Special Report Update! (9/14/01) -- 2:18 p.m.
Day 4: A Unified Industry Digs In So Others Can Dig Out

While emotions run high, work is progressing at the site of the former World Trade Center. Late last night, ironworkers and firefighters were the first line of defense in the cleanup and rescue operations, taking acetylene torches to the felled bridge that once linked the World Trade Center with the World Financial Center. This effort paved the way for search and rescue workers to do their job with less of a chance of being injured, according to news reports.

Toward the current rebuilding efforts, Tishman Construction released a statement that read:

“We are assisting clients with whatever is necessary to get them back in operation. In particular, we are putting 140 West Street back in to shape for Verizon, which is a priority, because it contains major switches that provide telecommunications services for major parts of the financial district.

“Parts of the collapsed 7 World Trade Center are leaning on 140 West Street, so this is a delicate operation. 140 West Street is a 43-story, 1.1-million sq. ft. building.

“We have inspected the building with structural engineers and have begun removing debris from the roof and setbacks. We are pumping water out of the basement, mostly coming from the continuing efforts to put out all of the fires at the World Trade Center site.

“We are installing new risers to get power to the switches so telephone service can be restored. The main objective is to get the telephone switches up and running and telecommunications restored as quickly as possible because all of the companies downtown obviously will need that to restart operations.

“Daniel Tishman, president of Tishman Construction and Joseph Simone, president of Tishman Real Estate Services, have met with other members of the Real Estate Board of New York and the mayor and his staff, to determine how many square feet and what type of facilities are needed by displaced companies. Our Real Estate Services group is already searching for space, which our interiors fit-out group will build.

“We are also talking with city agencies and offering whatever labor and management they need for general purposes.”

Meanwhile, in an interview with New York Construction News, Robert Fee, president and chief executive officer of Turner Construction Co., one of six firms making up the three New York City of Design and Construction-hired (DDC) cleanup teams, said the situation at the former site of the World Trade Center is being treated like a “crime scene.”

“We are looking for survivors first,” Fee emphasized.

The three DDC-hired teams are AMEC and Bovis Lend Lease LMB, Turner Construction and Plaza Construction and Tully and DeFoe Construction. Equipment.

The Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is the managing agency for the city and the contractors, Fee said, are working directly for DDC. “There was a meeting yesterday to discuss contract terms for the members of the three teams,” he added.

Elaborating on the roles of the three teams, Fee explained that AMEC and Bovis are looking at Tower 1 and the felled bridge that connected the World Trade Center and the World Financial Center because many “senior officers who were in the command center set up in and under that bridge may have been trapped after the bridge collapsed.”

Fee also said that the Tully-DeFoe team is looking at Buildings 3 and 5 and the Turner-Plaza team is doing demolition work at the site of Buildings 6 and 7. In addition, Turner is doing damage assessment in adjacent buildings in the immediate area, ordering glass and using available materials on hand to provide temporary protection.

“We are also securing the buildings with bracing and shoring and helping our clients who lost space to find space, create swing space, and do whatever it takes to get them operational. All of the other team members are doing the same thing,” Fee explained.

Fee could not estimate how many construction workers dropped everything to pitch in and help, noting that “so many construction workers and firms have abandoned projects and flocked to the disaster site to help.
Even the AOL Time Warner job has been shut down and the workers have gone down to help.”

Prior to the disaster, Turner had an office in the World Trade Center that provided on-call work for the complex. It also was doing work at the New York Stock Exchange, One Liberty Plaza and 90 Church St. “All of our people are accounted for, including laborers and subcontractor crews,” he added.

According to Fee, materials are stockpiled, the people are out there and the industry is ready to cleanup and help in the healing process to restart and relocate businesses and begin the rebuilding process.