Hours of Horror, Weeks of Valor
Among the more than 5,000 casualties of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were several AFSCME members and many other union members. Selflessly and fearlessly, thousands more rushed in to evacuate and aid the stricken and, later, search through and remove tons of grisly rubble.
By the Public Employee Staff
Public Employee thanks the following affiliate staff members for their vital assistance in producing this entire section on Sept. 11 and its aftermath:
CSEA Communications Department
Stephen Madarasz; Daniel X. Campbell, David Galarza, Lou Hmieleski, Rolando Infante, Ronald Kermani, Janice Marra.
DC 37 Communications Department
Chris Policano; Alfredo Alvarado, Molly Charboneau, Gregory N. Heires, Bill Schleicher, Donna Silberberg, Diane S. Williams.
NEW YORK CITY & WASHINGTON, D.C.
There have been heroes aplenty in the disaster that began at 8:45 on the morning of Sept. 11. As with all such events, they come in gradations, starting on high with the hundreds of dead New York City firefighters, police, emergency medical technicians and paramedics, and the passengers who attacked the hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93 over Pennsylvania. The honor roll of heroes then spreads far and fast, with AFSCME's own prominent among them:
The Rev. Mychal F. Judge of Local 299 (DC 37), the New York Fire Department chaplain who died at the World Trade Center administering last rites to a mortally wounded firefighter (see related story); paramedics Carlos Lillo and Ricardo Quinn, DC 37 members who braved that hellish scene to support rescue efforts; and five members of the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA)/ AFSCME Local 1000 — Yvette Anderson, Florence Cohen, Harry Goody, Marian Hrycak and Dorothy Temple — who worked in the doomed towers for the state Department of Taxation and Finance and were thus caught in the worst of places at the worst of times.
Nor were the dead and missing AFSCME's only victims. Sixty-nine paramedics and emergency medical technicians (EMTs) incurred physical injuries; an untold number of others, as well as people at work in the trade center, were traumatized.
Other unions, New York's firefighting and police units primary among them, suffered even more grievously. Yet every one, to the last man or woman, responded when called. And often when not called, from surrounding suburbs but also from hundreds of miles away. From start to finish, the labor movement can be eternally proud of the job it did under trying, at times unspeakable, conditions.
A kaleidoscope of additional AFSCME members became intimately involved in rescue, clean-up and subsequent planning — at the trade center and the Pentagon. Among them, in addition to paramedics and EMTs, were nurses, hospital and other health care workers, ambulance and tow truck drivers, social workers, police communications technicians (PCTs), consumer affairs and fire-prevention inspectors, city engineers, computer technicians, maintenance workers — plus a variety of Federal Aviation Administration employees. Many converged on the horrific scenes as part of their suddenly urgent and often highly dangerous jobs; many others, because they volunteered to go where nobody would want to go.
A FLICKER OF DISASTER. On that bright and beautiful Tuesday morning, state Department of Taxation and Finance secretary Rosemarie Deseta rode the elevator to the 86th floor of the South Tower. She had just placed her breakfast on her desk when an ungodly explosion made the lights flicker.
Rushing to the nearest window, Deseta, a CSEA member for the past 24 years, encountered a ghastly sight: the North Tower on fire. "We're leaving!" she and her co-workers declared. They walked quickly down the stairwell to the 78th floor, where they were able to squeeze into an express elevator to the lobby. She was outside the building, running, when the second plane struck her tower.
Days later, still trembling at the thought of friends, supervisors and co-workers who had vanished, Deseta described a scene from hell as the building she had fled crashed to the ground: "People were screaming ... yelling ... crying. They were walking around with blood on them." Covered in soot and dust, unable to breathe, she kept repeating to a man who was comforting her, "I am going to die."
Many people who were inside the second tower saved their lives by ignoring an announcement over the loudspeakers asking them to return to their offices because the immediate danger then was next door. One was Carmen Pedrosa, a keyboard specialist at the tax department who was on the 87th floor: "I automatically turned around, got my pocketbook and said, 'Let's go! Let's get out of here!'"
Marcia Smart, a secretary who worked on 86, also ignored the order to return to her office. Were it not for that announcement, she observes sadly, "A lot of people would have left" before the building collapsed and killed them.
From the pandemonium, heroes emerged. Tatiana Luina stayed long enough to get people out of several tax department offices. "If it had not been for her going around, knocking on doors, I might have stayed behind," says Nilsa Rosa, a secretary.
Luckily for Margaret Ramsay, an audit investigator, she had not quite arrived at work. She had just emerged from a subway station when the South Tower was hit. "While I was standing there, this plane came from nowhere and struck it," Ramsay recalls. "I just started running and didn't stop until I got all the way to Chinatown."
