Disaster site dripping with surrealism, danger, emotion
It would seem natural enough for a Wisconsin mental health consultant to want to help out at Ground Zero in New York City.
But Carl Wuornos of Right Management Consultants was driven to the Sept. 11 site by events six, even 36, years in the past.
Wuornos, who is a senior vice president and lead consultant with Right Management, a human resources consultancy focusing on career transition/outplacement services, counseled rescue and recovery workers in New York City between Nov. 12 and Dec. 3.
Right Management is a national firm with Wisconsin offices in Milwaukee, Madison, Appleton and elsewhere. Wuornos spends most of his time in the Appleton office.
Wuornos first realized his interest in disaster counseling after the April 19, 1995, explosion at the Frederick R. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
"I just had a real passion to go to Oklahoma City," Wuornos said. "My wife has family there and, fortunately, none of them were impacted. But I could not find an avenue to get out there and involved. I started to look at how to be involved next time there was a tragedy. What I found was the Red Cross. I received training in disaster mental health. I learned how the Red Cross works, and what they want from a mental health professional."
When the opportunity to be of assistance did arise, Wuornos wanted to be right where the action was — at Ground Zero.
"They told me I had no choice where I was stationed," Wuornos said. "And if I raised too much of a ruckus, they would just send me home. But then I was told that I would be working third shift — but at Ground Zero."
Wuornos would appear to have the right stuff to assist those embroiled in emotional situations. He has been a police commissioner, and his job places him in emotional situations where people have just lost their jobs. But Wuornos’ attraction toward critical situations runs deeper than his profession.
"I served in the Air Force during the Vietnam war," Wuornos said. "And, until now, I have never felt the same passion as I did then."
While Wuornos was stationed in Hawaii servicing aircraft, he did want to go to Vietnam — even as he worked on aircraft full of bullet holes and body bags. He said that his repressed feelings of guilt for not having served in-country were, in part, behind his need to be on-site in emergencies.
Danger is everywhere
The sense of danger hit Wuornos even before he reached New York. Wuornos departed on the same day that American Airlines Flight 578 crashed in the Rockaways neighborhood in Queens.
"Our flight path took us over the crash site," Wuornos said. "I had no fear of flying until I looked down on that site."
Wuornos’ exposure to that crash intensified once he was at Ground Zero.
"A lot of the workers at Ground Zero had just come from the other crash site," Wuornos said. "The way that aircraft came down — the bodies were compacted in the airplane fuselage."
Wuornos said that the accounts he heard of that fresh devastation obviously weighed heavily on the workers he counseled.
"Someone told me the top of the fuselage ripped off before impact," Wuornos said. "So not one of the passengers had any clothes on. They were all burned — but just slightly singed. These guys are putting all this back in their memory banks, and when they don’t have all this activity and sit back in their recliners, they’ll think about this stuff."
The mental health plan in place through the City of New York seems inadequate to deal with the horrendous aftermath of the tragedies. Wuornos’ own efforts seemed more akin to butterfly stitches on gaping emotional wounds.
"I was asked to keep track of the people I spoke with," Wuornos said. "They wanted me to make 35 to 50 contacts a night. Some people needed to talk quite a while. Others didn’t want to talk at all. It was surprising how the secondary stressors in life really diminished in importance. They were still there, but just further in the background. It wasn’t only that these workers had lost a lot of friends, but there was still the mother with cancer and the friend’s brother who committed suicide."
Wuornos noticed a difference between the professional emergency workers like police and firemen, and the construction workers and others working on-site. Some of the construction workers, according to Wuornos, were working 12-hour shifts at Ground Zero, then going to work a regular job during the day, sleeping a little in between.
"Most of them said they were just doing their job — but they were holding back a lot. The police and firemen who were sifting — they knew they were in stressful jobs," Wuornos said. "But the construction workers don’t have that kind of background. But they are out there picking up body parts, too."
Even finding a personal item could stir emotions in people, Wuornos said.
"You find a watch or a shoe," Wuornos said. "And you think of the person it belonged to."
Wuornos said signs of the missing and lost were everywhere — from the impromptu shrines that sprouted up around the city to the silent witness of victims’ cars in a nearby parking garage.
"I walked by a parking garage, and noticed that the top three floors were all full of cars," Wuornos said. "It dawned on me — these were the cars of the victims."
Even late in the sifting process, entire bodies were still being found.
"When they do pull up the complete bodies, there is a procession to honor them," Wuornos said. "They were finding about six bodies a day while I was there."
While the surreal, eerie landscape came courtesy of disaster that had already happened, there was plenty of real danger for those working in the tragedy’s aftermath. A building neighboring the World Trade Centers had been knocked 15 degrees off its foundation, and a warning horn was in place to warn workers of an impending collapse.
Once, according to Wuornos, an excavator crashed through the rubble, falling two stories. Fortunately the operator was on a break, and nearby workers managed to scramble to safety.
Wuornos, like many others who worked at Ground Zero, is suffering from bronchial problems as a result of fumes emitted from the smoldering debris.
"I have had a hard time articulating what I saw," Wuornos said. "You can smell something — and you are not sure what you are smelling. You don’t know if that is human flesh or some type of blowtorch smell."
Medical authorities attribute respiratory symptoms suffered by workers to simple exposure to dust and debris.
Support of others critical
Wuornos credited Right Management for being generous enough to let him leave during a critically busy time in their business cycle. Driven by layoffs, mergers and downsizings, Right’s staff had been going full-bore for months.
"We would break a record for a month’s billings, and then break it again the next two months. This was the busiest year they have ever had," Wuornos said. "It was very generous for them to say — ‘yeah, go.’ They never questioned whether this was an appropriate thing for me to do."
Wuornos also credits the many people at Right Management who filled in for him in his absence for making his time in New York possible — as well as his family.
Even on-site, Wuornos was dependent on the caring and help of others. In particular, aid workers at St. Paul’s Church helped Wuornos replenish himself.
"It was nice to go in there," Wuornos said. "I would get taken care of for a while."
Wuornos recounted an incident that illustrated, to him, the need of the caretaker to be taken care of.
After a hard night of counseling workers, Wuornos went to St. Paul’s for a much-needed respite. As he left and proceeded down the street, he noticed a police sergeant chasing after him.
"I just have one question for you," the sergeant said.
"What’s that," Wuornos asked, bewildered.
"How are YOU doing?"
Jan. 18, 2002 Small Business Times, Milwaukee
