(Photo credit: Jason Decrow- Associated Press)The first thing I did yesterday after hearing that a crane had collapsed on 51st and Second Avenue was to call my daughter. She lives only 3 blocks uptown from the scene of the accident.
On a Saturday afternoon, she takes care of grocery shopping and picking up dry cleaning in the immediate area. She could have easily been at that spot. She was not, as it turned out, but others were. I am heartbroken for their families.
But I am also mad, especially at Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his administration. They have unleashed one of the biggest building booms in New York City without making sure that the Buildings Department, the one agency directly responsible for overseeing construction sites, had a large enough and sufficiently trained staff to handle the extra load put on that agency.
Increasingly, it has fallen on local residents to monitor construction sites. But a call to 311 does not make a site safer from dangerous violations if inspectors show up three weeks later.
Shame on Mayor Bloomberg. He was quoted in the Washington Post as saying:
"Sadly, construction is a dangerous thing. We don't know why this happened. We will do an investigation. We will find out."
How dare he. I think we all know what happened. In New York City, under his administration, developers have been given carte blanche. With an understaffed, sometimes very incompetent Buildings Department left to monitor the construction sites, it was a recipe for disaster.
Tragically, people have been paying with their lives.
With a single minded interest in residential development, our present administration has turned New York City into the wild, wild West.
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