We will be collecting 9/11 photos during the weekend exhibition
of the
United in Memory 9/11 Victims Memorial Quilt
UIM Quilt Exhibit….Hearts and Hands Complex….9/7-9/10
http://www.where-to-turn.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=39022
9/11 PHOTO REQUEST REMINDER
My prayers and thoughts are always with you all on the loss of your loved ones.
As 9/11/07 approaches, please let me know what if anything I can do to support you at this difficult time.
Please be aware that the Christian Rock Station Star 99.1 on FM each year
plants flags for the number of those 9/11/07 victims. This is a station
which I listen to frequently.
This year however, Star 99.1 is collecting pairs of shoes to put with each
flag. These empty shoes will be a reminder also of those lives lost. The
shoes collected will then go to charities who help those poor people in need of a pair of shoes.
If you have any comments or feedback or want to be there when this is done contact -
Johnny Stone at Star 99.1 - johnny@star991fm.com
STAR 99.1 FM Radio
PO Box 9058
Zarephath, NJ 08890
Business Office Phone:
(732) 469-0991
email:
info@star991fm.com
With love and peace,
Rev. Gail Burwa, Chaplain to WTC Families for Proper Burial, Inc.
Giuliani to attend 9/11 anniversary
AP via Yahoo! News Tue, 28 Aug 2007 2:19 PM PDT
Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani will speak at the sixth anniversary remembrance of the World Trade Center attack, although he will not read the names of victims.
St. John’s News
St. John’s Staten Island Campus to Host United in Memory 9/11 Victims Memorial Quilt, Sept. 8-10
August 28, 2007
Staten Island, N.Y. -
Second Year Staten Island Site is Tabbed as New York Location for Memorial Remembrance
St. John’s University’s Staten Island Campus will host the United in Memory 9/11 Victims Memorial Quilt Exhibit for the second consecutive year, presented by Where-To-Turn and the Joseph Maffeo Foundation, on display the weekend of September 8-10. The University’s Student Center Gymnasium, 300 Howard Avenue, Staten Island, N.Y. will house the exhibit, which attracted more than 7,500 people during the four-day viewing one year ago.
The exhibit, a 16,000-square-foot quilt that stretches more than 1,500 linear feet, is a traveling memorial in honor of each individual victim of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The public is invited to attend the exhibit on Saturday and Sunday from 11:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. St. John’s students, victims’ family members and the general public will have a final viewing from 9:00 a.m-Noon on Monday, September 10. The exhibit is free to the public but corporate and private donations are accepted.
“The response from last year’s showing of the 9-11 Quilt was amazing and inspired us to continue on again this year,” said Joseph Sciame, Vice President for Community Relations at St. John’s University. “Our goal is to reach out to more New Yorkers who have not seen the exhibit – for it truly is an emotional experience that will not be forgotten.”
Corey Gammel, CEO and project founder of United in Memory, partners with St. John’s University once again for this labor of love to the fallen victims of the 9/11 tragedy. The quilt (which would stretch across a quarter-mile if the panels were aligned end to end), tours all across the country annually and was completed in 11 months. It is a remarkable feat when considering it was done largely as a grass-roots effort.
More than 3,600 volunteers from every state in the United States and 18 countries around the world have contributed to the crafting and assembly of the quilt. St. John’s University was honored to be selected as the site for the quilt’s only New York appearances the past two years.
Where-To-Turn (a crisis relief network for victims of tragedy) will also be organizing a Memorial Service and the showing of the Tower of Lights from Staten Island during a weekend long schedule of events.
“We must never forget the nearly 3,000 friends and family who were lost on that tragic day in September 2001. Events like this help us to remember and celebrate the lives of our loved ones,” said Dennis McKeon, Executive Director of Where-To-Turn. “It is the ongoing mission of Where-To-Turn and the Joseph Maffeo Foundation to make sure that we never forget and to make the world a better place in honor of those who were lost.”
For media interviews regarding the 9/11 Quilt Exhibit contact Dominic Scianna, Director of Media Relations, St. John’s University at 718-990-6185 or email inquiries to sciannad@stjohns.edu. For information on the United In Memory organization call 718-966-6531. For inquires regarding Where-To-Turn contact Dennis McKeon Executive Director at 718-619-2371 or dennis.mckeon@where-to-turn.org. The Joseph Maffeo Foundation can be contacted by emailing Keith Manfredi, Director, the Joseph Maffeo Foundation at maffeofoundation@aol.com
The History Channel Announces “Take A Veteran to School Day”, a New
National Initiative
The History Channel has developed a Take A Veteran to School Day
campaign to link veterans of all ages with young people in our schools
and communities. This nationwide initiative will help strengthen ties
in your communities and bring history to life in classrooms. The
History Channel is encouraging people throughout the country to
organize events at their schools in the weeks leading up to Monday,
November 12th, the official Veterans Day holiday. To learn more about
how to organize a Take a Veteran to School event at your school or in
your community, log on to veterans.com. This website will include
sample agendas, curriculum links, how-to guides, and information about
how to work together with your local cable company to organize an
event.
This campaign is not only celebratory or commemorative, there are
clear links to classroom course units and lesson plans. The Story of
Veterans Day – a 25-minute documentary produced in conjunction with
the U.S. Department of Education – will be linked to state standards.
A teacher’s guide to this program will be available on the website as
well. This site will also include oral history guidelines for middle
and high school students, and suggestions for in-class activities for
grades K-12 related to this program. If you have any additional
information, contact us at veterans@aetn.com.
COMMUNITY BOARD ONE EMERGENCY MEETING
PRESENTATION BY BOVIS- LEND/LEASE
REGARDING 130 LIBERTY STREET
DATE: Wednesday, August 29, 2007
TIME: 6 P.M.
