The victims were from all walks of life, but the massive response came overwhelmingly from the men and women of the city's unionized working class.

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS
with GREGORY N. HEIRES

The first call came in at 8:48 a.m. Seconds later the number of calls to the 911 Emergency Call Center jumped from 10 to 400 - all from people inside the World Trade Center and uniformed officers. In the 13 minutes that followed, as the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center unfolded, the Police Communications Technicians received a record 3,000 calls.

Eighteen minutes later, when the second Boeing 737 tore through 2 World Trade Center, New York City was enveloped in chaos and utter disbelief.

"I had to remain calm," said E911 Tech Gladys Mitchell, a Local 1549 member who received one of the first emergency calls. "I knew I had a lot of lives in my hands." E911 Techs take calls and feed information to police officers in the field. Other dispatchers, including Cheryl James, then seven months pregnant, were also on duty. "When I grasped what was going on, I didn't get emotional," she said. "I had to keep doing my job."

That day they answered 55,574 calls for help from people in and near the WTC.

Meanwhile, hundreds of members of Uniformed Emergency Medical Technicians and Paramedics Local 2507 and Uniformed EMS Officers Union Local 3621 raced toward the disaster with Firefighters and Police Officers from around the metropolitan area.

Hundreds of Officers and Firefighters who were the first to arrive set up their command centers and began the climb to rescue those trapped on the floors of impact.

Lifesaving direction to thousands of Police, Fire and EMS workers poured in from the 911 Center. Through coordinated efforts with the Transit Authority, the FBI and other agencies, millions of New Yorkers were protected from compounded disaster.

THE 911 staff made a tremendous sacrifice, said Local 1549 President Eddie Rodriquez. "They worked 16-hour shifts, put aside worries about their own families and kept the city safe."

Sadly, many of the Firefighters, EMS workers and Police Officers who called the emergency center were never heard from again, said George Rivera, a Supervising PCT. "We tried to reach them on the radio," he said. "We sat with tears in our eyes."

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani ordered all off-duty city employees to report to work. In the horrible early days and the desperate all-out rescue effort, New York City's Police, Firefighters and District Council 37 members provided a beacon of light with incredible bravery and round-the-clock work.

Throughout the yearlong cleanup and recovery drive, public employees have been at the heart of the effort, together with their counterparts in private sector construction unions. Members of dozens of DC 37 locals played essential roles in the city's mammoth effort.

"In recent years, the public sector has been so beaten up by conservative politicians that many people were surprised by the essential role of the unionized workforce in the city's recovery," said Elliott Sclar, director of the Urban Planning Program at Columbia University. In the worst of times, its oft-maligned public service infrastructure came through for New York City.

As the hail of glass and metal beneath the blaze at the trade center rained down, EMS crews, uniformed officers and good Samaritans helped care for and evacuate the injured who were lucky enough to escape. Sirens blared. Then, suddenly, at 9:59 a.m., the South Tower imploded. The city was flung deeper into chaos.

Four DC 37 members perished in the towers: the Rev. Mychal F. Judge ("Father Mike"), a Fire Dept. Chaplain and a member of Local 299; Paramedics Ricardo Quinn and Carlos Lillo, both members of Local 2507; and Off-Track Betting Clerk Chet Louie, a Local 2021 member who moonlighted at the WTC. (Mr. Quinn was postumously promoted to lieutenant.)

In addition to the DC 37 members who died in the attacks, more than 60 Emergency Medical Service workers were injured during that day.

"It was horrible," said Emergency Medical Technician Alex Loutsky, who was at Fulton and Church streets—a block from the site—when the first building collapsed.

Smothered in layers of dust and smoke and unable to see, Mr. Loutsky instinctively grabbed out into the darkness. He stumbled upon a parked van and smashed its window to get in and recover his breath.

Mr. Loutsky then ran a few blocks to New York University Downtown Hospital, where he often takes patients. Two nurses he knows helped him wash down. Despite being shaken up by the collapse, Mr. Loutsky returned to the disaster scene to help treat injured people.

"It's not a job for us, it's a calling," said Patrick J. Bahnken, president of Local 2507, noting that EMS workers like Mr. Loutsky put their own fears and traumas on hold and ignored their own injuries to treat injured people and save lives.

"EMS personnel responded without hesitation, knowing they were going into a dangerous situation, doing what they are supposed to be doing, which is saving lives," said Donald Rothschild, president of Uniformed EMS Officers Local 3621. "Emergency workers evacuated both towers that day, and 25,000 lives were saved."

Two miles north, staff at Bellevue Hospital sprang into full disaster mode and prepared for hundreds of incoming patients.

About 40 firefighters, 10 police officers and a Port Authority officer were rushed in. They were all in pretty bad shape. Few others were as fortunate. Bellevue took in less than 100 WTC victims. "We wanted to do more, but there was not enough to do—not enough survivors," said Confesor Arroyo, a Patient Care Associate and Local 420 member.

The North Tower, One World Trade Center, collapsed at 10:28 a.m., 29 minutes after the South Tower fell. A fallen steel beam from the towers punctured a water main buried 50 feet underground. The seismic force of the two implosions burst eight water mains in Manhattan below Canal Street. DEP workers scrambled to gain control of a situation that was spiraling out of control. The city's underground infrastructure—a labyrinth of gas and water pipes, electric, telephone and fiber optic wires—was severed by the massive shaking and threatened further by the water that flowed uncontrollably from the ruptured arteries buried deep below city streets.

