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Two come back with greater appreciation for nation's humanity

Thursday, October 18, 2001

By Jim McKay, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Death is no stranger to Michael Laughlin and Vance Delsignore, local compliance officers for the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

	Vance Delsignore, left, and Michael Laughlin, both OSHA compliance officers in Pittsburgh, said they couldn't have prepared themselves for the devastation they saw while volunteering at the World Trade Center site. (Darrell Sapp/Post-Gazette)

But even these veterans of workplace tragedies were shocked and saddened by the enormity of the devastation they experienced at the field of debris in Manhattan where the World Trade Center once stood.

Their jobs for one week at the end of September was to identify safety hazards confronting the construction crews that are slowly untangling tons of steel and concrete amid the ash from the two 110-story towers and the neighboring buildings that were destroyed or damaged by the towers' collapse.

The pair came away with lasting impressions of devastation too massive to be adequately displayed on a television screen and of the resilience of the human spirit that they found among their fellow rescue workers and volunteers.

"It looked like God picked up every piece of scrap metal he could find and deposited it right there," said Delsignore, 44, of Washington, Pa. "When I first got there I was shocked at how bad and how big the destruction was. I felt very, very sad, mainly for the people who died there and their families."

Delsignore and Laughlin, 51, of Baden, were among several hundred OSHA agents who have volunteered to work on the site a week at a time, monitoring safety conditions for the 5,000 workers, distributing and checking 1,500 respirators a day for fit and checking the safety of the more than 30 cranes being used to lift debris.

There have been no fatalities among recovery workers, but OSHA has counted 5,034 injuries to fire and police officers, urban search and rescue crews, and construction and sanitation workers in the weeks between Sept. 14 and Oct. 10. The majority are eye injuries, headaches, blisters, sprains, strains and skin irritations.

The OSHA agents were instructed to advise the contractors responsible for the demolition work of safety problems and possible remedies rather than act as enforcers of safety laws.

"There were a lot of problems," Delsignore said. "To be fair, they've got difficult working conditions. It's unlike anything I've ever seen both in size and scale and the amount of total damage."

The most difficult part, of course, was associated with the loss of life, watching the families of victims tour the devastation, the police and fire crews digging by hand for their dead friends and co-workers and often coming up with little or nothing after hours of toil -- an officer's badge, for example, or fragments of bodies.

"There are no words to describe it," Laughlin said.

Laughlin went to New York expecting to be angry over the attacks but ended up instead feeling sad and finding hope in the outpouring of support. He had a morale-boosting picture taken one morning at 3 a.m. with actor Harrison Ford, who was serving food to those who were working.

"Vance and I both deal with death on a routine basis, so we kind of conditioned ourselves. But it is hard with that much devastation," said Laughlin. A Vietnam veteran who has seen the effects of war, earthquakes and hurricanes, he found the scene at Ground Zero to be worse.

"I was looking for the positive, and the way people came together, worked together, just helped out, was unbelievable," he said. "Maybe that was the reason behind all of this. ... This has pulled people together.

"To me, I take a look at myself now and say 'How important is it to be angry at somebody? How important is it to feel you've been wronged?' I'm grateful. It gave me a greater appreciation for myself and my family and the people I work with."