Downtown New York City lost electrical power when the World Trade Center was attacked, and everyone involved in the rescue efforts – the fire department, the police department, hospitals, city government – needed power immediately. Con Edison, the local utility, is our customer, and they called us.

 Within 48 hours, we had deployed 80 mobile generators, 44 miles of cable and 75 technicians, engineers and project managers. It felt like all of GE was pitching in – we received transformers from Industrial Systems, trailers from Modular Space, accessories from GE Supply. We had to turn away hundreds of Company volunteers.

 We were so moved by the job. The entire nation wanted to help, and we were able to do so. One image sums it up for me. We had asked Industrial Systems for transformers. Within hours, they had trucks on the road with fully assembled transformers coming to our staging area. They arrived wrapped in plastic tarps, and on those tarps were just hundreds of messages of hope, prayers. There were poems. There were letters. It was just an amazing outpouring.