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| Name: David Rosenberger |
| Age: 30 |
| Hometown: New York |
On the morning of September 11, 2001, David was scheduled to appear in court with his attorney. The courthouse is located on Centre Street, approximately four blocks away from the Trade Center. He watched both Towers erupt into flames on the news over his morning coffee but decided to head downtown anyway.
When asked why he did this, David thinks for a moment and responds, 'I don't know. I watched the explosions on TV but it sorta didn't register right then what was really happening. Nobody really had any context to attach to the event, you know? Nothing like this had ever happened before. So I figured, well, I have this court date. And court dates are important. Can't miss that. So I got on the subway and headed downtown, straight into the disaster zone. You know what? I think I might have been in shock. Looking back, that's really weird behavior.'
David was not alone. In fact, a surprising number of New Yorkers interviewed for Tower Stories recall how their first reaction to the immense destruction of the World Trade Center was one of peculiar implacability. Many report not being able to feel any emotion for days.
IN HIS WORDS:
I got up at about 8:15 on the morning of the 11th and the phone rang at 8:45. My roommate's mom was on the phone, so I rousted him from bed and passed him the portable. She didn't say what she was calling about and I didn't ask. A few minutes later, my roommate stumbled out into the living room with this weird expression on his face. He said, 'Dude, turn on the TV.'
So I clicked on the set and there it was: a big, gaping hole in the one of the World Trade Towers with smoke and flames gushing out of it. The TV announcer was in the middle of hypothesizing what the cause of the incident was. He said, A plane has hit the building. This is confirmed. At this point no one is sure if it's related to a screw up in air traffic control or perhaps a malfunction on the plane itself? We're still trying to make sense of this...
My roommate and I were standing there watching the coverage when all of a sudden – from out of nowhere – the second plane zoomed on in and charged straight into the other Tower. Fire! Explosion! Now we had Gaping Hole Number Two. My roommate and I just sort of looked at each other. We didn't say a thing. I don't think either of us could believe our eyes at that point. It was like, is this some kind of joke? This is the trailer for a horror film, right? Tell me this is the trailer for a horror film, please...
We watched. I had a cup of coffee in my hand and I sipped it. On TV, the commentator's voice became really stressed out and he started shifting his observations toward, ladies and gentlemen, this must be a terrorist attack of some sort! The United States is under attack! I remember feeling a little funny, like I was drunk or something. Not thinking clearly. But I do remember thinking this: that's right. A terrorist attack. It's got to be. Plane accidents like that don't happen twice in a row.
* * *
That morning I had a meeting scheduled with my attorney downtown before we attended a court date. My lawyer's office was right across the street from the Trade Towers, but that didn't really register with me. I finally looked up at the clock I noticed I was running late. It seemed like I'd only been watching the TV coverage for a moment, it turned out to be more like 45 minutes. I threw on my suit coat and ran out the door by 9:30. Then [from the Upper West Side] I took a cab over to the east side, 51st Street where I caught the 6 train going downtown. I sort of wasn't really thinking about this part, either. But I was heading straight into the heart of the disaster.
Just before I hit the tunnels, I noticed that my cell phone had stopped getting reception. Guess that was part of what was happening at the Towers. No one would have noticed that underground, though. Pagers, Blackberries, cell phones, none of that stuff worked in the subways anyway. I also noticed that there were MTA guys scattered all over the [subway] platforms with their hardhats and orange vests. They were getting reports in over their radios about which trains in the subway system were still running, which ones weren't.
All of a sudden there was a big commotion on the platform I was at. Some kind of announcement had been made and whatever it was really rocked people off their feet. I couldn't hear what was being said, so I grabbed the arm of MTA guy passing by, asked him what happened. He told me that our train was probably one of the last trains heading downtown. When the train pulled in I got on and noticed that most of the people riding in my car didn't seem to have a clue as to what was going on.
* * *
I got off at City Hall and it was pretty apparent that news was breaking fast. I took the stairs up from the tunnels to the street, and I specifically remember the police officer who was standing at the top of the stairs, directing people. A black man in a tan suit, white shirt, and a tie. About six-one years old with a little male pattern baldness in the front and a little in the back. I knew he was a cop because he had a flip-out badge opened on his belt and he was definitely an authority figure. He was sweating and yelling, gesturing wildly with his arms and screaming at people. 'Move, move, move! Come on now! Move, god dammit! Move!' He was sending everybody who came out of the tunnels back north.
The first thing I noticed on the street was that a lot of people were just sort of standing around, ignoring the policeman entirely. Everyone had their faces turned up to the sky (they were watching something) so I looked up, too. And that's when I saw it. The World Trade Center was in flames. From where I was, the line of sight was broken by smaller buildings, but the Towers were so tall, you could easily see the top 50 or 60 floors. You could see where the planes had gone in, the smoke and the fire and the soot that was coming out. Debris was falling from the holes in the buildings. I think I saw the bodies of people either jumping or falling from the sky.
At first I could only see the South Tower burning. But I walked a little ways and from a different point of view I could clearly see them both. Again, I had that peculiar feeling of being drunk or something. Like, this isn't really happening, is it? Is it?!? Then there was a huge noise like the roar of the ocean and the first Tower began to slide down into itself and crumble.
People started running north. Away. We were only six blocks away from the base of the Towers. I stood there, frozen, watching the Tower collapse into itself and sink out of sight until it disappeared behind a lower building. And I felt a little uncertainty. Like, did it fall over? Did it fall straight down? Did it take out four or five blocks of the City? What exactly just happened? None of this made any sense at the time. It still doesn't really.
I just stood there staring in disbelief and I guess I must have been in shock because I suddenly realized I was practically all alone there in the street and now I could see why people were running. The cloud. This gray-brown gush of dirt boiling right toward me, real fast, pushing up the street, climbing up the walls of buildings, eating everything in its path.
I started to back up. I was staring at the cloud and walking backwards in slow motion. It wouldn't be until several days later that I finally acknowledged that the cloud did in fact hit me. Slammed right into me. But I don't remember it happening. I think I sort of blocked that part out of my mind. All I know is that suddenly I'd turned around and now I was running. Couldn't really see where I was going. Bumping into parked cars and slamming into who knows what. I ran. I ran until I outpaced the cloud by just a little bit. And after I'd gotten maybe two blocks, I turned my head and saw what had happened. The cloud had pulled up and was just sort of sitting there, it wasn't moving toward me anymore. 'd outrun it. I'd beaten it.
