Financial record excerpt, DEP Box 06, undated

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document NYC-WTC_0001 43470 va wi tes aie: 7? . Security at a Sy B4 N THE NEW YORK Times METRO rvespay. JUNE », 2005 Continued From Page BI . agite bounded by a heavily trafficked state _ highway; a memorial that is expected to draw millions of visitors; and a transparent, glimmering museum directly above the so: bread, column-free mezzanine of a busy > computer rail and subway station. Cigy ‘> streets will lace the site. Below them will be @ network of ramps, roadways, loading docks and parking spaces. Officials still intend te follaw this broad ; ‘: gevelopment outline, but the design of the . Freedom Tower is being revised to provide &@ greater shield from vehicle-borne explo- gives. This is generally described as “the “. most important consideration” in antiterror -. Structural design by the emergency man- agement agency, even though the last at- ‘tack on the trade center waz an aerial as- sault. Cars and trucks have proven to be an effective way of delivering large explosive charges. The first version of the Freedara Tower '* was unveiled in 2003 and publicly embraced “4 by city and state leaders, including officials of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site. The design placed the building as close as 25 feet from West Street-Route $A. From a paralielo- gram base ringed by an arcade of exposed columns, the tower was to twist as it rose, culminating after 76 floors of occupied Space in an opemair superstructure of ca- bles, power-generating windmills art an off-center spire meant to echo the Statue af Liberty. Ltreoe Be _ LiTraCon, a type of concrete with imbed- ¥ _“ ., ded strands of glass to make it translu- cent, may be used in the Freedom Tower. People who have been informed about the redesign discussions say that the architects ‘will probably set the buliding back at least iwice as far from the street to limit blast .. damage from a car or truck bomb, end un- ' twist it. The new building is likely to have a w € z ® ae x ae 4 ty, but we are also responding to life,” Mr. _ Libeskind added. “We cannot make the ‘ square fleor plan, with a different stunrnit | and several more occupied floors than were | in the original design. Windows below the 156-foot level will almost certainly be fewer and smaller, and views wilt be Umlted. The: arcade around the base may be eliminated. Managers of the redevelopment insist . . that the trade center site can be made sale | through a series of protective zones, with. checkpoints, bollards and other barriers. And they say the Freedom Tower and oth- * er sensitive buildings can be hardened with | - blast-resistant materiais. Some, like Daniel | “* Libeskind, the site’s master planner, say the ; new Worid Trade Center ‘will be as safe as: any site in the world today, if nol safer.” “We are responding to the need far securi-. Freedom Tower a tower of fear.” There ig ne denying, however, thal this -gite has been atiacked twice. In this context, the assessment of security is something of a gamble against unknowabie, and possibly ’ deadly, odds. Much about security preparedness has been deliberately shrouded in secrecy. Some experts and public officials spoke anonymously for this article because they .., are forbidden contractually, or by the agen- cies they work for, to publicly discuss ques- tions of safety. They also say that specifying ’ security detaits is an invitation to terrorists to exceed thers. Some with knowledge of the Police De- partment’s evaluation of risk on the site said that its experts {aver caution in securi- ty tradeofis, but do nat want to be unrealis- tic in demanding assurances of absolute safety. These experts acknowledge that an urban site cannot be built that is totally im-. mune from attack, but insist that its build- ings must not be so vulnerable that they in- . vite an attack. The Freedom Tower's original “threat and risk assessment” report, these experts say, specified that the building achieve the security standards for a high-level govern- ment structure in Washingron, capable of resisting a 5,000-pound truck bomb — more than the size of the 4,000-pound Oklahoma City explosion im 1995. Though such criteria were unusually high for an office building, the police rejected thera as inadequate, given the Freedom Tower’s height, its rele as a political state- ment, is planned glass exterior and its proximity fo West Srreet-Route 9A. The police did suggest some redesign op- tions and submitted a report detailing the history of truck-bomb attacks, according to some with knowledge of the ensuing dia- logue. Finally, in early May, the governor annoanced that the Freedorn Tower would be moved away from West Street, and that the tower exterior would be strengihened. Untwisting the torqued design of the origi- nal tower would reduce the size of the build- ing’s base, and help meet the Police De- pariment’s requirement that it be set back farther from the street. The original distance of 25 feet from West Street-Reute 94 will be doubled, at a mini- mum; as much as 6 feet is conceivable. Since the distance from Vesey and Fulton