Thursday, January 25, 2007

Risky Water View

In Brooklyn, waterfront condos are being built in Sheepshead Bay and Plumb Beach. The problem is, in the case of a fire, they may become death traps.

Fire fears over new Sheepshead Bay condos

That's ok, keep building! Don't you know that the NYC economy is counting on this revenue? People become expendable in a city where developers have more rights than taxpaying residents do.

Photo is of the John J. Harvey, a historic and endangered former fireboat. (Photo from preservenys.org)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

On a syndicated television program (which ran about a year ago) that dealt with a "post 9-11" world the following bit of information was conveyed to viewers, which I hope everyone takes notice of: (as per NYC Fire Dept. sources).......... IF YOU LIVE ABOVE THE 11TH FLOOR IN ANY BUILDING AND THERE IS A FIRE, YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN ! FIRE DEPARTMENT LADDERS CAN ONLY REACH UP TO THE 11TH FLOOR OF ANY BUILDING IN THE CITY!.......... So why are we constantly building higher? I guess that as long as a developer has "money to burn" they don't care if people do! This is irresponsibility beyond comprehension! It is absolutely criminal! Burn , baby, burn seems to be their creedo!

Anonymous said...

This is my first post on this site, but I love what is happening here and am mentioning it to my fellow workers and neighbors and parishioners.

The point I want to make it that in the case of an emergency, the city is completely unprepared to handle a real crisis.

Here in Astoria, they are starting to build like crazy. We lost our power last summer and no one was in a position to communicate the extent of the crisis for days. Even after it was known, emergency supplies took up to a week or two to get into place.

Every time we have a bad rain, the subways flood out and there is mass confusion. No one knows the deal, even the transit workers.

Something has to be done before a serious emergency hits our community. We certainly need to put a break on all this building because we can't take care of what's already here when the crap hits the fan like it did a few times last year. This was a wakeup call that seemed to have been ignored.

And we all know, the people that are responsible for that mess will get off the hook, be treated with kid gloves, and become heroes.