Scheduled to meet that morning with Marian Hrycak, Ramsay found instead that Hrycak was among the missing. "She was the nicest person," says Ramsay. "She would do anything for you."
DISASTER MODE. New York City's PCTs, members of Local 1549 (DC 37), work at a command center about a mile from the trade center. That morning, they were anticipating not a calamity but a celebration of "911 Day." Says Gladys Mitchell, "All of a sudden, the switchboard went red. We immediately went into disaster mode, and tried to pinpoint where calls were coming from. Many were from cell phones, which complicated things. I could hear a lot of screaming and yelling — people frightened for their lives.
"I tried to remain calm. I knew I had a lot of lives in my hands. It took every emotion for me to maintain my composure and not identify with the tragedy personally."
Police dispatcher Cheryl James, seven months pregnant, was also on duty. Like her colleagues, she had difficulty visualizing what was happening because the command-center building has no windows. Soon, James says, "I became overwhelmed with disbelief — but I still had to do my job."
'SHEER CHAOS.' PCT Bob Hanley took one of the first calls received in the 1993 bombing of the trade center. How did the two events compare? "There is no comparison. This time it was sheer chaos: people in wheelchairs, people jumping because of the intense heat. All we could tell them is not to panic, that help is on the way."
Callers pleaded with the operators to "call my wife" or to provide other kinds of immediate help. The PCTs were all but powerless in the face of such demands. Unable to function as helpers, many instead became the last humans to talk with the doomed people high in the towers. The operators worked 16-hour shifts that day. Later, some cancelled vacation plans to stay on the job. Many were so traumatized by the calls they handled that they had to seek counseling.
Supervisor George Rivera fielded calls from law enforcement officers trapped in the buildings. "Some of them I never heard from again," he says. Days later, Rivera was fighting back tears at the memories.
Immediately following the first tower attack, another group of DC 37 members swung into action: the various professionals grouped under Emergency Medical Services (EMS) — EMTs and paramedics (who belong to Local 2507), and uniformed security officers or supervisors. EMTs and paramedics rushed to what became known as Ground Zero to rescue and remove the injured, apply first-aid treatment, carry them on stretchers and load them into waiting EMS vehicles, which rushed them to the nearest hospitals. The EMTs and paramedics worked ever more desperately as the ensuing events unfolded — the second air attack, the collapse of the twin towers.
EVERYTHING 'WENT BLACK.' EMT Alex Loutsky describes his experience: "When the building collapsed, it was horrible. Everyone ran, and everyone was screaming. Then it went black. You couldn't breathe at all."
Carlos Lillo, 37, and Ricardo Quinn, 40, were two of the eight paramedics and EMTs who — like hundreds of firefighters — ran into the burning towers and did not make it out alive. During the rescue effort, dozens of paramedics and EMTs were injured. So were several members of EMS Lieutenants & Captains Local 3621. According toThe New York Times, quoting a hospital official, workers responding to the inferno "couldn't bring the stretchers in, so they carried patients out by hand. They transported over 2,500 patients from ... the heat of the ashes. Thirty ambulances were destroyed."
The Times also provided eyewitness accounts of EMT Quinn's heroism. Paramedics reported that, once inside the South Tower, he stopped to aid one of their own who had been hit by falling debris. He then loaded another patient into an ambulance, went back inside to help — and disappeared.
"I know he went in there thinking of other people," Quinn's wife, Ginny, told the newspaper. "The world is missing a good, good person. Well, it's missing 5,000 of them."
Quinn and Lillo were employed by the Fire Department, which handles about 75 percent of ambulance runs in the city. Although equal to the firefighters and police officers in heroism, the two paramedics are not their equal in death. According to Patrick J. Bahnken, president of Local 2507, the families of the fallen paramedics will receive a death benefit, but they are not eligible for the pensions bestowed on the survivors of uniformed-service workers who die in the line of duty. That's because EMS employees are classified as civilians.
NEW EMERGENCY. In Arlington, Va., American Airlines Flight 77 had crashed into the west side of the huge Pentagon, killing 189 military personnel, civilians and passengers. As fire trucks and rescue vehicles roared and clanged to the scene, employees of the Federal Aviation Administration, members of various locals within Council 26, launched a wholly different kind of emergency effort: securing the nation's airspace, airports and vital federal offices against what seemed quite likely to be additional terrorist attacks (see related story).
In Somerset County, Pa., near Pittsburgh, United Flight 93 had also crashed. Police quickly cordoned off the site, and state Department of Transportation employees were deployed there to control traffic. For eight days, about 150 DOT workers belonging to Local 2125 (Council 83) assisted law enforcement authorities.
