He had never been to New York, but seven days after Sept. 11 Peter Hansen was in Manhattan – counselling victims of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

The Calgary psychologist was part of a Canadian team marshalled to the front lines to help survivors cope with the tragedy – the people who worked in the complex adjacent to the twin towers that collapsed after the explosions.
And as he listened to their stories, he struggled to imagine what they’d endured.

“For many people, the most difficult time was the sense of panic when the towers came down,” says Hansen.

David Lazarowych, Business Edge
Psychologist Peter Hansen was part of the Canadian contingent

“What they described was incredible, a cloud of dust that just engulfed them. They couldn’t breathe, they couldn’t see. They didn’t know if they should be inside, outside, which direction to run. All around them people were
fleeing in panic.”

People’s lives changed in an instant, the snap of a finger. Yet, at the time and now one year later, the soft-spoken 44-year-old marvels at the resiliency of those human beings who were determined to get on with their lives.

Hansen worked seven days in New York. An independent chartered psychologist in Calgary, he was part of the trauma response team organized by Toronto-based FGI, a
pre-eminent Canadian ‘EAP’ (Employee Assistance Programs) firm.

FGI had quickly placed a team in New York only days after the attacks, and Hansen’s 27-member group arrived to provide relief. Immediately they set to work in an atmosphere that was chilling, surreal and touching.

Hansen remembers the first days as he oriented himself to the surroundings, acclimatizing to the air that smelled like an electrical fire. He tried to dismiss the daily media rumours that more attacks were imminent, that the water supply had been tampered with, and that there were chemicals in the air that were highly carcinogenic.

“One thing that was striking was when a plane flew overhead,” he remembers. “The first few times it happened you’d see the whole street stop and look up, just track the plane. I think that was a sign of just how deeply affected the whole city was.”

The days were long, and Hansen says it was amazing how quickly the group slipped into a routine. Based in New Jersey, they rode the commuter train daily into Manhattan.

Typically he worked with two groups of six to 12 people in the morning, two more groups in the afternoon and then was available for individual counselling.

At the end of the day the counsellors themselves were debriefed to ensure that they weren’t being overwhelmed.

“The idea is to take the trauma, this emotional shock and share it, spread it out amongst many people,” explains Hansen. “In doing that, you gradually reduce the impact. So I carry my load and then pass it on to somebody else.”

The reactions Hansen observed spanned the spectrum of human emotion. Some New Yorkers were almost blase about what had happened, ready to get back to work. Others couldn’t sleep, eat or concentrate.

A number of workers refused to return to Manhattan; they were counselled over the phone.

The sessions helped people assimilate what had happened, educated them, normalized their reactions and helped move them on to the next step of coping, says Hansen.

As the days progressed, he watched many people move forward. Others who remained troubled were identified for extra help. “Getting people to talk, to share their feelings is a powerful intervention,” says Hansen.

The attitude of the survivors was also remarkable, he recalls. The workers started to go back to their jobs one week after the attacks. They were under terrible stress, unable to get back into their building because it wasn’t deemed structurally safe.

They had no files, no computer, and were sharing tiny desk spaces trying to do a job.

“But they were actually trying to take care of us as well, bringing us food, making sure that we were OK.”

The team’s work began each day when they boarded the commuter train.

Seeing their Team Canada jackets, people would ask what they were doing and within minutes everyone on the train was talking to the team, telling them their stories, what they saw, where they were when the planes hit the towers.

The team found themselves literally debriefing people on their way to Manhattan.

Hansen confesses there were times when his mind drifted. As the stories unfolded he tried to imagine what the experience was truly like.

“There were images that they were describing that were difficult for me to hear. I had to consciously pull myself from that and get back into my role,” he said.

“Psychologically that was a buffer for me, preventing me from getting stuck in thinking about the events that were being described.”

As part of his counselling role in Calgary, Hansen attends to traumatic and unpleasant events such as industrial accidents where someone has died.

But he’d never seen anything like New York, the magnitude of the event and the personal risk factor.

Hansen was called two days after Sept. 11 by FGI to see if he was interested in the assignment. On Sept. 16 he was called again, and the next morning he was on a plane to Toronto.

It happened so fast, only his wife Dawn and two children knew he was going.

Hansen was worried about his own usefulness before
leaving for New York, but he believes people were helped. Reports from the company whose employees he worked with confirm his feelings.

And he, too, continues to process the events.

Last year when he arrived back in Calgary and drove to his home in Okotoks, he felt he understood how combat veterans felt when returning from the field.

Everything here was quiet, normal, far removed from the nervous world in which he had been immersed.

“In some ways, it feels like it happened just yesterday and in other respects it feels unreal – like it was 100 years ago,” he says.

To mark the event, Hansen hopes to speak on the phone this week with some of the “remarkable” counsellors he worked with in New York. They’ll talk about their states of mind and share their feelings.

It will be therapeutic – because it helps to talk about these things.