The Electrical Worker Online


May 2015
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Bosch Bails
Deep South's cheap
labor draws another manufacturer read_more

Training Program Helps TVA Coal Workers read_more

The Rooftop Revolution
Solar panels pose challenges for
electrical systems read_more

Energy Prices Skyrocket
In Germany, the downside of solar growth read_more

'It's the Daytona,
the Superbowl'
Member wins biggest snowmobile race read_more

If you build it,
they will come
New Chicago training
center 'Field of Dreams' read_more

North of 49°
New Brunswick Local's Safety Hat Trick read_more

Au nord du 49° parallèle
Le coup de chapeau de sécurité du Local au Nouveau-Brunswick read_more

In Lower Manhattan,
A Tower Rises on Holy Ground

Nearly 5,000 days after the attacks on 9/11 and seven years after construction on One World Trade Center began, tenants are moving into the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere.

The 16-acre site will always be holy ground. The plunging waterfalls in the footprints of the fallen towers will always be a pilgrimage site.

The 1,776-foot-tall tower, however, is not for memory; it is for work.

"We never stopped being there," said Ken Forsberg, Local 3 steward for One World Trade Center.

Local 3 members built the original World Trade Center 40 years ago and nearly 3,500 will tell their children and grandchildren they had a hand in the reconstruction. In 2003, Forsberg was one of the many journeyman who made the daily descent down the 480-foot ramp to rebuild what was lost. In 2009, he returned as steward for the whole site, a task he shared with others as the scope of the work expanded.

For some, it was too much.

"A few guys would tell me 'I can't come to the job. I get emotional. It's all I think about,'" Forsberg said. "I have nine years down there and an absolute attachment to the site. I still get choked up. The amount of time you spend doesn't toughen you any. It doesn't fade the raw memories."

Finishing it doesn't either. There is still the horror of the 2,753 people killed, including 21 IBEW members. Local 3's lost 17 are memorialized on the face of Local 3's hall. Four more were lost from Local 1212. On the back side of the memorial to the IBEW dead is a pledge to rebuild what was destroyed.

One World Trade Center is not the first, or even the second office building to open on the site. Building 7 opened in 2006 and Building 4 opened seven years later. The memorial opened on the 10th anniversary of the attacks and the long-delayed museum opened nearly two years ago.

But for Forsberg — for all of New York — without a flag flying over a finished Tower One, the pledge to rebuild was a promise unfulfilled.

Opening the doors of the tower to working men and women who will work in the building, not on it, is the start of a new page in the city's story. The hole in the skyline where the towers were hasn't been filled, but it is not as empty either.