Along with the rescue workers, the most harrowing, often ghastly, tasks in New York that day fell to hospital workers represented by Local 420 (DC 37). "Five hundred to 600 of our members were deployed in hospitals and morgues to receive human remains and body parts," says James Butler, the local's president and an International vice president. "Most of the members were at the main trauma center at Bellevue Hospital, working in two shifts, and on stand-by to assist in the morgues in preparing the bodies, undressing them, washing them and the like.
"Our workers were very stressed out. Some of them sought counseling afterwards, because this is the first time they ever encountered something like this."
Senior Nurse's Aide Philip Holder began his day in Bellevue's operating room. When the second plane hit, the hospital switched to disaster mode, and he joined the staff in the clinics, emergency room and wards that were converted into an extensive triage center. He accompanied one of Bellevue's 20 cardiac teams to Ground Zero for on-the-spot lifesaving. Despite the team's efforts, a police officer went into cardiac arrest, and a two-year-old died of respiratory failure. A later mission to perform on-site amputations was aborted. "It hurts a lot because we did not get as many saves as we wanted," says Holder. "It's all about the patients. It's all about saving lives."
Confesor Arroyo, a 26-year Patient Care Associate and Local 420 member, helped organize the hospital to care for the injured. He prepared dozens of stretchers with clean sheets, and made sure the trauma unit had necessary supplies at the ready. There was a problem: Clinics throughout the building were crowded with outpatients, so Arroyo and his colleagues had to arrange their care and rapid discharge to make room for the incoming trade-center victims.
Standing amid hundreds of empty white gurneys in their hospital, Arroyo says, "We all cried. We wanted to do more, but there was not enough to do, not enough survivors."
As far away as the suburbs, AFSCME members produced a same-day response. Three Long Island women belonging to CSEA, volunteer Advanced Medical Service Technicians, drove their fire department ambulance to Ground Zero.
OFF LIMITS. At DC 37's headquarters building, one block from the trade center, no one was injured by the collisions or the subsequent collapse of the towers. But the staff evacuated, and the structure's proximity to the crashes made the building uninhabitable. At press time, the first two floors were being used as an emergency-services command center. DC 37 established temporary field offices throughout the five boroughs of the city. It was uncertain when the staff would be able to return to the Lower Manhattan location.
Several days after the attack, Pres. Gerald W. McEntee made an unscheduled visit to New York, where he joined DC 37 staff and Administrator Lee Saunders at a meeting held in a hotel ballroom. Speaking from the heart, McEntee commended local leaders and council staff for perservering under dire circumstances and told them that the International would do everything possible to provide support. On Sept. 18, CSEA Pres. (and International Vice Pres.) Danny Donohue accompanied Governor Pataki on a tour of the disaster area.
At the Westchester (County) Medical Center — the largest trauma facility between New York City and Albany — CSEA members "were getting ready for the worst as soon as we heard about the attacks," says the president of the medical center unit, Jack Tatarsky. "We were keeping employees here in case we needed them." Personnel felt an odd sense of disappointment when, an entire day later, the hospital had yet to receive any victims. They remained ready to help anyone who arrived. In the interim, workers donated blood to make sure the center's supplies were well stocked.
"This disaster is a personal thing for me," says Jane Fox, an account clerk at the center. She volunteered to escort blood donors and dispense snacks to them, explaining, "While I don't know any of the victims personally, I feel I know them all. I couldn't sit back and do nothing. I just had to help in some way."
It was personal for many people, especially, it seems, for those giving blood. Day after day at the Nassau University Medical Center, CSEA members joined hundreds of other donors, waiting patiently for their turn. Asked why they had come, they gave simple, heartfelt replies. "I'm here for them," said Jim Cummings, a New York State Department of Transportation (DOT) worker, the meaning of "them" crystal clear.
BLESSINGS & CASH. Others hastened to donate money. CSEA members raised more than $17,000 for New York City relief in the hours just after the attacks. "God bless the USA," declared a member as he pressed money into a collection bin in Albany. "I wish I could give more."
CSEA's Capital Region Outreach Committee was on the move and on the phone, collecting from locals to aid the victims. "People are numb, shocked and frightened, but they want to do something that will help," said CSEA Capital Region Pres. Kathy Garrison, volunteering at the donation collection center. "Giving is something we all can do, and will be doing for a long time."
Effective coordination of relief efforts depended heavily on flexible, reliable, smoothly functioning communications. Working non-stop during the first few days, the city's computer specialists played a crucial role in establishing them. About three dozen technicians — members of Electronic Data Processing Personnel Local 2627 (DC 37) — had to equip the facility that replaced the Office of Emergency Management Bunker, which was destroyed in the collapse. Then, in an 18-hour stretch, the technicians installed 200 computer terminals and 320 phone lines in the city's new command center. Along the way, they maintained the system that tracks the city's rescue efforts, monitors complaints and processes requests for information.
