Stoneham company helps New York breath easier
Published on April 24th, 2002
STONEHAM, MA – One of the many frightening images that will always be associated with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 is that of the monstrous, pitch black cloud of dust and smoke that barreled down the streets of downtown Manhattan and swallowed up the terrified New Yorkers who could not outrun its wake. That billowing nightmare, which clogged the streets of the city and rolled across the Hudson River, left traces in the surrounding buildings that survived the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
Some remnants of that awful late summer morning remain apparent in the wreckage that lingers around Ground Zero and stays caked on neighboring skyscrapers that were spared their own demise. Much of it, though, stays hidden, stacked in inches of dust in the ducts of buildings that sucked that hellish plume into their vents and rendered whole floors temporarily unusable.
Cleaning those air ducts, returning them to such a pristine condition that surgery could be performed in them, is a gargantuan task. It is a mission, however, that has been embraced as a patriotic duty by Dan Greenblatt and his staff at Envirotech Clean Air, Inc.
Envirotech is an air duct-cleaning business that Greenblatt established in Cambridge in 1988 and moved to Spencer Street in Stoneham in August of 2001.
Shortly after Sept. 11, Greenblatt got in touch with some of his contacts down in New York City and asked what he and his company could do to help restore the region surrounding Ground Zero. He got his answer when, in February, Greenblatt, his right hand man, Ron Fallon, and a staff of shift managers joined up with a band of union workers to begin cleaning the air ducts of a 47-story skyscraper that stood in what once was the immediate shadow of the World Trade Center.
“It’s very emotional down there,” says Greenblatt, who since February has spent a few weekends in downtown Manhattan. “This is my way of contributing to what needs to be done down there.”
During the calamity of Sept. 11, a huge chunk was ripped from the third floor of the building that Envirotech is cleaning. As a result, Greenblatt and his staff are able to stand three stories above Ground Zero and peer into the rubble that pedestrians are unable to observe from sidewalks. It is a haunting view, complete with cranes removing destroyed subway cars and a fresh mound that hides bodies that have yet to be recovered.
And then, surrounding the building where Envirotech works, there are the memorials. Here, there and everywhere, baseball caps, teddy bears and flowers crowd pictures on walls and letters written by children to their fallen fathers.
“I lived through the Vietnam era,” says Greenblatt. “I have visited the Wall down in Washington and seen the names of my friends on it. The memorials down at Ground Zero make me feel the same way when I see them.”
Such feelings help Greenblatt and his staff stay on task. Make no mistake:
That cloud of smoke and dust on September 11 produced a ventilation nightmare in the surrounding buildings that far surpassed the resources of the entire duct-cleaning industry. Whichever company was going to accept the job of restoring the ventilation of affected buildings was first going to have to spend a lot of money to upgrade its resources.
“All of the smoke that you saw on TV got sucked into the ventilation of the nearby buildings,” says Greenblatt. “Ron Fallon, who does great work for me, first went down to Ground Zero and sized up the situation. When he called me from New York City, he pretty much told me, ‘I need everything.’”
Indeed, Greenblatt maxed out his credit cards and other funds when he purchased new vacuums and compressors to match the task before his company.
“I could see on day one that I was going to run out of money,” adds Greenblatt. “We managed, but it was a very scary time for me.”
Greenblatt had to purchase larger vacuums, which are called negative air machines. They are situated in the vents and used to suck as much as 5,000 cubic feet of dust a minute from the ducts. (To understand just how much larger resources than normal were needed down at Ground Zero, Greenblatt’s largest vacuums at his Spencer Street location that suck up 2,000 cubic feet of dust a minute.) From the negative air machine, the absorbed dust passes through a long and wide hose into a compressor that condenses the matter into a more easily disposable level. Before Fallon, his shift managers and the union workers can begin such a task, though, they must drape furniture in plastic and study a blueprint to figure which way to best access the vent on each floor.
According to Greenblatt, Envirotech faces a few more weeks of work until the ventilation system in the current building is spick-and-span. From there, the company may move on to other neighboring buildings that consumed the wreckage of Sept. 11. Anyone who is interested in Envirotech is encouraged to visit the company’s Web site at www.breatheasier.com.
The monumental task undertaken by Envirotech has proven to be the biggest assignment ever faced by Greenblatt and his staff, but, looking back on that fateful September day, one can’t help but fathom the chills of just how much worse things could have actually been.
“When I saw that cloud after the buildings collapsed, I thought that it must have felt like being underwater to be caught inside of it,” Greenblatt says. “When I saw it on TV, I didn’t think that there was any way that anybody could breathe inside of it.”
But they did, and now Greenblatt and his team are helping them to breathe a little easier.
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