Word: ritacco
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Dates: during 1988-1988
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...Ritacco then, in letters to city officials and administrators at the Carpenter Center and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), "strongly recommended" immediate corrective action on the Center's railings. He urged this move although building owners usually do not have to comply with changes in state codes after original construction or major renovation...
...confusion surrounding building codes effective when the Carpenter Center was built in 1963--10 years before cities assumed regulatory duties from the state--forced Cambridge inspectional services to ask Ritacco's state office for documents determining whether the Center was in compliance at the time it was built...
...unknown reason the matter was dropped that fall, and Ritacco never responded. The Cambridge inspector was later dismissed for unrelated reasons. Cambridge inspectional services is also under investigation for possible violations in its inspection procedures...
Meanwhile, the cogs of the Harvard bureaucracy were equally hesitant to turn. Carpenter Center officials who received Ritacco's notice in 1985 said the problem "did not lie with us" because structural maintenance problems were designated to other University agencies; staff said they forwarded the notice to Facilities Maintenance at the time. However, earlier this year Carpenter officials did authorize placement of chicken-wire mesh around the site of the April accident when a tour group of small children visited the center...
...official whom Ritacco had written, Eugene J. Arcand, director of facility finances, said he did not recall the letter or the details of the situation. No action was taken by the University until the accident...