[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 117 (Tuesday, September 17, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H6280-H6283]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





                             general leave

  Mr. BOEHLERT. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their 
remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 4687.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from New York?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. BOEHLERT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Madam Speaker, I am honored to bring this bill back to the House so 
we can pass it and send it on to the President for his signature. Last 
week the Members of the House, like citizens throughout our Nation, set 
aside time to remember the events and heroes and victims of last 
September 11. We re-experienced the shock and horror of that day, and 
we gave thanks for our liberties and the way our Nation spontaneously 
came together to provide emergency, emotional and financial support to 
those people and places that needed it.
  But that is not enough. Our responses to September 11 cannot be 
limited to sentiment. We have to learn from what happened that day, and 
apply those lessons. Most of the lessons, of course, relate to foreign 
policy and domestic security, and it is often difficult to discern 
exactly what those lessons ought to be once one goes beyond enhanced 
vigilance, but there are also lessons related to building safety, and 
at least the immediate lessons in that area are crystal clear.
  The collapse of the Twin Towers, and especially the emergency 
response and evacuation procedures in response to the attack on the 
Towers, indicates that we need to know more about skyscraper safety. 
The government study that followed the collapse showed that we need to 
have better procedures in place to study building failures, from 
whatever cause, if we are going to save lives in the future.
  The attack on the World Trade Center is, we hope, unique. But the 
collapse of those two seemingly immovable objects has lessons for a 
wide variety of buildings facing a wide variety of relatively common 
circumstances.
  H.R. 4687, which I introduced along with the gentleman from New York 
(Mr. Weiner), will ensure that we are able to learn and apply those 
lessons, not only in the case of the World Trade Center, but in future 
cases as well.
  The bill simply and precisely remedies each and every failing that 
hindered the investigation of the World Trade Center collapse. The bill 
gives clear responsibility and authority, including subpoena power, to 
the National Institute of Standards and Technology to use its 
longstanding expertise, and that of outside experts, to investigate 
failures of structures and evacuation procedures, and to make specific 
recommendations to prevent their recurrence. The bill ensures that 
NIST's response will be swift and thorough.
  This bill has already passed the House overwhelmingly, and we have 
negotiated clarifying changes with the Senate. The bill is ready for 
the President, and it will be a fitting memorial to those who perished 
last year at this time.
  Madam Speaker, I thank the families of those who died at the Trade 
Center, especially those who have formed the Skyscraper Safety 
Campaign, for all their hard work in helping to bring this measure to 
fruition. We are working together to ensure that no other families will 
ever have to experience their particular pain.
  Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

[[Page H6281]]

