Exercise developed and produced by:

Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies

National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism

Office of Justice Programs, National Institutes of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Community Organizations Acting During Crisis: 9/11 and Neighborhood Associations

Transcript  [Listen to this talk]

DR. TIERNEY: It's my pleasure now to introduce our next speaker, Diane Lapson. Diane is the Vice President of the Independence Plaza North Tenant Association, and was prior to 9/11. She was one of those community leaders. Independence Plaza is a building complex housing approximately 4,000 people that is located three city blocks from Ground Zero. Diane is a co-founder of the 9/11 Environmental Action Group, and a member of the World Trade Center Residents Coalition, a 30 year community activist in lower Manhattan, exactly the kind of person that should be at a meeting like this. Diane continues to deal with Tribeca's issues as a result of September 11th, 2001.

MS. LAPSON: This is Glen, who miraculously put my photos together within like three seconds, so I didn't think I'd show you any photos until he said he could do it, so thank you.

Well, the fact that I'm standing here in front of you is proof that this conference has validity, because if someone would have told me a few years ago that I'd be speaking at this kind of function, I would have just simply ignored them. It wouldn't have had any reality to me.

There are three sayings in Buddhism that inspire me daily. One is, the muddier the swamp, the more beautiful the lotus flower that grows from it. Another is, with strong faith poison can surely be turned into medicine. And the third is that winter will never fail to turn into spring.

September 11th, 2001 was a primary election day. Greenwich Street was full of activity. Our city council member, Katharine Freed, who is a friend and neighbor, was running for a higher position. Three blocks away was our familiar backdrop, the Twin Towers. Suddenly above our head came the loud roaring and the huge plane speeding downtown exploded into Tower Number 2. The next hour was horrific.

After rushing to evacuate the schools, Katherine and I ran to the 1st Precinct for assistance with the multitude of people pouring onto the streets. Someone then shouted the Pentagon was hit, and it seemed like it was the end of the world, yet my instinct was to keep helping and we'd lived through this. We is the key word. Evidently, this thought is not unique to me.

It was suddenly apparent that humanity's instinct for compassion is stronger than its instinct for personal survival. The one officer that was left at the police station said, "We can't help you. You have to do what you have to do." No police. We returned and tried to move the crowd uptown. Smoke poured through the streets, and people were jumping from the towers. The towers were crumpling. Later number 7 fell, number 5 had split in half. The tangled steel piled high over a raging fire became our new backdrop. I have a picture of that, of what we saw at the end of our street.

Independence Plaza North or IPN is a large middle-income housing complex in Ground Zero in Tribeca. There are 1,345 apartments in three towers and lower townhouses. The three towers are referred to as Building 1, Building 3 and Building 9. As you heard, there are approximately 4,000 people of all ages, races and denominations, with a large senior group.

Columbia University once said that we are a microcosm of New York. Most of us moved in during the early 70s, and we're the pioneers of Tribeca. Having no amenities, we proceeded to build the streets, schools, parks, commercial businesses, gentrifying an area that consisted of nothing but factories and a few loft buildings. We did get used to working together.

Three years ago faced with some serious tenant issues, a group of tenants decided to revamp our tenant association, the IPNTA. We really didn't know that we were also laying the foundation for surviving a terrorist attack.

The IPNTA has one president, six vice presidents, so I'm not that special, and a secretary and a treasurer. I'm the vice president of Building 3, but most important and maybe unique to our tenant association is our army of floor captains. We have a goal of one captain per every floor, and we know have 90 floor captains. Our goal is 115.

After the attack, a researcher from Johns Hopkins Biodefense Department wanted to know how our community organized so quickly. I explained that we were already organized before. No one questions my taking over the complex because they had worked with me, and they knew me already. I questioned my taking over the complex, but that's another story. I still question it.

Immediately following the attack, our tenant association structure took over, and we realized that we were facing many serious problems. Building 9, closest to the Trade Center, lost all power and had been hardest hit by the debris dust. Many people had no choice but to evacuate. The other buildings had electricity but no hot water. All phone service was out. Cell phones worked sporadically. We didn't know if our buildings were structurally safe, or if they would fall down, as well. All businesses were closed, including our supermarket and drug store. And actually, Dr. Lewis talked about this before, when she was talking about what the seniors had to face. This is a slightly different story, because the seniors were not abandoned in our complex.

Anyone who left Ground Zero was not allowed back into the neighborhood. Some tenants had been in the Twin Towers when it happened, some had been below. Some tenants died, some lost relatives and friends, all had witnessed the terrible after-math, including very young children. People were getting sick, traumatized, confused, depressed and very frightened, and for better or worse, I was in charge with no experience in this kind of -- with no disaster experience at all.

Sean, the vice president of Building 9, was forced to take his family to safety, so the other vice president, Dorothy, she was vice president of Building 1, and I set up our posts in our respective lobbies. I think I have a picture of that. There we go. This is actually not me, but this is where I stood. I stood next to that black phone for about -- between that and the street for about 16 hours a day. That's how we ran the complex, and we used this very antiquated intercom system which miraculously worked for the first time in 20 years.

Seeing the vice presidents at the security desk, they knew that -- the floor captains came down to the lobby, and when they saw us they knew that we were part of the -- they were part of the team. Management gave us a list of seniors and disabled for each building, and this was our A list, people to check-in on first. Everyone talked to their neighbors, made sure the elderly were okay. We made mental notes of who returned home safe, consoled the frightened, watched the news hoping they would find believe alive and prayed the attacks were over.

Although rescue services and armed forces were all around us, it was as if we were invisible. The reporters used our building for video. All eyes were understandably on the rescue site, and we were on our own. We didn't know it would be for 10 days.

