Kam Wong's office overlooked the Ground Zero site on 9/11. From that fateful day to the end of May, thousands of workers cleaned up mountains of debris from the collapsed Twin Towers after terrorists shocked the world by flying commercial airplanes into the iconic buildings.

Wong, who was then the CFO of the $2.5 billion Municipal Credit Union, and employees moved back into their headquarters building in February 2002 just a few yards from the hallowed ground where 2,753 people were murdered.

“One of the reasons I closed my curtains in my office was not about the disaster,” Wong recalled. “It was about the aftermath.”

Occasionally, he would hear a very loud sound like a trumpet or whistle bellow from the depths of Ground Zero. Using his binoculars, he looked to see what was going on and realized the sound was made when workers found the remains of another 9/11 victim.

Customarily, the laborers stopped what they were doing, lined up, stood at attention and saluted as disheartened, dust-covered firefighters silently carried the flag-draped remains on a stretcher.

“It was sad,” Wong remembered. “It was so sad.”

The sadness of that tragic day will be remembered by the nation and the world when the 15th anniversary of 9/11 is somberly commemorated.

MCU, which serves city of New York employees including firefighters and police officers, lost seven members.

“One of the board directors came to me and asked my opinion on forgiving all those debts. I thought that was a great idea,” Wong said. “One police officer had a mortgage with us and other members had car loans and other loans. We forgave about $400,000 to $500,000.”

Cliff Rosenthal, former executive director of the National Federation of Community Development, was in his office overlooking the East River less than a mile from the World Trade Center site.

In an interview with CU Times a few days after Sept. 11, Rosenthal said he didn't recall hearing the first explosion, but he couldn't mistake the second one.

“It was a loud, muffled sound,” Rosenthal said. “After the first Twin Tower collapsed, a cloud of white smoke enveloped the neighborhood. The whole area was coated by white soot, like snow. We figured the worst was over. Then the second tower collapsed and the smoke got darker. It was like night had come.”

Rosenthal, who's a consultant, still chokes up with raw emotions remembering that dark day and the constant acrid odor that permeated lower Manhattan for months, the photos of the victims posted by their loved ones on walls nearby Ground Zero in hopes that they would be somehow found alive, and living in a post-traumatic state of mind that created a new state of solidarity among New Yorkers and among Americans.

“It's still pretty visceral for a lot of us,” Rosenthal said. “There is no one in New York who was more than one or two people removed from the disaster. Either they were down there or they lost a relative or they knew somebody who did or they were thrown out of work for months and months because of it. There were very few people who were untouched by 9/11 in one way or another.”

After the first plane hit the North tower, Wong made the executive decision for all employees in the headquarters office and branches to evacuate and make their way home. Then-MCU president/CEO Bill Porter was stuck in traffic and the COO was at a conference.

“I was standing in my corner office when the phone rang and it was one of my directors asking if I was OK,” Wong recalled. “Just when I was telling him that I evacuated the building, I saw the second plane hit. I could not believe it. The fireball was so tremendous. It was coming toward our windows, sheets of paper were shooting like bullets into our windows. That's the kind of force I cannot even describe to you. There are just no words for it.”

Wong's first instinct was to leave and go home, but he realized that the credit union needed to implement its disaster recovery plan. The city cut off power to lower Manhattan as a safety precaution. MCU's battery backup powering the credit union's entire IT system would diminish and its branch operations and ATM network would no longer work.

“I contacted the New York Cash Exchange Network, which we belong to,” Wong said, “and asked them to honor cash withdrawals from our members when they used foreign ATMs. I put a limit of $200 and I found out later that limit was not enough.”

Wong received a call from the New York City controller's office requesting to raise the ATM limit to $800 because a lot of city employees paid cash for rent.

He approved the increase because he was concerned if members were unable to access their money, it would lead to a run on the credit union when it re-opened on Sept. 13.

MCU did have a hot site back-up established with a disaster recovery company. When the credit union contacted its disaster recovery firm, it was informed that the Philadelphia facility, where the credit union had chosen to recover, was oversubscribed because of the number of companies affected by 9/11. They offered facilities in Atlanta and Chicago, which the credit union couldn't use because planes were grounded.

On Sept. 12, some staffers were able to access MCU headquarters to retrieve some critical tapes and disk drives. But the credit union had to order new IT equipment that was overnighted to a disaster recovery site to essentially rebuild the credit union's IT system.

Although the branches were closed on Sept. 12, Wong told his management team they needed to re-open Sept. 13 and transactions had to be done manually until the IT system was back up on Sept. 17.

Although the system was up on that date, the credit union had to use a 56K modem. “We had to process all of those transactions we accumulated over the last few days, and it took a long time,” Wong rcalled.

Technical issues with connecting the IT system to MCU's branch network, however, persisted and the staff had to keep processing transactions manually until the credit union connected to an AT&T microwave satellite system that could support a T-3 line to link to MCU's new back office location equipped with 130 new desktop computers. The manual transactions from the branches were taken to the back office site to be posted on the credit union's IT system.

Once the IT system was operational, Wong determined $58 million had been overdrawn at ATMs. That number had been later revised to $25 million that members still owed MCU.

A letter was sent to members that offered them a new loan at a nominal interest rate to repay their overdrawn accounts. Most members accepted the new loan terms, while a few members had to be prosecuted.

The bottom line is that MCU took a loss of $1.2 million “A $1.2 million loss for this kind of traumatic event? I'll take it,” Wong said.

From this experience, Wong said he learned so much about the internal operations of the credit union and was promoted from CFO to president for his leadership during the crisis. He was named president/CEO in 2014.

“If I had the choice of doing it all over again, I would trade my promotion for the disaster,” he reflected. “From a personal perspective, I hope this doesn't happen again to anyone.”

Instant Insights /

Fifteen Years Later, NYC Credit Unions Reflect on 9/11

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