APRIL 3, 2015
NEW YORK, NY
In the nearly eight months after utility workers found
evidence of a leaking unauthorized tap on a gas line in an East Village
building, the city never sent an inspector to make sure the dangerous activity
had not recurred.
The reason, city officials say, was simple: They were never
aware of any potential hazard.
Now, the building is gone — the site of a fiery explosion on
March 26 that destroyed much of the block and left two men dead. The police and
criminal prosecutors believe the blast may have been caused by the continued
tapping of a gas line there.
But even without a definitive conclusion, the way in which
an inappropriate and dangerous gas situation at 121 Second Avenue was handled
has exposed what many consider to be a gap in the flow of information between
the utility companies and the New York City Department of Buildings. The only
notification about the leak discovered in August came a month later in a
routine filing from Consolidated Edison, which was all the utility was required
to share with the city.
Now, in a tacit acknowledgment of the shortcomings in the
current procedures, city officials are moving to sharpen their inspection
efforts and improve communication with Con Edison.
“The reports are very mechanical,” Anthony E. Shorris, the
city’s first deputy mayor, said of the notifications from the utility. “There
has to be ways to make that faster, more automated and more useful for us in
terms of targeting where we might send out additional inspection units.”
Mr. Shorris said the city hoped to conduct inspections “in a
more focused way,” with plans to single out “people who have a history of
problematic behavior” based on violation records and other factors.
“We’ll work with the city on any new processes they are
considering,” said Michael Clendenin, a spokesman for Con Ed. “The safety of
all residents is our primary concern.”
The current system involves random inspections and relies
heavily on Con Edison and other utilities to assume responsibility for stopping
potentially hazardous situations. The changes Mr. Shorris proposed could lead
to closer scrutiny of buildings like 121 Second Avenue and their owners, though
it is not clear that such changes would have prevented the recent explosion.
By all accounts from officials of the city and Con Edison,
what happened there on Aug. 6 followed all of the existing rules and
regulations.
A Con Edison worker smelled natural gas in the basement
while reading the meter and called for help. Firefighters and utility
inspectors arrived and found that a flexible hose had been attached to the gas
line that served a restaurant on the ground floor, Sushi Park, and it was
leaking.
Deeming this a “hazardous situation,” the Con Edison workers
shut off the valve that allowed gas to flow into the building and demanded the
removal of the tap, which appeared to be diverting gas to apartments upstairs.
As is customary in the utility industry, the company’s inspectors hung a red
cardboard tag on the line to indicate it had been shut off.
A copy of the tag, which contained information about when
and why the service was disrupted, was given to the manager of the restaurant,
which was Con Edison’s only customer in that building. The tag would remain on
the main valve until Con Edison approved the work a private plumber had done to
fix the leak.
Con Edison restored the service on Aug. 15, nine days after
it was shut off. A few weeks later, the company included the building in an
extensive list of locations where gas was shut down, according to city
officials. That citation said only that a leak had been found; it did not
mention the unauthorized tapping
Mr. Shorris said that “if Con Ed finds anything that’s
illegal or inappropriate, of course they tell us,” but acknowledged the “long
lag time” on reports from the utility. He added that the reports often include
scant detail about the circumstances of a shutdown.
Mr. Shorris did note, though, that the restoration of gas
service cannot be done without a licensed master plumber self-certifying the
work, a Con Ed engineer inspecting the site and another utility worker checking
the meter.
The city currently conducts random inspections of
self-certified jobs, he said. Other inspections often take place in response to
complaints from residents or other agencies.
According to Buildings Department records, the city issued
112 violations last year for the supplying of gas to buildings without
inspections, but officials say there are undoubtedly more instances of gas
being inappropriately used that are not detected.
The department has been a punching bag of sorts for the
administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has sought to reduce bureaucratic
malaise and speed up inspections.
During his State of the City address in February, Mr. de
Blasio recalled his days on the City Council, where members are inundated with
complaints about the department.
Some changes had already been in the works before the
explosion. The de Blasio administration said it was investing $17.4 million
over two years, with plans to hire new inspectors and engineers. A position of
“risk management officer” was also created.
Since last year, a trade group of plumbers has also pressed
the administration to enhance its enforcement efforts.
“The industry is under the serious impression that D.O.B.
does a very poor job investigating and disciplining unscrupulous licensed
plumbers as well as enforcement actions against unlicensed individuals/firms
performing plumbing work,” according to a December letter from the group, the Plumbing
Foundation City of New York. On March 25, the night before the explosion on
Second Avenue, the city’s buildings commissioner, Rick D. Chandler, met with
the plumbing group at a restaurant in Queens to address its concerns.
Mr. Chandler agreed that the department could improve its
enforcement of unlicensed work, said Steward D. O’Brien, the group’s executive
director.
“He said: ‘Listen, you guys are right. We need to do
more,’ ” Mr. O’Brien recalled.
In other places, government agencies and utility companies
treat reports of emergency gas shut-offs with more urgency.
Unitil, a distributor of gas and electricity based in New
Hampshire, sends special notices to local gas inspectors and state regulators
whenever it shuts off gas service out of a concern for safety, said Carol
Valianti, a spokeswoman for the company.
Each time Unitil workers place a red tag on a customer’s
pipe, the company sends a form explaining why the gas was shut off by
registered mail to the customer and to the local inspector, Ms. Valianti said.
The company is required to report shut-offs to New Hampshire’s Public Utilities
Commission, she said, adding that it fulfills that obligation through emails
that are generated automatically.
In New Hampshire, Ms. Valianti said, the company cannot
restore the service until the local gas inspector has approved the repairs.
While it may not be feasible to have as many layers of
inspection in New York City, some experts said that distinguishing serious
hazards from less-dangerous situations could help.
Mark McDonald, a former gas-utility worker who investigates
gas explosions, said he routinely drew attention to situations like the one Con
Edison stumbled upon. Whenever he found evidence of an attempt to tap a gas
line or steal gas from his employer — “something that’s considered a hazard
that we’ve interrupted” — he would go beyond the requirement to fill out a red
tag, he said.
“If they did it once, they may do it again,” said Mr.
McDonald, the president of NatGas Consulting in Massachusetts. “I would pick up
the phone in that situation and call the city inspector, just for the safety of
the people who don’t know what’s going on. It’s common sense.”
Source: http://www.nytimes.com