Thursday, March 13, 2014
Sad day in Harlem
From the Daily News:
In the months before a gas leak leveled two E. Harlem buildings, there were telltale signs of potential trouble.
Tenants say they complained repeatedly about strong gas odor in the buildings, making calls to 311 as recently as Wednesday morning.
And as of Wednesday, the city had yet to check to see if the owner of one of the doomed buildings had ever repaired a dangerous wall crack discovered in 2008.
Nine months ago a contractor installed a new gas line from the basement to the 5th floor in one of the buildings, and was allowed to sign off on his own work under a common practice known as “self-certification.”
At the time, the installation was “audited” by the city to ensure there were no leaks and as of Wednesday officials said there was no suggestion the new pipe caused the leak.
12 comments:
During the coverage of this story it was pointed out that much of the gas piping is brittle cast iron over 100 years old.
Our city and nation are falling apart. Yet we'll have spent over two-trillion dollars on two useless wars.
Some "priorities".
I expected we'd eventually get around to "Blame Bush" as we do for everything, but on the first comment?!
If maintaining a safe infrastructure in New York City can't avoid partisan politics, we have doomed ourselves to seeing more of this in the future.
After my father died in a Queens hospital, the doctor that broke the news to my mother and me made the comment that if "we didn't spend all that money on the war in Vietnam', it could have gone into cancer research.
He was trying to be "helpful".
i live on 63rd st in maspeth for over 12 years, since living here i have called the gas company numerous times about the gas main leaking and the smell of natural gas , the fdny has responded and they also notified national grid of the gas leak. national grid has come out and detected the gas leak , they sated that the gas lines in the area are old and do leak but the street is lot on the list to be updated so just deal with the gas leaking , go figure.
The practice of "self certification" was introduced during the Giuliani administration and has indeed become common in NYC. It is basically unheard of anywhere else in the USA, or any other first world nation for that matter.
Anon:
"I expected we'd eventually get around to "Blame Bush" as we do for everything, but on the first comment?!"
------------
Well we certainly cannot blame Bush for everything, but it was under his watch that we wasted all that money that could have been used for infrastructure for our country instead of two totally useless wars. What are we Vikings, we have to conquer.
But that goes for all the wars since Vietnam (all were wasted and useless).
It is called REALITY.
Seriously sad! The city doesn't take 311 seriously or even implement rules and regulations correctly. That's a way to stimulate the economy and create more jobs. Oh and the city doesn't think infrastructure matters and maintenance of this big city, but let's just keep on building more and more instead of fixing our problems first. Oh and yea lawsuit time for the city, these families should sue!
Well we certainly cannot blame Bush for everything, but it was under his watch that we wasted all that money that could have been used for infrastructure for our country instead of two totally useless wars. What are we Vikings, we have to conquer.
But that goes for all the wars since Vietnam (all were wasted and useless).
------------------------------
Well don't worry pal. the wars are over. And now your politicians can spend all that surplus money on welfare and benefits to illegal aliens. Anything left over will go into their own pockets.
Sad Day indeed. Or an exciting opportunity if you're a developer
Self-certification!
Surprised none of you commenters have picked up on that.
it's inevitable one of these new blade runner towers gets blown up over a gas leak.
as for the geopolitical ramifications over infrastructure neglect,the list is endless.Blaming Bush and his cabinet is a given,they inspired the shock doctrine,a strategy that continues even under so called enlightened liberal heros like our celebrity president and now the Blaz,who brazenly rehired edc flunkies from the previous teeny mayor's crew to his planning committee.
this particular tragedy is looking more like the work of malfeasance more than neglect.
as for the survivors,the city should award them new apartments,I am sure a lot of these luxury abu dubai imitation towers still have vacancies.
Anon stated:
Well don't worry pal. the wars are over. And now your politicians can spend all that surplus money on welfare and benefits to illegal aliens. Anything left over will go into their own pockets.
----------------
The wars might be over, but do you realize the amount of money we spend in those countries that we tore apart in rebuilding cost and the amount of money that is wasted in the corrupt system that we helped to create to begin with.
This is money that could be spent right in our own country for infrastructure.
So we blow the hell out of some country, that we should not even be involved in, nothing much changes and then we spend more money in the rebuilding of that country which never happens.
Post a Comment