Tales Of Miracles Emerge As Business, IT Worlds Deal With Attack On America

Even as the nation struggled to comprehend the carnage and chaos borne of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, stories of hope, resilience, and extraordinary cooperation emerged Tuesday from the business and IT worlds.

At the InformationWeek Fall Conference in Tucson, Ariz., executives stranded by the ban on air travel spoke of miracles big and small as they tried to manage businesses--some with operations at ground zero in the twin towers--from afar.

Brian Young, CEO of Thor Technologies Inc., said only one of 45 employees who would typically occupy company offices at One World Trade Center was unaccounted for as of Tuesday night. That despite the fact that the company's offices were just three floors below the impact zone where one of the planes hit. Thor, which makes digital-rights-management software, had only been in the tower for a year after moving from a different location in Manhattan. "The whole team is now involved in how we're going to open up again," Young said.

Recounting another miraculous escape, a Morgan Stanley Dean Witter executive attending the conference said 3,500 employees at the firm's Two World Trade Center offices were able to escape before their tower collapsed into rubble following a second aircraft strike. "Two World Trade Center was warned by One World Trade Center," said the executive, who asked not to be identified. He said the company maintained offices between the 44th and 73rd floors of the building.

Meanwhile, medical-supply companies moved to a state of wartime readiness as the scope of the disaster became apparent. Some, like Owens & Minor Inc. based in Richmond, Va., invoked emergency plans originally drawn up for Y2K. As the disaster unfolded, the company began automated shipments of supplies to New York-area hospitals, based on predetermined knowledge of what they would likely need in the event of a disaster. The company also shipped supplies to an emergency staging area at the Meadowlands sports complex in Secaucus, N.J. Though the operations ran smoothly, company chairman and CEO Gil Minor, an InformationWeek Conference attendee, said he wished he could do more. "Nothing would have pleased me more than to have been on the scene with my people," he said. Minor said information systems the company purchased from IBM and Perot Systems Corp. functioned without a hitch during the disaster.

Owens & Minor competitor McKesson HBOC also sprang into action, delivering supplies to the area. But despite their rivalry, executives from the two companies said they will cooperate as necessary in the coming days to make sure medical workers get the supplies they need. "I can't tell you how proud I am to be on this stage with Gil Minor," Charles Nettles, McKesson's chief technology officer, said at the InformationWeek conference Tuesday night.

Other companies also put bitter rivalries aside to ensure vital services were available when needed. Carol Bussing, VP of integrated system solutions at Sprint Corp., said her company cooperated with AT&T, as well as federal agencies, to ensure wireless phone service was available in New York. Bussing said that some switching stations in lower Manhattan shut down because of overheating, but for the most part the network stayed up. "We wanted to make sure our customers were able to stay in touch," Bussing said.

Other executives at the conference said the attack could have far-reaching consequences on the way Americans view the balance between individual freedom and security. Robert Rubin, CEO of Valley Management Consultants, said many citizens may be more disposed to accept government interception of E-mails if it means increased security.

While some companies emerged from the disaster unscathed, others weren't so fortunate. Content-caching provider Akamai Technologies Inc. confirmed Tuesday that co-founder and CTO Daniel Lewin was aboard one of the American Airlines jets that hit the World Trade Center. Lewin, 31, was en route from Boston to Los Angeles.