World Trade Center environmental data report, 2001-2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

other metals. Although a few samples in the ash and soot turned up turned up high concentrations of antimony and arsenic, according to the agency, “short-term exposure and limited routes of contact have minimized any potential for harm.” Workers handling the material, which was trucked away to an approval landfill, were required to wear respirators and protective clothing.

Both terrorist incidents provide almost textbook lessons in crisis management. In both situations, the same questions apply: What can be done to best protect environmental health? What can the public expect of health officials charged with protecting their safety?

Emergency response First to respond in New York City and Arlington Coimty, Va., of course, were local firefighters, police and other rescue workers. Many were lost as the buildings collapsed in New York City; in fact about one-sixth of the dead were themselves those who had gone in to rescue and evacuate building occupants. No first responders, fortunately, were lost at the Pentagon.

Fortunately, as big cities. New York City and Arlington, Va., on the edge of the nation’s capital, had an “incident command system” in place that specified a protocol to integrate the many agencies into one coordinated system, to avoid confused, delayed or redundant response efforts. This standardized management system, a paradigm used by the fire service since the 1970s has been adopted by more and more cities, helped to some extent. (9)

But when disaster struck, New York City emergency officials were caught off-guard because critical elements of the safety infrastructure—911 communication systems, emergency management, and the coordinating system for first responders—had been hard hit.

The biggest challenge to that city’s overall emergency response was that the city’s Office of Emergency Management, which had been well organized and well funded but also headquartered at the World Trade Center, lost its entire command center. The agency intended to coordinate the emergency response among myriad agencies, it was forced to evacuate in the early chaotic hours of the disaster. Many telephone, power and computer lines were down. And because the police had closed lower Manhattan, it was very difficult even for officials to get past checkpoints without badges.

When cell phones didn’t work, “email was a bit of a savior for people,” says Richard Cole, supervisor at the Arlington County Environmental Health division.

That left the first responders reeling in their initial response—and also affected the environmental health response. Because power had been cut off, some of the air-sampling monitors weren’t working; cell phones and commimications were spotty, if functioning at all, because suddenly thousands of people were trying to use their cell phones. Many firefighters may have not have heard the order to evacuate the buildings because of failures of hand-held radios, according to the Kinsey Report commissioned by the New York Fire Department. (10)

Many of the offices concerned with environmental health, such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region II office, and the city’s Department of Health itself, both of which evacuated

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