* * *
The next thing I remember doing, oddly enough - I started hunting through the crowd of people for my attorney I wasn't concerned for his safety, I think I was more or less looking for a friendly face, someone I knew whose presence would confirm for me that yes, this was indeed happening. This wasn't a bad dream. This was real.
It was tough hunting for him in that crowd. People were screaming, people were crying, people were running. It was madness. Lots of people were punching buttons on their cell phones but of course that got them nowhere. The signals were all dead. The microwave antennae, I guess, had been on top of the Tower that had fallen and now... now it wasn't there anymore. All anyone heard was a rapid busy signal in response to any number they dialed. I couldn't find my attorney anywhere so I stopped looking for him.
Long lines of people started forming at the payphones, which I thought was interesting. Most times in New York nobody bothers with public telephones. They sort of became useless years ago.
I hung around for awhile. I guess I kept walking because eventually I found myself in front of the courthouse, talking to a police officer. Believe it or not, part of me was still concerned about my court date. I just wanted to make sure that court wasn't in session for the day, so I asked the cop. He gave me this really strange look like I'd just said something very odd. And he said, 'No. Court is not in session.'
After that, he began to insist that I head north. The police were directing a steady stream of refugees away from the World Trade Center, toward whatever safety we could find. I sort of ignored him and hung around downtown for awhile. I know that doesn't make much sense. Very little that I saw that day does. I guess I was still in shock and part of me wanted to see what might happen next.
* * *
Just before the second Tower fell, I was walking west, trying to get a different view of what was happening. I hadn't eaten anything at all and it was 10:30 in the morning, now, I was getting hungry. So I stopped into a McDonald's to get an Egg McMuffin. I went up to the counter and put my order in – the girl behind the register seemed very weirded out by everything that was going on, but she still took my cash. All of a sudden, this guy comes into the store and walks right up to the counter. He's covered in white dust.
He might've been in his early 40s, but it was tough to tell. The dust masked everything. It was in his hair, on his clothes, everywhere. When he blinked, his eyes sort of disappeared. Maybe he was a white guy, but that might've been the dust, too. He was built heavy – heavy jowls, a belly, a few chins. Sort of your average middle-aged American guy. And he strolled right up to me and stood next to me in line, waiting for his turn at the counter like it's any other day. But he was visibly shaken. Sweating crazily.
The counter attendant came back with my McMuffin and handed it to me, looked past me, saw the guy and her jaw dropped a bit. She recovered pretty quick, though, and asked if she could get him anything. He said, 'Glass of water?' She turned to get him a drink.
I looked at this guy and said, 'You know you're covered in dust.' Stupid thing to say, but like I said – that whole morning I was in shock. The guy said, 'Yeah?'
I said, 'How close were you?' And he said. 'I was right there, I started running.'
I said, 'Oh yeah? How fast?' He looked at me and said, 'Fast.'
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| Name: Homicide Detective Y |
| Age: 38 |
| Hometown: New York City |
HOMICIDE DETECTIVE Y, 38, of the New York City Police Department, works out of an East side precinct. His station covers all investigations south of 59th Street in Manhattan. Detective Y has been on the force for 18 years; he served as an undercover narcotics officer for five. Before joining the force, he pulled a three-year stint in the Marine Corps. He is a big, affable man with unstoppable energy - a real New Yorker who talks with his hands and tells you exactly what's on his mind.
* * *
I'm on the wagon. I'm drinking water. I gotta lose weight. I gained like, 10, 15 pounds since the attack. A lot of it has to do with the long hours put in at the precinct. There was tons of food brought to the station house. A busy time. If you're not at the Morgue, or at the Fresh Kills landfill, or down at Ground Zero you were sitting in the office, working. Eating. For about a week, we were on duty all the time.
We're officially treating the attack on the Towers as a homicide case. A gigantic homicide, some three thousand strong. Basically, in a homicide investigation, you're trying to collect enough evidence to bring to the DA so you can make an arrest. Initially, the 1st Precinct had the homicide case, but then, right away, it became a federal case. We were handling the initial investigation, doing the grunt work - then the feds came in and took over. The FBI. The "Famous, But Incompetent", I call them. Or "Forever Bothering Italians", depending on where you grew up. You can quote me on that.
Most NYPD guys feel the same way about them. Most of these feds aren't street people, they're college graduates. They have a degree in accounting. What the fuck does that have to do with the street? It gets in the way; they got no common sense, no street smarts. I mean, I can talk to a person for 10, 15 minutes and get a sense for what type of person he is. But I've done numerous interviews alongside FBI agents. Just the way they question people? Man, are they missing something.
You've got some guy from Iowa coming over here to interview people from the streets of Manhattan and it doesn't work. I was born and raised in Brooklyn. I have a sense for this city. These guys? Yeah, there are some good federal agents, but if you ask around, most of the good ones are ex-cops. They know how to communicate.
But I don't want to get into the feds. Please. It's just gonna piss me off.
* * *
I been on the force 18 years. I could retire if I want when I get my 20 years in. But I won't. I like it. What I do now is like being the CEO of a company. To me, homicide is the ultimate crime. Everything else? Not exciting. You steal something from someone? That can be replaced - money, property, whatever. Can you replace a life?
You see bodies, you see killers, you see assholes in my business. If you let a case get to you, emotionally, that's when the problems start. You're working a child murder or an elderly person is killed? That's when it gets to you. When you get a storeowner that gets killed when somebody holds him up? Any normal person that has no business getting whacked? That's the stuff that gets to you.
But if a street person gets killed? You take that as being part of the street. You're a wise guy, you get whacked? You're a drug dealer and somebody kills you? You're robbing somebody's store and you get shot? Hey, you're in the game and that's part of the game.
It's the innocent people that get to you, and that's why September 11th was such a giant wake up call for this country.
* * *
To me, freedom is not free. A lot of people don't realize that. These liberals! They have this attitude that we shouldn't bother anybody. "Leave everyone alone." Look at what happened to the U.S.S. Cole . The liberals and Clinton didn't do a goddamned thing about that. And the message sent was, "You can do whatever you want to this country and we won't do anything back." These are the liberals I'm talking about here, not the working class people who know what it is to make a living.
What I mean about freedom is not free is that... if you get to a checkpoint and you get stopped, don't complain about it. Or when you get on a plane now and you're being frisked, you gotta take off your shoes? Don't complain about it. I just got back on a plane from Los Angeles, right? And coming back, the pilot of the plane only showed one ID at the gate. Security wanted two. So they put him through the search like anyone else. The pilot was not too happy about that. You know what? Fuck him. That's for your safety.