  Mr. WEINER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Madam Speaker, I want to add a couple of points of explanation to 
what the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert) has said.
  First of all, it is clear that no one in this body, no one on the 
Committee on Science, no one could have anticipated that dreadful act, 
that shameful act of cowardice that led to the collapse of the World 
Trade Center. In fact, nothing that we do today should negate the fact 
that the way those buildings were built, with such strength and such 
great craftsmanship, they stood for over an hour, even after they were 
hit with the most horrific forces any building has had to withstand. 
What is the result, today over 25,000 families are together with their 
surviving member because they were able to get out alive. It was the 
largest urban rescue in history, and it would not have been possible 
had it not been for the fortitude of those buildings.
  But we also would be remiss if we did not recognize that the 
investigation that ensued after the September 11 building collapse was 
a disaster. There was miscommunication between different agencies. 
There was infighting with agencies. To give Members an idea, 80 percent 
of the steel from those buildings was taken away and recycled before 
any expert could take a look at them to try to determine if there were 
flaws that could be avoided in the future.
  The electrical switches that could have provided so many telltale 
signs for investigators were taken away. There were even fights over 
whether investigators had the right to see the blueprints to the 
building. In fact, the way I put it, it was a crime scene, and not only 
was there no smoking gun found, but there was no weapon found. In 
truth, there was not even a detective assigned to the case. That is 
what we are trying to address today.
  I should point out this is not just idle Monday morning 
quarterbacking. There are real things that we will be able to learn 
from this investigation and others to come, although we all hope that 
this agency is never used. We could learn things that we learned 
already in the preliminary investigation of the World Trade Center, 
that perhaps having exit stairwells so close together makes it possible 
that they can all be knocked out through one horrific event, such as 
happened in Tower One where three of the stairwells were completely 
knocked out, preventing egress to the top.
  We can learn something that hopefully we would have learned in the 
1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, that we need to hard-wire 
repeaters into these buildings. Repeaters allow firefighters on the 
ground to talk to firefighters almost a quarter of a mile up without 
interference on the radio. The most haunting thing that came from so 
many of the revelations that we have seen since September 11 is that 
firefighters, the most heroic imaginable, were climbing the stairs up, 
not hearing the calls from their comrades below that it was time to 
evacuate. Mayday calls that should have been assigned to firefighters 
to get out were never heard by the firefighters because the hard-wiring 
in the building was not sufficient to install repeaters.
  Finally, we may need to learn something about roof access to these 
buildings. Who knows what might have been possible. We know that 
hundreds of people perished that day because they went up to the roof 
seeking a way out. As a matter of fact, early on there were reports 
that some of the dispatchers who were getting the calls were advising 
people to do that, all of the things we may learn for future 
investigations.
  But there is one other fact we must not forget, and the gentleman 
from New York (Mr. Boehlert) pointed it out, that this bill would not 
have happened, simply put, would not have happened had it not been for 
families of victims and interested Americans coming to us and saying in 
the midst of all of the difficult things that we have to do as a 
Congress and efforts to secure our homeland, let us not forget that we 
need to do an investigation about why those buildings came down.
  Frankly, it was the impetus of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign that 
made this bill a reality. It would not have become a reality had the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert) not taken it up, and not taken 
it up with such dignity and speed, and his staff had not been so 
proficient in doing it, including Mike Quear on our side of the aisle, 
Geoffrey Hockert and Lamar Robertson on my staff. Frankly, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert) has shown us the way to get this 
stuff done. Many of us are standing here after September 11 and 
wondering why so many of the obvious things are taking longer than we 
thought. Perhaps if the gentleman from New York (Chairman Boehlert) was 
the chairman of all of the committees, and I am not sure that I would 
wish that on the gentleman, but perhaps it would move quicker.
  Secondly, it is undeniably a fact that if we did not have the NTSB as 
a model, this would have taken a lot longer. The NTSB has shown us the 
way in the way that they investigate airline crashes, the way they 
sequester information, and take control of a scene as if it were a 
crime scene. They always get their man. They have virtually 100 percent 
success rate of coming to conclusions about why planes crash. We use 
that as a model to help this bill.
  Madam Speaker, I strongly urge the President to give this the 
attention it deserves by having a ceremony when he signs this bill. I 
thank Senator Schumer and Senator Clinton for being so expeditious in 
their consideration. This is legislation that hopefully we will never 
see put into place. There should never again be, God willing, the type 
of catastrophic building collapse as we saw in New York on the morning 
of September 11; but if there is, we should learn from it. And, as 
importantly, we hope with this legislation we give the tools to 
investigators to learn everything possible to learn about the causes of 
the September 11 collapse.
  Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. BOEHLERT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Madam Speaker, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Weiner) points out 
something very important. We get things done in this institution by 
working on a bipartisan basis. We get things done in this Congress by 
working on a bicameral basis. That is why we have succeeded in getting 
to this point.
  Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut 
(Mr. Shays), someone who has been very instrumental in fashioning this 
bill and bringing us to the point where we are right now.
  Mr. SHAYS. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Boehlert) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Weiner) for this 
legislation, for their perseverance, and for listening to their 
constituents and the people who suffered from September 11 who helped 
design this bill.
  When we had the first hearing on H.R. 4687, the National Construction 
Safety Team Act, I thought, ``what am I really going to learn.'' Two 
large airplanes filled with fuel crashed into two buildings, and the 
buildings came down; end of story.
  Well, as soon as the hearing began, I learned there was so much more 
to the story. First, who was in charge. What happened to the evidence, 
not like it was a crime, this was a terrorist act, but what happened to 
the materials that would help us understand how these buildings 
collapsed and how it might have been prevented.

