Document identifier record, NYC-WTC series

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

What Could Go Wrong? It’s His Job to Know I By RANDY KENNEDY TERRY HAUER, to put it bluntly, I likes guts. Meaning viscera, in- I nards, the stuff things are made ‘ * of. There is one story he tells in which this fascination is quite literal (more on that later.) But another illustra­ tion, a bit more metaphorical, is hard to miss when you walk into his office on the 23d floor of 7 World Trade Center, otherwise known as “the I'M’ bunker,” the $13 million bulletproof, I# hurricane-proof, blackout-proof emergency crisis center opened by the city last month. Mr. Hauer’s office looks nothing like a bunker. It has comfortable chairs and picture windows that frame the Woolworth Building. But in one corner there is also a big stack of mismatched bricks that attests to the unusual function of this office and the unusual fascinations of its holder. As the city’s chief emergency Don Hogan Charfes/The New York Times manager, Mr. Hauer oversees the Jerome M. Hauer, with pieces of rubble from collapsed buildings. response to building collapses, of which there have been no shortage over the last three years. And as he I’m going to starve — because I have These days, the messes are a little has sifted through piles of rubble, he no interest in this.” more complicated. Around his belt, has made it a point to squirrel away They insisted and so he left, even­ he wears two cell phones and three a chunk of each disaster. He has a tually becoming the head of state­ pagers. And no matter where he tries brick from 540 Madison (office tow­ wide emergency services in Indiana, to go, something on the belt is beck­ er; partial facade collapse, Dec. 7, where his wife, Glenda, grew up. oning him back. Saturday, for exam­ 1997), one from the entrance to the ple, was spent in Queens, after a Selwyn Theater (collapsed Dec. 30, 1997) and from an apartment build­ ing at 172 Stanton Street (partial B iUT nothing — not even trying building collapse in Far Rockaway . to figure out whether the Bho- that killed a mother and her teen-age ' pal chemical disaster in India daughter. During the heat wave that collapse; demolished Jan. 24, 1998). could ever happen at an I.B.M. plant began over the July 4 weekend, he There’s also a piece of steel about the — prepared him for this job. was headed to Montauk, to begin a size of a slice of bread, a cross sec­ If he were to update his resume, vacation with his wife and their 12- tion of the beam that fell from the the “types of emergencies handled” year-old son, Michael. But a beeper upper deck of Yankee Stadium on category would read something like went off and he hitched a ride back April 13, 1998, forcing it to close. this: helicopter crash, subway fire, into the city with the state police. When he found out someone was water main break, ice storm, heat In a city where many emergency about to put the beam in a Dumpster, wave, blackout, building collapse, services fiercely guard their own he almost lost his temper. “I said, building collapse, building collapse. turf, the introduction of an umbrella ‘Don’t throw it away! That was two “No two days around here are ever office to coordinate these services weeks of my life.’ ” Those weeks the same,” he said. has created a few crises in itself. In. were, he adds dryly, “loads of fun.” In many ways, you could say he particular. Police Commissioner For much of his professional life, it was born for the job. The son of a real Howard Safir has been involved in a has been the task of Jerome M. estate executive and a nurse, he was long-running turf war with Mr. Hauer, 47, to know a lot about how raised in Peter Cooper Village, on the Hauer over who gets to call the shots things work so that when they stop East Side, and practically grew up at many city emergencies. working — when they fall down. around emergency rooms. He will go “I’ve got to work around it,” Mr, when they get blown down or blown into more detail than most people Hauer said. “It’s not an easy issue.” up, when they freeze or burst or burn could stomach about how he spent (Marilyn Mode, a spokeswoman for out — he knows what to do. Like all the summer when he was 15. Mr. Safir, did not return a call yester­ self-described emergency junkies, he His mother. Rose, a vice president day seeking comment.) sits around all day thinking up horri­ for nursing at Beth Israel Hospital, Ultimately, Mr. Hauer says, he fying ways for things to be destroyed helped him get a job in the hospital’s still loves his job. But he wonders and people to die and then hoping morgue as what pathologists call a how much longer he can last. that all his plans stay on the shelf. “diener” — German for servant. “As He looks out the window. Where He has done it for I.B.M., when he the junior guy,” he explained, “I was most people would see the glorious ran their worldwide emergency re­ the one responsible for all the dirty sun glinting off the gargoyles of the sponse program. In fact, he did it so work ; cutting open the gut and clean­ Woolworth Building, Mr. Hauer sees well that his bosses wanted to pro­ ing it and pinning it and making it a problem. “One of the most beauti­ mote him to a higher-paying corpo­ ready for the pathologist to review.” ful buildings in the city, right?” he rate marketing job, and he had to say And did he enjoy this? “Well, it asks. “We have an earthquake, and to them, ‘Listen, guys, if I have to was fascinating. The first week was a you know what. All that beautiful sell computers, if I have to develop shock. But I got used to it after a artwork up there is going to fall like programs, then I’m going to die — while, like anything else.” missiles.”

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