Postmaster General John Potter told a Senate subcommittee yesterday that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington cost the U.S. Postal Service about $50 million.
Questioned by Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI) about the possible effects the attacks had on the postal service, Potter said the Church Street Station postal facility in New York sustained “substantial damage” that will cost about $25 million to repair.
The facility at 90 Church Street, which also houses several other federal offices, including the Internal Revenue Service, is directly across the street from the now destroyed World Trade Center.
The remaining $25 million covered emergency ground delivery contracts and an estimated $1 million a day in lost revenue. Potter told Akaka, chairman of the federal services subcommittee of the Senate’s Government Affairs Committee, that the USPS “activated” plans to begin moving mail by ground immediately after the attacks, which killed more than 6,000 people.
Those plans included calling on thousands of trucking companies used at Christmas time for mail transport and getting Amtrak to add additional mail cars to its trains.
In addition FedEx, which usually flies some 3 million pounds of mail daily, began carrying mail on its trucks as postal service trucks retrieved mail from commercial airlines, grounded immediately after the attacks.
The USPS is using commercial airlines for cross-country shipments of first class and other letter-size mail while having cargo planes, trucks and trains carry packages. Special arrangements have been made to fly mail to Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.
“I’m happy to say that the mail moved, it is moving” in the wake of the attacks, he said while noting that some deliveries have been slowed by limits in air transport. “People have to be somewhat patient with us,” he said.
Network