Streets will be considerably less, traffic on those streets will most likely have to be lim- ited. Such seemingly minor differences matter “because explosive pressures decay so rap- idty with distance. Literally, every foot counts,” said Eve Hinman, the president af Himman Consulling Engineers and a princi- pai author of “Primer for Design of Com- mercial Guildings to Mitigate Terror Ai- tack,” issued in 2003 by the emergency man- agement agency. The Freedom Tower architects have said that the building's stairwells, ike those of the new 7 World Trade Center but unlike those of the twin towers, will be protected by reinforced concrete instead of wallboard, and will be pressurized to keep stair pas- sages frorn filling with smoke. Architects are planning to inchide sep- arate emergency-respender Staircases and elevators that could be used in a crisis. The designers hope to inoerporate redundant seis of pipes feeding the fire sprinklers. And signal-boosting radio repeaters are planned to enhance radio communication. The security consultant on the Freedom Tower project is Weldiinger Associates, an engineering firm with decades of experi- ence in blast resistance. Gver afl, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has said, the redesigned Freedom Tower will be buill to achieve United States embas- sy security standards. The base, up to 156 feet, will have what consultants call “a hard bottem,” built to Department of Defense standards of blast resistance. Although the size of this threat is classified, an emergen- cy management agency report recom- mends protection against at least 10,0060 pounds of explosives. (The largest truck bombing against an American target, ihe Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, involved seme 12,000 pounds of explosives.} Among the sheathing materials under consideration lor the Freedom Tower are stainless steel, larninated glass and transiu- cent concrete, an expensive material, same of which is sold under the brand name LiTraCon, for light transmitting concrete. The redesiga is likely to eliminate arcade columns, which the emergency manage- ment agency recommends avoiding in its design primer since they are “primary structural elements that hold ap part of the building,” said Dr. Hinman, the author of the report, in an interview. Te compensate for the reduction in floor space caused by the redesign, the occupied portion of the building, originally to be 70 stories, will probably increase by another few floors. Publicly trumpeted flourishes at the top of the building — a wind farm, an observa- tion deck, restaurants and exterior cabling at the spire — are likely to change. But none of the original elernents has thus far been written off. Qne possibility is that a singte antenna structure will allow the tower ic reach 1,776 feet. That height remains the governor’s goal, even though some security experts say it substantially raises the security ante. “in my opinion the height is a negative because of the risk of another acrial attack,” Dr. Hin- Man said, Mr. Libeskind, however, said that “a four- story building on that site wouldn’ be less attractive te those who want io destroy this country.” BRAD ae Carl Galiote, a partner at Skidmore, said, “Our client and the governor have asked us to design something grea.” Greatness aside, the security goal is to make the Freedom Tower structurally re- usable after an explosion. Such engineering standards do not assure that the lives of all the people within the building cowld be saved in an aitack, though hardening the structure could prevent many deaths. The origiuat plaza of the work? Trade Center, which acted ag a sametimes wind- swept barrier to the surrounding neigh- borhood, might have been preferable purely trom a security point of view Because it Rethinking a design that does not follow several antiterror guidelines. eliminated streets running through the site. But Alexander Garvin, an urban-planning professor at Yale University, championed the re-creation of the old street grid when he headed planning at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation in 2002 and 2063. “Either we live normal lrves with normal streets and normal sidewalks, or we go back to living in fortresses as they did in the Mid- die Ages,” he said in an interview. Masy prominent buildings are quite clese to streets. These include Grand Central Ter- minal and the Empire State Buliding and structures under construction like the Bank of America Tower at | Bryant Park and the . Freedom Tower The New York Teves Security on the streets near the Freedom Tower is being re-evaluated. future glass-clad headquarters of The New York Times across Eighth Avenue from the Port Authority Gus Terminal. This trans- portation hub has for months been undergo- ing a security upgrade. Bare steel supper: columns in upstairs parking areas have been encased in reinforced concrete to en- hance their fire and blast resistance. Several experts question the location of the Freedom Tower near a state highway, ree through streets and the beadquarters of at least iwo high-profile companies, American Express and Verizon. “The best thing from a security stand- point would be to move the Freedom Tower to Church Street,” said Guy J. Nordenson, a structural engineer and a professer of archi- tecture at Princeton University who is cur- rently invelved in several projects at the trade center site. “You could contre! truck traffic access better on Church Street than on West Street, and you would be able to achieve setbacks more easily on that site.” Trucks are not the only threal. “Large passenger vehicles Hke 5.U.