World Trade Center environmental data report, 2001-2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

Touw and his team would erect what was called the “Taj Mahal,” the largest test for workers ever built, a 31,000 square foot heated area where workers could wash off their hands and face and boots, shower, and get a hot meal. “It was a dome the size of a football field,” Touw recalls, a structure for which $75 million was earmarked by FEMA, capable of serving 10,000 people per day, 24/7, for four months.

After it was built, of course, the dome would house respirators, booties, military tents, water for rehydrating equipment^—and equipment for “disposal of all that stuff.” Early on, Touw remembers they were instructed not to call them “decontamination” stations.

Planning for this winterized ‘biosphere’ dome on the night of September 16“*, Touw remembers, “We pulled an all-nighter.”

If Region II emergency personnel would be stretched, so would the agency as a whole, as former EPA Administrator Christie Whitman would argue in her testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works September 24, 2002. EPA, she said, “responded to three national incidents” simultaneously: not just at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania crash and would be responding to the anthrax attacks too.

September 11*'' was unprecedented in yet another way—perhaps for the first time, government coffers were laid wide open. But EPA and other agencies were not stretched financially at all.

September 11"’ was unprecedented in yet another way—^perhaps for the first time, government coffers were laid wide open, as the President and Congress enacted a $40 billion emergency response package to help deal with the tragic events of September 11. The fiuiding, according to the government, would “ensure that the U.S. had the resources to respond to and recover from the attacks and to protect national security.”

By early October, billions of dollars were released to assist in New York and the other impacted areas—and more fimding was headed to both disaster sites as well as a dozen agencies involved. W 1 With $2 billion, FEMA i supported overall emergency assistance in New York and •w ■I other affected jurisdictions. This went to pay the costs of such AM items as debris removal and L ’ emergency protective measures, / as well as individual and family H assistance, search and rescue, H and other disaster assistance H efforts.

Photo: Earl Dotter

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