Dept. of Environmental Protection crews kept working around the clock to shut down water mains so foundations near Ground Zero, including that of DC 37 headquarters, would not be further compromised.

To console survivors, families and workers, many Chaplains from AFSCME Local 299 were on hand to provide counseling that fateful day and in the weeks and months that followed.

Rabbi Mayer Birnhack, a Fire Dept. Chaplain, arrived from Brooklyn just after the first plane struck; he was walking on West Street when the second one hit. He remained on the scene as the buildings collapsed, helping survivors get assistance and providing support to rescue workers.

"Many of the people I saw couldn't breathe," Rabbi Birnhack said. "They couldn't see because their eyes were full of soot. And many people suffered from burns. My immediate concern was to help people wash out their eyes."

Thousands of DC 37 members in the nation's greatest public service infrastructure helped New York City make recovery a reality.

From its office near Union Square, Social Service Employees Union Local 371 mobilized volunteers to help survivors and witnesses cope with the intense emotional fallout after the tragedy. Working and retired Social Workers, doctors, nurses and volunteers came from around the country to help.

And on the West Side, the city's emergency Family Assistance Center on Hudson River Pier 94 housed more than a dozen agencies, from social services to the American Red Cross to the FBI. Families of WTC victims filed into the site to get legal assistance, Worker's Compensation or simply a hot meal and a cup of coffee. The center provided vital help for survivors and families of victims for months after 9/11.

The size of two football fields, the center handled clients efficiently, thanks to computers installed by a team that included Computer Specialist Dennis Harney, Computer Technician Patrick Luc and other members of Local 2627. In 24 hours, they set up 300 computers and installed the software that gave them access to the necessary databases. For months, Local 1359 members at another disaster relief center helped people affected by the with housing problems.

Thursday night, Sept. 13, rain poured in torrents. The violent storm flooded sewers citywide and further weakened the giant underground wall around the 16-acre WTC site that held back the Hudson River.

Out of the public eye, an army of professional and technical workers—Structural Engineers, Inspectors and Surveyors - assessed the damage to scores of buildings in the area and shored up the concrete basin surrounding the site, preventing a flood of the area, surrounding subway and PATH stations and tunnels.

When thousands of exhausted volunteers and workers needed to refuel, many of them ate meals prepared by a dedicated crew of Local 372 members who worked around the clock at nearby Stuyvesant High School. There, a few blocks from Ground Zero, the staff made sure volunteers did not go hungry. Powered by generators, Stuyvesant High School was open 24 hours and the staff worked at a fast pace, preparing breakfast, lunch dinner and snacks - as many as 2,000 meals a day.

Other rescue workers ate meals contributed by families citywide, but not until every donation was checked for safety by a team of Public Health Sanitarians from DC 37's Local 768.

Fire Prevention Inspectors staffed the missing persons hotline at the Fire Dept. Environmental experts monitored the air quality and ensured that demolition workers followed health and safety standards.
Members from the Office of Chief Medical Examiner moved in quickly to identify victims.

Hundreds of experts, including many DC 37 members such as Forensic Anthropologist Amy Mundorff of Local 375, worked on the biggest crime scene in U.S. history. Ms. Mundorff and three co-workers with the crime reconstruction unit, Brian Desire, Ralph Ristenbatt and Brian Gestring, were injured as they bolted from the base of the collapsing South Tower on Sept. 11.

For several weeks after the attack, Medical Legal Investigators in Health Services Employees Local 768 worked in a temporary morgue—a tent with tables on Vesey Street at the perimeter of Ground Zero. Theirs was the grizzly first step on the evidentiary trail - tagging and cataloging bodies and body parts. After about three months, a new makeshift morgue was set up in two closed high schools on Liberty Street.

Morgue Technicians in Municipal Hospital Employees Local 420 then transported remains to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner across from Bellevue Hospital for autopsies, and Pathologists made identifications based on DNA analyses.

Early on in the cleanup, the chain of command was clearly established, with public employees in the Dept. of Design and Construction in charge. DDC divided the 16-acre disaster site among four demolition contractors.

A volunteer team of 88 Engineers, all members of Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375, supervised the work of the contractors.

The Giuliani administration's attempt to contract out DDC's work to the giant San Francisco-based Bechtel Group was blocked when federal agencies and the City Council agreed the city workers were doing the best job possible.

Local 375 members also designed and supervised the rebuilding of the 1 and 9 subway tunnel, which was destroyed when the World Trade Center collapsed. They helped bring in the project ahead of schedule and under budget.

"New York City's public sector workers knew their jobs and knew what to do. With a disaster of this scope anywhere else, the state and federal governments would have had to intervene," said Columbia University Professor Elliott Sclar.

"Surviving the World Trade Center attacks is part of the collective experience shared by all Americans, but especially those hardest hit—New Yorkers and the unsung heroes of the public workforce represented by District Council 37," said DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts.

The heroism, dedication and pride of the municipal employees represented by DC 37 are a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

Yet, we can never forget:

"Every day when I pass by the Brooklyn Bridge and look into the skyline of downtown Manhattan, I give myself the sign of the cross," said Mario Gallo, a member of Motor Vehicle Operators Local 983. The Assistant Highway Repairer spent three weeks hauling debris away from Ground Zero.

"As a father, I can never forget that there are 5,000 orphans because of what happened on September 11," he said.