by David Freedlander, am NewYork Staff Writer
Nearly 900 buildings throughout the five boroughs -- including some of the most iconic in New York City -- need to be brought in line with the local building codes and be subjected to city-mandated safety inspections, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said Sunday.
The 885 structures exempt from city building codes and regular inspections by the city and the FDNY include the UN's Secretariat Building, Grand Central Station, Penn Station and the Port Authority Bus Terminal, according Stringer's office. The buildings do not have to comply with city codes and inspections because they are either owned by the federal or state government, by independent authorities like the Port Authority, or by foreign governments or organizations.
"If something goes wrong in a foreign embassy or in a state building, it's our firefighters -- New York City firefighters -- that are going to have to go up those stairs and save those lives, and they don't have a road map in those 885 buildings," said Stringer at a news conference at the Deutsche Bank building at Ground Zero, where two firefighters died last year in a blaze.
City and other inspections at the building, owned by the quasi-governmental Lower Manhattan Development Corp., had not detected safety lapses, and the fire led to finger-pointing over inspections and access. State Sen. Marty Connor (D-Manhattan/Brooklyn) called on Gov. David Paterson to issue an executive order mandating that all state-owned buildings and those owned by state agencies bring themselves into compliance and subject themselves to inspection by the Department of Buildings immediately.
One of those agencies, the Port Authority, defended their safety record yesterday.
"All Port Authority facilities meet or exceed municipal building codes," said agency spokeswoman Candace McAdams. "We work closely with the Department of Buildings and the New York City Fire Department and our buildings are subject to frequent inspection."
The AP contributed to this report.
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