I catch my first glimpse of the debris pile and I'm stunned. The scene is inconceivable. There are fires burning everywhere, a square mile of twisted metal and debris and those buildings which remain standing are unstable. There is an initial moment of shock but then a sense of duty, inspired by training, kicks in.
My first instinct is to look up. Actually we're taught to look up during incidents like these. The twin towers are gone! The skin of the remaining, surrounding buildings are torn and scarred from the force of the collapse. They form the walls of a canyon that skirts massive piles of rubble. The twisted steel rises and sinks like giant burial mounds for a dozen square blocks.
Suddenly there’s the screech of police whistles. Not the short burst of a traffic cop, but long, alarming blasts. A distant voice warns, “Collapse, collapse!” A dozen rescue workers running toward us halt our forward motion.
“Go, go, go!” a PAPD officer screams in my face.
I begin backing slowly, but apparently I’m not moving fast enough for the steelworker who grabs and lifts me by my bunker coat.
“C’mon, c’mon – didn’t you hear the damned whistle?” He shouts.
Everyone retreats to the relative safety of the north side of Millennium Hilton, waiting for the all clear to be signaled. I overhear a marine say, “That’s the sixth time tonight. This place just ain’t safe!” I'll never forget the sound of the whistles.
Through the haze of smoke and suspended particulate I can make out hundreds of shadows – rescuers conducting the search for the WTC victims. Those in the very center are working "the dig," unearthing anything that resembles evidence or body parts. Others form single file lines, stretching out from "the dig" like fingers to the outer perimeter of the disaster scene. Through those lines pass hundreds of five gallon buckets filled with debris and body parts. Once the pails reach the end of the line, they are emptied onto smaller piles, and then searched again before being taken away in dump trucks to God knows where.
Hundreds of firefighters, police officers and construction workers are working on their hands and knees. Digging like moles, they refill the buckets with handfuls and shovelfuls of wallboard, paper, and shards of metal. The smoke cloud reaches the surface through hundreds of fissures, and lays low as it moves to the east. Firefighters do their best to keep the largest blazes at bay by dousing the ruins with huge 1000 gallon per minute master streams. But there are only a half dozen nozzles – and hundreds of small fires.
Here at the edge of the pile there are some small traces of office furniture and computers, but for the most part everything has been pulverized into a fine dust. Volunteers hang a huge hand painted sign from the nearby AMEX building. It reads, “You rushed in when others were rushing out. God Bless FDNY and NYPD.”
"We’re up!" shouts Mathis, the retired FDNY Chief. Finally, it’s my turn to help on the pile although I am admittedly frightened. It’s not easy walking on the slippery, shifting steel beams, so I focus on my footing rather than gawking at the bizarre sites. The team continues to move through the jungle of twisted aluminum, PVC piping, and glass shards. We cross over some gaps that feel like blast furnaces – venting hot gases and smoke from the fires below.
“Man oh man -- where the hell do you begin? “ I say under my breath. Mathis tunes in and answers. “That's the problem! If we're going to find anyone alive, we've only got hours...at best a couple of days.”
Everyone who is working here is polite and respectful of one another. This may sound trite, but this is truly sacred ground. Many heroes gave their lives early today and everyone working here is respectful of their sacrifice. I never have seen this level of camaraderie at a disaster as I have among the people working in this horrible place.
The physical and mental exhaustion of FDNY members is very apparent. My heart feels their pain and the desperation in their souls. They’ve been digging for hours, hoping to find members of their family. With so much devastation surrounding them, it will be an endless job.
Chief Mathis takes the time to inform us of the obvious. "This job is gonna be dangerous -- the most dangerous you've ever worked. So watch out for one another." Then he passes around a legal pad to which we all add the name, address and telephone number of our next of kin. A volunteer from Long Island asks the chief where we can pick up hand tools. The chief holds out his bare hands and replies. "Tools? Here's what we're working with until someone gets equipment to us."
Hope Launches The Mission
Now that Building 7 has fallen -- some say imploded -- the hope is that somehow, some way, folks inside the towers were able to find shelter in elevator shafts, stairwells and the underground. But we also know that hidden somewhere within these mountainous piles are the mutilated remains of over six thousand human beings.