¥.'s are able to carry more explosives unobtrusively and are a major hazard,” Dr. Hinman said. She said the current estimate of how much a big S.U.V. can carry is the equivalent of the charge used in the Oklahoma City bombing. Te make underground parking safe, all vehicies entermg the subterranean road- ways would be subject to inspection at the entrances off Liberty and Vesey Streets, said Stefan Pryor, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Security experts underscore that terror- ists’ intentions cannot be predicted, and they recommend the installation of special- ly designed air intakes and ventilation sys- tems in buildings at the site to counter ra- diological, chemical and biological threats. Ailsa undergoing scrutiny is the $2 billion PATH station and transportation hub by the architect Santiage Calatrava, which poses many engineering chatlenges, incinding the routing of the PATH tracks directly under the Freedom Tower site, meaning that the tover’s supporting cohimns must be thread- ed among the rails. Mr. Calatrava said in an interview that he could deliver “a beautiful building that. ac- complishes all the needs of security,” add- ing that “85 percent of people in the station will be In lower levels.” and therefore more shielded fram the possibility of explosion. Tbe distance from Church Street to the above-ground part of the terminal has net yet been determined by the Port Authority, which runs PATH, but engineers have set 50 feetas a goal. Te support the bulk of the maseum build- ing, transfer girders will be used to redis- tribute iis weight out to the sides of the PATH étation mezzanine directly below. Generally speaking, the use of transfer gird- erg is “strongiy discouraged” in the ermer- gency management agency’s primer. “If you lose the transfer girder, alot more mbol of Resolve: Many Demands on a New Ground Zero Tower The New York Tiaws of the building ig going to come down,” Dr. Hinman said in an interview. The failure of structural transfer systems contributed to ihe collapse of the original 7 World Trade Center and of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Butiding in Oklahoma City. But the transfer girders above the PATH station have been designed ‘in a way that the global collapse of the building would be almost irapossible,” Mr. Calatrava said. The museum is to have « “crystalline fa- cade” of glass prisms set into walle of wood or lerra-cotia designed to capture light, said Craig Dykers of the Norwegian architecnuir- al firm Snohetta. “We have been apprised of the security requirements,” he added, “and we plan to meet and exceed them.” But relatives of those who died In the trade center have expressed concern about all of ihe glass facades planed for the site, said Monica Tken, whose husband, Michael, died in the south tower. “For many family members who were talking on the phone to their loved ones,” she said, “the last thing they heard was the shattering of glass.” Based on past terrorist incidenis, Dr. Hin- man said, up to 80 percent of injuries from terrorist attack are from breaking glass. In an explosion, even safety glass “breaks into thousands of pellets, each with sharp edges flying at near-supersonic speed,” ac- cording to “Security Planning and Design,” a 2004 safety primer from the American In- stitute of Architects. fhe Department of De- fense requires a miniraum of quarter-inch- thick laminaied glass for exterior windows and glazed doors. : The police have neither seen nor ap- proved che redesign of the Freedom Tower, but on the basis of brielings about the safety criteria lor the revision, they have judged that the new buliding will be very resistant to a irack bomb, though they will reserve comment until they see mere specifics. The police have not yet given security ap- proval to the PATH station of to the mu- seum that will be above it, bur seme who have knowledge of Mr. Calatrava’s presen- tation io law enforcement agencies say he imapressed them with ihe security aware- ness he demonstrated from his designs of seven previous stations. In the end, some decisions about security at ground zero may necessarily be arbi- trary, political and imperfect: in short, a compromise. Family merabers of trade oen- ter victims underscore the fearful gravity of these choices, “From the begioning it bas been a rush to rebuild,” said Monica Gabrielle, co-chair- woman of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, who lost her husband, Richard, in the south wwer. “But let what they build on that site be a monument to a change in mentaliry about safety and security. No one should ever suffer like my husband did, and the 3,000 other families. We want ne one to walk in our shoes, ever.”