The public safety horror show at 208 N. 10, (aka 199-211 N. 9th Street and 489 Driggs) which has included free public access to a dangerous demolition site, has carried over into the excavation phase. We’ve featured it repeatedly because it is one of the scariest demolition and construction sites we’ve seen in Brooklyn in terms of allowing easy public access to a very, very dangerous place. The site was violated by the Department of Buildings for failure to safeguard the public back in September, but it has been wide open on-and-off ever since. Given that the site now features a deep pit and that the job appears to include the removal of soil that needs to be covered up before it’s removed, it remains a public hazard.

GL Analysis
The site at 208 N. 10 is a poster child for everything that is wrong with the building monitoring system concerning low-level violations, like threats to public safety that are less dramatic then steel beams falling 20 stories and killing people or construction safety violations. The lack of solid fencing at construction sites in communities like Williamsburg, which have them on every block, represents a nasty breakdown of the system. Unsecured sites with construction equipment, buildings in mid-demolition and deep construction pits are a danger to the public. Someone–a child, a drunk or an adult with compromised judgment–is going to die at one of them eventually. It is a statistical likelihood. It is a shame that the city doesn’t require developers of expensive projects to surround them with secure fences. When a child or adult dies, some will ask how it happened. This is how it happened: clearly dangerous situations were ignored, and even when they weren’t, the city didn’t require developers to put up fences that wouldn’t fall down in a stiff breeze or that could be pulled down by a ten-year-old. Is it a major scandal given other building related issues? No. Then again, the devil is in the details.