Firms Pick Up Pieces in Bombing Aftermath : Workplace: Those displaced by the World Trade Center blast try to set up shop elsewhere. Big companies appear to fare the best.

Call it controlled chaos.

World Trade Center workers griped and moped, but when all was said and done they coped on the first business day after Friday’s bomb blast that killed five and left a four-story crater in the bowels of the 110-story twin-tower complex.

It was, in other words, nearly business as usual in a city that takes a measure of perverse pride in absorbing such urban calamities as power blackouts, runaway subway trains and water main breaks.

“This is New York. We’re used to this kind of stuff. It’s one trauma after another,” shrugged Ursula Dessibourg, a legal assistant at Cantor Fitzgerald Securities, just three days after she and her colleagues groped their way down smoke-filled stairs from the 105th floor of One World Trade Center.

Dessibourg was interviewed as she and hundreds of other displaced workers waited--and waited and waited--to retrieve crucial files and computer data from the Trade Center towers.

The monoliths house the bulk of the 350 firms and 50,000 workers who occupy the seven-building complex. The buildings have been shut down indefinitely until safety systems destroyed in the blast are rebuilt. As a result, everyone venturing in on Monday required police escorts, slowing the process to a crawl.

“I was here all day yesterday, with no luck--had to come back at 6 o’clock this morning,” groused Ward Lape, president of Candia Shipping Lines. By noon, Lape had managed to retrieve a box of what he said were classified documents.

“We transit-ship through the Suez Canal, and these are military records,” Lape said, tapping the box mysteriously. “That’s all I’m going to say.” Candia has set up shop for its 26 employees in Lape’s home, in Millneck on Long Island, for the duration.

Lape’s company appeared to be luckier than many small firms in Trade Center.

“We’re essentially paralyzed,” said Leonard Santow, a principal in the financial consulting firm Griggs & Santow, as he waited in subfreezing cold for hours to gain access to his office.

New York’s five commodities exchanges resumed trading for abbreviated hours Monday after an evacuation from Four World Trade Center--a building separate from the towers--curtailed trading on Friday.

“There’s no heat, no cafeteria and the toilets barely work,” said Matt Alderesi, a trader for E.D.F. Man International, a commodities trading firm. But for the most part, trading was normal.

One notable exception was at the Coffee, Sugar & Cocoa Exchange, where officials were forced to run an unprecedented special session at midday Monday to allow traders to close out spot contracts that ordinarily would have expired at the close of business Friday.

Otherwise, “traders who were holding open contracts (at the time of the blast) would have been forced to take 112,000 pounds of sugar per contract,” said Grant Carroll, an independent sugar broker. “Imagine that being dumped in your back yard.”

Big firms with multiple offices in the New York area appeared to fare best on Monday. Dean Witter, Discover & Co.--the big brokerage and credit card firm that employs 3,500 in the Trade Center--dispersed its workers to nine sites in Manhattan, Westchester County and New Jersey.

“Our contingency plan worked nearly perfectly,” said Timothy Lee, vice president for communications. He was speaking from the shell of an old industrial building in Manhattan that had been outfitted over the weekend with phones, computers and fax machines.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the Trade Center and has its headquarters there, also dispersed employees to other facilities.

Authority Financial Officer Barry Weintraub said that most tenants’ business interruption insurance would cover the costs of relocating and lost business activity. The Trade Center itself is insured for $1 billion--$600 million of property insurance and $400 million in liability coverage.

“It’s broken up into a large number of pieces with a large number of carriers,” Weintraub said, adding that authority insurance officials were too busy preparing and filing claims to provide more specifics.

Security guard companies said calls began pouring in Friday from big- and medium-size businesses in the New York area that want to beef up their protection.

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