Thirteen Years Later, We Remember the Efforts of Transit Workers at Ground Zero

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As the towers fell 13 years ago, New York City transit mobilized for the evacuation of lower Manhattan, the painstaking search for victims, and the removal of hundreds of tons of broken cement and i-beams. Our subways and buses brought countless New Yorkers swiftly away from the disaster site, and rushed in hundreds of Firefighters and Police Officers who came to render aid. We picked up passengers from Cortlandt St/World Trade Center just as the towers fell. We brought in heavy rigs and began hauling 80,000 pound loads of debris by tractor trailer from the site. We cut steel and put the supercrane into service at the site that usually lifts sections of railroad track. But in the history of those days, transit workers are generally overlooked. The official histories don't record that three thousand TWU Local 100 members worked on the pile, many for weeks. Today, many suffer health effects from their service. TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen was one of those there on a daily basis serving alongside those from most every title in transit. These photos document some our work at Ground Zero as we remember this tragedy 13 years later. Here's how the Local 100 Express covered 9/11 in November of 2001.