"Our most challenging task was to create local computer networks at the Command Center and the Victims Center," says Ed Hysyk, president of the local. "Computers have been used to keep track of everything from dead bodies to inventories."
BUCKET BRIGADES. At the trade center, more than 300 DOT workers, including scores of CSEA members, were facing mountains of rubble and human remains. They cleared heavy debris from the site, and assisted other rescue workers in the bucket brigades that struggled to extinguish smoldering ruins. "We're pitching in in any way we can," says Dwayne Palen, CSEA president for DOT workers in the mid-Hudson Valley.
Nothing, however, prepared Palen for the reality of Ground Zero. "There is carnage, total devastation everywhere," he said, "so much debris — twisted metal, molded steel, smashed cars — all over the place. It's so much worse than what is shown on TV."
And there was the smell: "The whole site smelled like fire, like death. You cannot describe it any other way."
Palen, who served in the military and with a volunteer firefighting unit, calls the scene "numbing." It's only later, "when you're driving home, that the magnitude of it all really hits you."
DC 37 members employed by the city's Departments of Transportation and Parks were among the first to reach the ruined trade center, where they cleared parked cars so that emergency vehicles could get through. Some worked 12-hour shifts, raking through debris and hauling it off to a landfill on Staten Island. Others ran lighting units that allowed around-the-clock operations. As many as 100 workers at a time lined up to pass brimming pails away from the wreckage.
Wayne Goody of Local 376, a veteran highway repairman, helped with the clean up, and for Goody, the work was agonizingly compelling: He had learned that his brother, Harry, was one of the five tax and finance employees listed as missing. "Waiting on that is the hardest," Goody said at the scene. "I'm filled with mixed emotions. I have to work to keep my mind occupied."
'NOT SINCE SAIGON.' Also at Ground Zero was William Bell, a member of Local 1505 who served in the Vietnam War. "I have not seen anything this horrible since the collapse of Saigon," said Bell. Frank Coniglio, a highway repairman and Marine veteran, was helping sift the rubble for body parts. He doubted that most of his co-workers were prepared to handle what they were dealing with: "They've never before seen this level of devastation, and probably never will again."
In disasters of this magnitude, survivors, their loved ones and others emerge with pressing emotional needs. Notes Council 1707 Exec. Director (and International Vice Pres.) Josephine LeBeau, "The psychological impact here is so severe that we had to provide resources necessary to repair the damage to school children, the elderly, people who work and live in tall buildings, as well as to victims and their families."
From the 11th on, the services of nearly 2,000 social workers, counselors, psychiatrists and psychologists — all members of Locals 215 (Council 1707) and 371 (DC 37) — were in demand. Even AFSCME members who are not health professionals found themselves informally counseling others.
Psychologist and Local 215 member Mel Goman, at work a few blocks from the trade center, saw the second plane slam in: "I spent the whole day talking to people in our building. A few were on the edge of panic. But calming them down and reassuring them helped tremendously."
Public health "sanitarians" from the Department of Health looked after the safety of the rescue teams. "Workers are becoming physically taxed from the digging," said Local 768 member James Morris. On their behalf, "We have to be concerned about fumes, abestos and toxins."
For a broad array of public employees — injured or frightened and exhausted — there were comforting thoughts. They had done one hell of a job under unimaginable pressures. And a public that often does not appreciate them now has a clear lesson in how valuable they really are.
NEEDED: YOUR HELPING HAND
To assist our union families victimized by the tragedy, AFSCME has established the "AFSCME September 11 Relief Fund." Donations will go to the families of our eight lost members — to help with burial expenses — and to assist surviving members and their families who have suffered. Make checks payable to: AFSCME September 11 Relief Fund, c/o Business Office, 1625 L Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036-5687.
AFSCME members in New York should also check the CSEA and DC 37 Web sites for additional information on union activities and services, volunteer opportunities and grief counseling.
'Every Little Bit Helps'
Pat Widdith of Local 215 (DC 37), a specialist with the Bronx Development Day Treatment Center, was not directly involved with the relief efforts but considers what she did important. Widdith works with disabled kids and retarded adults. Soon after the attack on the World Trade Center, she had her students drawing pictures of the devastated site and making American flags that they displayed throughout the school.
Said Widdith of her charges, "These are people who have been pushed aside, but they have feelings, too, and they want to express them at this time."
Along with her co-workers, Widdith also launched community fundraising drives to aid the victims and their families. "Many people are going to be unemployed because of what happened," she said. "Every little bit helps."
