Our Story: The Day After 9/11/2001
Understanding that my office is less than a football field away from the World Trade Center which was now a cemetery, investigation site, construction site and massive amounts of loose wires and shaky structures, I still decided that I would try to get to our offices on 9-12-01. Once I was in the area, a person who identified himself as working for the FBI said that the entire area was a dangerous place to be. I headed to my client’s office, Sky Management, who allowed me to work from their offices.
By Friday we were back in our office, and learned that the window that Nancy Fernandez opened with a burst of ash crashed our server/computer. Fortunately ,we also kept a paper calendar and all of our files had been kept in file folders.
Not only was our office phone working, but it was ringing. At that time we practiced in Supreme Court and Housing Court but at that time we were most well known for our Housing Court practice, although we did not have the time to ask too many questions on how these concerned New Yorkers came into our offices. Our community had questions and needed help. We opened our offices on some days for up to 18 hours to handle all of the visitors. We tried making appointments, but eventually our office was fully occupied with people carrying leases and tons of questions.
We worked with the landlords of those who maintained leases in their buildings who had perished on September 11, 2001. The more difficult question was when they were roommates and the surviving roommate could not afford the rent alone. I gave advice, helped fill out forms, and directed them to Court and took on as many cases as we could. At that time, we did not represent so many of the largest landlords in New York City. We had only started Adam Leitman Bailey P.C, 1 year and 9 months earlier.
Making my job more difficult and still showing sympathy and compassion, we carefully dealt with very sensitive issues. For example, I learned that a small percentage of the Police Officers and Fire Fighters families were very human. Wives and mistresses showed up declaring as many rights as they had questions. I judged no one and simply helped everyone that I could assist. Working with other attorneys, we came up with the phrase that all of the Police Officers and Fire Fighters we worked with were heroes but some of them were not saints.
The next issue were the buildings that had been declared off limits as a result of the tragedy. The residents came to me to get temporary access to get their clothes and necessary belongings. That was the first time I heard the word Hazmat suit. I then pushed for a full, efficient and facilitated clean up in several of the buildings while obtaining limited access to buildings closest to the tragedy. Many of the buildings were owned by the same companies, so I realized I was working with the same policies. Being so close to these buildings and visiting them was daunting, but necessary. No landlord was demanding rent or starting non-payment cases. I was working with them comparing lists of who had and had not perished and working with the families coordinating the efforts to terminate their lease without any liability going forward. Almost every landlord was compassionate and reasonable. Much of the time I was answering questions and explaining the housing laws and whatever I knew about trusts and estates law. It seemed that during this time of turmoil a new set of street rules for tenants and landlords came into being for both commercial and residential dwellings. We applied both New York law and these new set of rules to do whatever we could to play a small part in putting New York City back together.
Thankfully, I was single with no children at the time and 31-years-old with an ability to work all hours of the day and night. The firm had two other attorneys who handled the work of the firm while I assisted our community.
There were no advertisements, no television cameras and I still do not know how so many people found us. It was the first time in my life when by November 2001, I was experiencing difficulty mustering up the energy to get to work. I went to the doctor as the words “mental health” had not been invented yet, or I had never heard of them. The doctor said that I desperately needed to take a vacation. So my high school friend and I got on an almost empty plane to Puerto Rico. It rained the entire time, but it did the trick and the four day trip reinvigorated me and I was excited to get back to work in a wounded downtown New York City.