A lot of people don't feel that way. And you know where that comes from? Being born in this country and thinking you can do whatever the fuck you want, whenever you want.
Civil rights and "you can't touch me". Bullshit. Tell that to the three thousand victims at the Towers. Or tell that to the families of the victims.
* * *
You know, the same thing goes for when you're working homicide. I mean, say that . . . Jesus, knock on wood, but say that somebody in your family gets killed. Do you want me going the extra step and maybe not worrying so much about how the killer feels about his civil rights when I'm conducting my investigation? Or would you rather I get the job done? God forbid, your brother or your mother or your sister gets killed. You want me talking to their murderer in a nice manner, making it easy for them to get away with it? Or do you want results? If I gotta break your balls to get results, I'm gonna do it.
You treat people accordingly, though. I only break balls if I have to. See, if you start out high? You got no place to go from there. You gotta start out here. Then? According to where the conversation goes, you adjust accordingly. If you earn the respect, you get the respect. If you act like an asshole, you get treated like one.
* * *
A wake up call, I'm telling you. Liberals? They're the most annoying people on the face of the earth. To me, they're in La-La Land. It was two or three days after the attack and I'm driving down 42nd Street. There's people out there protesting us bombing Afghanistan. I'm at the point now where I'm older; I don''t get as uptight like I would've. But those people? They don't look at the big picture. They don't realize that they're able to protest only because they're in this country and they're allowed to. They got these signs out: "Two wrongs don't make a right." What the fuck are you talking about? Are you a mental midget?
I got an idea! Why don't we let the terrorists do whatever they want and leave them alone so they can attack us again?
And those people? They weren't down there. I guarantee that none of them were down there at the World Trade Center when the attack happened. They didn't see the after effects. I guarantee that no one who was down there turned around and held up a sign saying, "No more war."
You know what I call a conservative? "A liberal who got robbed."
* * *
Was I down there that day? Yes. What happened was this:
Homicide detectives work what's called a turn-around tour. We work two 4-to-1s
from 4 in the afternoon to 1 at night. Then two 8-to-4s; 8 in the morning to 4
in the afternoon. So when you work your third shift, you get off at 1 in the morning
and you gotta be back at work by 8. We sleep at the precinct. That's the turnaround
part. September 11th was the morning we slept over, that was our 'turnaround tour'.
We were working.
My partner and I were in the racks . We get up, my partner looks at his beeper
and says, "Oh shit. Look at the date. It's 9/11. 911 - like the emergency code.
I wonder if we'll catch a homicide today."
I says, "Hey. You never know." And we brushed it off. This is 8 o'clock in the
morning.
We go upstairs and we get a phone call from our detective bureau to respond down
to the World Trade Center. "A plane hit the World Trade Center." When we initially
heard it, we thought it was one of those Cessnas that went off course. We turned
on the TV and said, "Holy shit. Now there's a problem." There were six
of us working and we split up. Three guys went in one car, three guys went in
another. At any given time, you've got five detectives and a sergeant. So my whole
team went down.
I was driving. We took the FDR down, I guess 'cause I knew it would be easier
to go around the Trade Center. But as we were heading down, the second plane hit.
We didn't see it. We heard it. Then we got near the Brooklyn Bridge, then
we saw it. Or rather you could see what was left of it, the Towers, through the
outline of the city. That's when we said to each other, "Holy shit. This is not
an accident. We've got problems."
We went down by the Battery Tunnel, went around that loop, and parked the car
underneath the overhang just outside the Tunnel. I figured, if we were gonna get
outta there, that was the best way-there was no way to bring the car up any closer.
We got up and started walking up West Street, a couple blocks south of the South
Tower.
* * *
It's a mess. There's cops everywhere. Fire trucks pulling up. EMS was there, treating
people who were injured with cuts. There was glass all over the place, you were
afraid to walk. I saw one body on the ground that was already covered. Somebody
had put this yellow poncho over it.
We had our shields out on the lapels of our suit jackets, but it was mayhem. We're
trying to tell people, "Get the Hell out! Get the Hell out!" But some people just
weren't getting it. I don't know if you want to call it shock or stupidity; people
were just sitting there. They were strolling along as if they were going to see
a play. I'm like, "Let's get going. What are you doing? We have to be here,
you don't. Get the fuck outta here! Move your ass!" Nobody really paid attention.
So. Three of us stuck together. We made a pact when we got down there that we
would stay with each other because it was total mayhem. But I says, "You know,
this'll sound funny, but I gotta go to the bathroom in the worst way." I'd had
two cups of coffee that morning, which I normally wouldn't have. Now I do a part-time
job further south of the Towers on Trinity Street and I says, "Hey, you know what?
Why don't we walk over there to my job, and I'll use the bathroom. I'll get on
the phone to find out where all the detectives are gonna be."
See, we didn't know where everyone was. Turns out all the detectives were on the
north side of the Towers; we were the only morons on the south side. We started
walking down Greenwich Street, straight south.
We got to Thames Street when we heard a rumble, sounded like an explosion. We
look, and there's the building starting to come down. We start to run. And as
we're running, this thick cloud comes down and covers us. It's like being in a
wind tunnel. Everything turned black. We were literally blown off our feet - it
picked us up off our feet and threw us. We landed and none of us could breathe.
The smoke, the concrete dust was so thick. It burned our eyes.
* * *
Now I always carry a hanky he gestures to the pressed white handkerchief in the
breast pocket of his suit jacket. Always. So what I did was I kept passing it
back and forth so that we could all breathe through it. I knew where we were and
I knew we had to get south in order to get away-south was where the water was.
Near the water, it'd be a little easier to breathe. So we held onto each other's
belts and I basically led the way.
One of the guys with us - not my partner but the other guy - he couldn't breathe,
he has asthma. We were getting a little nervous for him. I wanted to pick him
up and carry him out but he didn't want that. Me? I can understand that. He's
a man.
It was like walking around at midnight. You know those little street carts where
you get your cup of coffee? We didn't see one of these things until we walked
right into it. Totally deserted. We went into it and got water, poured it on the
hanky. We took a few bottles of water with us and kept passing the hanky back
and forth. We kept moving.
* * *
A guy appears out of nowhere, walking next to us.
He says, "'Scuse me. Am I all right? Am I all right?"
He's got a big cut across his forehead over his right eyebrow. A middle-aged man,
late fifties.
I say, "Listen. You're all right. You just got a bad cut. You're going to need
stitches." The cut was covered in filth.