                              {time}  1530

  As others have pointed out, where the location of the stairs were. I 
have a constituent who spoke to her loved one, her husband, for almost 
an hour as he went to the top of the building, went down to the fire, 
tried to find a way to get out, asked for her help as she looked at the 
building on the cameras, on the TV, to see if she saw any opportunity. 
That was the last time she spoke with her husband, trying to help him 
deal with this catastrophe.
  We have a good model in the NTSB. We know that we have the ability 
when there are airplane crashes to look at the NTSB and see what they 
do. They take control. They have subpoena power. They have the ability 
to look at every aspect of the disaster, the people involved, what they 
did, what they did not do, the materials involved, what happened. With 
this legislation, NIST has the same authority, with all the

[[Page H6282]]

same powers. When there is a major catastrophe, when there is loss of 
life, they are going to step in.
  I was particularly intrigued by the fact that not only were we 
talking about these two incredibly large buildings, but we are talking 
about a 40-story building that caught on fire and there was no way to 
put that fire out, no water, no ability to put it out, so it was 
allowed to burn for nearly 7 hours, this 40-story structure. Think of 
all that we could have learned about building material. Think what we 
will learn in the future and just think of how important it is for 
those who have lost loved ones to know that there is an organization 
like NIST that will take charge just like the NTSB takes charge in the 
disaster of an air flight. We are at war with terrorists. They are 
going to use conventional, biological, and possibly chemical weapons. 
Heaven forbid that they will someday have access to nuclear weapons and 
try to use them. We know that we cannot always prevent a disaster, but 
when there is one, we need to learn from it.
  Again, I want to just thank both the chairman of the Committee on 
Science, who has brought science to the discovery of why things happen, 
and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Weiner) for his incredible help. I 
appreciate the work of both of them.
  Mr. BOEHLERT. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
New York (Mr. Grucci) who has been there right from the beginning, at 
every hearing, meeting with the skyscraper safety campaign committee, 
meeting with the professional staff, working very hard to produce the 
product that we are proud to present to the House today.
  Mr. GRUCCI. Madam Speaker, I would first like to take a moment to 
thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert) and the gentleman from 
New York (Mr. Weiner) for their steadfast leadership and my colleagues 
on the Committee on Science for working together on this incredibly 
important piece of legislation. The tragedy of September 11 was one 
that no one could ever predict or even fathom. The extent to which our 
Nation was affected may never be completely understood. America sat 
with fear and awe, our eyes captivated by the sight of these once great 
majestic towers, reduced to a pile of smoldering ruins. But as the 
hallowed ground of lower Manhattan is cleared of the rubble and America 
attempts to heal from the horror of September 11, we continue to work 
together to find what answers we can muster from this tragedy and ask 
the critically important questions to find out how these towers failed.
  Madam Speaker, my congressional district lies just 45 miles from what 
is now known as Ground Zero. My constituents were some of the first 
responders, opening up their emergency rooms and volunteering their 
rescue services to help the mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, 
friends and even strangers, all that were trapped in that rubble in the 
World Trade Center on the morning of September 11.
  This legislation, the National Construction Safety Team Act, will 
give the National Institute of Standards and Technology clear authority 
and responsibility as well as the necessary legal tools to investigate 
building failures. Other Federal agencies, such as the National 
Transportation Safety Board, have the authority to obtain evidence and 
investigate transportation calamities. In the collapse at Ground Zero, 
there was no clear mandate to what Federal agency would lead an 
investigation into the building's failure. This confusion can never 
happen again.
  H.R. 4687 clarifies the process and makes certain that NIST has the 
authority to study building collapses. It is crucial that we extend 
this authority to building engineers and protect all Americans from 
future danger or tragedy. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of 
this legislation and place my full support behind the bill. I urge my 