LOCATION: New York State Assembly Hearing Room
250 Broadway, 19th Floor
New York, NY
Co-Sponsored By
New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver
U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer
New York State Senator Martin Connor
New York City Council Member Alan J. Gerson
New York State Assembly Member Deborah Glick
Regards
Craig Hall
WTCRC - President
c/o 200 Rector Place, APT38A
New York, NY 10280
212.945.4332
IUOE Local 94 members can play a critical role as “first responders” in times of crises. Attacks such as 9/11 require special training for our members. “We are the first ones on the scene of a building attack by the very nature of our profession.” We know the ins-and-outs of our buildings. During 9/11 “it was our operators who immediately moved in with heavy equipment to assist our stationary engineers, the fire fighters, police and EMT in the rescue and recovery operations”. “It was our operators who initially led many of the occupants of those buildings to safe evacuation routes and who had the foresight to shut down the power in those buildings, saving many more lives.”
The Homeland Security Training Program has extrapolated real world experience from the aftermath of 9/11. Also, Local 94 in conjunction with numerous emergency agencies has developed this training program to better prepare our members for a calamity. Some of these agencies include the NYS Dept. of Public Safety (HLS), the NYFD, NYS Fire Prevention, FBI Joint Terrorist Task Force, BOMA NY Evacutation, to name just a few.
The Homeland Security Training Program is open to all members. It offers classroom and practical instruction.
JIM DWYER | About New York AUG. 25, 2007
Two New Deaths, Same Old Questions
In a partnership with the State of New York, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s government owns a ruined, contaminated skyscraper at 130 Liberty Street, across from the World Trade Center site. The building appears to have been a howling firetrap, the kind for which private owners would be indicted in days. Last week it killed two men, Firefighters Robert Beddia, 53, and Joseph Graffagnino, 33.
Mr. Bloomberg and his partner, Gov. Eliot Spitzer, preached at the funerals that they would find out what their own governments had done.
Here is a short list: They hired what appeared to be a shell corporation to demolish the building. This company plugged stairwells with plywood to keep asbestos from flying around. Workers clipped sprinkler lines. Someone cut a standpipe, a dry water main that is reserved for delivering water during fires.
On many floors, the workers left a carpet knife and a flashlight by plywood doors that led to the stairways. Because the doors were draped with sheets of plastic, the knife could be used in an emergency to get out. The floors, being slowly demolished, were mazes.
All this was done under the eyes of inspectors from Mr. Bloomberg’s Buildings Department. They were in 130 Liberty almost every day, along with agents of Mr. Spitzer from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the official name of the partnership between the governor and the mayor. They issued piles of citations.
However, no one from other branches of the governments run by Mr. Bloomberg or Mr. Spitzer got around to telling the Fire Department exactly what was going on. And no one from the Fire Department bothered to find out.
Even though there is a firehouse next door to 130 Liberty Street, no firefighter had set foot in the building to inspect it for about a year. No one from Mr. Bloomberg’s government has yet explained their absence. Nor has anyone explained why the Fire Department had not taken part in discussions about the building’s demolition.
The first mission of the department is to respond to fires. Its second “critical objective,” as defined by the Mayor’s Management Report, is to “reduce the risk of fire incidents through quality inspections, investigations and public education.”
With the city booming and with vast new resources, the Fire Department has conducted 8,000 fewer inspections since 2001, while its budget has grown by more than a third. Officials say this is a normal fluctuation.
The calamity of 130 Liberty Street is not the sole responsibility of the Fire Department, but it will be firefighters who will be buried after the next Liberty Street, wherever it may be, if the department does not figure out how this one happened. If it is possible for the mayor and the governor to conduct thorough investigations of their own government, it still will fall to the Fire Department to protect its members by understanding how this could have happened. If it can.
The modern Fire Department grew out of 19th-century volunteer organizations that were aligned with gangs and politicians. With mass deaths in early high rises, the department emancipated itself from political influence and became a force for reform of building codes. It also became an organization devoted to merit hiring, in the process creating a culture of civil service fundamentalism. The highest-ranking officers are chosen by test. This has had its historic virtues, but it has also clogged the department’s ability to shape and scrutinize itself.
“You have no accountability at the senior levels,” said Thomas Von Essen, who was the fire commissioner under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. He noted that in 2001, three firefighters, John Downing, Brian Fahey and Harry Ford, were killed on Father’s Day, fighting a fire in a hardware storage area that had not been inspected in years.
Three months later, the attacks of Sept. 11 found other weak spots: 343 firefighters died. Now, what appears to have been an accidental fire a week ago has killed two more.
In “Young Men and Fire,” a book about a forest fire that killed 12 firefighters, the author, Norman Maclean, wrote that such a disaster had to be honestly examined; otherwise, it would leave “terror without consolation or explanation.”
“Perhaps most catastrophes end this way without an ending, the dead not even knowing how they died,” Mr. Maclean wrote, and “those who loved them forever questioning this ‘unnecessary death,’ and the rest of us tiring of this inconsolable catastrophe and turning to the next one.”
E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com
August 25th, 2007
UPDATE ON WORK AT 130 LIBERTY STREET
The City Department of Buildings has permitted limited work to resume at 130 Liberty Street in order to make the façade of the building safe in the aftermath of a fire on August 18th.
This work includes debris removal, scaffold repair and netting installation around the building. Residents who have windows facing 130 Liberty Street are advised to close them until they receive notification that this work is complete.
Authorities have also instituted a Frozen Zone around 130 Liberty Street until further notice. This map, posted at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s web site, www.renewnyc.com, details areas that are off limits to pedestrian and vehicle traffic. These areas, highlighted in yellow, can only be accessed by authorized personnel.
For more information please contact the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation at 212-587-9747.