Sanitation workers carted off $10,000 worth of wood and tools from a Chinatown lumber yard to build makeshift stretchers on Sept. 11 – and then the city stiffed the store’s owner on the bill.
It wasn’t until The Post called to ask about the money that city bureaucrats scrambled to make good.
Two sanitation police officers showed up at Chrystie Street Lumber at about 3 p.m. on Sept. 11 and told owner Rita Tsang they needed plywood, 2-by-4s, hammers and other materials to build makeshift stretchers – for what was then expected to be hundreds of wounded trapped inside the destroyed Twin Towers.
Sanitation employees and volunteers proceeded to clean out the small lumber yard – at the corner of Chrystie and Broome streets – literally carting off nearly everything in city vans.
Tsang kept note of what was taken and had the officers write their names and badge numbers on an invoice.
The bill tallied $10,100.50. They told her she could call the Sanitation Department to get paid.
“They took everything. What could I do?” Tsang said. “I knew everybody needed to help.”
But she said her good deed has been repaid with four months of hassles.
She made numerous calls to Sanitation and the Office of Emergency Management, which is responsible for the WTC recovery effort, without getting an answer.
Peter Nieves is a union contractor who helped load up the materials at Tsang’s store and then worked turning the wood into hundreds of stretchers – which ended up going unused because very few survivors were pulled from the rubble.
“They didn’t hesitate one moment because they knew what the situation was. They said, ‘Just grab as much materials as you can,” Nieves said of Tsang.
“These people have demonstrated what a true American is. They have to be paid.”
After The Post began asking questions, Sanitation officials promised to pay Tsang.