One Basement On The Drawings. The Man Who Measured It Went Down Four Floors.
The published condition report jumps from page 44 to page 61. This newspaper has the sixteen missing pages and the notebooks behind them: four landings below the recorded slab, standing water at the third, a transformer vault on the second.
MONTAUK, New York — There is one basement on the drawings for this building. The man the state paid to survey it went down four more floors, wrote what he found in a notebook, typed it into an appendix, and never saw the appendix again.
The report was published in November 2004, before the last of the site was opened to the public. It runs to 82 pages. Its page numbering steps from 44 to 61.
This newspaper now has the sixteen pages that are not there, and the three field notebooks behind them.
What is under the recorded slab
Delwyn Sturrock-Amadi surveyed Camp Hero for Barrowcliffe & Nnamdi of Hauppauge in the winter and spring of 2004. His brief was hazardous materials and structural condition. He was 39, he had a tape, a torch, a graduated rod and a camera that took film.
The published report describes a plant room 4.9 metres below the entrance threshold and calls it the lowest floor.
Appendix C describes what happens after that. The stair core does not stop at the plant room. It turns and continues: fourteen risers at 175 millimetres to a landing at 8.8 metres, dry and swept, with a light fitting in the ceiling and no lamp in it. Another flight to a landing at 12.7 metres. Another to a landing at 16.5 metres, where there is standing water, 1.10 metres deep against the wall on 3 March 2004.
He measured the well below that with a tape and a weight and got 20.4 metres. His notebook entry for the fourth landing is three words long: seen, not entered.
The second landing
The room at 12.7 metres is the reason this is a news story rather than a curiosity.
It is 11.2 metres by 6.4 metres with a bunded floor, and it holds two empty transformer bays, their rail sets still bolted down at 1.98-metre centres. Cable trays 600 millimetres wide leave the room heading west and downward, their covers gone. Sturrock-Amadi measured the conductors in the trays and wrote: approx 250 sq mm, 3 cores + earth, XLPE, no markings legible.
We gave those dimensions, with the site name and every date stripped out, to Dr. Marit Ferrante-Okonjo, who designs medium-voltage cable systems and who was not told what she was reading.
Her answer was that 250 square millimetres at 13.2 kilovolts is a circuit good for something in the order of nine megavolt-amperes, and that nobody installs it for lighting and pumps. This newspaper reported earlier today that an unmetered circuit ran into this fence line from the Amagansett substation at up to 4.6 megawatts between 1974 and 1987. A cable of this size is what you buy when the load is intermittent and you have decided the cable will not be the part that fails.
Five bolts
In the middle of that room, anchored into the slab, is a welded steel frame.
Sturrock-Amadi dimensioned the anchor pattern in 2004 because that is what a structural surveyor does with anything bolted down. Five anchors. Four on a 610-millimetre square. A fifth, off the square, 197 millimetres from the north-west bolt.
On 21 August this newspaper published a 1975 defence purchase order for a subject positioning assembly delivered to this site, recovered from a bankrupt Long Island fabricator's papers lodged at the Suffolk County Clerk. Stapled behind the fabricator's sub-order in that same exhibit file is drawing 5511-F2, frame and anchor set, layout.
Four anchors on a 610-millimetre square. A fifth, off the square, 197 millimetres from the north-west bolt, annotated earth stud, do not omit.
Down again, with a tape
On 6 August an agency site manager unlocked the plant room door, walked our party to the head of the stair and stopped there. He did not come down. The agency confirms below that this is the whole of what he was entitled to do.
We asked Sturrock-Amadi to re-take three of his own 2004 measurements on camera, without looking at his figures first.
The riser height: he wrote 175 millimetres in 2004 and 176 in 2026. The tray width: 600 both times. The water at the third landing: 1.10 metres in 2004, and 0.94 metres this month, which does not match, and which he pointed out himself before we could.
"Water moves," he said. "The bolts do not."
The sentence that is not there
The closest comparable object in this newspaper's vault is PX-1402, six sheets of mechanical drawings for a building two thousand miles away, dimensioned to six subterranean levels where the published construction record describes three. Note 13 on sheet 4 of those drawings reads: DO NOT FIELD-VERIFY BELOW LEVEL -3.
