When the smoke cleared.

• Position: Interview with Port Authority of New York and New Jersey CFO Barry Weintrob - Risk Management - Interview

Few people know for sure how they'd react to a disaster. Would they panic? Or become true leaders? During the World Trade Center crisis eight months ago, one CFO discovered that an emergency can change your way of thinking.

"WE'VE BEEN HIT BY lightning!" someone yelled. The Twin Towers of New York City's World Trade Center were shaking. Within a few seconds, the tremors stopped, but the lights in the buildings were off and the computers were down. Smoke was seeping from the elevators.

Lightning? An earthquake? A misguided airplane? Everyone had a guess. But until almost two days later, no one knew for sure what happened. Now we know: At 12:18 on the afternoon of Friday, February 26, 1993, a bomb exploded in the parking area beneath the Trade Center. The blast killed six people and injured many others. As this article goes to press, several people are standing trial for planting the bomb.

Barry Weintrob, the CFO of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, remembers the day vividly. His company owns and operates the six buildings and one hotel that make up the World Trade Center; it also has offices in one of the Twin Towers.

At the time of the explosion, Weintrob was on the 67th floor of the 110-floor tower, heading for the elevator to go to lunch. The treasury department was in the middle of a sizable wire transfer and just two hours earlier had announced the sale of $100 million in long-term bonds scheduled for the next week. Within minutes, Weintrob had joined a band of coworkers, and thousands of other tenants, making their way down the stairs. The going was slow -- so slow that the Port Authority employees finally exited onto a floor, somewhere in the 50s, to find relief from the annoying smoke that was building up in the stairway -- and to gather any information they could about what was happening. From there, Weintrob eventually met up with his CEO and then made telephone contact with outsiders, including the press. When the smoke finally cleared, at about 4:30 p.m., the group walked to the ground floor.

As CFO, Weintrob oversees about 750 people in the areas of treasury, controllership, information services, audit, financial analysis and real estate policy. Each department has its own director and its own business resumption plan -- the tool that Weintrob credits with guiding the Port Authority through the disaster and moving tenants back into their offices weeks before outside experts had estimated. Here's his story.

Financial Executive: What happened when you finally reached the ground floor after the blast?

BARRY WEINTROB: A command center had already been established by the Port Authority's police, some of our company's executives, the New York City police, the New York City fire commissioner and police commissioner, ambulances, fire engines, and the deputy mayor, since the mayor was in Japan at the time. The center was a control point where people could go for information about what had occurred and what the damages were. The city really took control, and the response was unbelievable. By the time I got downstairs, the Salvation Army was already dispensing coffee.

From the command center, we tried to figure out what we would do over the weekend. The explosion was on a Friday, so we were at the site most of the weekend. My first priority was to determine that all my people were safe. I have about 750 people working for me directly or indirectly and we're divided among six floors in the building, so it took some time to account for everybody.

How long has your business resumption plan been in place?

As part of our annual audit in 1991, we decided we needed better business resumption planning. It was one of our internal control deficiencies at the time.

Did you use outside help to prepare the plan?

Yes. Each department prepared its own plan, based on an outline that I provided. The outline included the essential elements of effective resumption plans used by other companies, and each department modified it to meet its own requirements.

How quickly did your departments respond to the disaster?

Information services and treasury kicked off their business resumption plans right away. That primarily meant contacting every person in those departments to make sure each employee knew where to go for work on Monday. That was our focus for the weekend.

Of course, we needed remote computer locations to work. For example, we were in the middle of a major wire transfer in the treasury department when the blast occurred, and we couldn't complete it. We had to finish it Monday morning, so we needed to set up computers at an alternate site.

I also had to arrange for office locations for the Port Authority's executive staff. With the help of some very friendly neighbors, we found ample office space for an indefinite period. At that point we had no idea how long we'd need the space or how many people we'd have to house. We ultimately leased space for several hundred people for a little more than a month right across the street from the Trade Center.

Did you have any problems with your insurance?

We...