Secretary Salazar Visits Statue Of Liberty

Ken Salazar's first trip to a National Park Service area as the Secretary of the Interior was to the Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island on Friday, January 23rd, just three days after being confirmed in his new position.

There he met with Acting Director Dan Wenk, Superintendent Cynthia Garrett, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), and Reps. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and Albio Sires (D-NJ) to talk about the issue of reopening the crown to the public as well as to look at the rehabilitation work being done on the south side of Ellis Island.

“The Statue of Liberty is unique among our national parks as a symbol of freedom not only to Americans but also to people around the world,” said Secretary Salazar. 

He made clear that he supported the concept of reopening the crown to public access if possible, but that there were legitimate public safety concerns that had to be considered.

The park was closed to the public following the September 11th attacks. Ellis and Liberty Islands were reopened on December 20, 2001, but the statue itself remained closed. In 2004, the pedestal was reopened after NPS aggressively reduced life safety risks by taking care of the majority of fire, safety, and evacuation deficiencies in the lower levels of the monument and by putting into place additional security screening measures. Above the observation deck, however, the NPS was unable to identify any way to meet fire and building code requirements or their intent and still provide safe public access. Due to continued concerns about visitor safety, the statue’s interior – including the crown – therefore remained off limits to the public.

Garrett noted that the crown is accessible only by a narrow and steep 168-step double-helix spiral staircase with a low guardrail, which makes it extremely difficult to evacuate people from the statue in the event of an emergency of any sort, whether a fire in the pedestal, a heart attack in the crown, or a terrorist attack. She said this narrow, constricted spiral staircase was installed for occasional use by maintenance workers, not for sightseeing by visitors.

To ensure that the National Park Service was asking all the correct questions of the outside subject matter specialists, Congress requested that the NPS conduct another study. A contract was awarded to Baltimore-based Hughes Associates (HAI) to study what physical changes to the structure would be required to bring the statue’s interior into code compliance and to determine how the NPS could minimize the life and safety risks to staff, visitors, and emergency management personnel if access cannot be made code compliant. The final report, expected in mid-April, will evaluate potential alternatives and cost estimates for each. A decision on the crown issue will be made after the final report is received and its findings and issues understood and discussed within the NPS.