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Issue No. 313 September 27-October 4, 2001 Guerrillas in the midst Renegade aid workers risked life—and arrest—to come to the rescue at ground zero By Rod Richardson Few know that in the first week of the World Trade Center disaster, 9 of the 11 distribution, feeding and triage centers in and around ground zero were set up by a small band of private individuals—heroes from all walks of life and from all over the globe with little or no affiliation with any relief organization. The Salvation Army had only two feeding stations, each two blocks in from the perimeter of the "hot zone" south of Chambers Street, a quarter mile from ground zero; the Red Cross, concerned for the safety of its volunteers, kept operations north of the hot zone. But the guerrilla volunteers had no such qualms. Without their help, the hundreds of rescue workers, firemen, police, soldiers and cleanup crews on the scene would have likely received far less of the support they needed to do their jobs. Many might not have found respirators, asbestos-grade filter masks, protective clothing and other crucial safety equipment—not to mention five-star gourmet food, kindhearted fashion models, and soothing massages and chiropractic care. On the west side of 2 World Financial Center, around the North Cove Boat Basin in Battery Park City, an ad-hoc village sprang up overnight from the ashes. Following signs spray-painted onto pieces of plywood, rescue workers could find solace in some of the amenities of civilization—food, shelter, supplies, doctors and compassion—at outposts set up under tents and in evacuated buildings by volunteers who gave them inspired or familiar names, such as the Freedom Café. On the north side of the complex, a long line of equipment-covered tables was called the Flea Market. At the south pier of the boat basin, organizers raised a tented depot (the "General Store") filled with boxes of supplies coming in by water. Docked nearby, the Spirit Line cruise ship The Spirit of New York provided bathrooms, sleeping cots and hot meals catered by Chef Daniel Boulud (whose New Zealand mussels were reportedly delicious). Though unofficial, these centers were often the main hubs for receiving equipment. Military humvees trucked in additional materials to a spot that became known as St. Joe's Supply, which operated out of St. Joseph's Chapel on the South Pier. And on the south end of 2 World Trade Center, the Freedom Café, a makeshift outdoor bistro, provided hot meals and a place for exhausted firemen to relax, while 20 or so volunteers offered medical triage, massage and chiropractic care. Nearby, on the dust-smeared glass and marble wall of the World Financial Center, every rescue and fire company scrawled the name of its unit, along with messages of hope or humor. Most of the volunteers who worked at these locations had been at ground zero since the beginning. They were exhausted, not having slept for days, and most lacked ID tags giving them official clearance to the area. (That didn't matter so much, since many had never left in the first place.) Most wore little more than a strip of yellow duct tape on their chests, with their names penned in. Gray, grizzled Greg Freitas, captain of the sailing yacht Adirondack, and fellow mariner Sean Kennedy used Kennedy's speedboat, the Chelsea Screamer, to pull nearly 200 people off the piers within minutes of the collapse of the north tower. Later, both skippers brought in paramedics and provisions. Recalling that first day, Freitas says, "Supplies were piling up on the pier, and it was a mess. I asked, 'Who's in charge?' Well, no one was, so I said, 'Okay, I'm in charge.' Then I didn't sleep for the next 60 hours." To give the General Store a roof, Kennedy donated the large party tent from another one of his boats. Then he shuttled in volunteers to staff the store, along with food to be served on The Spirit of New York. Newlyweds Cas and Alex Stachelberg found themselves working beneath the very same tent under which they were married earlier this year. Down the pier, Perry "Flick" Flicker, a long-haired Intel production manager, and NYU graduate student Elizabeth Stull took charge of St. Joe's Supply. His voice gravelly from lack of sleep and inhaling concrete dust, Flick recounts his finest hour: "At 2pm on Wednesday, the captain of the rescue crew comes over and says, 'Hey, Flick, you've gotta help us. We're cutting through steel beams and we've totally burned out all our blades. The rescue is at a standstill.' I made three phone calls, and 45 minutes later, we had 500 brand-new blades on-site and the rescue was back on track." You heard the same kind of story all over ground zero. Artist Cordelia Roosevelt (a descendant of both presidents) took charge of the Freedom Café. An amazingly patriotic pair, Gary Schöen and Patty Braun, drove in from Ohio and established a clothing depot on the second floor of the American Express building at 3 World Financial Center. Fashion stylist Karin Bereson, model Susanna Laguna and a host of other volunteers set up a facility at Stuyvesant High School, complete with a supply depot, massage and chiropractic care, a catered cafeteria, triage center and sleeping cots. "The energy at Stuyvesant was very feminine," says Bereson. "It's kind of like the cast of Sex and the City showed up in the middle of an episode of Rescue 911. We've got a crew of fashion designers, runway models, downtown hipsters and New Age massage babes taking care of supermacho firemen, soldiers and cops. They come in here exhausted, and the right touch, a look, knowing when to flirt a little—it does so much. I've had at least 14 guys say, 'Thank you so much for wearing perfume! It is the first nice thing I have smelled in days.' " At P.S. 234, on Greenwich Street south of Chambers, a volunteer wearing a Red Cross T-shirt and ID, who lost three people dear to him, ignored the order to leave the area. Known simply as William, he took a small abandoned public school with no power or water and turned it into a full-scale support facility, with triage center, hot meals, supply depot, saline eye-wash station, sleeping cots, chiropractic care, water and working rest rooms. Thousands of rescue workers streamed through William's support center every day in the first week, and they were all outfitted with the best available safety gear, which they probably would not have had otherwise. Without him, many of these men would have gone into ground zero with inadequate paper masks, or no masks at all. A senior city official even bent regulations to supply William with filter masks and hard hats, because, as the official put it, "William was the man who was getting the stuff where it needed to go." On Day 7, William was removed from the site by police officers at the request of Red Cross officials. "The reason [William] was escorted out was because he was posing as a Red Cross worker," says Anne Sommers, the Red Cross's director of media relations. "He may have done a great deal of good that he should be congratulated for, but it's not fair to the public to think that they're with someone who's been trained by the Red Cross when it may be someone who has very good intentions but may not know what they're doing." William's city supplier had a different opinion: "So what if he broke the rules? Anyone who did any good at all down here broke plenty of rules." By 6am Monday morning, security was tightened throughout ground zero. Some guerrilla volunteers were arrested and thrown out of the hot zone because they did not have the correct ID. Those who could get by security sneaked right back in. But on Day 9, top officials from the mayor's Office of Emergency Management asked for a meeting with organizers of the guerrilla volunteers. They thanked them, finally recognizing their enormous contributions. They even asked them to stay on until the National Guard could take over and to continue volunteering thereafter on an as-needed basis. And they apologized for some of the rough treatment the volunteers had received. But the rumors of impending arrest and ejections had not slowed down these guerrilla volunteers one bit. According to one urban legend circulating among volunteers—a story that epitomizes the dedication of these workers—a man who was ejected from the area went to Jersey City and swam across New York harbor so he could keep volunteering at the Flea Market. He climbed up the pier, asked for dry clothes and was working again in 15 minutes. Rod Richardson is a New Yorkbased glass sculptor and a guerrilla volunteer who worked at ground zero throughout most of the disaster.
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