So we rinsed it off with the water bottles. I wasn't gonna give him the hanky,
I hate to say it, that was all we had. "Listen," I says. "Put something against
your head to stop the bleeding and follow us."
At this point, we were a couple of blocks further south and you could see a little
better. There were people running around us, you could make them out. We didn't
want to run because you still couldn't really see what was in front of you; we
could've run into anything.
A female hooked up with us, too. She saw our shields, I guess. She said, "Do you
mind if I come with you guys?"
"No. Go right ahead. We're just gonna try to get to the water."
So that's what we did. We walked toward the water. And little by little the air
started to clear.
* * *
I'd called my wife on the cell phone when I got down there to the Trade Center.
This is about 10, 15 minutes before the Tower collapsed.
I said, "I'm right underneath the South Tower. It's mayhem down here. I can't
talk to you."
She wanted me to find her brother who works on Barclay Street, very close. He
was on his way to work and nobody could get hold of him. She gave me his cell
phone number and, of course, I couldn't get through.
But I had just spoken to her and she was watching all this on TV. She knew I was
at the South Tower. Then the building fell. She thought I was killed in the collapse.
I didn't realize this until I finally got through to her four hours later. She
was hysterical. I been married 15 years. I got an 11-year old daughter at home.
When I'm finally talking to my wife, I made her go to my daughter's school. I
said, "I don't care what you gotta do, I want you to pull her out of school."
She's in a Catholic School in Staten Island. But, you know? When I saw this happen,
I didn't know what was gonna happen next. What other kinds of attacks? Schools?
Bridges? I knew we were in a lot of trouble and it wasn't over. So I took precautions
for my own family.
What was going through my head during all of this was, "We're in for a lot of
shit. We, the country, are in for a lot of shit." Because if they attacked
here? If they could bring the Towers down?
We didn't even know about the Pentagon at that time, or the other plane in Pennsylvania.
We didn't have radios, we didn't know what was happening. But I said to myself,
"Life, as we know it, has totally changed."
* * *
We walked from where the first Tower was all the way down to Water Street and
Battery Park. We meet up with a lieutenant I know from the detective bureau and
a chief I know. They just happened to be there, directing people to walk up the
FDR Drive.
They're like, "See this building on the corner? This building's gotta be evacuated,
there's still a lot of people in it." We're trying to get everyone out, but they're
saying things like, "Well, the building personnel told us we should just stay
where we are." It was the most frustrating, aggravating thing. It was like being
in a comic strip. You just couldn't understand what the fuck these people were
thinking - I mean, these are educated people, they have white-collar jobs. You'd
figure they'd have a little common sense.
I said, "Listen, the Towers just fell. Get your asses out of here. Manhattan is
obviously a major target, I don't think they're gonna attack Brooklyn, know what
I mean? Get the fuck outta here." And we're trying to get them to walk over the
Brooklyn Bridge - just get them outta the buildings! We didn't want anyone in
buildings.
At that point, my partner panics because he hears a jet overhead. I says, "Relax.
Take it easy. That's one of ours."
"How the fuck do you know?" he says.
"I spent three fuckin' years in the Marine Corps. I know what the Hell a fighter
jet sounds like. Trust me. If it's not, we ain't got a prayer in Hell, so don't
worry 'bout it. If the terrorists got hold of a fighter jet, we're in a lot more
trouble than we think."
But, then, if they had fighter jets, they wouldn't have used commercial planes.
They would've attacked with missiles or something like that. This is all going
through my mind while we're down by Battery Park.
* * *
Now we start walking up Water Street 'cause we understand there's a temporary
police headquarters set up by Pike and South over by the Pathmark Grocery Store.
We learned about it through a radio one of the guys had, so we started walking
toward there.
We don't realize how bad we looked. But we're covered from head to toe in soot
and the dust. As we're walking, people are looking at us. And the weird thing
was . . . we would look at each other, but we never really thought, "I must look
like that, too." I guess we must have been in shock a little. Plus there was this
instinct of let's-get-to-where-we-gotta-go-so-we-can-start-doing-something. I
wanted to get in the game. Up until then it was like: okay, this is a fight. Now
it was time to get in the game and take a swing at someone.
We get all the way up to Pike? Cherry? One of those streets over there. And this
uniformed guy starts screaming, "Get back! The Bridge is gonna blow! Get back!
Get back!"
We start running for our lives, my shoe goes flying off, I get a cramp in my leg.
My partners are ahead of me, I'm slowing down. They're screaming at me, "Come
on! Come on!" It was insane.
"Go! Don't worry, go!"
"We're not leaving you!"
This is all when we were walking underneath the Bridge . . .
Turned out somebody had left a truck on the Bridge and just walked off. They assumed
it was a truck filled with explosives. But nobody was gonna get close enough to
it to try and figure it out.
* * *
We got to the temporary headquarters. Everybody saw us. They were all, at the
point, in uniform.
They said, "Listen, there's a decontamination unit set up behind the Pathmark."
So we went, and they literally hosed us down from head to toe with our suits still
on. We were just covered. They washed out our eyes with solution and our eyes
looked like demons' eyes, they were so red. We finally relaxed and were able to
get something to drink. And we finally got hold of one of our supervisors who
told us that everybody was gonna muster at Church Street. So we start to walk,
now from the east side back over to the west side.
We're walking through Chinatown, sopping wet in our soaked suits. And Chinatown's
going about their business as if nothing happened, selling fish heads and fucking
rice. You can look into the backdrop of the skyline, and all you see is this plume
of smoke. But in Chinatown, it's like it's a different world and nobody cares.
Me and the guys looked at each other like, "What the fuck is going on here? Are
we in a different city?"
I mean, not to degrade the Chinese. But I was a little offended by it. I was a
little pissed to be honest with you. "What the fuck is wrong with you people?
Do you realize what's going on?"
* * *
We didn't realize that the three of us were among the officers reported missing
from the NYPD. All our partners thought we were dead. At Church Street, when they
saw us, everybody hugged each other. "Are you all right?"
"Huh? Yeah, we're all right."
Meanwhile they had gone through the same type of deal over on the north side of
the Towers.
One of the sergeants from the detective bureau, for instance. He got his leg run
over by a van. He dove underneath a van when the Towers fell and it ran him over.
He ended up spending about a month in a Jersey hospital, they took him over there
with a harbor launch and he's doing real good, thank God.
* * *
All the stuff that happened afterwards? Maybe that was the worst. At my daughter's
school, they lost six parents. Three firemen and a woman and two men who worked
in the Trade Center. That's a big nut when you consider it's a small school, only
two grades per class.
