Coastal Services Center

At 8:46 a.m. Laura Bartovics, New York Sea Grant outreach coordinator, heard the explosion from the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, but she didn't realize it came from one of the buildings she could see out of her office window until she got a phone call from someone asking if she was OK. She watched in disbelief as the second plane struck the towers, which were just eight blocks from where she sat.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Ed Levine, scientific support coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Response and Restoration, wasn't at his office, which is just 0.7 miles from the World Trade Center. The meeting he was attending in New Jersey was interrupted with the news that a plane had flown into the first tower.

"We all assumed that it was a little plane that was flying up the Hudson River," Levine says.

When the group went outside, it could see the smoke coming off the Trade Center buildings in the distance. "I will never forget when they collapsed," Levine says. "We heard the rumble come from 20 miles away across the waterway. It was a loud, bass sounding rumble."

As the news reached the New York State capital of Albany, George Stafford, director of the Department of State's Division of Coastal Resources, immediately began canvassing to find all the employees who may have been in New York City, including those at the department's office, which is five blocks from the World Trade Center. "We were very lucky," he says, that none of their staff were lost or injured. Many other state agencies that had offices located in the towers were not as fortunate.

"I still don't like thinking about it," Stafford says. "It's still very raw."

The Aftermath

As the rest of the country watched the horrific events of that day unfold on television, coastal resource managers in New York lived them. All of the New York city, state, and federal managers interviewed for this edition say that no matter where they were at the time of the attacks, their lives and jobs were impacted in some way.

After the second plane hit, Bartovics' building was evacuated. She was one of the many who walked home across the Brooklyn Bridge. "Everyone was very quiet," she says. "Every now and then you would see people who were covered in dust, carrying their shoes."

Ten minutes after the towers collapsed, Levine was asked to leave the naval weapons station where his meeting was being held. He headed home—and a trip that should have taken 45 minutes lasted two-and-a-half hours. "Highways were being closed, approaches shut down, trucks were being stopped." He finally made his way home driving on back streets.

In Albany, all offices were evacuated, state troopers surrounded the capitol, and sharpshooters were stationed on the roof. "It was definitely frightening," Stafford says.

Coastal Managers Play a Role

At about 10 a.m., the Division of Coastal Resources staff was called to the state Emergency Management Office's underground bunker, which is the command center in times of crises. "Our job is to coordinate all the secretary of state's resources to address a disaster," Stafford explains.

For the next several weeks, the coastal program's geographic information systems (GIS) staff was called upon to help with the massive GIS and remote sensing efforts that were part of the emergency management coordination. Another employee who is a counselor worked with survivors in other state agencies.

Offices in lower Manhattan were closed for about two weeks. Phone communication was down. Bridges, streets, and subways were closed making transportation very difficult.

"What became apparent," Stafford says, "is that the waterways in New York were suddenly extremely important. Boats that normally take tourists to the Statue of Liberty became an important transportation lifeline to the city, and it's only increased in significance since then."

Initially, the Brooklyn Bridge was closed to all traffic except trucks hauling debris from ground zero to the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island because there wasn't adequate docking space for barges to accept the rubble. The coastal program immediately began processing emergency permits for dredging and float docks to accommodate the barges, Stafford says.

On September 13, the U.S. Coast Guard contacted Levine and requested NOAA support at its command post on Staten Island. Over the next several weeks, he coordinated activities that ranged from testing for the possibility of PCB-contaminated oil running off the disaster site and investigating the status of sewage plumbing beneath the streets of lower Manhattan to generating charts and establishing a Web site for Coast Guard internal and external communications.

Residual Impacts

At the time of the attack, Bartovics was planning for a harbor-wide celebration of Estuary Day on September 29, 2001. Like many events around the country, it was canceled.

The coastal program had been cosponsoring an international design competition to develop a master plan and design vision for Fresh Kills Landfill, which had been closed and had the potential for public use, Stafford says. "We were in the midst of the design competition when September 11 occurred. Obviously this has changed the outcome of what the future of Fresh Kills will be."

A budget deficit in the state also is impacting coastal managers. A hiring freeze has left the program 26 percent short of staffing needs.

"We're having to look at different ways of accomplishing the same obligations," Stafford says. "We're creating new partnerships with academic institutions and nonprofit organizations to have them do some of the work that we're still obligated to accomplish."

The New Normalcy

Four months after the attack, Levine says things have settled into the "new normalcy," a phrase coined by the Coast Guard. He notes that there are still many "subtle and not so subtle reminders" of the events of September 11, which range from the increased homeland security work he is involved in to passing the boarded up subway station in front of his office building every day.

Bartovics feels her role of educating the public and educators about the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program is as important today as it was before September 11. "In fact, it may be more important today for people to understand and appreciate the whole environment of New York City," she says. "It's not just buildings and people and the center of commerce, but there are other living resources here. The environment shouldn't be separate from anything else, whether it be energy, security, or the economy."

"On a personal level, you're affected by it. No question about it," Stafford says. "September 11 has done many things. It was frightening and horrible, it has absolutely made us aware of the rest of the world, and that we are not always the most beloved country, and it's brought people closer together in their communities. It has forced us to think more about the future, people's suddenly increased focus on their own communities, and the role of community in managing coastal resources."

He adds, "Our job is managing resources to improve coastal communities. We must understand changes caused by September 11, and incorporate those changes in the way we manage, to make sure we continue to improve coastal communities. Coastal managers should not just react to these changes. I want us to lead."

For more information on how coastal resource managers were impacted by the September 11 terrorist attacks, contact George Stafford at (518) 473-2459 or gstafford@dos.state.ny.us. To see the Web site created by the NOAA Office of Response and Restoration for the Coast Guard's activities related to the attack, point your browser to www.incidentnews.gov.