Nobody gave Sturrock-Amadi a note like that. He says that if they had, he would have obeyed it, and that this is the part he has thought about most.
The agency's deputy commissioner does not say Appendix C is wrong. Asked four times, she says it was not adopted, and then explains, without being pushed, that the ground below the recorded slab was never transferred to her agency in the first place.
Both sentences are printed below, in her words, at the length she wrote them.
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Sources & Method
A reader who had bought a copy of the 2004 report from the agency's own records office telephoned to ask why it stepped from page 44 to page 61. We asked the agency for the missing pages, were sent the appendix cover sheet and nothing behind it, and then went looking for the surveyor, who had kept his file copy and his notebooks in a garage for twenty-two years. On 6 August we took him back to the site with a tape and a camera and asked him to re-measure three things without first looking at his own 2004 figures.
Who we spoke to
- Delwyn Sturrock-Amadi, Chartered building surveyor, retired 2019; carried out the 2004 condition survey for Barrowcliffe & Nnamdi of Hauppauge. Interviewed over three days, twice at his home and once on site; his three 2004 field notebooks photographed page by page with his permission July and August 2026 Not paid, and refused a fee twice. Asked us to print that he has no view on what the plant was for and did not have one in 2004.
- Appendix C, 'Subsurface stair core: observations and dimensions', 16 pages, The severed appendix to the November 2004 condition report. Supplied by Mr Sturrock-Amadi from his own file copy and matched page for page against the appendix cover sheet released to us by the agency's records office July 2026 The cover sheet carries a handwritten instruction, unsigned: 'hold C, handle separately'. Two examiners could not agree on the initials beneath it and we are not printing a guess.
- Dr. Marit Ferrante-Okonjo, Distribution engineer; designs medium-voltage cable systems for industrial sites. Commissioned to read the notebook's cable and vault dimensions cold, with the site name, the state and every date removed August 2026 Was not told what the story was until after she had filed. Her caveat about what a cable size does and does not prove is printed under Unverified in her own words.
- Suffolk County Clerk, exhibit file 83-CV-2210, drawing 5511-F2, 'Frame and anchor set, layout' — the 1975 fabricator's drawing for the subject positioning assembly. Read at the public counter and photographed with a scale rule in frame; dimensions taken off the print by us and checked by a second reporter August 2026 Same exhibit file this newspaper used for the purchase order on 21 August. The drawing is stapled behind sub-order 5511.
- Verena Oyelaran-Deakin, Deputy Commissioner for Historic and Capital Facilities, the state parks agency. Written questions sent 30 July 2026 with Appendix C attached and eleven numbered points; replied on 19 August in her own name and not through a press office August 2026 Printed in full and unedited. Answers every question asked, including the two we expected to be refused.
Documents
- PX-1402 — Denver International Airport, Concourse D substructure — mechanical drawings, sheets 1–6 of 19 accepted
What we could not confirm
- The fourth landing. Mr Sturrock-Amadi's notebook says 'seen, not entered' and it means it: he stopped at the water on 3 March 2004 and so did we on 6 August 2026. The depth of 20.4 metres is a tape dropped down a stair well, not a floor anybody has stood on. Everything in this story below 16.5 metres is a description of a staircase.
- Whether the vault was ever energised. The trays are there, the conductors are there, and they are the size we say they are, because two people measured them twenty-two years apart. Nobody has put an instrument on them. Dr. Ferrante-Okonjo asked that her caveat be printed in her words: 'A cable rated at nine megavolt-amperes tells you what somebody was willing to pay for. It does not tell you that one ampere ever went down it.'
- Who holds the ground. The agency's own reply says the 1984 transfer instrument reserves everything below the level of the recorded foundation slab, and rights of access to it, to the transferring federal authority, and points us at Schedule 2 of that instrument. We asked for Schedule 2 on 20 August and we do not have it. Until we do, we cannot tell you whose four floors these are.
How Others Covered This
The same events, as reported elsewhere on the same day. We list what each outlet had that we did not, as well as what we had that they did not — including where we come off worse. Why we print this.
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The Hollow PostWHAT THE STATE CUT OUT OF ITS OWN MONTAUK REPORT
Read the excision as the entire story and cast the surveyor as a whistleblower, which is a description he has never accepted and asked us twice not to repeat.
