October 3, 2001

WISCONSIN REPS TOUR DISASTER SITE
By Melanie Fonder

WASHINGTON-Scenes of rubble from what used to be the World Trade Center have played on television for three weeks, but even those horrific images don't provide an accurate picture of the devastation left since the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City.

"The TV screen, of course, is two dimensional. For the first time I have a sense of the immensity of the damage," said Rep. Mark Green, R-Green Bay. "But it's also the odors, burning rubble.It's the sounds of crunching metal being hauled away. The looks on the workers faces. You really can't comprehend that. That's what so shocking."

Wisconsin Reps. Green, Tom Barrett, D-Milwaukee, and Gerald Kleczka, D-Milwaukee, were three of the more than 100 members of Congress who toured ground zero Monday with New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani and New York Gov. George Pataki. Reps. David Obey, D-Wausau and James Sensenbrenner, R-Menominee Falls, had already seen the disaster site on separate trips. Members took a train from Washington and then ferried to the site.

"It was numbing," Barrett said. "Standing there at the end of a graveyard is how you felt." Because some surrounding buildings were damaged by the WTC collapse and others were not, the "random and chaotic" nature of the devastation made the scene worse, Green said.

Guiliani told the delegation, wearing gas masks and hardhats, that the worst of the devastation was far beneath the ground caused by the force of the collapse. Guiliani said that even though 151,000 tons of debris had been removed, that the clean-up efforts could take nine months to a year. Some services to the immediate area will not be restored for another month or month and a half.

"You'd never guess that [much had been removed] standing there," Barrett said. "There's a lot you don't see because the way the ground compressed it." Fires of debris were still burning and flare-ups were occurring during the removal operation, Green said. Green described the extraordinary circumstances Guiliani and other city officials were operating under.

"Guiliani's secretary's husband was lost so this has touched him very personally, and yet he is strong and dynamic in his leadership," Green said. "He described how his administration are having to sort through body parts and match them to DNA samples. Can you think of a more gruesome task?"

It remains unclear if Congress will need to allocate more funds for the repair and rebuilding effort. "We need to be prepared to be able to help the people of New York for the months to come," Green said. "They're facing challenges that we have never faced domestically."

On a positive note, Barrett said that even with all the devastation, Guiliani told the congressional delegation that there were perhaps 30,000 people who had escaped the buildings before they collapsed.

"There is a sense of spirit from everybody that is surrounding the area - a sort of can-do attitude," Barrett said.

Melanie Fonder is a staff writer for The Hill, a weekly newspaper that covers Capitol Hill and Washington correspondent for WisPolitics.com. A version of this column also may have appeared in the Green Bay News-Chronicle. Write to Melanie care of WisPolitics at info@wispolitics.com