[font=Verdana]The charred ruins of the city's biggest fire in more than a decade are being used to line the already deep pockets of the ravaged site's owner - who is literally selling the rubble off brick by brick.[/font]
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[font=Verdana]Dozens of century-old, giant wooden beams and thousands of bricks from the destroyed Greenpoint Terminal Market are being carted away and sold, sources revealed yesterday. [/font]
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[font=Verdana]The red bricks from the warehouses' crushed walls are priced at 15 cents for lots of 10, the sources said. [/font]
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[font=Verdana]And magnificent roof beams - cut from durable wood that can be recycled into new flooring - are being hawked for about $1,500 each, the sources said. [/font]

[font=Verdana]Even the beams that were scorched black are selling fast, the sources added. [/font]

[font=Verdana]"Wood is just like toast. Scrape off the burnt part" and it's like new, a source said. [/font]
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[font=Verdana]The historic warehouses had been slated for demolition before the suspicious inferno erupted May 2. But preservationists fighting proposed apartment towers on the [/font][font=Verdana]East River[/font][font=Verdana] had been hoping to save the warehouses by getting them landmark status. [/font]
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[font=Verdana]The 10-alarm fire was the biggest fire in the city in more than a decade, aside from 9/11. The site's owners, Joshua Guttman and his son, Jack, have adamantly denied any role in the fire. No one has been charged. [/font]

[font=Verdana]The bricks and beams began being carted away in huge trucks Wednesday when the elder Guttman, 58, made a rare appearance at the site, escorted by his son. [/font]
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[font=Verdana]"You and the media make me guilty," Joshua Guttman yelled at a photographer before driving away in an SUV. [/font]
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[font=Verdana]The Guttmans bought the warehouses for $25 million in 2001 and had agreed to sell the site for $420 million last year, but the deal eventually fell apart. [/font]

[font=Verdana]Fire marshals and NYPD arson investigators have been trying to determine the cause of the inferno by digging for evidence amid a 6-foot-deep layer of debris. [/font]
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[font=Verdana]Investigators were sifting through the rubble by hand yesterday for the first time when Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta visited to check on their progress. [/font]
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[font=Verdana]"I'm happy with the course of the investigation but it's going to take some time," Scoppetta said. [/font]
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[font=Verdana]Joshua Guttman's lawyer, Joseph Kosofsky, did not respond to calls yesterday regarding the developer's decision to sell the bricks and beams. [/font]

[font=Verdana]But several Greenpoint residents whose homes were temporarily shrouded by the blaze's black smoke were outraged. [/font]
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[font=Verdana]"It's disgusting, but that's business as usual for a person like Guttman," said Phil DePaolo, 45, of the community group the People's Firehouse. "Their interest is always money. That's the bottom line of a developer." [/font]

Source: The NY Daily News