September 11th

Tamaro first learned of the attack on the towers from his daughter, who worked two blocks away from the complex. Once he was assured that his three children were safe, Tamaro gathered his WTC photographs from 1967 and 1968, and others of the World Financial Center, realizing they would probably be of use to the emergency personnel.

And then he waited for the call.

It came the next day from Richard Tomasetti of Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers. Tamaro and his staff were quickly hired to work with the team assigned to the below-grade structure. In the initial days and weeks after the attack, this meant providing information about the structure and condition of the underground areas to the search and rescue teams. Due to the uneven impact of the collapsing buildings, the structure below ground was unpredictable: relatively intact structure coexisted alongside massive craters.

These conditions would dictate recovery and clean up efforts. The process was very ad hoc, says Tamaro. "I had no authority, over anybody. If someone didn't respect you, they wouldn't listen to you, it was as simple as that." From the start, Tamaro kept a worried eye on the slurry wall, monitoring any movements. If the bathtub was to be compromised, or collapse, the site could be flooded, the recovery effort jeopardized and perhaps more lives lost. The most alarming moment came when it appeared the southernmost wall along Liberty Street was moving and required emergency backfilling.

A group of younger engineers did most of the exploratory work below — Pablo Lopez and Andrew Pontecorvo from MRCE were among them, says Tamaro. At times he worried that they were driving themselves too hard and had to drag them off the job. "The site can get you so involved emotionally," he explains, "that you begin to lose sight that you're exhausted and you're liable to get hurt."

Tamaro took the attack on the World Trade Center extremely personally since he was involved in the construction of so many of the buildings destroyed or damaged: the North and South Towers, World Trade Center 7, and the World Financial Center.

Shaken, Tamaro tried to approach the recovery and clean-up as an engineering problem, he says, enacting a personal slurry wall of sorts to keep emotions at bay. But, when he talks about the events of September 11, Tamaro's sadness seeps in. The event, he says, made him focus on what is truly important: family and friends. "My son was three blocks away. He once worked in Tower 2 with Eurobrokers. Many of his friends are gone."

Professionally, Tamaro feels that the WTC clean-up proved that "you don't need all the paperwork to do a job." It also pointed out the need for some legislation, Good Samaritan laws to protect engineers and others who respond in emergency situations from future litigation. "We were doing things without permits, without reams of calculations," he says. "You just did what you had to do and you worked under the assumption that if you did something that was logical, reasonable and proper, that you would be supported in the future."

Tamaro has begun work on the reconstruction of WTC 7. He has his thoughts about what should be done with the WTC site, but prefers not to voice them until more of a consensus has been reached. He will say, however, that he doesn't believe that it is necessary to rebuild to the former 110-story height.

"I think that the tall buildings are primarily an expression of strength, prestige. I think that we don't have to express ourselves in that way right now. It's like walking, strutting down the park looking for a fight."

More importantly, he says, is that these destructive acts of terrorism not become a focal point for the nation. "In the long run, we've got to avoid making this a defining moment. We need to focus on more positive times."

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