NEW YORK— While almost all hotel employees are trained for emergency situations, most of them thankfully never have had to put those skills into action. This is not the case for the Ramada Plaza Hotel near the JFK International Airport, which over the past five years has served as a grief center for four different airline catastrophes. Nicknamed the “Heartbreak Hotel,” the Ramada at JFK has received much media attention for its quick response to emergency situations and its delicate handling of friends and family of plane-crash victims. The last month’s crash of American Airlines Flight 587 in Queens County en route to the Dominican Republic was no different. From the moment the red emergency phone rang at the hotel’s front office on Nov. 12, the Ramada staff had an hour and a half to turn the hotel’s 477 guestrooms and 13,000 square feet of meeting space into a staging ground for emergency workers and grieving families. The Red Cross and New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani immediately designated the property as a meeting ground for the hundreds of family members affected by the American Airlines flight, which killed all 260 passengers and crew on board. In less than two hours the hotel blocked off one-third of its guestrooms for family members; set up barricades, portable toilets, and food tables outside for the press (which was kept out of the hotel at all times); and turned all of its meeting facilities into emergency relief centers offering around-the-clock buffet food for families and workers, prayer services for various denominations, counseling centers for employees and guests, and a telephone command center set up with 80 phone lines for family use. The hotel had 230 employees on duty, some working double shifts and others choosing to return to work after recently being laid off from the hotel due to the turbulent economy. And though many of the families were moved to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in later days, which was still bustling with attendees of the IH/M&RS, the hotel’s General Manager Ali Chiani, noted that a lot of relatives “decided to come back to the Ramada at night,” because of the caring service offered by the staff. “The hotel is an amazing place. It’s been through four major airline disasters,” said Steve Belmonte, Ramada president/CEO. “The hotel fortunately, or unfortunately, has become very proficient at dealing with these types of disaster issues.” The hotel dealt with its first major airline crisis in 1996, when relatives were sent to the property after the Paris-bound TWA Flight 800 exploded off Long Island’s South Shore, killing all 230 people on board. The hotel housed the grieving Flight 800 families for 40 days, according to Belmonte. “What the hotel went through with Flight 800 is unique because of all the time that went by… The hotel had around-the-clock food, religious services and support groups. And when days turned into weeks, we had to bring in psychological counselors for our employees.” He added that the staff was so immersed in grief that it “began to take its toll.” In addition to offering hotel services to its guests, employees were working to comfort the families. “We needed counselors to tell them it was okay to cry, to hug, to help someone,” Belmonte stated. The hotel did such an amazing job handling the families and the situation that it developed an Airline Emergency Plan under the guidance of Chiani. The 16-page guide was so extensive that New York City’s Port Authority decided to incorporate the plan into their own emergency procedures, and was also recently granted permission by Ramada to distribute the manual to other airport hotels in the area. The hotel also housed relatives after Swissair Flight 111 crashed in Nova Scotia in 1998 and after EgyptAir Flight 990 crashed in 1999. The American Airline Flight 587 marks its fourth airline tragedy, and despite the numerous devastations and the emotional toll they’ve taken on the hotel’s employees, Cha