A picture, they say, can be worth a thousand words. But no picture--or story--can describe the human destruction in body, mind and spirit that began Tuesday, Sept. 11 at 8:48 a.m. EST when the first hijacked airplane struck the World Trade Center's (WTC) North Tower in New York City.

Among the tens of thousands of people in the WTC complex were approximately 300 members of the FPE/AFT-affiliated New York State Public Employees Federation (PEF) working for the Department of Transportation, the Department of Tax and Finance and the National Development and Research Institute. According to the most recent information available to PEF, 39 tax and finance employees working on the 82nd and 84th floors of the South Tower were missing as well as three transportation employees working on the 85th floor of the North Tower. Thirty-six of the 42 employees missing were PEF members.

"We're basically doing union triage," said PEF president Roger Benson, "looking at health and then services and then counseling and then core field staff services" for our members who have been affected by the tragedy.

AFT president Sandra Feldman, a native New Yorker, took the train from Washington, D.C., to New York's Penn Station Sept. 13 to meet with Benson as well as leaders and members of the AFT's United Federation of Teachers (UFT) in New York City. Many UFT members and students lost family and loved ones in the WTC inferno. On Sept. 17, Feldman and UFT president Randi Weingarten visited staffs of schools that were evacuated and relocated to other schools in the wake of the tragedy.

"In schools that Tuesday, every special education child was taken home safely--thousands of them," Feldman reported. "Nurses--school nurses as well as public health and other nurses--fanned out to schools where they were needed, as did psychologists and social workers. Teachers and principals sacrificed going home to their own families and stayed with students until parents could come for them. In many instances, they stayed all night at school with them because bridges and tunnels were closed and the kids couldn't get home."

As details about Sept. 11 unfolded, it was clear the tragedy engulfed the entire labor community. Three Washington, D.C., public school teachers were among the passengers killed when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. All three were members of the Washington Teachers Union. They were accompanying three schoolchildren on an educational trip to Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary near Santa Barbara, Calif., as part of a marine research project funded by the National Geographic Society.

Hundreds of New York City firefighters and police officers have died. Other AFL-CIO-affiliated unions, including the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees, the American Federation of Government Employees, the Communications Workers of America and the Service Employees International Union, all represented members working in the WTC and the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, members of AFT's healthcare affiliates in New York and Northern New Jersey were active in treating injured survivors of the disaster. Among the AFT members were 550 healthcare professionals at the Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn, 300 employees at the Staten Island University Hospital, South Campus, and some 3,000 workers at four Northern New Jersey hospitals, including Palisades General Hospital and Bayonne Hospital.

The AFT-affiliated New York State Psychological Association (NYSPA) and its members also were involved. NYSPA's disaster response network offered crisis intervention services to victims, family members, rescue workers and others who needed someone to talk to, says June Feder, a psychologist and UFT staffer who chairs the response network.