headquarters building, which was then still under construction. Around 10:40 am on December 13, a tower crane on the structure’s 30th floor began hoisting 14,000 pounds of structural steel to a height of more than 100 feet in the air. At that point, the nylon sling enclosing the load ruptured, and the beams fell 13 stories, landing on a construction trailer that was situated directly above an enclosed pedestrian walkway, alongside West Street. The impact nearly killed (and permanently crippled) one person inside the trailer, architect Robert Woo. The fact that the pedestrian passage (which was used each day by hundreds of school children going to and from P.S. 89) was empty at that moment was largely a matter of luck.
It may also be a matter of luck that the square mile of Lower Manhattan, currently the site of more than 50 major construction projects has not experienced more incidents of this kind. City Council member Margaret Chin said, “this is a tragic reminder of the importance of coordinating an ever increasing number of construction projects in densely packed neighborhoods downtown. In particular, we need to work together to stop the planned closure of the Department of Transportation’s downtown command center, which is needed now more than ever, as this tragedy so powerfully illustrates.” This was a reference to the recently deactivated Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, which once coordinated the many local construction projects, seeking to maximize both physical safety and environmental safeguards. That agency was shut down in 2014, over the objection of community leaders and elected officials, with most of its functions absurd a newly created office within the City’s Department of Transportation. That office is now also slated to be shut down, with its coordinating functions for Lower Manhattan construction projects spread among several other offices. “I will continue to fight on behalf of Downtown residents who are living every day with non-stop construction,” Ms. Chin added.
Manhattan Borough president Gale Brewer said, “since I first convened the Manhattan Construction Safety Working Group in the fall, it’s only become clearer that we need to make changes. Both yesterday’s death and the shocking four-story fall of a worker last week both occurred on sites with a history of multiple violations. City enforcement must do more than levy fines and increase the cost of doing business — it must actually make dangerous worksites into safe ones.”
Ms. Brewer continued, “I am working with labor leaders, developers, construction safety experts, and my fellow elected officials and community representatives to address this spike in construction accidents though legislation, rule changes, and better City enforcement. We will begin campaigning for a package of reforms shortly, and I am also meeting with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and law enforcement agencies to explore how we can strengthen safety right now.”
Jonathan Perelman
photos by Robert Simko