Posted: November 29, 2001

Dozens of Highway Repairers and Construction Laborers from Local 376 threw their strength and skills into the valiant rescue effort at the disaster site. “We weren’t heroic, we just did what we had to,” said volunteer Richard Carlino.

Growing up and working on Staten Island, Highway Repairer Richard Carlino saw the twin towers almost every day of his life – until Sept. 11. “Now there are holes in the skyline and holes in so many lives,” he said.

A month later, the Local 376 member turns red with rage as he talks of the disaster: “I feel angry at the terrorists every day. Thousands of innocent people said goodbye to their families and went to work ó just like me. Then they never came home.”

But in the first frantic days after the attack, as he tore into the rubble with his hands, seeking survivors, he said he was “driven by pure hope. We did it for life. Hope kept us working.”

Among the many DC 37 volunteers, Mr. Carlino joined the rescue force with a crew of 30 Dept. of Transportation workers from the DuBois Avenue Yard. They worked to exhaustion and came back for more. Day after day, they repaired roads for DOT from 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., took the ferry to Manhattan, clawed through the debris for another full shift and didn’t get home until after midnight.

Their job skills were important as they taught Police Officers to use gasoline-powered chop saws to cut steel and concrete and get to where there might have been people.

On the rescue teams, Mr. Carlino “felt closer teamwork than I ever experienced. It was all colors together, like we were brothers and sisters in one family.”

The work was grisly, frustrating and dangerous: “We found a lot of shoes, and a lot of things I don‘t want to mention, but not one live person. Everything was pulverized. The largest piece of concrete was no bigger than a basketball,” he said. They breathed smoke and dust, balanced on jagged metal and broken glass and glimpsed building sections tottering above. “When the wind rose, the Fire Department blew a horn, and we had to get out.”

At home, Mrs. Cindy Carlino, Gabrielle, 11, and Chelsea, 13, “were scared every time I volunteered at the disaster site,” said Mr. Carlino. “I just explained that it was the right thing to do. Later, they were proud of me.”

The union, too, is proud of Richard Carlino and all the members who joined in the rescue effort – some assigned on their jobs and others who volunteered – said Local 376 President Ed Bennett. “We were put to the test and we came through. That’s what kind of people we are as city employees and members of DC 37.”