On September 14th, 2001, my brother Philip and I volunteered to assist in the Search and rescue efforts at the World Trade Center site.
As we drove across the George Washington Bridge on the night of the 14th, to the right we could see eerily-lit smoke billowing where the towers had been. NY City Police waved us on to the lane reserved for emergency workers. Phil was dressed in Firefighter turnout gear and I was in uniform. We arrived at the Jacob Javits Center which had been set up as the coordination center for all rescue efforts.
I parked my car and we were soon offered a ride down to the site in a Washington DC Fire Department Van. When we arrived at the site the streets were dark – all electric power had been cut off. Around the corner we saw the intense-blue glow of floodlights.
Turning that corner brought us face to face with devastation which pictures still only hint at. No pictures or video can convey the enormity of the scene – the sheer scale. Nothing can recreate the smell -- a smell like burning cars, trash, and electric fuse boxes. Before us the once great 110 story towers were now a smoldering heap, barely 75 feet high. Surrounding the site were shattered buildings, some barely standing (several were found structurally unsound and later razed). Everything was covered with millions of sheets of paper and a fine grey dust.
The contrast of the night with the brightness of the generator-powered lights surrounding the sight further intensified the surreal nature of the place. We had walked into what the Psalmist described as “The Valley of the shadow of death.” Death lay all about us, beneath our feet, and grasped for more victims as we crawled on jumbled steel with flames and toxic smoke issuing from beneath our precarious walkways.
The site was chaotic with little command and control evident. We walked the perimeter of the site until we saw a place we could work.
Near one enormous rubble pile a live body dog (as opposed to a cadaver dog trained to find dead people) barked excitedly at a spot in a side street that was filled up to fifteen feet thick with fallen debris from the North Tower. Twenty of us began working the spot with gloved hands and buckets. Phil and I went around the corner to get some shovels and crowbars. When we came back, there were at least fifty more men. Soon we had a full-blown bucket brigade working: about ten men in front, digging with shovels and crowbars and by hand, filling buckets, the rest behind, passing the buckets back. Some buckets were very light, containing just one long strand of rebar steel, others were painfully heavy, packed with wet dust and concrete. Nevertheless, we worked fast.
The bucket line had a rhythm -- turn left, hand off bucket, turn right, get new bucket. Soon there was a second line devoted to sending the empty buckets back. As diggers tired, they left the dig to those behind and walked to the back of the line. This happened without direction, like a veteran team.
Soon it was my turn, and I dug by turn with crowbar, shovel, and gloved hands. We dug down to a flattened truck. I found a jacket sleeve. We dug more. There was no one in the jacket. We felt relief mingled with disappointment. We were disappointed, because if it had been a body, at least someone would have a body to bury. By now we knew thousands were under the rubble, but so far less than a hundred had been found.
My brother was far out on the pile now. A FDNY Battalion chief called me over, "Captain, look, we gotta keep these guys back. Look at all those widow makers." He pointed up into the night sky, where in the glow of the lights I could see the large shards of glass and steel facade only partly torn away from the buildings on either side of us flap in the faint breeze caused by the heat of the fires below. "If one of those comes down we'll lose five guys -- I'm not losing anymore." the chief said. I agreed. We took turns keeping an eye on the widow makers, ready to sound the alarm if one should fall.
Phil came over to me, excited, but clearly scared. He had nearly fallen into a hole -- seventy feet straight down to the floor of the parking garage. The Chief sent search dogs in -- they sniffed the spot and barked, this time more excitedly. Soon, a squad of cave rescue experts along with EMTs rushed to the spot. Walkie-talkies yapped incessantly. Hope lifted.
There was a very large void below -- where the parking garages had collapsed, but left pockets of air. The chances were good that if there were survivors, they would be found there.
We all waited in silence, ordered not to make a sound so the cave rescue guys could listen for taps. 10 minutes passed. 20. 30....then, one by one the cave rescue guys slowly emerged from the hole. No more radio chatter, Tears streamed down hardened faces. Word came down -- “No survivors, only victims.”
There were moments of humanity that meant some much more by the contrast they presented to the devastation -- in a shattered Burger King across the street from the WTC, food from NY City's finest restaurants was served free to any rescue worker. I ate the best Shrimp Scampi ever while standing on Vesey Street, surrounded by firemen and soldiers also dining on five-star cuisine, all of us covered in the ubiquitous grey dust.
All along the streets surrounding the site were pallets filled with dog food, work gloves and socks, respirators, handy wipes and towels. I learned later that I’d missed the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches donated by a Kindergarten class in South Carolina. Each one had a note that said, "We made peanut butter and jelly because just like you, they stick together."
We returned to work, this time at the front end of the large pile where we stayed the rest of the day. We dodged plumes of hot gas and smoke emerging from under our feet. We sifted through tons of dust. We worked with dust masks on until we grew tired of sucking air through paper filters. Then we'd let them hang from our necks until smells and fumes became overpowering again.
In twenty-four hours of digging, I only recognized three objects from the pile: 1/2 a CD, a melted keyboard, and a woman's shoe. The shoe was not empty. It went to the morgue. Every piece could potentially identify a victim.
The bright light of day cut through the hazy smoke, but this Indian summer light was somehow inappropriate. Darkness seemed more respectful.
We left late in the afternoon, before nightfall. We both wanted to stay, but we also realized our hopes of helping in a rescue were over. Another FDNY chief told me, "Thanks, but this isn't a rescue anymore. It's a recovery. It's time for cranes and bulldozers. We're not gonna find anyone alive."
He was right.
