WORLD TRADE CENTER
Project:
Clean up the World Trade Center site.

Challenges:
The challenges at the World Trade Center were the extreme conditions, both emotional and physical.

The emotional challenge was to overcome the shock, the sense of mass destruction, and the loss of life. The knowledge that, in the first weeks, we were there not to just clean up, but to search for victims.

The physical challenge was the sheer magnitude of the project and its components. A beam 30 feet long and 8 feet wide weighed between 60 and 80 tons—steel so heavy it broke grapples and twisted booms. With ground temperatures reaching in excess of 1,200°F, steel beams were pulled out of the wreckage glowing red.

Solutions:
On the emergency list for the City of New York, Mazzocchi's team arrived at the site with essential machinery (including the EX550 LRD). Our workers at the site during the first week said they overcame the shock and the sight of the victims by focusing on the work, on the necessary job that had to be done.

Mazzocchi had other responsibilities away from Ground Zero. We used our fleet of trucks to haul the twisted metal to the Hudson River, where it was immediately shipped to the Fish Kills site. There, Mazzocchi assisted in strategically sorting the material for federal officers' final inspection.

One supervisor said the most remarkable thing about the whole job was the unity during the first few days, with the Red Cross, police, firemen, emergency personnel, construction workers and people on the street all coming together to help. This spirit of unity continued throughout the project as contractors worked together—under the overall supervision of the New York City Department of Design and Construction—to get the job done.

Multiple contractors working together was one essential element in overcoming challenges. Another was just plain hard work. A second Mazzocchi supervisor said the hardest part for him was being away from his family for six months, as he worked 12-to 15-hour shifts six or seven days a week.

On the purely mechanical side, we had the back-up machinery to move in if any of our equipment on site was damaged by the extreme conditions. We had the ability to repair or replace machinery immediately, resulting in little or no downtime.

Result:
We worked continually at the site from September 11 to the beginning of March 2002. But the real result of the project and of the entire September 11 crisis was a greater unity in America and a greater sense of needing to work together. Mazzocchi Wrecking is proud to have been a part of that result.