By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

Working through the loss
HIGHWAY Repairer Wayne Goody drives north along West St., hosing down the dust clouds that billow as trucks haul twisted rubble from Ground Zero. He glances east toward the site where the World Trade Center once stood and pushes his emotions behind him. Mr. Goody has a job to do.

DOT’s Wayne Goody battles the dust near Ground Zero, where his brother Harry lies buried in the rubble.

“My brother Harry is in there, buried under all that wreckage,” he said. His 50-year-old brother worked in Tower Two for the State Dept. of Taxation. Harry is among the estimated 3,900 people who went to work on Sept. 11 and were killed in the World Trade Center attack.

The oldest sibling and the father figure for the Goody family, Harry was serious minded, thoughtful and always put others first. Last February Harry and his wife celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. After raising three children, they were just getting used to having the house to themselves.

“I heard Harry came down from Tower Two,” Wayne said. Harry, a CSEA member, and hundreds of others got an ‘all clear’ message, Wayne said. “He went back in, probably to help others. He was was always the first to offer help.”

Wayne Goody, a Local 376 member, watched from DOT’s Pulaski Yard in Brooklyn as unthinkable events unfolded the morning of Sept. 11. He saw the towers collapse. Hours later, he realized his brother was trapped inside and rushed to the scene to help. Their mother was hospitalized when she heard the news.

At first Mr. Goody tried to keep his personal tragedy to himself. But word got out, and his coworkers and DC 37 offered support. DOT employees took up a collection for the family. “They’ve helped me keep my head up and keep moving on,” he said.

One of the first volunteers on the site, Goody worked tirelessly on 12-hour shifts at Ground Zero. He told PEP on Sept. 17, “I’m here to clean up and search for information on my brother.” Although one of Harry’s coworkers survived and lay in a burn unit at a local hospital, hope diminished as days went by and the search went from rescue to recovery.

Two weeks after the disaster, a Daily News article ran with Harry’s picture. “I had hope until that day, and then it hit me,” Wayne said. “I was halfway to Ground Zero when I broke down and had to turn back. We had to accept reality and realize Harry is not going to walk through the door.”

Without a body, Mr. Goody said, “the family feels they have no closure.” They were among the thousands who attended a memorial at Ground Zero in October, and on Nov. 10 they held their own service for Harry Goody III.

“Nothing is normal anymore. We will not have the same kind of Thanksgiving this year,” Wayne laments. “We’re in a more somber and solemn state of mind.”

Now wetting down the dust that rises and wafts down Chambers and West Streets is part of his job.

So as Wayne Goody drives his truck past the hot zone, he glances south to where the towers once stood and says, “Harry’s in God’s hands now.”

Working around the clock for six weeks, members in DEP aided rescuers and saved vital infrastructure.

Moving toward recovery
LABORERS Richard Bivona and John Caccavalle were fixing a sewer near City Hall Sept. 11 when they saw the first plane crash into the World Trade Center.

Immediately, the two Local 376 members raced toward the Fire Dept. base in the WTC. “We never reached the Command Center,” which was in Tower Two, the first building to fall. “Everyone there perished,” Caccavalle said.

Members of Locals 376 and 1322 in the Dept. of Environmental Protection respond to two-alarm and worse fires, to maintain adequate water pressure.

In the hours that followed the collapse, scores of DEP workers battled chaos to get to the disaster site with truckloads of much-needed equipment.

“The building let out a frightening moan as the steel and concrete buckled,” said Carmelo Ruiz, a Laborer in Local 376. With batteries, radios and gauges strapped to his back, he hiked from Canal Street to Building Seven. When the second tower crumbled, “The sky darkened like an eclipse. Debris and bodies were falling all around,” he said.

Like hundreds of others, Mr. Ruiz scrambled for cover. Under a truck he met two firefighters who helped him remain calm in the choking minutes that seemed to last forever.

Around them vehicles were pummeled and broken. A steel beam from the WTC fell with such force that it pierced a sewer main 50 feet underground.

As city residents and Americans nationwide struggled to grasp the meaning of the senseless destruction, emergency workers began the frantic search for survivors and Firefighters fought to quench the WTC blaze. DEP crews set up emergency showers and wash stations for the hundreds of public workers and volunteers.

In the hours that followed the attack, experts say, the city’s labyrinth of underground infrastructure threatened to give way. The seismic force of the falling towers burst eight mains. Water flowed uncontrollably from the busted arteries buried deep below the streets of lower Manhattan. The flooding made a terrible situation worse for the hopeful rescuers.

“The streets of Ground Zero were so covered with debris,” said Local 1322 President John Townsend, “that the crews could not locate manholes to close the valves. DEP crews worked through the night to shut down the water.”

Less than 48 hours later, rain poured in torrents, lightning scarred the black sky and thunder rumbled through the city.

“The storm flooded sewers citywide and threatened to collapse the system,” said Ernie Williams, a District Supervisor. DEP crews kept working around the clock to shut down water mains so hot zone foundations would not be compromised further, unclogging sewer basins and saving the crushed subway tunnels under the WTC from flooding.

Once the DEP workers restored water pressure around the disaster site, the crews turned to pumping out flooded basements, including DC 37’s building only one block north at 125 Barclay St.