That night, going home . . . I remember it being so eerie going across the Verranzano
Bridge. Quiet. All the tollbooths were up. No lights. It was all black. We had
gone to the hospital to get treated and I had to be back at work at four the next
morning. I got home at 12 midnight. I walked in, both my wife and my daughter
were up. They gave me a big hug and a kiss - it was good to be home. But I wanted
to get back to work.
My daughter understands what's going on. Not because she's my daughter do I say
this, but she's very intelligent. Her attitude was, "What do they want, these
people? Why don't we just give them what they want so they'll leave us alone?"
I asked her, "What do you think they want?"
She says, "It can't be that important for us not to give it to them."
She doesn't have a mean streak in her.
* * *
One night I broke down. We had a party in the house and I had been drinking. Everybody
that was there, none of them were cops. Everybody's talking about the World Trade
Center, whether the information we receive is accurate. And I didn't want to hear
it. I was like, "You people don't know what the fuck you're talking about. I'm
in the middle of this shit. I know what's being found, I know what's not being
found. I'm at the Morgue . . ."
I drank myself into oblivion. After everybody left, I went upstairs.
A good friend of mine was killed in the Towers and every day I checked the Morgue
to see if they had found him. They haven't found him yet. We were partners in
Narcotics from '92 to '96. He'd been in the Marine Corps the same time I was in,
we just didn't know each other at the time. We were very close. I found out he
was missing the second day Sept. 12th, and I knew that anyone missing was dead.
Just after being down there and seeing that devastation.
I broke down. My wife came upstairs, she had heard me sobbing. My daughter started
to come in the room, but I turned over and my wife said, "No, it's okay, honey.
Daddy doesn't feel good." My little girl knew something was up. You think kids
don't know. But they know.
My daughter didn't really see me too much. And that's good, because I never want
her to see me upset. Because to me, it shows weakness. And I never want her to
see weakness in me. I don't want her to ever worry that I'm not there to protect
her. She always says she wants her mother? But when something happens, she wants
her daddy. I never want her to see me vulnerable and think that Daddy won't be
there.
* * *
The attack on the Towers is technically a homicide and our office started working
on tips coming in. Stuff like, "I know this Arab who said he wasn't going to work
on September 11th and he wouldn't tell me why." We didn't have a homicide in the
city for a week following the 11th. We didn't have a homicide in Manhattan South
for almost a month after the attack. I guess people had other things on
their minds. So our job was to track down these leads.
Now this is where my problem with the FBI comes in. We would go out on a tip and
find out that two FBI agents had already been there. It's like, "Let me ask you
a question, what the fuck's going on here? Either we're gonna work together or
not work together. But don't waste my fucking time."
The leads were being filtered into a command center, then they were being filtered
out. If it was something that took place in Manhattan South, we went out on it.
If it was something that took place in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn detectives went
out. But all these leads went through the command center where the FBI analyzed
them.
For one tip, the guy was a pilot. An Egyptian. He was staying in a hotel in midtown.
Someone called in to say he'd overheard this guy had said, "The skyline's gonna
change" or something like that. The fact that he was Egyptian and a pilot made
it suspicious so we went to visit him. We found out the FBI had already been there.
I said, "Lemme call the FBI agent." I had his number.
I got him on the phone and said, "Did you talk to this guy?"
He says, "Yeah."
"Well, what did he tell you?"
"Not much."
"Well, how'd you talk to him? What'd you say to him? How'd you question him?"
"Well . . . you know . . ."
"No," I said. "I guess maybe I don't."
Now I went back upstairs to question the guy. He didn't understand the point to
the investigation. "Why are you bothering me?" he says. "Leave me alone, I don't
bother nobody. I really don't have time for this, I'm going to brunch with my
friends."
And that's when I got a little hefty with him. Apparently the FBI guy didn't get
that way with him, 'cause as soon as I got a little heated he kinda understood
that we weren't fucking around. I said, "I'm gonna throw you out the fuckin' window
in about two seconds if you don't shut the fuck up and answer my questions. You
think I'm playing, you try me. I'm in no fuckin' mood for you. Okay?"
At that point, we thought there was five thousand people dead from the Towers.
So I said, "You think I'm gonna listen to your bullshit today? I'll throw
you out that fuckin' window so fast your head'll spin." What can I say? He came
around. He sat down and shut the fuck up and answered my questions.
But you know, the FBI didn't do that. It's not in the book. That's a street thing.
I don't mean to be mean. But you gotta show people you're not playing games.
Turns out that the whole lead was a joke, a get-even thing.
* * *
So the Egyptian went through where he was, what he'd been doing on the 11th. I
could tell by looking at him that he might have been homosexual. So I says, "Are
you gay? Were you with any lovers recently? What's the story?" I'm not shocked
by anything like that. You gotta be an asshole if you're shocked by that sort
of thing, especially if you're a detective in New York City. I mean, if the guy
thought he was gonna shock me by telling me he was gay, well . . . you'd better
get yourself some Rice Krispies and have a good breakfast, 'cause it's not gonna
bother me. I seen it all. I told him that.
He told me he'd gone out to a few clubs and been with a few different lovers in
one night. I said, "All right, fine, no problem, no big deal. I just need to know
all this."
I said, "Do you know all these guys' names?"
He says, "No, I don't." And I know he don't. For that community, that's
a lifestyle that happens a lot. We've worked plenty of homicides with gay individuals
that sleep with three, four men a night and not even know their names. You know
what? If I could do that with women, I'd do it. I mean, that's a great lifestyle
if you can do it.
So when the guy told me he didn't know the guys' names, I believed him. But I
don't think the FBI would have believed him. They never even got to that fuckin'
point! Again: I don't mean to throw a blanket on all of the agents. But the majority
of these guys couldn't find their asses if they had a map in their back pockets,
know what I mean?
As it turns out, the Egyptian was homosexual and a lover of his was trying to
get even with him by giving a bogus tip. We wound up getting a lot of those.
And the fact that the feds were going on these leads before we got them meant
that they were trying to upstage us. It's frustrating. The right hand don't know
what the left hand's doing. And when we ended up telling our bosses what was going
on, they pulled us from the cases. They said, "Well, if this is what's going on,
then we're wasting our man power."
I know nothin' about Al Quaeda cells. I'm no expert on terrorism. But you know
what? I learn pretty quick. I know how to get information, that's my job. I'm
good at what I do, and everybody I work with is good at what they do. You don't
want to tell me? Fine. Then tell me who to interview and tell me what you want
to know and I'll talk to them.
