Entered into the database on Sunday, January 15th, 2006 @ 17:03:01 MST
As Village
Voice reports Friday that a federal judge has issued an important
ruling in a little-noticed lawsuit about the collapse of World Trade Center
Building 7. The power company ConEdison had a substation beneath the WTC7, which
suddenly imploded late on the afternoon of 9/11. ConEdison's reinsurers have
sued the parties involved in the construction of WTC7 for recompense. Scanning through the copy of the ruling provided online by the Voice,
we see the name AMEC pop up. Ths is interesting, because AMEC
is the British construction company which was in charge of "reinforcing"
the wing of the Pentagon which was bombed on 9/11. From United
States District Judge's ALVIN K. HELLERSTEIN's Jan. 12 ruling: "Plaintiffs filed Civil Action 02 Civ. 7188 on September 10, 2002 against
the City and the Port Authority,2 and Civil Action 04 Civ. 7272 on September
10, 2004 against the owners and lessees of 7WTC, and against the design and
construction professionals who designed and built 7WTC and the leased floors
of Salomon and the City. Plaintiffs seek to recover their damage. In order to ensure that a power outage would not disrupt Citigroup’s
trading activities at 7WTC, the Citigroup Lease provided that Citigroup would
have the right to install "diesel emergency power generators …
together with all ancillary equipment therefor." (Citigroup Lease at
C-10.) The Citigroup Lease included detailed provisions relating to the size
and location of the generators and provided further that 7 World Trade Company
would "arrange with the Port Authority for the installation of a diesel
fuel storage tank on the property of the Port Authority and the installation
of a fuel line from such facility running through the property of the Port
Authority to the Tenant’s emergency power generators." In 1988, Salomon Inc., now Citigroup, entered into an agreement with Silverstein
as 7 World Trade Company’s managing agent, pursuant to which Citigroup
leased floors 28-47 and portions of floors 1-5 of 7WTC. By Order of January 7, 2005 (the "F&K Order"), I ruled: The
complaint . . . mixes claims against numerous defendants labeled, "the
Construction Defendants." It is impossible . . . to understand what each
such defendant purportedly did in the construction of 7 World Trade Center,
a multi-storied office building that collapsed 4. The Citigroup Construction Defendants ----- So, Saloman controlled the first five and the top 20 floors of this building.
AMEC was in charge of wiring Saloman's offices to diesel tanks elsewhere in
the building. That would have given AMEC access to the enitre infrastructure
of the building, to be powered for "back-up power" or.... whatever
else. The judge has dismissed all charges against AMEC and will allow a limited negligence
claim against leaseholder Silverstein and the Port Authority to go forawrd.
More from
Vllage Voice indicates how suspicious New York's literati are finally becoming
of the anomalies: WTC7 was the last building to fall on 9-11. No one was killed there. Compared
to the twin towers it was a relative nobody among New York skyscrapers, but
it has enjoyed posthumous notoriety because of the mystery of why exactly
it fell. Thanks to the neat and sudden collapse of the building, WTC7 is central
to alternative theories about what happened on 9-11—and particularly
to the notion that the buildings in lower Manhattan were brought down by planned
demolitions. Mainstream inquiries also find puzzlement on WTC 7. The national investigation
of Ground Zero building collapses has yet to issue its final report on building
seven. An earlier study by the Federal Emergency Management Agency punted
on trying to explain the collapse definitively. Not struck by planes, WTC7
appears to have collapsed solely because of fire—apparently a first
for a steel-framed skyscraper. The diesel fuel was the most likely culprit,
even though FEMA said this "best hypothesis has only a low probability
of occurrence." The city's OEM command center used a 6,000-gallon diesel
tank; this was one of several in the building. Hellestein's ruling doesn't
delve into whether the diesel fuel caused the collapse, or if it was a particularly
bright idea to have it there, but finds that the city is immune under a state
law.
The Citigroup Construction Defendants—AMEC PLC, the general contractor;
Skidmore Owings and Merrill, L.L.P. ("Skidmore"), the architect;
Flack & Kurtz ("Flack"), the mechanical engineer; Centrifugal
Associates, Inc. ("Centrifugal"), the infrastructure and mechanical
subcontractor; and Irwin Cantor, the structural engineer—are alleged,
by the same general allegations as were used in the previous groupings of
defendants, to have been negligent in the design and construction of 7WTC.
(Am. Compl. 7272 ¶¶ 183-88.)