The September 11th attack
Hawai'i residents helping at ground zero

By Robbie Dingeman
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hawai'i American Red Cross mental health worker Ken Lee finds himself at the center of this national tragedy, handing out cold water, hot meals and helping the helpers cope with the devastation in New York City.

"I've been in ground zero for the last 48 hours," Lee said last night. "My clothes reek of the smell, like burning electrical insulation. I'm sunburnt."

Lee is stationed some 20 feet from the area hardest hit. At West Broadway and Maiden Lane, it offers a very clear view of the collapsed north tower of the World Trade Center. A roar of machinery dominates the scene, trucks hauling debris, generators keeping lights on around the clock.

"There's a constant wail of sirens," Lee said. "Every time they find significant amounts of remains, they bring in an ambulance with a coroner."

Lee is one of three Red Cross workers from Hawai'i in New York City helping in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. A fourth is headed there.

Lee said Red Cross crews he was with handed out about 500 bottles of water from emergency response vehicles, which look like red-and-white manapua wagons.

But he said his work is tame compared to those in the rescue and recovery effort. "It's hot exhausting work. These people that are coming out are just covered with grime. Their face masks are caked with dirt."

Relief workers hand out bottles of water as trucks crawl by, sometimes throwing water or food into the cabs. "They can't stop because of the huge procession of emergency vehicles." They also pass out eye protection and respirators.

Lee said he and the other Red Cross workers don't ask people how they're doing because of the risk of prompting a flood of emotion from people who are under enormous stress.

"We say 'God bless you. You guys are doing a great job. We're here to support you.' We tell them they're heroes."

Lee spoke yesterday to a woman with a heavy accent with tears streaming down her face near ground zero. She told him that she had fled Kosovo with her two children five years ago, after her husband and others close to her were killed there.

"I got her a respirator," Lee said, and some water and tissue. She told him that she had been working on the cleanup because her nearby business was affected but had steered clear of the tower area until now.

Her 7-year-old son came up to her yesterday with her 6-year-old daughter and asked: "Mommy, are we going to have to find a new country?" When she asked him why he thought that, he said: "The war came down here."

Lee said he's been touched by the efforts of people from Hawai'i and other states to reach out to those far away. On Sunday, he toured Red Cross feeding sites and was astounded by the outpouring of donated food and notes. He was especially moved by the sight of a mountain of homemade cookies — "maybe tens of thousands of baggies" — which had to be thrown away.

And most of the bags also contained notes of goodwill from across the country, "very heartfelt messages," Lee said.

"People, in their own ways, were all trying to nurture us," Lee said. But the food had to be discarded because the Red Cross cannot pass on food that does not come from a known vendor in a sealed container.

Hawai'i state disaster director Glenn Lockwood is also in New York City, where he said the devastation is hard to take in. "What we're dealing with is so unprecedented," he said. "There is a huge cloud of smoke that is always visible. We've done building collapses and we've done airplane crashes and we do other things, but this is all rolled into one."

He said every intersection in Manhattan has at least four or five police officers stationed there and larger intersections have 20 to 30 officers posted.

"I don't know how New York is going to recover," Lockwood said. "They may recover, in the sense of physically, but the emotional will stay with them forever."

Landmarks are closed. "The Brooklyn Bridge is closed and will be for the foreseeable future only because it's an artery that dumps people into an area that's so close to what they consider the hot zone."

He said that emergency workers need their assistance, too. "It's trying to help our workers cope with the complexity and the magnitude of what they're seeing," Lockwood said. "You cannot be a part of this without having it impact you and having it traumatize you."

Lockwood is heartened by some of what he's seen. "I think we can feel glad — in terms of a country — to see a community come together."

He said the big-city standoffishness had faded. "You always hear the stories: New Yorkers never say 'hi.' Yet, the average person is so thankful, that there's an openness, a conversation, people stop you on the street, which some people say is unheard of in New York."

And a city grudgingly proud of its gruff and aloof reputation has opened its doors. "Thousands of people have opened up their homes to people coming in from outside," offering help to family members looking for lost loved ones, rescue workers and others, Lockwood said.

Reach Robbie Dingeman at rdingeman@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8070.