New York, NY – Mario Galvet, 64, is an Electronic Equipment Maintainer who has worked for thirty-seven years for the Transit Authority. “That title is used in about four or five different departments,” he says, “I have worked for the one that’s in charge of the maintenance of, first and foremost, police, train and bus radio communications.
LaborPress had the honor of speaking with Galvet, a seasoned veteran, who details about the unmatched technical knowledge that he developed in his many years, what other elevated positions he currently holds, and how he was able to be a part of the search, on 9/11 and in the days after, for those that may still have been alive under the catastrophic destruction.
LP: You are on the Executive Board, as well as being an Electronic Equipment Maintainer, correct?
MG: That’s right. That’s a local-wide office, and I represent all the electronic-wide personnel at the e-port, essentially.
LP: Another hat you wear is the Vice Chair for Line Equipment Signals Division of Maintenance of Way.
MG: Yes.
LP: What makes you stand out, in your career, and what helped you to assist in what must, in particular ways, be called a ‘search and rescue,’ team, albeit in an electronic sense?
MG: We work in teams, but I will say this much about myself: it’s a matter of public record, it’s a matter of Transit Authority record, that in terms of what I did for a living, I brought skills that were entirely unique. I would immediately know what the defect was, I would fix it, it would stay like that. I had a long-established reputation of being the most competent technician in the department, as evidenced by the boss saying, at the time of 9/11, ‘you’re going in there tomorrow.’ And off I went.
LP: On the day of 9/11, you were called to use your technical skills, to “ping” the cellphones, in the area of the collapse of the buildings, in order to see if there might be any response, meaning, if anyone was still alive, under the rubble, to see if they would answer.
MG: Yes. But initially, the first personnel that were attempting to get on the site, and did get on to the site, were our midnight crew. They worked through the night and then they came back to the office and said everything was covered in dust, and everything looked awfully hazardous – they were using their wipers as if the dust was snow – and they didn’t have the proper breathing protection.
When they got there, they immediately noticed that the above-ground communications were shot, as well as the below-ground communications. Utility lines were down, there was flooding, and even ConEd couldn’t do anything; their back-up batteries were depleted. So there was nothing [as far as communication] above ground, there was nothing below ground.
The team then went to a further downtown subway station, West Broadway/Chambers Street, and there was radio equipment there that corresponds to the WTC radio equipment itself. It extends all the way down to the South Ferry, the tip of the Manhattan Island. When we went to go down there, we saw that it was running off a battery, it was working erratically. But we were able to test our antennae, to see if it was affected by all the destruction, and we attached a device to it that connects to the antenna. That device sends a series of radio pulses and measures how long it takes for that pulse to come back, if it does, and to what degree. That device measures the health and efficacy of the antenna, which has an incredibly tough construction.
The results suggested that for the first time in my career, the device said that the antenna was cut. With help from some other devices, I found that, sure enough, the break was right under Tower Number One.
The whole neighborhood, we found after that, above-ground, was kind of dead in the same way – the radio communications were not working. The antennas on the North Tower were not working, so we went to the Cortland Street station, where we saw that the antenna there was down, buried under bent-up beams, mountains of busted-up concrete.
The next step was for the crew to be hooked up with commercial cell-phone carriers underground to see if they could help – in other words, to locate living beings beneath the rubble. Those carrier personnel brought equipment that was to be hooked up to the antenna. After some more adjustments, it was clear that the signals at the time could project signals that could penetrate the debris pile.
They did their thing, and the objective was to see if there was anything in there that could be communicated with – to “ping” them. It was not commonly known at the time – and this is why they were being so secretive – is that the cell phones could be made to react. They – someone who works for National Security or something – they didn’t want people to know that you could remotely find and alter their cell phones. The pinging can say, “Hey, is anybody out there?” And then your cell phone goes, “Yeah, I’m here.” So they attempted that, and not one cell phone reacted. If there are thousands of dead people there, and that means that more than likely, thousands of cell phones, and not one reacted, not one of them said, ‘Hey, I’m here,’ it indicated that each and every one of the cell phones were dead. And that just gave an idea of the level of destruction. It was a nuclear-bomb-type energy exerted.
Athough at the end of the day, myself, and the rest of the 4,000 of us in TWU Local 100 who showed up – the first of those who did on that day – we ultimately really didn’t get to save anybody’s lives, but as we always tell people at our medal events [where TWU Local 100 members, and some management, are awarded medals over the years – those who were vetted for their service, and have come forth and have been compensated for their work, and those with WTC-related illnesses that have been recognized and compensated by the federal government, among others], that a) we were the biggest presence at 9/11 and b) we were the first ones there in significant numbers.
I did what I did thinking that my little part would help facilitate rescues because you need radio communications, and that extended to the use of our antenna, but, unfortunately, we all know now that the level of destruction ruled that out.
LP: Despite the ultimate outcome of Galvet the work he and his team did, searching for survivors, as he has said, the level of destruction was at such an extreme level, that, tragically, despite their heroic efforts to save lives, that was not the outcome.
However, Galvet’s personal journey into what was literally a hell-scape, and the hard-won and unique knowledge that he used in trying to locate those that may have survived, earn him a place in LaborPress’ 2024 Heroes of Labor pantheon of honorees.
