Gerard A. Rozea oral history interview conducted by Julie Broihier, December 13, 2010

About

Gerard (Gerry) worked as an engineer for Lucent Technologies, installing phone systems in offices. On 9/11, he was working from his home in Pennsylvania, troubleshooting on the phone with co-workers at the phone company's central office on Vesey Street in Manhattan. He saw the planes hit the towers on TV and was worried about his co-workers. On 9/12, Gerry headed to the Manhattan office. When he got into the city, he saw the National Guard and felt as if he was "in a cloud within a cloud" due to the dust. When he arrived at the office, there was equipment hanging all over the place. He went up to the 16th floor, and looked out the south windows and could see the Deutsche Bank, something he could never see before as the towers blocked that view. He found it "mind-boggling" how so much debris from the towers ended up being such a "small hill." Battery Park and Wall Street didn't have phone service, and Gerry's job was to get the two main switches up and running so that they could get back to work again. He finally got both switches up and running by the 18th of September. Gerry said, "Everybody worked together regardless of trade. . .because everybody had one goal. . .to clean it up as fast as we could." Gerry worked at the WTC site restoring telecommunications through early December 2001. He worked about 700 hours and put in about 16 to 20-hour days.

Archive

Library of Congress, in Library of Congress

Licence or status

Rights statement at the Library of Congress, as the Library of Congress states it.

Credit

Library of Congress

Language

English

Country

United States

Who can watch

The archive gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Teens profiles and older, judged from its collection and subjects. How films are placed