colleagues to join me once again in supporting final passage of this 
critical legislation before the close of the 107th Congress.
  Mr. WEINER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  I just want to make one concluding thought. One of the things that 
has been suggested in some quarters, and we are having a great deal of 
discussion in New York about how to redevelop lower Manhattan is, 
``Well, maybe we shouldn't build big buildings anymore.'' I think this 
legislation is a recognition of just the opposite. Big buildings have 
always been, as E.B. White described it, built out of our desire to 
reach for the heavens. In New York City, frankly, we do not have big 
wide open spaces, so we are not going to build out to the sides. We are 
going to be building high-rise.
  There is another absolute fact I can say going forward: We are always 
going to have firefighters who are going to run into those buildings to 
save people on the high floors. Those are two almost immutable facts of 
life in New York and probably in the United States of America.
  This legislation is a sign that we are not retreating from that idea. 
What we are doing is trying to learn from our experiences, to try to 
make both the people who work in those buildings, firefighters and 
emergency workers who may someday, God forbid, have to rush into those 
buildings, make them both safer. But let no one see this legislation 
being passed and say, well, we are getting a little bit weak in the 
knees about whether or not we should be living up to our greatest 
ambitions as Americans and as New Yorkers. Neither one is true. In 
fact, this is recognition that we are going to be building big 
buildings, we are going to be making them safer, we are going to be 
making them such that emergency workers can get in and out of them with 
ease and make them, frankly, never terror-proof, they are never going 
to be earthquake-proof, they are never going to be bomb-proof, but we 
are going to try to learn the tragic lessons of September 11. That 
should be the legacy of those 2,801 people that were lost that day.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. BOEHLERT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Our unending quest must be to fill gaps in our knowledge base. With 
this legislation, we are doing just that. This is a proud moment for 
the House. I want to thank particularly the gentleman from New York 
(Mr. Weiner) but also others who cannot be here today because of 
conflicts. The gentleman from New York (Mr. Israel) was very helpful. 
The gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella) was there right from the 
beginning and worked very hard.
  I want to comment on the high degree of professionalism of the staff 
on the Committee on Science. On our side, Cameron Wilson and Diane 
Jones and Dr. John Mimikakis and our staff director David Goldston. But 
it was not just a Republican staff and a Republican bill or a Democrat 
staff and a Democrat bill. This is a bill for America developed by 
concerned Americans who want to protect us as much as humanly possible 
for the future.
  Mrs. MORELLA. Madam Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 
4687, The National Construction Safety Team Act of 2002. I want to 
thank Chairman Boehlert for his outstanding leadership on this 
legislation, and for helping to bring this important issue to our 
attention. This bill has been strongly supported here in Congress, and 
also by the Administration.
  We are all imminently aware of the tremendous challenges America 
faced on September 11. In an effort to find answers to some of our 
questions, the Science Committee heard disturbing testimony about the 
investigations into the reasons for the catastrophic building failure 
at the World Trade Center. As a result of that testimony, we have 
learned that there was no federal agency with clear authority over the 
investigation. This bill helps remedy that problem by giving the 
construction safety teams and the National Institute of Standards and 
Technology comprehensive investigation authorities similar to those of 
the National Transportation Safety Board. We are firmly establishing 
who is in charge of future investigations with clear mandates for 
action, without impeding search and rescue operations. The legislation 
will allow the teams to carry out critical functions such as: accessing 
the site of a build disaster, accessing key building records and 
documents, and retrieving and preserving evidence. We have also learned 
through testimony that the public was often kept in the dark, leading 
to confusion and resentment among victims and families. This bill 
establishes clear lines of communication, ensuring that the public will 
be informed throughout the investigation, with regular briefings and 
public hearings.
  Additionally, we are supporting much needed research by NIST into the 
technical causes

