DISASTER RECOVERY - How Nasdaq Bounced Back from 9/11
Thu, November 01, 2001
CIO — Where were you on Tuesday morning, Sept. 11?
Bailar I was in Greenwich Village [about 10 blocks above the World Trade Center] heading north in a hired car. We didn’t hear the crash, but we stopped, turned and saw the smoke. It wasn’t clear what was going on. One Liberty Plaza, which is across the street from the World Trade Center, is Nasdaq’s headquarters, with mostly executive staff and sales staff, not operational staff. Our offices are on the 49th and 50th floors of that building; they saw the first plane hit. I immediately called headquarters, and they said, "Everything seems OK." Next I tried to call my wife. I had trouble but eventually got a message through. Then I called Connecticut, where our primary data center is. It appeared that we didn’t have any issues.
Then the second plane hit. I thought: two planes, direct center of two different towers. Time to batten down.
I jumped in the car and told the driver, "We’ve got a major problem here; they just took out our two financial center buildings. Let’s get out of here and get to our Times Square site, where I know we have a lot of security staff, and let’s get this market locked down."
What was happening at 1 Liberty?
They began evacuating after the first plane hit. Our security guards on their own accord evacuated our floor at least, so most of our people were on the ground when the second plane hit.
What did you do next?
We drove to Nasdaq’s market site, a building where we have a press studio and broadcast studio in Times Square. At the market site a group from the press was asking, "What are you going to do with this building? Shouldn’t we evacuate?" We needed to keep it up as our command center, so I was not interested in shutting it down. At 9:15, I determined with the rest of our staff that it would be necessary to keep the market closed at least until 10. Later we made the decision to shut down the market for the whole day.
Halting the market wasn’t a step you could take lightly.
We’ve never done that in the securities market, period. I remember that moment vividly because there were a lot of people on the phone call?40 or 50 people?including senior management for Nasdaq, the New York Stock Exchange, the SEC. I was the ranking executive for Nasdaq, and my cell phone was fading in and out. They were saying, "Gregor, have you made the decision?" and I was saying, "Yes, halt!" They didn’t hear me. They said, "Gregor, we need your confirmation that we need to pull the markets." I pressed some phone buttons so that the tones would stop the conversation. Everybody stopped talking, and I said, "Yes, halt the market."
How did the command center operate?
When the first tower fell, it took out the power in Lower Manhattan, and in fact Nasdaq had a telephone switch there that was serving the market site in Times Square. So our market site telephones went down. We moved essential staff over to the Marriott Marquis [a hotel in Times Square] and sent the rest home.