But the Feds took everything over. And we went back to work on the active homicides
we had prior to the attack.
* * *
We also did the Fresh Kills landfill, sifting through the debris from the Trade
Center, hoping to find body parts, identification, the black boxes - which are
actually orange. In the beginning, we were finding a lot of body parts.
The area up there was set up pretty much like a military camp. We had tents set
up with designations: body parts, bones, identification, papers. All of them in
separate spots so you could drop off whatever you found and it could be analyzed.
Some of the stuff we found that we thought was human flesh wound up being meat
from a refrigerator. And some stuff that we thought was meat from a refrigerator
wound up being human flesh. They had scientists up there who could tell the difference.
We'd bring the stuff over in buckets; we were dressed up in the Tyrex suits with
the gas masks. You can't appreciate that type of work until you do it.
And then we were assigned to the Morgue, on 1st Avenue and 30th Street. As the
bodies and body parts came in, each thing had to go to a different area. If you
had an arm, it went to the area where the arms were. If you had a leg, it went
to the leg area. Torsos-they all went into refrigerated trailer trucks and they
had teams of detectives escorting body parts to wherever they had to go, just
to make sure everything was done in a proficient manner. It's a pretty good system.
If a fireman's or a cop's remains came in, there'd be a ceremony. We'd all line
up. A flag would be draped, then somebody would fold the flag in the right manner.
The remains would be saluted and then the body would be taken in. Most of the
time, there really wasn't much of a body, but it's something for the family.
To describe the way the bodies are? You can't. When you see homicides, you see
accidents, all kinds of different deaths . . . which I have seen . . . it didn't
prepare me to see the destruction of bodies from the World Trade Center. What
happened with those people . . . it lives with me every day. We homicide detectives
don't leave it. We're always around it. Cops and firemen are still right in the
middle of this shit.
* * *
You walk into that Morgue and the smell hits you. If you've ever smelled bad meat?
Times that by a hundred-that's the only way I can really describe it. If you've
never smelled it before, once you do, you'll never forget. And once you know it,
if you walk into a room and you get hit with that smell you know there's a body
in the room.
Every dead body is different; it depends on the temperature, the time of year,
ventilation. There's a lot of factors. It's essentially the same goddamned smell,
but at different levels.
You get a guy that's been dead for two weeks in an apartment that's a hundred
degrees... that's got a certain smell. It's hard to explain.
* * *
I don't think I have much of a story. A lot of people went through a lot more.
People who got injured, hit with glass, people who got cut. You know, if I hadn't
gone to the bathroom . . . when we went back the next day to get our car, had
we been standing there? We would have been dead. We escaped narrowly with our
lives.
I lost six very good friends, cops and firemen. To me? I believe, "If your time's
up, your time's up." I was always kind of a believer in that. But after the attack,
I knew it. And knowing that? Personally, it makes it a littler easier. I've been
in shootings. I used to think that I had a destiny when I went into a firefight
or knocked on a door. But I have an attitude now where I'm always careful, I always
do my tactics . . . when my time's up, it's up. And there's nothing gonna change
that.
You say to yourself, "What if I didn't have to go to the bathroom? What
if I hadn't had somewhere to go downtown? What if I didn't go to
the Towers that day?" A lot of what-ifs. We laugh about it. But things happen
for a reason.
* * *
As far as the way people treated the cops after the attack? In my 18 years, I've
never seen that kind of admiration toward cops. The hellos on the street. People
coming up to us - kids coming up with pictures they'd drawn. Pictures of the Trade
Center. Captions that read, "We love you, New York City Police". "Thank you so
much for what you're doing." They're handing them to us. Heartbreaking. It was
just heartbreaking.
Everybody loves firemen, everybody hates cops. That's what it boils down to. Firemen
don't give you a summons. Firemen don't lock you up. But I seen this guy on an
interview who was down at the Trade Center that day, working in one of the firms.
He said, "I used to walk by the police all the time, I took them for granted.
I don't do that no more."
What this city turned into after the attack happened was the most beautiful thing
I had ever seen. I was shocked. For a while, everybody was, "Hey, how are ya?"
Concerned about each other-what we used to call esprit de corps in the
Marines. A camaraderie. But things are back to normal now. People are back to
being assholes. Now everybody's back to, "Fuck you, get out of my way, I got my
own business to attend to."
* * *
I'm offended by that viewing ramp they built. Handing tickets out to people, whatever
the fuck it is. I'm offended seeing tourists down there snapping pictures. Maybe
I'm being a little sensitive, but to me, that's a giant tomb. A gravesite. I take
offense to these fuckin' European scumbags coming here taking photos like it's
a fuckin' circus attraction. A carnival. How would a family member feel knowing
people are taking pictures of a loved one who's not home yet?
I want to say to them: "What are you folks taking a picture of? Do you have any
idea what you're looking at?"
But what are you gonna do? People are gonna be people. That's human nature. The
asshole factor's always out there.
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| Name: Roger Smyth |
| Age: 35 |
| Hometown: Belfast, Ireland |
| ROGER SMYTH, 35, New York City 911 Paramedic . Roger moved from Belfast, Ireland to New York City because he wanted to be a paramedic. "It's work that suits me," he says. It's never predictable." When he speaks, his voice rolls out in a clear, lyrical northern Irish drawl.
September 11th was supposed to be Roger's day off. This is how he spent it:
* * *
It was like Vietnam going over the Brooklyn Bridge. You see all these refugees spilling over the Bridge, the smoke billowing out behind them. And then I heard . . .you know how you're driving near an airport? That sound? "Hwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!" It was a jet. You know how jets sound when they land? I'm thinking, "That's too low."
But let me backtrack a bit.
* * *
My girlfriend woke me up about a quarter to nine. She said, "The Trade Tower's been hit by a plane." We went up to my rooftop in Brooklyn and you could see the Tower smoking. I took pictures of it. There was a call over the television set for anyone who could help, people with skills-a state of emergency. I work at NYU Downtown Hospital . 10 minutes after I got up, I was going in to Manhattan.
I took my car. I've got lights and sirens. I drove cross the Brooklyn Bridge. It was pandemonium up around here Park Slope, Brooklyn. There was an orchestra of sirens goin' off. The police had everything cordoned off well, though. I had free passage from my house to the hospital. Literally 10 minutes from door to door. They respected the sirens; I was in uniform in an official car.
