From Ground Zero To The Classroom: NJ Instructors Share Firsthand Lessons From 9/11

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In the days, weeks and years that followed the September 11, 2001, attacks, many instructors from the Center for Public Health Workforce Development at the Rutgers School of Public Health answered the call to assist with the recovery and rebuilding efforts.

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More than two decades later, the connection between the center and September 11 remains deeply personal – and profoundly relevant.

The center was initiated in 1977 to provide health and safety training for workers, and from there it expanded into courses covering asbestos, lead, hazardous waste and other occupational safety and health topics. A few days after the attacks, the center was called upon to assist the Port Authority in their recovery efforts at Ground Zero. Months after the attacks, the center was among the first with the task of creating an on-site disaster training program.

Now, the center, based in Somerset, offers more than 300 courses each year in construction safety, hazardous materials training and occupational health safety.

The instructors who witnessed the devastation worked amid the debris, protected recovery workers and helped rebuild what was lost still carry those experiences into the classroom.

Mitchel A. Rosen: Training Workers to Face Disaster

As with so many people who answered the call for help after September 11, Mitchel Rosen, the director of the Center for Public Health Workforce Development, has vivid memories of the morning the planes struck the towers and the work he did over the days and months that followed.

Two days after the attacks, Rosen was contacted by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and asked to assemble a team with expertise in toxicology, medical services, human remains recovery and other specialties beyond the typical scope of safety professionals. Rosen reached out to colleagues with the specialized knowledge, and they arrived at Ground Zero several days later.

At the time of the attacks, Rosen's work at the center was largely focused on protecting workers through hazardous waste and occupational safety and health trainings. Almost overnight, that shifted to disaster preparedness and response.

"It was an honor to be able to assemble a team to engage with the Port Authority on such important issues and to help them when our expertise was so urgently needed," Rosen said.

In addition to the urgent needs of the Port Authority, the center contributed to the development of a site safety training program for workers at Ground Zero. A little more than two months later, the safety training program was in place and a requirement for all workers involved in recovery efforts.

The need to train workers before disasters strike led to the development of the Disaster Site Worker Program, which is still taught at the center 25 years later. Lessons learned from September 11 serve as the foundation for this program, which consists of two courses: OSHA 5600 Disaster Site Worker and OSHA 5602 Update for Disaster Site Worker Trainers.

"We were able to utilize some of the things we learned after 9/11 and the anthrax attacks," Rosen said. "We incorporated lessons from 9/11 into the Hurricane Sandy response, in terms of entering or not entering buildings that are unstable, and to conduct risk assessments of the site. Even with the spread of Ebola, 9/11 respiratory protection lessons were still applicable."

He added that thanks to this program, the hope is that first responders and other workers who rush to the scene of a disaster won't have to wait months to acquire the skills and knowledge they need to keep themselves safe.

Philip Taylor: There to Do a Job and Honor Memories

Philip A. Taylor was working as a supervisor for the Port Authority's Occupational Health and Safety Unit. He was working offsite that day, a coincidence that changed the course of his life. The day after the attacks, Taylor arrived at Ground Zero, alongside a flood of rescue workers, heavy equipment operators, construction workers and first responders eager to help.

"It's hard to express in words the magnitude of the experience," said Taylor, now an instructor at the center. "Your brain had to first comprehend what your eyes were seeing. It was just destruction 360 degrees. Once you comprehend that, you realize you had bodies beneath you. You have to put these feelings away, the knowledge that your friends are down there somewhere. We honored their memories by doing the best job we can."

Nothing about the 9/11 recovery effort was a typical response. By the end of September, more than 2,000 construction workers a day were operating a myriad of heavy equipment within the 16-acre World Trade Center site. Everyone was focused on the job at hand and preventing any additional loss of life.

Taylor worked on site for the duration of the response, working up to 16-hour days. Each day more safety representatives from various agencies arrived. What started as an ad hoc safety crew morphed into a multiagency environmental, health and safety committee, which was given a seemingly impossible task of protecting workers while surrounded by vast destruction.

"Typically, construction workers do not unearth bodies," Taylor said. "Typically, construction workers do not work around cadaver dogs. Workers do not usually have to crawl into spaces where there's a fear of collapse. These were real-world, on-the-spot decisions to get the work done and keep workers as safe as possible."

Team members quickly became a committed and cohesive entity focused on getting the job done.

"We all knew what the objectives were, and we all worked together to meet those objectives," Taylor said. "Did we always agree? No. We discussed it out. I don't remember anyone ever arguing. Everyone understood the magnitude of the situation."

Today, Taylor shares the lessons he learned at Ground Zero with trainees at the center. His experience in the months after September 11 shaped his understanding of what it means to protect workers when the hazards are unfamiliar, the circumstances are changing by the hour, and the stakes could not be higher.

Brian Cichetti: The Work, the People and the Lessons

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Brian Cichetti was working as site safety manager with E.E. Cruz & Co., a civil construction contractor. He was working on the Jersey City waterfront putting up a building foundation as the planes hit the towers.

Cichetti and his colleagues sprang into action. They knew both supplies and workers with their skills would be needed in recovery efforts. Cichetti and his colleagues began piling all the equipment they could onto a tugboat to take over to Battery Park City.

Cichetti remembers stepping off that tugboat early the next morning and entering a surreal landscape. Concrete dust covered the ground ankle-deep and 8.5-by-11-inch sheets of paper covered every surface and snowed down around them.

At Ground Zero, stations had been set up where workers were cutting pieces of steel into movable pieces. Bucket brigades stretched across the site, trying to clear debris. The hope at that time was that there were still people who would be found alive under the rubble.

"One of the things that's still near and dear to me is how everyone came together," Cichetti said. "There were construction workers from all over the United States … everyone who wanted to be there to help was there."

Cichetti knew there were dangers all around to be concerned about. When the Twin Towers were erected in the 1960s, they were still using lead paint, meaning paint that was burning was creating lead vapors. Additionally, dust from concrete and asbestos was a deadly combination. Add to that the instability of the piles of rubble, which was shifting constantly and still burning in places.

Cichetti worked at the site around the clock for the next few days, going home just to shower and sleep. He traveled back and forth between Lower Manhattan and his home in Bayonne on tugboats like the one he'd first arrived on.

Five years later, Cichetti returned to Ground Zero, working there from 2006 to 2009 as E.E. Cruz's site safety manager while they built the footings for the World Trade Center Memorial and Museum.

For Cichetti, returning to Ground Zero was more than another construction project: It was a deeply personal experience.

Today, Cichetti teaches others about occupational safety and health. His experiences at Ground Zero are part of what he brings to the classroom.

His work at Ground Zero eventually ended – but the lessons didn't.

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