Public Employee Press

When disaster strikes

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

When a tornado touched down in Brooklyn Aug. 8, television meteorologists downplayed it. They laughed and bantered through the early morning news — business as usual.

That tornado was everything but what they said.

It slammed into Brooklyn with a force so powerful it ripped 100-year-old trees from cement sidewalks, crushed cars, and tore roofs off houses. The twister cut a path of destruction from New Jersey to Staten Island, across the Narrows to Bay Ridge and on to Ditmas Park where it vanished into nothingness as surely as it came.

The National Weather Service said its winds reached 135 miles per hour as driving rains flooded the subways and swamped the morning rush hour.

As always when disaster strikes, public sector workers were first to respond. From the 911 techs who directed rescuers to the scene to the arborists and Parks workers who removed giant fallen trees, they came through as rescue and recovery professionals. “It blew across the Verrazano Bridge and hit the promenade. It’s amazing that no one was killed,” said Local 1506 arborist Jeff Potts on Bay Ridge Avenue.

DC 37 responders included Emergency Medical Service members in locals 2507 and 3621, 65 forestry workers in locals 1506 and 1508, other blue collar workers in locals 983 and 1505, and Police Communications Technicians and clerical staff in Local 1549. Climbers and Pruners, ­Motor Vehicle Operators, Parks Service Workers and Parks Enforcement Patrol officers worked alongside fire, police and sanitation workers to remove trees that trapped residents in their homes, and crushed vehicles.Remarkably, they cleaned up in just three days.

It did not go as well in Minnesota Aug. 1, when 13 died as the I-35 West bridge collapsed into the mighty Mississippi River. Members of AFSCME, DC 37’s national union, were on the span as it fell and others were first responders, risking their lives to save others.

Eyewitness to tragedy
“In America, bridges do not collapse,” said AFSCME Council 5 Executive Director Eliot Seide. An eyewitness to the devastation, death and disbelief, Seide said the disaster brought back horrible memories of the 9/11 terrorist attacks he witnessed while at DC 37 headquarters, one block from where the Twin Towers once stood.

Once again, out of the horror and grief came heroism.

“Public workers, many of them AFSCME members, were the everyday heroes, the first to respond,” Seide said. AFSCME 911 staff, radio dispatchers and ambulance crews handled the emergency calls, members at the Red Cross provided blood, and others labored to save lives on medical teams at three hospitals. AFSCME Psychologists, Counselors and, Corrections Officers selflessly came to the rescue with Police Officers, Firefighters and Nurses in other unions.

Through the unbelievable destruction, public workers braved the hazards of rescuing the injured, recovering the dead and searching for the cause of the collapse.

In addition to the natural dangers of the job, Seide pointed out, these workers face the anti-union, anti-government, anti-tax climate fostered by politicians like George Bush, who love to get their pictures taken with heroic first responders but constantly vote to disinvest in public infrastructure, public services and public workers.

Since the collapse of I-35W, more bridges have received poor ratings in cities whose transportation departments are underfunded and understaffed.

Like the devastation that befell New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit its weakened levees, the Minneapolis bridge collapse stands as a warning of the kind of tragedy we can expect when nature’s forces slam into fiscally starved public infrastructure.

“It’s bad politics, bad ideology and bad management to not reinvest in our cities and hire public sector workers to rebuild our crumbling infrastructures,” Seide added. “People need their confidence restored; they need to know that government works.”