The first plane had already hit and I'm driving over the Bridge, looking. I didn't see the second plane hit, but I saw the explosion. 9:03 am. I thought, "Oh shit. That's another one." And at that stage the people on the Bridge heard it and seen it. The crowd had had some sense of calmness. They had been walking over the Bridge. Now they started running. Big cloud of smoke just covered the Brooklyn Bridge, totally engulfed it. And I was driving into it.
* * *
I went to NYU first of all and picked up an ambulance. I grabbed my bags. The two main bags you carry in a paramedic ambulance-everything for life and death emergencies - you have your trauma bag and a medical bag. In the trauma bag you carry an intubation kit, fluids, IV setups, drip administration, trauma bandages. We'll also carry some equipment for crichs, getting a surgical airway in the neck. Stands for Needle Cricothyrotomy, which is making a puncture in the cricothyroid membrane and creating an airway tube. So if you have a crushed airway you cut into the neck. It's a similar procedure to a tracheotomy.
In the medical bag? We carry about sixty different drugs for cardiac arrests, diabetic emergencies, respiratory emergencies. Morphine, Valium, Versed, Ativan. Narcan, which is a reversal agent for heroin overdose. Vasopressin. Benadryl. Lasix, for removing fluid from the lungs. Adrenaline. Lidocaine. Atropine. Magnesium Sulfate. Sodium Bicarbonate. Different types of cardiac drugs. Calcium channel blockers. For cardiogenic shock, we carry Dopamine. A whole slew of other drugs. None of that came in handy that day.
* * *
We parked at the base of the World Trade Center while the Towers were still standing. Pandemonium. Things strewn everywhere. Everything from bits of bodies to bodies to furniture-office furniture. Luggage. Shoes. Handbags. Mementos. Personal items. Scattered everywhere, all around from the impact, obviously and the explosion and the debris and everything blowing everywhere. Bodies falling out of the sky. People scattering in every direction. Emergency workers trying to get people out.
Our first patient, we had a young girl approximately 25 years of age. She was burned from head to toe, third degree burns across her entire body. These people just called to us, "You've got to help this girl, she's badly burned." They thrust her toward us. We intubated her; passed a tube down past her vocal cords to her lungs so she could breathe. That way she could receive oxygen and medications.
This was no such thing as a structured call like you'd get on a regular day over the radio dispatch. You can't imagine what it was like. Thinking back on it, it's hard to comprehend the amount of people swirling around. We took this girl to NYU Downtown along with a couple of walking wounded. She was stabilized there. Then we brought her up to Cornell Burn Center. And on our way back down the FDR, the South Tower crumbled right in front of us as we were driving. That was at 9:50 am.
Nobody believed . . .you know, you hear so much hype about these buildings. You don't think they're ever gonna fall. But when the first one come down, you pretty much knew that the other one was gonna go, too.
* * *
So back down there. NYU Hospital was pandemonium. And in the midst of it all, I lost my partner. There was another girl I knew, a Fire Department EMT from Brooklyn - she had lost her partner and her ambulance when that Tower'd come down. So I couldn't find my partner, she couldn't find hers. We teamed up in the ambulance and started to drive down Broadway. At that stage, the visibility was down to around 10 feet from the debris. Flames everywhere. It was like a nuclear snow. Hard to believe it was New York City.
We went back down to a couple hundred yards away from the base of the Towers and set up a triage area, quite close. There had been closer ambulances than us but they had been wiped out in the collapse of the first building. So we were starting treatment when they started shouting, "It's gonna collapse, it's gonna collapse," and everyone scattered. Concrete falling everywhere. We ran under an overhang. And then this huge engulfing cloud of smoke. 10:29 in the morning.
As soon as it settled, you could hear voices. Screaming. Shouting. People not knowing what direction was what because it was so dense, the smoke. The Fire Department guys, they wear these motion trackers. If they stand still for more than 30 seconds, their motion tracker goes off. So you hear all these high-pitched, whining electrical screams. ["Reeeeee Reeeeee Reeeeee Reeeeee."] Those were the sounds of the boys who were trapped.
As soon as it started to clear I saw people getting up and going toward the rubble. Getting whoever they could out.
* * *
We stayed there the rest of the day. But after the buildings came down, there were no survivors. The treatment we administered was for emergency and fire personnel. One guy in particular was a firefighter. In his early to mid-forties. He was burned around the side of his neck and his head and his back. Could have been caused by a hot metal hitting him. Fuel. Burning debris. I honestly don't know.
His blood pressure was very low and we tried to get an IV started. And he's wrestling with me to get back up, to get back into the rubble. I said, "No, no, man. It's over for you, now. You're job's done." And he says, "My whole company's in there, my whole battalion. I need to get back in." I ended up literally having to wrestle with this guy.
I didn't even take him into the ambulance. He was just sitting on the edge of the back. And then he disappeared. He got up and he left. I told him not to go. But what can you do?
If I was in his position? If I had come out with maybe 14 of my buddies still in there? There was a camaraderie and a selflessness that I had never experienced before.
* * *
This guy here in this photo? That's Ronnie. I told you I teamed up with another girl who had lost her partner. That's him showing up five hours later. But if you see us smiling it's because we thought he was dead.
You would bump into different people throughout the day. You didn't know who had come down there. The different rumors; different people missing. Nothing was verified. You just worked and worked and hoped for the best.
* * *
After the second Tower came down, we didn't transport any more patients to the hospital. We treated people for inhalation, respiratory heat emergencies. A lot of the treatment was irrigation of eyes. Oxygen treatment. You'll see some of the photos I took, the Fire Department guys just sucking on the oxygen.
Those particle masks that people were using? They didn't work. I didn't use one. Breathing the air was pretty horrible. You weren't suffocating. But just in the force of it coming toward you. You didn't know what was in it. We kept wet cloths over our faces.
One thing I seen, it was a bit bizarre. It looked like a Halloween mask. But it was somebody's skull there on the ground with all the skin fried off it. It looked like a joke mask, you know? Like one you'd see in a window? Doesn't look real? But it was. The body parts. It was hard to see anything clearly. If you got a big lump of meat and threw it on the ground, covered it with dirt . . .is that a body part? Is it not? Obviously if it was a torso or an arm . . .you'd go up to it. Look at it. Ooop. It is.
But you didn't do anything about it. It wasn't our concern. At that point, it wasn't necessary. At that point we were still looking for survivors.
* * *
There was a guy there from New Jersey, a cop. He just came down with his search dog. Like: "Right. I've got a dog. I'm ready to go. What do you need?" There were a lot of people who weren't part of any special structure down there.