With many of New York’s most seasoned rescue personnel missing in the collapses, remaining rescue personnel, like Mathis, take the initiative of breaking workers into teams to begin search and rescue. Firefighter Joe Higgins (Ladder-111), whose brother Lieutenant Tim Higgins (Squad 252) is among the missing, has been searching since late morning.
"We didn't know where we were or what we were doing.' Higgins later tells me. "We were just looking for a spot where we maybe could do some good.”
Where Building #4 once stood, steel beams have pancaked one atop the other, compressing what had once been 10-foot tall room spaces into voids barely large for me to pass my flashlight. The lower we go to inspect the damage, the tighter these voids become.
Some tools are managing to make their way to the disaster scene. I notice that at the main entry portal on West Side Highway, volunteers hand out shovels, picks, gloves, water bottles -- even tylenol. Soon the steady whine of chain saws mixes with generators and accented by the moaning of shifting steel. It seems as if the pile actually speaks.
At the edge of the pile, no one seems to be in charge. Hundreds of rescuers crawl around on the hot steel beams in small work teams, which have been organized by members of the FDNY and PAPD. A dozen teams of twenty or thirty rescuers labor with torches, shovels, wire cutters, that were salvaged from shattered firefighting machines – but mostly they use their bare hands.
A French speaking EMS volunteer from Montreal named Victor is handed a shovel, which carries a special message. He reads the engraved inscription aloud for all of the team to hear. "God bless you all. The citizens of New Hope, Pennsylvania."
Victor answers with a thick Quebecois accent. "Well, New Hope -- let's get to work!
14 Acres of Horror
Traveling around the disaster scene is an experience like no other I've ever encountered. It takes over an hour to walk the perimeter of the debris piles. It’s so huge that Ground Zero has been divided into four HUGE sectors, where dozens of emergency response agencies from throughout the nation and around the World work side by side.
At times the entire operation comes to a sudden halt. That’s when rescuers signal that they have heard sounds from a possible survivor. This time the find is along Liberty Street in an area where debris has been falling all evening. Word comes to us that two Marines have heard faint tapping near an elevator shaft. More taps. There’s a sudden rush of activity as ESU teams and members of FDNY burrow by hand through the pulverized concrete, hot steel and loose debris.
Not much later, a PAPD officer is uncovered and removed – alive but extremely beaten up. His partner remains trapped deep below as the surviving members of Rescue-5 launch into a FAST Team operation to free him.
The discovery of the PAPD officers provides all rescuers with a great deal of hope. Cheers and applause spread throughout the sector, spurring the rescuers to work harder, exposing themselves to even more danger. But that's what they've been trained to do.
The devastation seems endless and the pile itself is unpredictable. Here at Church and Liberty the mountain of debris stands some five stories. Then, as the crest moves toward the Hudson, it makes a sudden drop into a valley several stories deep. Progress is slow, but search teams are forming at every street corner, every alley, and every storefront.
There are thousands here, in every type of uniform imaginable. Firefighters, police officers, Coast Guard, MPs, operating engineers, iron workers, sanitation employees – you name an agency, I bet they are here! There’s little talk, and no one complains -- except about the wait. They pace back and forth, waiting for their turn to climb atop the pile and down into in the voids, in hope of discovering trapped victims.
Rescue teams tread lightly atop the wreckage, searching for signs of life and hoping for more rescues. Along Church Street, demolition engineers consult with fire officers to determine the best course of action at the South Tower. On the perimeter, heavy equipment operators finesse their mighty machines, revealing layer upon layer of steel and debris. The whine of diesels and the crunching of mighty pneumatic jaws are the pre dominant sounds in this emergency village.
"It's hard to believe, isn't it?" one firefighter remarks shaking his head from side to side. Using phrases like "hard to believe" is the common greeting here at Ground Zero, much like saying hello.
Even though the FDNY has suffered such an incredible loss, their strength as a cohesive, working team remains rock solid. Although it’s tough to determine who’s running the show, once you’re on the pile you realize quickly that it is the Fire Department of New York.
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