Posted on 06/02/2004 9:03:40 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Crumbling edifice of the UN
By Susannah Price
BBC United Nations correspondent
The landmark United Nations headquarters in New York was state of the art when it was built more than 50 years ago.
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| Impressive from the outside... |
Behind the scenes, it is a different story. The plumbing, electrical, heating and cooling systems also date back half a century and have gone well beyond their useful life.
The UN is looking for $1.2bn for a complete renovation. UN officials are taking politicians, journalists and diplomats on a so-called "dirty tour" of the worst affected areas to see how bad the situation really is.
"The dirty tour is to show people who are interested in the renovation of the UN complex what it is we are going to do, why we need to do it and the age and condition of the equipment," said John Clarkson, director of the planned overhaul of the UN's ageing infrastructure, known as the Capital Master Plan.
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| ...less so on the inside |
The tour starts up on the mechanical floor where the heating, ventilation and cooling systems for 10 other floors are based.
Huge pipes snake along the ceiling and floors next to a panel of old dials and meters which would look more at home in a museum. Along the corridor, behind padlocked metal doors with warning signs, there are high voltage transformers, which these days are no longer found inside buildings.
The rooms on the floor directly below the transformers are empty. No one wants to work there because of the potential danger from the electromagnetic rays.
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All the old systems need to be replaced |
Here Mr Clarkson also shows visitors the crumbling asbestos, once used for insulation but now recognised as a danger to health, which lurks on walls behind 4,000 of the wall-mounted heating and cooling systems in the UN.
"We want to remove all the asbestos and hazardous materials along with the old building systems such as the heating, ventilation, plumbing. Then we will reconstruct it all from scratch," said Mr Clarkson. "The building will function more efficiently at the end."
The Capital Master Plan will entail moving all 3,600 staff out of the UN headquarters into a temporary home to be built nearby with enough room for the Security Council and General Assembly meetings.
The UN complex would be renovated and staff moved back in after five or six years.
The US has said it will lend the UN the money to pay for the work but Washington wants the UN to pay interest. UN officials say this will double the cost of the project and are still looking for other sources of funding.
| We have a place in the basement where we filter the water coming in. When we empty this for maintenance, at the bottom we find crabs, fish and eels |
| Tony Raymond, Mechanical Maintenance Unit |
In another windowless room, Tony Raymond, general foreman for the Mechanical Maintenance Unit, adjusts the temperature in the building through a bank of switches.
He describes how they use water from the East River to cool down the machines with unexpected benefits.
"We have a place in the basement where we filter the water coming in. When we empty this for maintenance, at the bottom we find crabs, fish and eels," he said.
"Some people like to take them home - as long as they don't wind up on my dinner table that's fine by me."
UN officials say the building is not dangerous, but it does not conform to modern safety standards.
Catherine Bertini, the UN's under-secretary general for management, personally experienced the vintage infrastructure when the pipes in her ceiling burst as she was about to welcome the Italian ambassador.
"This is not the safest place in the world to work, although it may be doing some of the most important work in the world," she said.
But Siberia has very few expensive gourmet restaurants. You're too cruel!
Or Yemen. (Also, Syria's nice this time of year...)
Um, yeah. Tell you what, Catherine, could you give us some examples of that important work you folks are doing?
I have a thousand shares of Webb and Knapp, the firm that built the UN.
Just like the UN they are now worthless.
The U.N. needs to be moved to the capital of cesspooldom in frogland, where the fecal floaters will appear normal.
I vote for Rwanda. I consider Rwanda a symbol of the effectiveness of the UN.
now THERE's a great idea!
Agreed. I say demolish it, send the UN bureaucrats packing to their natural home -- Brussels or one of the other centers of Euro pretentions to international government. Put a park and memorial to OUR Cold War victory on the site.
Maybe a little bit of overkill there. I'd hate to see some UN bureaucrat's desk fly through my Uncle's roof - IN QUEENS! 8^)
We should replace the current structure with a circus tent. They can keep the show going for as long as they can sell popcorn and hotdogs.
No sympathy here. I work in a downtown building that's 70 to 85 years old depending on which part of the building you're talking about. And yet somehow, my relatively small company keeps finding the money to keep this old place looking nice, functioning mechanically, and a suitable place for three hundred employees to work. The HVAC works great through the worst of a South Carolina summer, the toilets flush, the lights stay on, the asbestos has all been removed. All in a building with cornerstones that say "1921" and "1934," and that's built so strong it's still considered an emergency shelter (and in fact sheltered employees during Hurricane Hugo).
The UN could've easily replaced those "crumbling" HVAC and electrical systems piecemeal years ago instead of waiting until things got critical and then begging US for over a billion dollars. But they were too busy using that money to line their own pockets and work for the destruction of the US and Israel, so they could come back to us and scream "You need to give us more money! It's for the starving chillllrun!"
Eff 'em. Let them get their $1.2b out of Kofi Annan's Oil-For-Food slush fund. Call it "Oil for Asbestos Removal."
Better yet, it's a perfect opportunity for them to just get the hell out of the United States and move to Switzerland. I'm sure that that building could be turned into some prime office space to replace the WTC, for a lot less than the $1.2b they think it'll take to renovate it into their One World Palace.
}:-)4
As if Haiti doesn't have enough problems...8^)
Seriously, the 18 acres of land that the UN sits on is worth, what, $200-400 million. They could buy some good land outside of Paris, France, by the airport and build a new facility for so much less than building a temporary NYC structure, then rebuilding the UN over 5-6 years. Start building a permanent new facility in Europe today and move permanently in 18 months.
That reminds me...weren't the Yankees talking about a new stadium?
and beer. you left out beer.
Why not just move the UN to one of Saddam's billion dollar palaces in Iraq?
The UN is looking for $1.2bn for a complete renovation. UN officials are taking politicians, journalists and diplomats on a so-called "dirty tour" of the worst affected areas to see how bad the situation really is.
It's called "mainenance", look into it.
"See how poorly we kept this building up? Help us build a new one."
Same problem cited by school systems with a surplus of funds (yeah, but that money is for a rainy day).
Even the UN building inspector appears to be blind.
The author has an impressive resume, but she's hooking her column for a private tour of the UN building.
The average houshold in America will pay ~$9 for this, if not repaid as a loan. Even that is too much to give to these criminals. I feel like I'm getting shaken down.
Just a small portion of recovered Food for Oil dirty money could pay for this. Prosecute the criminals in abstentia in a friendly court in the US, and use the settlement to pay for the remodeling, or send them to Haiti, the Haitians need the boost to their economy.
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