School’s Out! (Temporarily); The Auditorium Collapsed

MOUNT VERNON, N.Y. — Students were expecting a tough week here at Mount Vernon High School, trying not to fall apart as they slogged through third-quarter exams and prepared for Advanced Placement exams and Regents tests.

They never thought it would be part of their school that fell apart.

Classes were canceled after a 100-foot section of wall in the auditorium collapsed around 4:30 p.m. Monday. The noisy avalanche exposed steel beams and wires and damaged three nearby classrooms used for woodworking, television production and R.O.T.C. meetings.

The nearest students were on a practice field on the other side of the building, and no one was injured, district officials said.

State and district officials immediately closed the 1,400-student high school, built in 1963, to determine whether it was structurally stable and to test for possible asbestos contamination.

On Thursday, yellow police tape stretched across the school property, and a police officer and security guard kept passers-by from coming onto the grounds. Mount Vernon has two other high schools.

W. L. Sawyer, the superintendent, said that preliminary investigation indicated the problem was limited to the collapsed wall and that classes would resume on Monday.

Inspectors found that cinderblocks were not properly anchored to steel beams during the construction of that part of the wall, but that the rest of the building was safe.

Officials said they would keep the area around the collapsed wall cordoned off.

Some students and nearby residents complained this week that the high school had been poorly maintained.

“It wasn’t a surprise, because there are leaks all over the building that aren’t fixed or repaired,” said Chelsea Hamlet, 18, a senior, who saw a picture of the collapsed wall on a friend’s cellphone.

Still, she said that she was recently in the auditorium for an Easter service and saw no indication of a problem.

Marian Barksdale, a 1973 Mount Vernon High graduate who once had a locker near the auditorium, said that maintenance issues might have been compounded by torrential rains that saturated Westchester this year. “It was probably already weakened and all the rain didn’t help,” she said “That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Dr. Sawyer acknowledged that the district had struggled to maintain its buildings for many years because of budget problems. But, he said, other than a leaky roof, he knew of no structural problems at the high school. “This had nothing to do with maintenance,” he said.

He also said there was no indication that the heavy rain played a role in the collapse.

Mount Vernon is a working-class city of 68,000 where three-quarters of the 10,000 students qualify for free or low-price lunches.

State education officials said that Mount Vernon High School had not been cited previously for any deficiencies in building conditions and had a valid certificate of occupancy.

A major wall collapse at a school in this area in 1989 killed seven children when a tornado tore through a cafeteria at East Coldenham Elementary School in the Valley Central School District in Orange County.

Dr. Sawyer said the high school was trying to make up the four missed days by making at least one professional day for teachers a school day, and is reviewing other options so that it will not have to extend classes past June 25, s the last scheduled school day.

“There’s no time that’s good to lose four days, but when the elements are against you, what can you do?” he said.

Dr. Sawyer said that the district might also seek a waiver from the State Education Department if it cannot make up all the time. State education officials said that they would consider such a request.

Many students said they were enjoying the unexpected break.

Dwight Glin, 17, a senior, said he slept until 9:30 a.m. on Thursday. After a bowl of Froot Loops, he headed to the library to watch music videos and check online for news about the school.

If the school had not been closed, he would have been answering questions about enzymes and respiration on a biology exam, he said.

“It’s good to get another break from school,” he said. “I rub it in with my friends” who go to different schools. “I’m like ‘So how was school? Well, you know what? I didn’t have school today.’ They just get mad.”

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Inspector Says He Faked Data in New York Building Tests

A safety inspector licensed to make critical assessments of asbestos and lead risks in buildings and at construction sites across the city made a stunning admission in federal court: Despite filing hundreds of reports saying his tests had found no danger, he had not performed a single one of the tests.

The inspector, Saverio F. Todaro, 68, submitted clean asbestos or lead test results for well over 200 buildings and apartments, including some that were demolished or renovated to make way for publicly financed projects under the Bloomberg administration’s affordable-housing program, according to people briefed on the matter and court papers.

The number of potential victims of Mr. Todaro’s fraud, which spanned at least a decade, loomed so large that the Manhattan United States attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the case, created a separate Web page to comply with a law requiring it to notify victims.

His admissions late last month have raised troubling questions about whether such conduct might be more widespread, and it has led to an expanding inquiry focused on some aspects of the work of asbestos and lead inspectors in the city.

“Todaro’s guilty plea is not the end of the story,” said the Manhattan United States attorney, Preet Bharara. “This investigation is very much ongoing.”

The investigation, in part, seeks to determine whether he conspired with others — taking bribes to fashion crude forgeries and mask his failure to conduct any tests — or whether he acted alone for other reasons, officials said.

The breadth of his crimes, the simplicity of the schemes and the apparent ease with which he got away with them over the years also suggest that the city’s oversight is strained, at best.

“It’s the tip of the iceberg,” said one official briefed on the matter and on the issues facing city and federal regulators, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry is continuing. “We just don’t know how big the iceberg is.”

Because Mr. Todaro never did the tests in question, and because in more than a dozen instances the buildings involved have been torn down and replaced with new ones, or gutted and renovated, it is impossible in some cases to determine if proper tests would have revealed potentially dangerous levels of lead or asbestos.

At the same time, federal and city officials have not made public the precise number and location of the buildings involved, or disclosed specifics of what they think took place in each instance. While the city’s health department has reviewed 17 cases in which Mr. Todaro performed lead tests, it remains unclear whether city officials plan to conduct any other reviews or retesting.

But the stakes are unquestionably high.

The Environmental Protection Agency has found that the long-term effects of lead exposure in children and adults can be severe. Inhaling asbestos can cause lung disease and cancer.

Several city agencies sought to play down the dangers.

City regulators have found no evidence that either the fraud or risks are widespread, said Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

“We can always look for new ways to improve our process,” he said. “D.E.P. is going to start increasing audits, which is the right step to ensure inspections are being completed properly.”

But, in addition to the continuing investigation that grew out of the charges against Mr. Todaro, there are now six other unrelated federal cases under way exploring allegations of similar practices in the New York City area. Some 1,500 people hold city or federal certifications to test for lead or asbestos in the area.

One line of inquiry for investigators in the case involving Mr. Todaro is whether any building owners, management firms or contractors for whom he or other inspectors worked paid bribes for the bogus inspection reports. Officials say substantial sums of money could have been saved by allowing the demolition of buildings without performing expensive asbestos abatement.

Indeed, several current and former law enforcement officials and industry experts underscored that the city’s construction industry, and in particular the demolition and asbestos abatement sectors, have a rich history of corruption.

“It sounds like a disaster,” said Daniel J. Castleman, the former chief assistant in the office of the previous Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, where he supervised corruption cases focusing on the demolition and asbestos abatement industries. “Obviously there are always going to be people who will take a short cut in order to make money, whether it’s in the inspection of lead or asbestos or concrete or steel.”

The case bears some similarities to one brought by the district attorney last year, which exposed widespread fraud in the concrete testing industry and led to criminal convictions and cost the city and private developers millions of dollars for retesting.

The precise targets of the growing investigation are unclear, and several people briefed on the matter said it may be some time before determinations are made as to whether others will be charged.

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