One Year Later: Progress

By Jodi Prill, Associate Editor

PANYNJ faces challenges of rebuilding; turns to technology for security

NEW YORK - On September 11, 2001, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey lost 75 employees in the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings, including executive director Neil Levin. Today, employees are still dealing with the effects of the tragedy - some have yet to return to work. For the aviation department, those who have returned to work have been relocated four times since the attacks and are focused on rebuilding the division and securing the airports.

"Our daily working experience is different," says Jeanne Olivier, senior manager, operations, maintenance, and security planning. "Virtually every desk has photos of colleagues killed."

The rebuilding process began immediately for the Port Authority. "We made payroll that Friday," Alan Reiss, deputy director of the aviation department, and former director of the World Trade Center (WTC) says. "A paycheck was everybody’s last thought – everybody was astounded."

"We had copies of everything in a safe on the 67th floor. It was protected from fire, but we never thought it would come crashing down and be destroyed."

Alan Reiss, PANYNJ

Reiss was among those who spent that Friday addressing UPS envelopes to each employee to ensure that he or she would receive a paycheck.

Operations resumed almost immediately for the Port Authority. Reiss says that the terrorist bombing of 1993 proved to be somewhat of a "dry run" for last year’s events and had prepared many employees for working in a disaster.

"Our business manager had the foresight to grab the business resumption plan as he ran out of the building. A lot of stuff stopped, but all the contingency plans kicked in," Reiss says.

Luckily, the PANYNJ computers were up and operating fairly quickly as well, within 72 hours.

"The staff rose to the occasion," Reiss says.

Reiss offers the example that the director at JFK closed the airport before the FAA closed all others – immediately going into an inclement weather plan.

Olivier explains, "Most people had read that many Port Authority facilities were identified by terrorists. Immedi-ately, we had an organization for each office scattered throughout the area. We had a workforce both shocked and grieving, but mobilized for alert because there were still threats."

Rebuilding hasn’t just meant new office facilities for the Port Authority. In many ways, they must recreate the department. "We lost all our files," Reiss says. "We had copies of everything in a safe on the 67th floor. It was protected from fire, but we never thought it would come crashing down and be destroyed."

Leases with independent companies were lost; employee personnel records, letters of praise, documents for lawsuits with contractors and tenants were gone. The Port Authority then had to turn to others to, hopefully, recover what they could.

"In many ways, New York became a little town," Reiss says. Whatever the Port Authority needed, there were countless people and organizations ready to give. "People wanted to help, that’s what allowed the rebuilding."

CHANGING, ADAPTING

Following 9/11 and the destruction of the WTC, Reiss says some of his staff became "mobile." One worker had his papers in a gym bag he carried around in his car. There have been 16 issues of the staff directory since 9/11, so the Port Authority began publishing cell phone numbers of its employees so everyone could be reached, no matter where new office facilities might take them.

Reiss says he used to back things up on his computer fairly regularly. Now, he backs it up every morning.