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Home Front: WoT
Guiliani overrode report, put NYPD command center in WTC
2008-01-27
A detailed 1998 New York Police Department analysis opposed the city's plans to locate its emergency command center at the World Trade Center but then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani's administration overrode the objections, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
No axe to grind here, weekend before the Florida primary, nope, nope ...
"Seven World Trade Center is a poor choice for the site of a crucial command center for the top leadership of the City of New York," the Times quoted a panel of police experts aided by the Secret Service as having concluded in a confidential Police Department memorandum which has not been previously disclosed.

The longest of the analysis' nine sections, headed "Explosives," describes a blast analysis of the likely impact of various types of bombs, and concluded that the largest of truck bombs would have led to the building's collapse, the Times report said.

The command center was destroyed during the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center that also destroyed the twin towers in the seven-building complex.
All Rudy's fault, too. I'm waiting for the Troofers to jump on this.
Among the location's vulnerabilities was its history as a target, the report said. One of the World Trade Center's twin towers was attacked by truck bomb in 1993 that killed 6 people and injured more than 1,000.

Giuliani, currently campaigning in Florida for the Republican presidential nomination, has acknowledged some skepticism by the police about the choice, but characterized it as a dispute between government officials and departments, the Times said.

"This group's finding is that the security of the proposed O.E.M. Command Center cannot be reasonably guaranteed," the July 1998 memo to the city's police commissioner concluded.

The Times said it obtained the document from a law enforcement official who it noted was not affiliated with any rival political campaign.

Giuliani's campaign declined to answer questions about the memo but spokeswoman Maria Comella said the former mayor's administration had considered 50 different sites and examined varying factors before choosing the site. "This is one memo out of a variety of memos that were presented," she told the Times.
There was a huge push to set up emergency command centers in cities like NY during the mid-90s, integrating police, fire, medical agencies. NYC in particular got a lot of federal help in risk analysis after the first WTC attack. NYPD was the lead agency in that planning IIRC.
Chicago got one of these too, though it's not in the Hancock Building.
Posted by:lotp

#1  In totally unrelated news, the NYT endorsed McCain.
Posted by: DMFD   2008-01-27 10:51  

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