Christine Hauser and Kathryn Carlson reported in yesterday’s Times - online editions, in any case, that Rondell Grant, eleven years old, was killed last Saturday by a hit-and-run driver. Brooklyn Boy, 11, Killed by Hit-and-Run Driver. Grant was apparently killed after two cars sped past him - he then stepped into the street and was hit by a third car. This suggests that the three cars may have been travelling - and speeding - together. And that Rondell Grant’s death may have been entirely unnecessary.
Grant lived at 505 East 43rd Street in East Flatbush; he was struck and killed in front of 608 East 42nd Street, between Foster Avenue and Avenue D.
Time, we think, to consider speed bumps.
In Today’s
Times, Anthony Ramirez reports that the real estate
developer of the site of yesterday’s crane accident is a retired New York City firefighter - with at least one experience of rescuing construction workers.
Continue reading ‘Developer of crane accident site is a former firefighter’
When a subcontracting firm - the “John Galt Corporation” - is named for the protagonist in an anti-union, anti-government-regulator novel (Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead) it is to be hoped that at least one decision-maker would have thought it disturbing to put such a firm in charge of safety. (See David W. Dunlap’s “A Literary Footnote to a Fire: John Galt,” on the Times’s City Room Blog.
John Galt Corporation and Bovis Lend-Lease are accused of safety violations which led to the deaths of two firefighters. William K. Rashbaum and Charles V. Bagli, “Bank Tower Contractors Accused of 44 Violations,” The New York Times, February 20th, 2008. Rashbaum and Bagli report that the staff of the New York County District Attorney’s Office have been presentign evidence to a grand jury.
But not since the Eisenhower Administration. Now, 55 years later, Marjorie Bloomberg Tiven - the mayor’s sister and the city’s chief of diplomatic protocol, has persuaded the United Nations to do the right thing:
In January, the city’s Fire Department found 866 violations of the fire code. By October, less than 20 percent of the violations had been addressed. (Because of concerns about possible terrorist attacks, Ms. Tiven will not be more specific about the violations.)
| The U.N. took 9 months to allow a fire inspection |
In an Oct. 30 letter, drafted by Ms. Tiven’s office and signed by the mayor, the city demanded that the United Nations provide proof of, among other things, a fire safety plan, additional smoke detectors, and resolution of the remainder of the 866 violations by early next year.
“If the United Nations does not adhere to these deadlines,” Mayor Bloomberg said, “the city will be forced to direct the cessation of all public school visits to the United Nations.”
“The mayor has been patient,” Ms. Tiven said, “but he can’t be patient forever. The city is going to do the right thing.”
Continue reading ‘United Nations headquarters complied with New York fire code - during Eisenhower Administration’
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