Information > In The News > The Courier-Tribune
Conscience called him to help lead clean-up effort at WTC
Kerry Kesler, Staff Writer
taken from The Courier-Tribune, 2002
ASHEBORO - "I felt like I could help, and I had to do something."
That's what David Griffin Jr., 34, vice president of D.H. Griffin Wrecking Company, Inc. of Greensboro, told a gathering of the Asheboro Kiwanis Club Tuesday evening.
Griffin, who just wanted to help, soon became the go-to guy for New York City authorities in the clean-up after Sept. 11.
After the attack on the World Trade Center, Griffin said he drove to New York with his wife and three children on Sept. 13 to see if he could help in the recovery of survivors at the site of the Twin Towers. He had no credentials with him, and had no contacts. He was simply determined to get to the site of the disaster and help out.
"I got up at 5 a.m. Friday morning, put on a hard hat and some protective gear, and walked from the hotel into the pouring rain toward Ground Zero," Griffin told his attentive audience at the AVS Banquet Centre.
"I got to the first set of barricades, five blocks from the site, and walked right through. I thought, 'That was easy.' But, there were more barricades patrolled by police and National Guardsmen. I was stopped four blocks from the site. I didn't have my credentials with me, so I couldn't get any further. I could see Ground Zero in the distance through the pouring rain."
Griffin said the Salvation Army arrived about the same time and began serving coffee and doughnuts to the soldiers and police officers. As the officials began moving toward the Salvation Army trucks for refreshments, Griffin said he continued his walk toward the remains of the devastated buildings, expecting at any moment to be stopped and turned around.
"Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw," Griffin said. Griffin said his approach took him by the remains of building seven of the WTC complex. Debris had accumulated in the street to a height of 50 feet. No one was working there, so Griffin said he went to the remains of Tower One, and began working with firemen and paramedics on the bucket brigade there.
Debris was in the road there 15 feet deep, 100 feet from the scene of the building's collapse. The firemen cutting away at the twisted steel were working in hazardous conditions. Several were working under a portion of steel that was threatening to collapse on top of them. Engineers were called in to determine how to remove the danger, and that is when Griffin, whose company has been in the demolition business since 1959, spoke up.
"I told them how to get the remains of the structure down. They asked, 'Who are you? You're not from here are you?' "
Griffin laughed and said his North Carolina drawl was a giveaway that he was not from the area.
As word of Griffin and his expertise passed from engineer to engineer that Friday, Griffin was soon called into a headquarters area to discuss how to begin clean-up of the 16-acre site.
On Saturday, he was approached to become overall head of the demolition teams at the disaster area. New York authorities gave him two hours to make up his mind. Griffin accepted the position.
"We worked as a team, and we all got along. There were some difficulties. There were some heated discussions. But we were all there to get the job done," Griffin said.
Griffin quickly became known as "Carolina" to then-Mayor Rudolph Guliani, who let Griffin have complete control of the clean-up of the site despite the fact that Griffin had no ties to New York and had never worked there.
Shortly after taking over as head of demolition, Griffin said he had to fire a construction company which wasn't doing the work they were being asked to do. Later that day, Griffin said he heard by word of mouth through other engineers that he had fired a Mafia-front company. "I was scared for a day or two after that," Griffin said. "But it worked to my advantage. Other companies realized that if I had the nerve to fire that bunch, I would certainly fire them if they wouldn't do what they were told."
By Sept. 28, Griffin said his crew and expertise were still being questioned by some of the engineers at the clean-up site. There had been a discussion that day on how to remove a 27-story-tall piece of the reinforcing curtain which remained in Tower One. Most of the experts wanted to call in cranes and cut the ruins into sections and haul the debris away. Concerned that the operation would take too long and be too dangerous, Griffin said his crew recommended pulling the piece over so it could be cut in two safely. Other construction engineers were skeptical.
"This was a piece that was taller than the Jefferson-Pilot building in Greensboro," Griffin said. "They called us all kinds of names. They thought for sure I was a redneck from North Carolina. They called us the Clampetts and asked if we sat around and played banjos on our porches."
Griffin decided to go with his crew's suggestion, and within 55 minutes of pulling the piece back and forth with cables, his crew dropped 12 stories of the piece safely to the ground.
After that day, Griffin said, he became accepted by the other crew chiefs and engineers at the clean-up site.
Griffin told his audience that the scale of the clean-up was unimaginable.
Tower One and Tower Two, both 110 stories tall, each had a "footprint" of an acre - 200-feet by 200-feet.
Both buildings together contained nine-million square feet of space. Damage to them and the other structures involved 12 million square feet of space, Griffin said.
On any given day during the clean-up, there were 3,000 people working at the site. Together, they removed 1.7 million tons of debris, 110,000 truckloads at 100 trucks each day. At the beginning, it was estimated the job would take up to two years to complete.
Griffin said the two World Trade Towers were constructed of 250,000 tons of steel and a total of 44,000 windows. There was nine million pounds of copper in the two buildings.
The two towers had collapsed in such a way that most floors left only a gap of one foot between each floor. Nothing, not even a telephone, came out complete from between these floors, Griffin said.
"Days 10 through 21 were the toughest for me," Griffin said. "Because it was clear that there would not be any survivors from such a collapse. I cried for several days as I watched people come by looking for lost relatives. The rescue workers got real stressed out then, too."
On top of the physical dangers from collapsing debris, Griffin said they had several special problems during clean-up.
The remains of the Customs House contained $100 million in cocaine placed inside as evidence in court cases. The facility also contained an indoor pistol range with one million rounds of live ammunition. The CIA had offices in the building, and Griffin said he was never told what was located in that section of the building.
The Bank of Nova Scotia held $400 million in gold and $120 million in silver. Clean-up in this area involved guards and video cameras. There were two presidential limousines parked under the WTC. Those two vehicles, along with 200 others, were removed unscratched from the parking area underground at the site.
The clean-up cost New York City $750 million and that was $400 million under budget, Griffin said. Even with a December 2002 completion date, construction teams finished four and a half months ahead of schedule.
Griffin said he was grateful to have the opportunity to work with so many engineering experts on the clean-up operation at the WTC. When someone in the audience asked if he would be willing to do something like that again, Griffin said he would go in a minute.
"It was a true honor to be there. I learned a lot about myself, and I learned a lot about other people. I was just one of many at that site. America is a great place to live and I'm proud to be from North Carolina."