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News
Deutsche demo on hold, but contractor talks
cranes, safety & morale
Downtown Express June
16, 2008 By Julie Shapiro
Ray
Master, the person charged with bringing the
Deutsche Bank building down safely, said his
colleagues constantly tell him two things.
The first is that he’s crazy
to take a job as safety director at 130 Liberty
St., where a blaze last August killed two
firefighters.
The second is that he’s
crazy to go before the community board to answer
questions.
But Master told Community
Board 1 Monday night that being called crazy
doesn’t stop him.
“I don’t mind coming here
anytime,” Master, a Bovis Lend Lease supervisor,
told the World Trade Center Redevelopment
Committee, before briefing them on progress at
130 Liberty St. And board members certainly
don’t mind having him — they heralded Master’s
openness in contrast to the past reticence of
Bovis, the general contractor, and the Lower
Manhattan Development Corporation, which owns
130 Liberty St.
Master updated the board on
work to decontaminate the building, which
contains 9/11 toxins. Abatement is underway on
floors 14 to 19, with floors 18 and 19 nearly
complete. Workers are finishing decontamination
chambers on floors 12 and 13, an L.M.D.C.
spokesperson later added.
“We’re starting to get in a
rhythm,” Master said. “It will start
accelerating.”
Once the building is clean,
the L.M.D.C. will demolish it so the Port
Authority can build a vehicle security center
and headquarters for JPMorgan Chase. But Master
said it would be months before officials start
crafting new plans to take the building down.
Master, a health and safety
director, previously oversaw about 80 projects
through Bovis’s New York office, but in January
he moved to 130 Liberty St. full-time.
When he took over, the first
thing he noticed was that the workers were not
feeling good about the project. In the aftermath
of the fire, the workers felt tense, stressed,
guilty, angry and afraid, Master said.
He met with the workers to
emphasize two points: No one would get hurt and
no contamination would leave the site by
mistake.
“I think we’re there,”
Master said, but he added, “It’s a struggle day
to day.”
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