Seen staff mopping inside the World Trade Transportation Hub recently? No, they’re not mopping up vomit from puking patrons sick at the sight of the Oculus’ horrific detailing. No, no, they’re mopping up puddles from leaks.
In May, rain resulted in water drizzling down to elevators and balconies in both wings of the Oculus. At $4 billion, the transportation hub’s leaks may even be more costly than the Russian kind the U.S. is currently more accustomed to experiencing. In early May, officials from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (the agency that owns the transit hub) blamed construction work going on at the adjacent 3 World Trade Center. At the time, legislators did call for an investigation into the issue as well.
That didn’t appear to do much, though. Perhaps, one supposes, the investigation slipped on some marble as the agency in a prepared statement on Friday, May 26, denied that the Oculus was indeed leaking at all. “There were no leaks in the Oculus this week,” spokesman Steve Coleman said, despite a reporter witnessing the leaks with their own eyes.
“We soak it up and drain it. It’s a lot of work. It’s nonstop,” an Oculus mopper told the New York Post recently. “People do have accidents. Like the last rainy day, somebody almost broke their neck here on the marble,” the maintenance worker continued. The victim in question, a woman, was apparently walking down a set of stairs when she slipped on a puddle. “They slipped and they really hurt themselves because, you know, these are marble floors.”
Construction workers adding the final touches to Santiago Calatrava’s billion dollar transit and retail behemoth have said building work was rushed. “Everything is not done so you’ve have to come back and do it,” Shawn Cumberbatch also told the New York Post as he was caulking an unsealed seam in the main room. “They just wasted a lot of cash over here. This should have been done. If they just took their time and got it right the first time, we wouldn’t have this problem.”
In April this year, two men sustained injuries after an escalator malfunctioned. Earlier in the year, a woman was killed in February when she fell off an escalator after reaching too far for her hat.
