Details Emerge in Fatal Christ Church Accident

When Christ Church on Clinton Street in Cobble Hill was struck by lightning in July 2012 causing a scaffolding to collapse on and kill a 61-year-old passerby, the church had been fighting for years with its insurance company for additional funds to fix the deteriorating structure in the wake of another lightning strike in 2000 and a small earthquake in 2009. The Wall Street Journal has recently unearthed internal church meeting minutes and correspondence with its insurance company which sheds more light onto who was aware of structural problems and when problems were flagged. Documents obtained by The Journal show that church officials were indeed aware of the problems and had been trying to get money from its insurance company for years when last year’s tragic accident happened. In a 2009 meeting with engineers, the structure was referred to as “very hazardous.” “There is continuous deterioration in the church and the tower,” say the minutes. “This has gone on too long. Plans must be put in place.” In a 2009 letter to its insurance company, the church pointed out severe problems in the tower’s northwest pinnacle column it attributed to the 2000 lightning incident. In 2009, the Church Insurance Agency Corp. agreed to revisit its $120,000 payout from 2000 (the church had sought as much as $800,000) but ultimately came to the conclusion that the church’s poor condition was due to neglect not lightning damage and refused to pay out any more money. The problems were not fixed. In the days following the accident last year, the Department of Buildings issued violations to the church relating to scaffolding and sidewalk sheds; there had been no sidewalk shed in place where the pedestrian was killed.
Christ Church Considered ‘Hazardous’ Before a Death [WSJ]
Photo from the Brooklyn Bugle