Newsday

After visiting hundreds of sites around the city, the department has uncovered more than 120 violations since the Aug. 18 fire at the former Deutsche Bank building. The inspections have caused the city to shut down construction sites at a rate twice as high since the fire, compared with the months before, according to city records.

Some of the sites - close to 500 - are being inspected for the first time, despite city law requiring inspections every 15 days.

The lack of visits to the former Deutsche Bank tower failed to uncover a broken standpipe that supplies water to fire hoses, which complicated firefighting efforts in the blaze that killed two firefighters.

"What's important is they're being inspected, and they're going to continue to be inspected," Fire Department spokesman Jim Long said.

The visits across the city will also soon extend to its most high-profile construction site, the World Trade Center, which has not been regularly inspected by the department because it is not on city-owned property.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the bistate agency that owns the 16-acre site, will halt construction if ordered to by the Fire Department, even though the law doesn't require it, said spokesman Steve Coleman. Department officials are coming to the fenced-off site in the next two weeks to familiarize themselves with the construction there before beginning regular visits, he said.

The citywide inspections started in late August, after Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta ordered the department to find every site where construction or demolition is going on, check for fire safety violations and other issues that could make fighting a fire difficult.

The department looked at 485 sites, which included just over 350 actual buildings, and reported 122 fire hazards that required a follow-up inspection by the city Department of Buildings, fire and buildings officials said. More than 200 other calls routed to the Fire Department from the city's 311 complaint line prompted more inspections.

The city Department of Buildings issued 27 stop-work orders that shut down construction sites in the six weeks since the blaze, according to records. Before the Aug. 18 fire, 67 orders had been issued in 2007.

None of the sites inspected, Long said, have the same features as the former Deutsche Bank tower - a building that was being cleaned, floor by floor, of toxic debris at the same time it is being dismantled.

Firefighters have said that the building was enormously difficult to inspect, requiring inspectors to don protective environmental suits and spend several hours going floor-by-floor through the former 40-story building.