Fort personnel fill many roles in tragedy’s aftermath From locating cellphones to dealing with explosives, CECOM experts are on call

Fort personnel fill many roles in tragedy’s aftermath
From locating cellphones
to dealing with explosives,
CECOM experts are on call

CHRIS KELLY A soldier stationed at Fort Monmouth, Eatontown, checks passes at a checkpoint located on the perimeter of the base.

EATONTOWN — If any injured people trapped in the World Trade Center rubble have been trying to use their cellphones, those transmissions are much more likely to be picked up thanks to the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command.

Teams of CECOM experts from Fort Monmouth were deployed to ground zero in New York with equipment capable of locating cellular phone transmissions within the ruins of the structures that collapsed, according to Timothy L. Rider, a spokesman for the Army base.

Rider said other CECOM personnel were dispatched to the World Trade Center scene with thermal imaging equipment to increase visibility in dark regions of collapsed structures.

The use of the high-tech devices are just part of Fort Monmouth’s contributions to the rescue and recovery operation.

Rider said the 754th Ordnance Company (explosive ordnance) from Fort Monmouth was also deployed in New York to assist authorities should they come across anything they think might be explosives while digging through the debris in search of victims.

The 754th Ordnance Company can safely set off or render inoperative any explosive that is found, Rider said.

In addition, he said, an emergency response team and firefighters from Fort Monmouth were sent to the ferry terminal in Highlands to help treat the injured as they arrived from the disaster site in lower Manhattan.

Patterson Hospital on the Fort Monmouth grounds was prepared to receive some of the injured, but none were taken there, Rider added.

The gates of Fort Monmouth were closed and barricaded, except for the main gate on Route 35, during the height of the reaction to the attack on the World Trade Center when the base was on the highest level of alert; and Oceanport Avenue, which runs through the rear of the base between Little Silver and Oceanport, was closed from the railroad tracks to Main Street in Oceanport.