[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.
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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
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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.
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