- Key insight: Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in lower Manhattan, executives at one community bank in nearby Chinatown recall the efforts to reopen.
- Expert quote: "What I recall is that after 9/11, we suddenly understood the need for having a disaster-recovery plan." — Vera Sung, board director at Abacus Federal Savings Bank
- Forward look: The Sungs are growing increasingly worried about the health issues that still affect their community, especially in light of the release this week of documents that show government officials knew the air quality around the World Trade Center was dangerous.
Jill Sung's memories of Sept. 11, 2001, and the following weeks and months are fragmented, arriving in flashes, some seared in her mind, while others are persistently blurry, out of reach.
A cloudless blue sky. Then a feeling of shock. White ash everywhere. The smell of burning metal and smoke and sweat. Throngs of people walking across the bridges to get home.
The president and CEO of Abacus Federal Savings Bank was in her office at the bank's headquarters in Chinatown when the first airplane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. Eastern time. The branch on the building's ground level had opened its doors 16 minutes prior.
"I remember hearing tons of sirens," said Sung, who was the community bank's general counsel at the time. "It was like nonstop sirens going on, and I started thinking, something's not right."
Abacus Bank is a minority depository institution founded by Sung's father in 1984 to serve the Asian American community. Its headquarters at 6 Bowery and a back-office operations center that was housed on nearby Nassau Street were in the thick of the chaos when
Twenty-five years later, Sung spoke about the tragedy with a steady voice, keeping her focus on how the family operated bank, which today has $324 million of assets and five locations, worked to reopen as soon as possible following the attacks. People needed access to their money, she reasoned, and it was her job to make sure Abacus could serve its mission amid the devastation.
"I started compartmentalizing," Sung said. "I thought, 'This is what I have to do to get moving.'"
'No time to process'
Sung and her sister, Vera, an attorney who sits on the bank's board of directors, were the last to leave 6 Bowery on Sept. 11, after closing the branch early and sending the bank's 90-some employees home. It was dark by the time they made it far enough north to where they could meet up with Jill Sung's husband, who had driven as far south as he could amid the street closures.
Vera Sung, who lived in the downtown's South Street Seaport district, stayed that night with her sister on the Upper West Side. She remembers not being able to get to her own apartment, and said that it was months before she was able to resume living there again on a full-time basis.
"The next morning, it was like 5 or 6 o'clock, and Jill said, 'We've got to get up and we've got to go'" to the headquarters building, Vera Sung said. "There was no time to process anything."
The pair made it as far as 14th Street and walked the rest of the way. They were worried about the security of the bank's vault, which had no alarm, their employees and their community. And they knew they had to get the bank back online and in functioning mode as quickly as possible.
They devised a plan to move their back-office operations to an existing Abacus branch on the north side of Canal Street, which unlike the south side of the street was open. Vera Sung, who handles the bank's real-estate closings, also relocated her office and her staff to the building.
The bank had a busy wire-transfer service, allowing first- and second-generation customers to send money home to China. In order to keep providing that service, it relocated its FedLine terminal, a special computer used only for wire transfers, to Canal Street by way of a cart. DOS-based FedLine terminals were
"We rolled it up Nassau Street to Canal Street," Jill Sung said. "Someone from the [Federal Reserve Bank of New York] was assigned to go with us. He helped us get back online."
The bank moved other equipment to Canal Street, including a printer that printed bank checks. Vera Sung and her staff began conducting real-estate closings at that location, rather than 6 Bowery, because of accessibility issues.
Read more of American Banker's 9/11 anniversary coverage:
Stranded in Japan on 9/11, she managed New York's banks from afar What 9/11 didn't, and did, change about America The 9/11 attacks marked a sea change in bank regulation As the newly minted FDIC chair, he saw his agency rise to the challenge of 9/11
The exercise, on the whole, resulted in Abacus' first disaster-recovery playbook. It forced the Sungs to think about backup locations, systems and processes in the event of future disasters.
"What I recall is that after 9/11, we suddenly understood the need for having a disaster-recovery plan," Vera Sung said. "It had to be an instant place to be able to work in. I'm thinking, 'How am I going to do closings and help people to buy homes? How do we do this in case something happens again, without running around and being concerned about how to get things done?'"
Neither sister remembers for sure how long the Canal Street branch served as the temporary bank headquarters and back office.
But it was likely months, they said.
Moving forward
Abacus Bank currently has about 70 employees, three branches in New York City, one in northern New Jersey and one in Philadelphia. Jill Sung has been the president and CEO since 2005. Vera Sung is one of six directors, along with her father, who remains chairman.
Following the attacks on the World Trade Center, the bank has weathered its share of disasters, including Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which created a storm surge that was particularly destructive in lower Manhattan, and the COVID pandemic, which shut down New York City for months.
Abacus was also
Since Sept. 11, the Sungs have witnessed changes in their community. Some small businesses in Chinatown were never able to recover after the attacks. A section of Park Row, a major artery that used to connect the financial district to Chinatown, was closed to public traffic in 2001.
Health issues are still a problem for many residents. Earlier this week, New York City
Vera Sung, who still lives in the same apartment downtown, said she has chronic sinusitis, which she suspects developed as a result of breathing the air after the attacks.
"I was walking to work [on Thursday] in a daze because of all of these 9/11 reminders and the commemoration … and it's very triggering," she said. She acknowledges that the bank could have taken a very different path in its recovery if it had not focused on its customers.
"I think behind all of it [was a sense of], 'I need to help these people close these loans. I need to keep our people safe,'" she said. "That's what keeps you going. It could have been paralyzing otherwise."