Had that we did not
The page-number jump, correctly, and a genuinely good short history of the 1984 land transfer that we have borrowed from.
Left out
The agency's answer, which had been sent to them as well as to us, and which explains the excision in a way their framing leaves no room for.
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The Continental WireState agency says 2004 appendix on Montauk site 'was not adopted'
Carried the finding and the agency's sentence at equal length and left the reader to weigh two claims of very unequal evidential weight.
Had that we did not
The reply in full, and faster than we managed it.
Left out
That 'not adopted' is not 'inaccurate', a distinction the deputy commissioner drew herself, unprompted, in the next paragraph of the same letter they quoted from.
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They Buriedthis newspaperOne Basement On The Drawings. The Man Who Measured It Went Down Four Floors.
Found the surveyor, photographed his notebooks page by page, took him back down with a tape and a camera, and matched a bolt pattern to a 1975 drawing sitting in a bankruptcy exhibit file.
Had that we did not
Appendix C entire, all three re-measurements including the one that did not match, and the agency's reply unedited and at length.
Left out
We put the bolt pattern in the second section and the man in the fifth. Mr Sturrock-Amadi spent twenty-two years being told his sixteen pages would be handled separately, and this newspaper made him wait until it had a diagram. — V. Ashcombe-Doyle, standards editor
Right of Reply
They Buried contacted Verena Oyelaran-Deakin, Deputy Commissioner for Historic and Capital Facilities in writing on 30 July 2026, with Appendix C attached and eleven numbered questions, and three weeks to answer. Replied 19 August 2026, in her own name. Printed in full and unedited, including the paragraph in which she apologises to our source.
I am going to answer your questions in the order you asked them, and I am not going to characterise your reporting, which is a thing my office is always tempted to do and which has never once helped.
Yes. Appendix C exists. It was delivered to this agency with the rest of the report on 12 November 2004. Your copy is our copy. I am not going to suggest it is a fabrication in order to save myself a difficult afternoon.
The appendix was not adopted. You have asked me four times, in four different forms, whether 'not adopted' means 'found to be inaccurate'. The honest answer is that it does not. This agency has never made a finding that Mr Sturrock-Amadi measured anything wrongly, and I have no basis on which to make one now. What 'not adopted' means is that the appendix fell outside the scope of the commission and this agency could not act on it, and I am going to explain why, because if I do not you will assume the reason is discreditable.
The commission was for hazardous materials and structural condition within the demise. The demise is the property interest this agency was granted in 1984, and it is not the whole of the ground. The instrument reserves the subsurface below the level of the recorded foundation slab, together with rights of access to it, to the transferring federal authority. That reservation sits in Schedule 2. It is a matter of public record and I would encourage you to obtain Schedule 2 for yourselves rather than take my summary of it, because my summary is a summary.
So when your surveyor walked down a staircase he had not been asked to enter and measured plant this agency has never owned, he produced sixteen pages of careful work about somebody else's property. He was told the appendix would be handled separately. That is because it was referred onward to the federal authority under the access provisions, which is what handling it separately meant. Nobody told him so. That is a discourtesy, it lasted twenty-two years, and it is ours rather than his. I would rather have written to him directly than have him read this in a newspaper, and I have now written to him directly as well.
On the 2021 works. We capped the external head of the stair. It was an unsecured vertical opening beside a public path and I would cap it again tomorrow morning. You have asked whether any record was taken before the pour. It was not. There was no requirement for one and, on the interest we hold, no right to take one.
On your visit of 6 August. Our site manager unlocked the plant room door, walked your party to the head of the stair, and did not follow them down. That is precisely the extent of what this agency is entitled to do on that ground. I have said so to him in writing and I have taken no action against him, and I would ask you to print that alongside his name if you print his name at all.
I want to be clear about what I am and am not saying, because your readers deserve better than the fog a press office would give you. I am not telling you that there is nothing under that building. I am telling you that this agency does not own it, has never entered it, holds no record of it beyond the sixteen pages you already have, and would be acting outside its powers if it went down there and looked. If you want to know what is on the fourth landing, you are asking the wrong government.
Published unedited under our right-of-reply guarantee.
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