Thousands of City Workers Respond

By Dan Janison | STAFF WRITER

September 13, 2001

Thousands of municipal employees have been drafted for a thousand odd tasks required by the massive emergency response to the Twin Towers nightmare.

Part planned and part improvised, this instant revolution in priorities for the besieged city's 225,000-person government has kept the city running, with obvious service gaps and tricky problems.

The roles of firefighters, medics and police - among them hundreds missing in action and presumed dead - were supported by the assorted efforts of parking enforcement officers, court officers, sanitation workers and technicians.

On Staten Island, the Fresh Kills Landfill, closed amid fanfare earlier this year, rumbled to life as a grim sifting site for tons of debris, with federal probers seeking crime evidence and recording boxes from the crashed airliners.

Sanitation trucks sprayed down streets to wash away the dust and grit in what's still a danger zone teeming with National Guard soldiers - one stationed in a tank yesterday at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge.

City Hall stood closed, phones lines out, leaving the city with no central seat of government.

The Health Department said it is monitoring for hazards the clouds of floating dust that have fouled the air over lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Driving a borrowed city car with lights and sirens to his office, Jerry Cammarata, a Board of Education member and youth-services commissioner, described some of the ad-hoc actions of the previous day.

"Kids who go to Economics High School across the street [from the explosions] took the ferry with their teachers and went to stay at Curtis High School," he said. "We were in the emergency center and someone came in and yelled, 'get out immediately!'"

En route, he stopped along the street to speak with Joel Miele, the environmental protection commissioner, whose agency must keep the water flowing in lower Manhattan.

The Parks Department, too, sent vehicles toward ground zero, with six big light towers usually used for outdoor concerts so that searchers can dig through the rubble at night. Park patrols were reassigned to help direct traffic alongside Nassau County police and gray-uniformed state troopers. A Taxi and Limousine Commission car with lights and sirens sped through the numerous staffed checkpoints yesterday - as did some civilian cars, jail buses, Army Humvees and cars from the Downtown Alliance. Though the courts were closed, state court officers on special shifts stood guarding the buildings.

Buildings Department technicians assessed the structural safety of remaining office buildings near the World Trade Center and buses were pressed into ferrying squads of police around the area.

Outside 40 Worth St., which houses the hospitals, housing and health agencies, one city employee faced the eerily quiet street making complicated arrangements for the delivery of phone equipment.

Through it all, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani kept tabs on the complex array of tasks in the devastation zone, moving through the wreckage with aides and, at times, stopping to hug and encourage city employees.