[[Page H6283]]

of the World Trade Center collapse, and other fire safety issues, in an 
attempt to provide the necessary research for future building safety 
codes. NIST is the premier federal laboratory for research in building 
design and safety, and is uniquely positioned to fully understand the 
World Trade Center disaster and thereby prevent future collapses.
  While I applaud my colleagues for their efforts on moving this 
important bill, I also caution them that our work may not be done. As 
the investigations continue, NIST may uncover more questions about the 
deficiencies of our building designs. They may also discover gaps in 
our knowledge. New studies and new facilities may be necessary to fill 
these voids, and thereby may require a new commitment from us. Passage 
of H.R. 4687 is a very important step toward greater knowledge and 
better understanding of the events that changed all our lives. I urge 
your support of this legislation.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Madam Speaker, I strongly support H.R. 
4687, The National Construction Safety Team Act of 2002. I am pleased 
with the outcome of our work on the Science Committee in addressing in 
a timely fashion, a problem highlighted in the wake of the events of 
last 9/11. In just a year we already have before us a piece of 
legislation that will greatly enhance the safety of the next generation 
of buildings, and save many lives.
  Every experience, no matter how horrific, presents an opportunity to 
learn. Many lives were lost last year, the two moments that jets 
crashed into the World Trade Center Buildings 1 and 2. However, much of 
the devastation occurred over the next hour, as people became trapped 
in the building, exposed to fire and smoke, and eventually as the 
buildings collapsed. Although, our first responders made heroic 
efforts, and did an excellent job at rising to the challenge of this 
unprecedented attack--there is always room for improvement. Also, 
although the World Trade Center was an architectural marvel, perhaps 
there were design changes that could have been incorporated that would 
have saved lives.
  Even as the healing is taking place, we must look back carefully and 
objectively at the events that took place, and look forward to 
implement plans which might prevent such catastrophic loss from 
occurring again.
  The National Construction Safety Team Act gives responsibility to the 
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to dispatch teams 
of experts within 48 hours after major building disasters. The team 
will determine the likely technical cause of building failures. They 
will also evaluate procedures used for evacuation and emergency 
responses. Then, the team will recommend specific changes to building 
codes, standards and practices, and to emergency response and 
evacuation procedures. The team will make regular briefings to the 
public during ongoing investigations, to keep the public apprised of 
developments. Implementation of the final recommendations will make our 
nation's buildings safer and people more secure.
  The bill strikes an excellent balance between allowing the team to be 
efficient and effective--to access the site, subpoena evidence, etc.--
and the need to stay out of the way of search and rescue attempts that 
may also be ongoing.
  Obviously, the first implementation of this bill would be a 
comprehensive review of the World Trade Center collapse. NIST has 
already started its follow-on investigation, with $16 million 
transferred from FEMA. This bill (H.R. 4687) will provide NIST with the 
ability to subpoena data, if necessary, to augment its current 
investigation. The citizens of New York deserve such a deep and 
thoughtful approach.
  But this bill is not only a ``World Trade Center Bill.'' Teams will 
be organized and prepared to respond within 48 hours of any major 
building failure that involves significant loss of lives, or the danger 
of such loss. I hope that such a system could also help us learn from, 
and better prepare for natural disasters as we saw in Houston during 
Tropical Storm Allison in 2001. Flooding led to the destruction of 
thousands of homes and buildings, and the loss of 41 lives nationwide. 
Hospitals, such as that at Baylor College of Medicine, suffered 
millions of dollars in damages, setting research back years.
  One young woman who died in Houston, Kristie Tautenhahn, was in a 
building that was rapidly flooding. A voice came over the intercom, 
informing employees that the underground garage was filling up with 
water, and people should go down and move their cars. Kristie, a 42-
year old proofreader in a law firm got trapped in an elevator on her 
way down to the garage, and drowned soon after.
  Tragic events, like the death of Ms. Tautenhahn or the flood damage 
of Baylor probably would not trigger the kind of investigations that 
this bill provides for. However, it seems that the work of 
investigative teams created by this bill, could provide valuable 
information which may bring about smarter building codes, to prevent 
such failures, and better strategies of getting the appropriate 
warnings and evacuation information to potential victims of disaster.
  H.R. 4687 is a great strike toward a more comprehensive national 
strategy for predicting, preventing, and mitigating damage due to 
disasters of all sorts. It is a proactive, pre-emptive type strategy 
that could save lives and money. I am pleased with the Science 
Committee's leadership on such issues. It compliments well other 
legislation emerging from the Science Committee, such as the Inland 
Flooding Bill that I worked on with my colleague from North Carolina 
Bob Etheridge, which will help predict and prevent damage from cyclone-
related flooding. We are turning away from just putting out fires, and 
toward understanding our vulnerabilities, and trying prevention. It is 
the right way to go.
  I urge my colleagues to support the National Construction Safety Team 
Act 2002.
  Mr. BOEHLERT. Madam Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and 
I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Biggert). The question is on the motion 
offered by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert) that the House 
suspend the rules and concur in the Senate amendment to the bill, H.R. 
4687.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds having voted in favor 
thereof) the rules were suspended and the Senate amendment was 
concurred in.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

                          ____________________