Toxic tower damaged on 9/11 finally coming down

Associated Press

NEW YORK

The contaminated bank tower stood shrouded in black netting for years over ground zero, filled with toxic dust and the remains of 9/11 victims. It stayed where it was, not coming down even as the towers at the World Trade Center site slowly began to rise.

Nearly a decade after the trade center’s south tower fell into it, the building with a sad history of legal and regulatory fights, multiple accidents and a blaze that killed two firefighters will finally be gone. The demise of the 41-story former Deutsche Bank building, just south of ground zero, is at least as welcome to its neighbors as the construction of new trade center towers.

“I love having the light,” said Mary Perillo, whose eighth-floor kitchen window overlooks the busy work site where the steel framework of the Deutsche Bank building is being disassembled. “I love having that black monolith out of my face.”

The bank tower — first slated for deconstruction in 2005, when a government agency bought it to end an impasse over who would pay to take it down — is down to two stories above street level. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the agency that oversaw the $300 million dismantling, said it will be completely removed in just over a week.

The delicate work of dismantling a skyscraper — referred to by its street address, 130 Liberty — is visible from surrounding buildings and from the street.

Tourists watched last week as a huge crane gently lowered a steel beam. Sparks flew as a welder removed the cables holding the beam.

Less than an hour after a hijacked jet slammed into it Sept. 11, 2001, the trade center’s south tower collapsed, tearing a 15-story gash in the Deutsche Bank building.

The building was shrouded in black as Deutsche Bank and its insurers fought over whether to raze it or clean it. To resolve the dispute, the LMDC, the city-state agency created to oversee the rebuilding of the trade-center area, agreed to buy the building for $90 million, clean it and tear it down.

The cleanup of toxins including asbestos, lead, mercury, PCBs and dioxins was delayed multiple times by fights over how to remove the material without polluting the neighborhood. More than 700 body parts of Sept. 11 victims were recovered, mostly on the roof, along with parts of the hijacked plane. Environmental and city regulators spent years coming up with a cleanup plan that would keep the toxins in with polyurethane coverings and other protective panels.

Accidents plagued the deconstruction. In May 2007, a 22-foot pipe fell from the building and crashed into the firehouse next door, injuring two firefighters.

Three months later, a construction worker’s discarded cigarette sparked a fire that tore through several stories. Firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino were trapped on the burning 14th floor and died of smoke inhalation Aug. 18, 2007.