Law Department notice on WTC document preservation, Oct 2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

Pages Mr. RickBeasae August 4,2003

samples taken from Octobar 2001 through May 2002 there were only seven exceedances oftheAHERA standard.” 20. The second full paragraph on page 30 beginning, “'rhe indoor residential cleanup program"’ is inaccurate. The second scntciice states that the Governor of New York did not declare a public health emergency. In fact, the thwemor declared a ‘'general emergency,” which is construed to include a public health emergency. Also, the fourth sentence stales ihat ihe City indicated that an inidnor cleanup was not necessary. This is not ctHTCCl. At no time did the City indicate thtd an indoor cleanup was not necessary, hr feet, early in the “Re^onsse Effort,” the City inquired concerning the availability of federal funds to pay for such a cleanup. The City also widely disseminated guidchr.es. for bui tding owners and tenants to clean indoor spaces. The City accordingly recommends that the second sentence he modified to delete the phrase, “and the Governor of New York did not declare a public health emergency for (Ida incident” We recomTnend that the fourth sentence of the paragraph be deleted.

21. We strongly recommend that the re&piratcsr sections contained withitt pages 16 through 10 be completely takes out ofthis report. Work place safety and personal protective equipment are matters within the junsdiction of OSHA. These matters are, therefore, inappropriate for assessment by BPA-OIG. Further, much of Ihe material concerning respiralMs ^tpears to be based on two reports that are inaccurate, incomplete and iTBuiriciontly researched. If these sections remain in the report, we advise foe following; The section entitled "Kt^rator Use at Ground Zero Lacking” should be changed to “Respiratw Use M Grouod Zero." Within foal section, the first sentence should be changed to read: “A widely publicized aspect of ths WTC resporwe was (he less than 100% compBance with requirements to use respirators by rescue and consIniclitKt crews,” since there was not a total lack of respirator use. The second sentence should be changed to: “b was beyond foe scope of this review to tk^ermine the extent of noocontpltance with respirator rvquirentcttls. jukJ why this occurred” for foe same reason- The fourth sentence within that section should read: “Our Bmited work in fois ares indicated that respirators were widely available but provisions of the site requirontanls for using respirators were not fully coar^lied wth for a niunber ofreasons” since there was a plethora of respirators at the site. The sixth sentence contains several inaccuracies and rfiouW be ehanj^ to; “Other reasons appeared to include tiw respirators’ interference, due to lite state of foe lectnology, with the ability of emergency workers to communicate and conflicting messages about (lie air quality at Ground Zero.”

22. The section entitled "Reports on I.ack of Respirator Use” on page 17 should be completely deleted because, wlnfo it purports to rquesent a total picture of Site oporaiiuns, it in feet presents a very narrow ami skewed snap^ot by the author, who was at foe site for a very limited number of hours, and who misidentified a key City agency - the Department of Design and Construction ~ and its role in the rescue and recovery efforts. The bullet points sliould be taken out with (he exception of foe point starting with "During foe September 22-26 period," because there woe foousaols of rosasue and olean- op workers on foe site and a DDC official monitoring safety at th® site personally

146 Report No. 2003-P-00012

NYC-WTC_000145501