Don’t Linger in Statue of Liberty’s Crown

NEW YORK — Welcome to the Statue of Liberty, and enjoy the view – quick.

A new safety report obtained by the Daily News recommends once Lady Liberty’s crown reopens on July 4 that only up to eight people enter at a time and that they shuffle out after spending no more than five minutes admiring the vista.

The crown, closed after the 9/11 terror attacks, will reopen to the public for two years, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said last week.

It then will close for safety modifications for up to two years.

The new fire safety and emergency evacuation study, commissioned by the National Parks Service and executed by Baltimore-based Hughes Associates Inc., says about 240 people a day could safely make the trip.

“Given a delay of [five minutes] in the crown, [it] was determined that the maximum throughput is roughly 30 visitors per hour,” the report said.

Salazar has said visitors will be allowed up the spiraling 168 steps to the crown in groups, accompanied by a guide.

Researchers sought to answer two questions: Can Liberty’s crown be brought into line with fire codes? If it can’t, what can be done to make it as safe as possible for visitors?

Unsurprisingly, the study – which was heavily redacted – found Lady Liberty’s cramped crown doesn’t meet fire codes.

That would require two separate sets of exit stairs from the crown, the report says, and there’s no room for both.

An alternative, building an external stairway, “was not possible without adversely impacting the historic fabric of the monument.”

Hughes reported that stairway enclosures to protect visitors from smoke during a fire would have the biggest effect on the time it took them to leave the statue safely.

Other buildings were used as comparisons in determining how to safely get people out of tight spots in a hurry, the report said: among them, the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas, a large city church, a Washington cultural institution and various air-traffic control towers.

The Hughes report also noted that a 2001 engineering study conducted when the crown was still open concluded that there were fire protection concerns – but they weren’t serious enough to limit public access to the crown.

Salazar last week hailed The News as “the clarion call” for reopening the statue’s crown to the public.

The News, in a series of more than 20 editorials beginning in 2003, argued Lady Liberty was a crucial American icon that had been “ceded to Al Qaeda” when the Bush administration’s Park Service refused to reopen it.