The Boom Box Looks OK, But I Don’t Know About That G5 Tower

Vado Diomande, the man who became ill from anthrax inhalation, has had most of his belongings incinerated. And others using the same building that housed Diomande’s storage facility also had some very expensive stereo equipment “incinerated”:

When Justin Kafando, a member of Diomande’s dance company and co-owner of Megastar Studios, housed on the third floor of the 2 Prince St. location, took the microphone after Diomande spoke, he could not contain his anguish. He said his life has been destroyed because of the cleanup.

“You have nothing to do with this,” he assured Diomande, adding, “Everything I’ve worked for, all my dreams have turned into a nightmare.”

Then he broke down in tears and could not continue speaking, though he answered questions later on.

Kafando’s recording studio was totally destroyed. Among items removed — worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — were speakers, microphones, all CD’s, hard drives, a G5 tower, the air conditioning unit, all software in boxes and personal documents from a cabinet. Even petty cash totaling a couple of hundred dollars was missing. Diomande told the press that 600 sealed boxes of CDs of his music were also taken away. Tradewinds, an independent contractor, was hired for the 2 Prince St. decontamination. The E.P.A. provided technical consultation, and D.O.H.M.H. had final say in decisions. The building owner had to pay for the cleanup, said to cost between $500,000 and $2 million.

Kafando was told that one speaker was contaminated; yet every expensive speaker is gone. Meanwhile, one worth about $25 wasn’t removed. Kafando related that the boom box that was in the rehearsal room was moved into the control room and set up with the cheap speaker that didn’t belong to it, so the workers could listen to music while they were decontaminating. The big, costly keyboard workstation is missing, yet the cheap one, which was back to back with it, wasn’t touched.