The next morning Elizabeth, a psychologist trained and experienced with Red Cross, organized a trauma drop-in center. People dropped in immediately, and we identified which tenants were blind, paraplegic, partially paralyzed, suffering from Alzheimer's, immobile, et cetera. Their home attendants, as Dr. Lewis said before, were not allowed passed Canal Street, so they were alone in their apartments.

By afternoon, Red Cross volunteers appeared in the lobby, and they said that all of Building 9 must be evacuated. They would also help by going door-to-door to other buildings, starting with our A list. I explained that there was a paralyzed woman who had stopped eating and drinking. A neighbor had obtained her key, and they also gave us a few volunteers for our drop-in center.

There was a lot of food set up in the streets. We needed 60 meals for our A list, but we were told it was only for the rescue workers. It took days to negotiate with the Salvation Army. A rescue worker from IPN heard the problem, and he quietly showed up with 60 meals twice a day for all of our seniors and disabled.

A few days later there was so much food being donated that our constant begging resulted in food being designated directly to our building, and we sent teams of people to pick the food up and bring it back. This is what our street looked like. I'm just showing you some tenants. You notice people are smiling because they were smiling. They were working in hell and they were smiling.

During the second day some bigger problems cropped up. A resident announced that she had just taken her last heart pill. We discovered that many people expected prescriptions in the mail, but there was no mail. We turned to Katherine to see if she could help. She arranged for a doctor to come from Chinatown the next day, and we posted signs for all who needed medical supplies to go to our community room in the morning.

Another problem involved the paralyzed woman. Unfortunately, the Red Cross volunteer maybe was a little inexperienced, and she brought a reporter up to her apartment without asking the woman, and when the woman found out, she had been convinced to go the hospital, but when she discovered there was a reporter there, she threw everyone out of her apartment and didn't go to the hospital, and it was a very serious situation taking care of her for the next few days.

When Building 9 was evacuated, some tenants moved into other buildings and the rest went to shelters. Some people waited for hours with their elderly neighbors in the streets so the neighbors would get picked up before they themselves evacuated.

By day three no doctor came. However, Katherine had somehow managed to find the owner of the drug store and convinced the authorities to let him in. Tenants volunteered to run the cash register and manage the store as he honored all prescriptions. And knowing the guy who runs the drug store, you know that's a miracle, anyone behind his cash register.

Having our city council rep living there was a great advantage, but she also was helping the rest of the area. Without her it would have been worse. Con Edison told us that Building 9 wouldn't be back for two or three weeks, and she managed to get it running in five days.

No response from the Office of Emergency Management the entire time, I'm sorry to say. Oddly, my cell phone number was distributed as a Tribeca emergency number, and for all of those other groups that did not have any tenant association, suddenly I had a $400 bill for helping my neighbors figure out what they should do in their situations.

Minister Diane Dunne arrived asking if she could set up a soup kitchen which, of course, we really wanted because we didn't have any hot meals until then, and so we set up the soup kitchen, and all of the tenants served -- this is an Egyptian family that was particularly traumatized. You can imagine how the kids felt, and we put them to work too.

Four days without hot water, we all smelled like smoke, the air was terribly polluted. It was hard to breathe. Paper masks were distributed, but they only helped with the smell. We were trying to be good citizens, but it would have been very good if we got assistance from somebody. No assistance came. After voicing some of our complaints, we were told that people with proper I.D. could now leave and return to the neighborhood, and so the home attendants were finally allowed back in. That took a big load off of us, and other tenants starting making trips with shopping carts to bring staples back for their neighbors.

Much to our shock, the Red Cross volunteers told us they were leaving our trauma center. Somebody thought that they didn't need our help. We had to move on and replace them with a few tenant social workers. And I think we, all of us who are leaders should have been at that drop-out center, I wish, drop-in center because we were traumatized and we didn't even know it.

That Friday night, we had a general tenants meeting, and a few religious leaders came to give some encouragement to the tenants who needed it. Recently, a neighbor told me that I saved her husband's life, and thanked me for it. I had no idea, but evidently during that chaos she said her husband wasn't feeling well, and I called the Red Cross, and they rushed him to the hospital. Never heard about it again.

Based on our experience, I have a few messages to get out. To the citizens, organize your neighborhood now. Start a small group, a large group, we pray no more attacks come, but do it anyway. It's good to be prepared. Elect officers, enlist volunteers and give them assignments. Meet regularly and create bylaws. If needed, charge a reasonable fee and you could always use it to buy batteries and flashlights, and first aid kits, and invite groups in to train. If nothing else, once a year have a great party to celebrate each other. It's a great way to bring back a sense of community to the United States.

To the government and the relief agencies, knowing people will volunteer and want to help during an emergency, accept their invitation. There may be fear that volunteers will not do the job correctly, but they're going to volunteer anyway, so training is important. At least one person in each community should have Red Cross training. Start more outreach programs to communicate groups.

The police departments, and fire departments, and even the armed forces can give us some instruction. It may not seem so important -- it may not have seemed so important before, but now it's really important to us.

I've only hinted at our survival, and we're still struggling with a lot of issues. The rest of the country may think we're back to normal but we're not. But because we have a strong community, we continue to overcome each obstacle.

I know I'm running out of time. I have one more thing to say. One late night during the difficult week of September 11th, I stood in the street looking at where the World Trade Center once stood. I remembered something I once said when asked how can you live in the middle of a city? There's no landscape, no hills and no forest, just concrete and glass. That's true, I responded, but in New York City the people are the landscape. On September 11th, 2001 and during the ten days that followed, we let go of our personal issues and focused on the common good. The statement became ever more precious to me. The people are the sunrises, and the sunsets, and the mountains, and the rivers, and flowers and valleys. The community is what fills my heart with inspiration and hope. Thank you very much.

[return to top]