At the NJMT Port Newark office September 11, 2001 began as a gorgeous late summer morning, low humidity, clear blue sky. Shortly before 9 am I received a phone call from Dennis Lombardi, from the 34TH floor of 1 WTC, with a sense of urgency “there was a major explosion, the whole building violently shook. Rick and I are getting everyone on the floor the hell out of the building. Turn on the TV and see what is happening. I will try and stay in touch.” We turned on the TV in the conference room of Building 260. On the screen, there was an image of 1 WTC with black smoke billowing out a gaping hole and the report was a plane hit the building. Watching the image, it was pretty clear it wasn’t a small plane. A couple of us gathered and we watched live, first in disbelief and then in horror, as the second plane hit 2 WTC. I looked at Chuck King.; We were both in shock, I said the obvious, “a plane just hit the second building.” The unthinkable happened so quickly. We were stunned and there wasn’t much we could do but take calls, stay in touch with our colleagues attempting to evacuate the buildings to safety, provide encouragement and information.
After the Pentagon was hit, it became clear the iconic WTC towers were part of a larger coordinated terrorist attack. Planes across the country were grounded. A group of us moved up to the roof of Building 260 where with the backdrop of the clear blue September sky, both towers could be seen on fire and eerily there were no planes in the sky anywhere.
Port staff watching the towers in flames on the roof of Building 260 witnessed the 2 WTC collapse. It became apparent that we were witnessing a major disaster unlike anything we had been through in our lives. Fear and concern for our colleagues and all the people that were at Ground Zero was foremost in our minds. There wasn’t much we could do except handle phone calls from staff, encourage those in or near the buildings to evacuate and to start to think about recovery operations, while still going about the business of operating the Port. Port tenants were reaching out to us as well, mostly looking to see if they could be of any assistance.
On September 11 and the initial days that followed, we anticipated an unimaginable number of casualties and deaths. Horribly, there were many Port Authority employees and beyond, that did not get to go home to their families. Although there was much grieving and as the days passed many funerals to attend, the overwhelming stories of rescue and survival were awe inspiring. The reality is the casualties could have been much worse. As a department, we held a deep appreciation and concern for each other, focusing on creating temporary office space and the business of getting back to some semblance of the “new normal” operations.
