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Putting World Trade Center Back Together : Trying for an April 1 reopening of the towers, 1,300 cleaners and 1,500 engineers are laboring around the clock.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Clean the smoke detectors, all 3,000 of them. Get water out of the basement (1.8 million gallons). Check flushometers on enough toilets to serve 50,000. Send in cleaning crew of 1,300 to sponge up soot.

So goes the to-do list of the operators of the World Trade Center, who hope to reopen their twin towers by April 1 and, in the meantime, face the Herculean task of mucking out a high-tech Augean Stables.

The Feb. 26 bomb blast that crippled the giant complex capsized computers, severed water pipes and left generators swamped. Several of the largest air-conditioning units in the world were crushed by falling slabs of concrete.

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These days, the site swarms with 1,500 engineers, electricians and other contractors scrambling around the clock to reopen the towers to 50,000 antsy office-worker tenants.

The pressure is intense. Businesses stand to lose an estimated $1.07 billion if the towers remain closed just one month, and real estate brokers are already courting disgruntled tenants.

“It’s absolutely mind-boggling,” said Peter LaGow of Otis Elevator Co., which built the 256 elevators and 78 escalators in the complex. “I have never attempted to do anything like this. I don’t think anybody has.”

Nearly everything about the World Trade Center comes in superlatives. Its towers, the second-tallest in the world, use more phone lines than any other office building in New York City and more power than any other customer of Consolidated Edison.

The bomb blast was remarkable too. It turned the center’s six-story basement into a crater 200 feet wide and 70 feet deep, blew a hole in concrete slabs on three levels, and tore out part of the floor of the hotel lobby above.

The destruction radiated over eight square blocks. Smoke billowed up into the 110-story towers, covering desks, computer terminals, telephones and walls in a soft blanket of soot.

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The bomb assaulted the complex’s “nerve center,” the basement crossing point of pipes, conduits, cables and wiring crucial to emergency communications, fire-protection and other systems.

Mopping-up has been complicated by the criminal investigation. Basement levels cannot be rebuilt until the inquiry is finished. But that could not begin until the area was made safe. To make it safe without disturbing the crime scene, contractors had to work from above, through holes in the hotel’s ballroom floor.

Now, workers are hauling 50 crushed cars a day out of the 2,000-space underground garage. Eventually, they expect to cart out 2,500 tons of debris.

“Reoccupation” of the towers is tentatively scheduled to begin April 1.

“It really depends on how these many pieces of work go,” said Anthony Shorris, first deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the trade center. “Some of them are dependent upon things we just don’t know right now.”

The command center for the reconstruction is a former restaurant, known as The Big Kitchen, in the ground-level concourse. Inside the dining area, dozens of workers buzz over plywood tables. Cigarette smoke curls upward; glazed doughnuts come and go.

Hand-lettered signs hang from the ceiling, identifying each agency, contractor and activity: New York Telephone, Northland Equipment, Con Edison, Turner Construction--air flow, fire alarm, support systems.

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The reconstruction is divided roughly into three parts: structural, mechanical-electrical, and cleanup.

The biggest structural problem, engineers found, was that the collapse of horizontal concrete slabs in the basement had weakened many vertical columns beneath the hotel. The columns would have to be braced.

The work went painfully slowly at first. It took a week to get the crucial first 18 braces in place. Dozens of additional braces must be installed before contractors can begin demolishing and rebuilding the ruined basement levels.

As the structural work goes on, workers have been restoring essential services and life-safety systems--including fire detection and alarm systems, and public and emergency communications.

In many cases, systems in the towers were unscathed. But the blast cut them off from basement equipment that enables them to function, affecting such crucial services as elevators, heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

“It is a massive job,” said Charles Maikish, the authority’s director of world trade. “The response of people working 12, 15 hours a day--tradesmen, contractors, supervisors, engineers--is phenomenal. It’s as if they’re trying to say to whoever did this, ‘We’re not going to let you win.’ ”

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One of the first tasks was what Maikish called “de-watering” the basement, accomplished with fire department pumps working 24 hours a day. The water had swamped generators, but when the pumping was finished, access to them was still blocked by debris.

The blast also badly damaged five of the seven massive “chillers” for the air conditioning system, each with the cooling capacity of 7,000 tons of ice. They are so big they cannot easily be replaced by summer, and so the agency is investigating substitutes.

Many elevators were damaged not during but after the explosion, when rescue workers pried open doors to free trapped passengers. To check the 196 elevator shafts for cracks, technicians perched on the roof of each elevator car will ride up and down the 110 stories of each tower.

“What else?” LaGow of Otis Elevator mused to a reporter. “Uh, sit down and have lunch.”

Remarkably, the blast barely affected some systems. The 40,000 voice telephone lines and 30,000 data lines were untouched. Tenants trapped in the towers spent the afternoon on their phones, chatting with television news anchors.

Electrical service was interrupted only briefly. The trade center has a peak consumption level of 86 million watts in a single instant. Service was restored on all eight of the towers’ 13,000-volt lines within hours of the explosion.

Late last week, the actual cleaning had finally begun. A small army of specially trained cleaners is working its way down from the uppermost floors, mopping up the soot with the help of special dry sponges for sensitive surfaces, such as computer keyboards.

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And any other tools? Shorris of the Port Authority was asked recently.

“More Windex than I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said.

A Recovery Program Checklist

The following tasks are crucial to getting the towers’ 50,000 office-worker tenants back to work. Target date: April 1.

1. Cleaning up the soot that is coating offices and elevators. Workers cannot begin until the safety systems are restored.

2. Restoring the smoke-detection, fire alarm and fire-prevention systems and assorted other communications equipment. Efforts under way.

3. Shoring up the basement. Engineers had to reinforce damaged support columns from above to keep from disturbing crime scene. Vertical supports fixed but horizontal slabs still need repair.

4. Replacing damaged air conditioner “chillers.” They will not be back in operation by summer. Other options are being considered.

5. Restoring emergency generators. Water has been pumped from basement, but debris still blocks access.

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Source: Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

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