"We first saw Ground Zero from the sky as we flew into New York City," said Sgt. 1st Class Jeremy Zemaitis. "There was stunned silence on the plane. Seeing the devastation on TV is one thing, but we were all looking out the windows, and we were just stunned by the sight."
Of the 31 Soldiers in the 249th Engineer Battalion (Prime Power) who deployed to New York City after Sept. 11, 2001, only Zemaitis remains on active duty with the unit. (Editor's note: Although the response to New York City gets the most coverage, the 249th also deployed six Soldiers to provide power for emergency operations at the Pentagon.)
The 249th is the only prime power unit in the U.S. Army, and the only active-duty battalion assigned to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It provides commercial-grade electric power to military units and federal relief organizations during operations ranging from training to war to disasters.
Immediately after the 9-11 attacks, a team of 249th Soldiers deployed to New York City and used 1,500-kilowatt generators supplied by the city to generate power for Wall Street. The New York Stock Exchange resumed operation on Sept. 12.
Early Sept. 12 the battalion deployed a two-person prime power action team to Edison, N.J., as action officers in the emergency power section of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) relief effort.
On 9-11, Zemaitis was a new sergeant in the 249th. He had graduated from the Prime Power School in August 2000, and was assigned to B Company at Fort Bragg, N.C. He had been with the company only about a year, and was in vendor school training (now called Industry Lead Training) in Tampa, Fla., on 9-11.
On Sept. 13, a prime power team of Soldiers from the battalion's Headquarters & Headquarters Company at Fort Belvoir, Va., and B Company deployed to New York to assist North Atlantic Division (NAD) and to serve as subject matter experts for power-related issues. The Soldiers were led by their battalion commander, Lt. Col. Kevin Wilson, but worked under FEMA direction.
After meeting with the NAD forward commander, FEMA representatives, and the local power company, Consolidated Edison (ConEdison), the 249th deployed an additional 21 Soldiers to assess power needs and install emergency generators in lower Manhattan.
"We came back to the company that Friday, and on Sunday we headed up to New York City," Zemaitis said. "We arrived at JFK Airport in our BDUs with our toolboxes and all our equipment. A taxi picked us up and took us to a Corps of Engineers boat that took us up the Hudson River to the Corps' Disaster Field Office at Pier 90.
"We in-processed and spent the night at the DFO, and the next day they sent us out to assess the area," Zemaitis said. "Our credentials got us into a lot of restricted areas, taking photos and documenting where we could help."
Soldiers deployed from both Fort Belvoir and Fort Bragg on Sept. 16 and spent the next three days helping ConEdison. Some of the significant missions included assessing power and installing generators at multiple financial buildings, including the New York Mercantile Exchange and the NASDAQ Electrical Hub. ConEdison asked the Soldiers to help install 50 1,500-kilowatt generators supplied by the city. The generators were housed in 40-foot containers on semi-trailers.
"We went down into the underground vaults where ConEdison had the switch gear," Zemaitis said. "We were helping them hook up the generators to power the Financial District. Of course, safety is the first priority, so whenever we went into a manhole the ConEdison guys made sure it was a safe working environment.
"Upon entering the vaults, we checked what was usable down there and tested to make sure the lines were still good," Zemaitis said. "Once we determined the gear was operational, we isolated that area so we could tie the back-up generators into the electrical connections so that it would just feed the areas that we knew were safe."
Soldiers from 249th also worked with ConEdison to set up generators at medical triage facilities and transient lodging centers to support the relief effort. To accomplish the missions more efficiently, the 249th split its assessment/installation teams into day and night shifts, enabling electrical repairs to continue around the clock. The pace was intense.
"When you're involved in that type of event, your adrenaline pumps and you want to just keep going," Zemaitis said. "A lot of the 249th guys were like that. This was such an intense, massive mission, and it was so heartfelt to be there, people didn't want to stop. They wanted to keep going and do as much as possible. We were going for two days straight when we got there. We wanted to get out and do anything we could to help."
By Sept. 18 most of the city's power was restored, and FEMA determined that the 249th was no longer needed to augment the local infrastructure. The Soldiers redeployed to their home stations that evening.
The deployment had a profound effect on Zemaitis.
"It has been the driving factor for all of my other deployments," he said. "In November of '01 we went to Uzbekistan, and from there we did some missions in Afghanistan. I've been to Afghanistan twice and Iraq twice. Going to New York City and witnessing 9-11 first hand gave me a determined drive when I went on future deployments. It gave me the experience to say, 'This is why I'm deploying. I was there, and I saw what happened.'"
(Capt. Hans Pung, operations officer of the 249th during 9-11, and Vince Elias of the New York District Public Affairs Office, also contributed to this article.)
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