There was an organization initially, but that was wiped out when the building came down. You had a lot of fire crews, paramedic crews who were freelancing, going in, search and rescue. There was no tabs on them. And a lot of boys were very emotional, you know? They'd lost friends, brothers. You know, you're not gonna listen. If you're my boss and I've lost two of my best pals in there, I'm gonna go, "Fuck you," and go back in. I mean, you can see from these photographs. These boys are really fried.
* * *
Around noon, these firemen came out of the rubble and just threw themselves down against my ambulance. Wrecked. Dog tired. They just fought their way out. There's another photo of an ambulance there. Crushed.
Our ambulance was right beside those boys who were raising the flag. As you see, smoldering rubble everywhere. Smoke and chaos. We were all waiting for something to do. So I seen these three Fire Department guys climbing up on top one of those broken buildings. With a flag post they'd set up, near Vesey Street and the West Side Highway. The three guys get up and you see the Stars and Stripes come out and they started to raise it.
I'm not into any form of patriotism. But I was very moved by what was going on. This symbol of defiance in the midst all the rubble. It was very reminiscent of Iwo Jima. Even as I took the photo I was struck by it. And there was total silence. You might think, looking at the pictures, that there was this massive noise and chaos. They were raising the flag in this very eerie silence.
* * *
I didn't come down until I came home that night. I got to Ground Zero at around 9 o'clock a.m.; I got back to my apartment around 1 o'clock in the morning. I met with a couple of friends who live downstairs. I came back with two friends from the site, Robbie and Trin. We all just sat there with the thousand-yard stare. It's . . .you're feeling something but you can't describe it. There's a numbness going on in your body. We were still very hyped-up when we got back here. Not quite sure what to think. And then we put on the news. And we hadn't seen it, you know? We hadn't seen the media coverage. So all of a sudden, we're looking at it, the buildings, the chaos, we're going, "Jesus Christ." My friends set us up with a couple beers and we sit and chat.
Then Robbie and Trin left, one of the Fire Department guys came round and picked them up. I was sitting with my friends Mark and Tara, the Scottish couple downstairs. Sat there watching the news. And then I broke down. I felt this well of emotion brewing inside. I couldn't contain me self. I cried like a baby for 20 minutes. Uncontrollable sobbing. And when we were down there all day, our spirits were good. We were working. We were joking with each other a bit. Keeping morale up. But the enormity . . .when I actually came home and sat down, away from the work area. You realized what had actually happened. And then the emotion set in.
* * *
If the Towers hadn't have fallen, we'd have been busy, busy, busy. But they fell and they crushed everybody and that was it. That's the long and short of it. If 110 stories of concrete and steel is coming down, what's it gonna do to you? I mean, you're human.
The things that I had a problem with finding was the personal stuff. A shoe. A handbag. That was the sort of stuff that would stick in my head, not the body parts. A shoe would turn your imagination around a little bit. "Well, where did that shoe come from? Where did that person go? Is that from luggage? Is that from a person on the plane, is that from a person that fell, was that person burned?" Whereas if you look at a body or a body part, it's like, "Well, that's a body part, they're dead." Maybe it's the paramedic standpoint. We're so used to seeing the gore that it becomes more about the intimate things.
I treated this firefighter guy, Sal; he works for Ladder 7, Engine 16. I met him on the first day. He was suffering from heat exhaustion. He was badly dehydrated, muscle cramping, feeling a bit dizzy. We started a couple of IVs for him, gave him some fluid therapy to get him going again.
I had kept bumping into him on the first day. I thought, "You know, it's quite uncanny that, in the midst of all this, I keep bumping into the same person." Then on the fourth day we did Search and Rescue on September 15th and I kept bumping into Sal again. And I thought, "There must be something in this." And I said, "Wherever you guys are going today, I'm going. I'll be your paramedic." I was down there on me own time, wasn't getting paid for it. I had my trauma bag and all me equipment. So I went search and rescue with their company. Right into the rubble of the Towers.
* * *
On that day, all we found was a rag doll and a bag with a journal in it. That was after 13 hours of searching. Then it started to hit home to me that they're not gonna find anybody. It's done. It's over. It was demoralizing. I realized that, as a paramedic, there's not more for me to do. I was just an extra set of hands down there. If I stay on, all I'm gonna be doing is collecting rubble or digging through. But my skills as a paramedic? There's nothing for me to do.
The journal? It was a little notepad and it had these words written in it: "Flirting is just an innocent way of getting to know somebody." I found it in the rubble and I remember thinking, like, "Huh?" It was that weird sense of, "Did he write that just before it happened?" I believe it was a he. There were bills in the bag with a man's name on them. Personal stuff. Damp and wet. I didn't bother flicking through. I picked it up and thought, "Well, that's somebody's personal stuff."
Checked the journal, put it back in the bag, and then handed it back. If you found any personal items, you passed them back on down the line where people were collecting them. Probably the Red Cross, the Fire Department. There was so many agencies there, I don't know.
* * *
A couple things I seen. Like a big glass paperweight. A solid ball paperweight that would be on somebody's office desk. You don't know where it came from, either. You don't know how it didn't shatter. But there it was. And an unbelievable amount of paper. Luggage from the fuselage of the plane. Charred. Broken up. Intact. Everything was there in every possible stage. There was such an influx of the senses; your smell, what you're seeing . . .
It was that day when I found the journal and the rag doll that the President was coming in September 15th. The rubble of the Towers was still smoking very badly and you know where the gold ball was? We were like, 20 feet away from that. I found myself looking around and, in some strange way; it was like being on a movie set. The surroundings didn't seem real. I was waiting for somebody to say, "Cut! That's it! Action!" Maybe that was just a coping mechanism.
But the next thing we heard was the ["Whhooooopp, whhoooopp, whhoooopp."] The big Chinooks, two big helicopters coming in. Then, out of the smoke, the Tomcat jets banking in. ["Hwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaahhh."] And I'm standing there in the rubble of the World Trade Center, in the middle of New York City, watching these planes banking in. It was too surreal. You know that scene from The Terminator? When those big robots are coming in and blasting everything from the sky? That's what it reminded me of. Post-Apocalyptic. And here I was standing right there in the middle of it.
* * *
I was probably down there for about 70 hours total. About 13, 14 hours the first day; seven on the second; third day, maybe seven, eight. I had my normal shifts at the hospital and I went to those, as well. In between I went down to help. I couldn't sleep, either. After that day where we found the doll and the bag with the journal, I didn't go down anymore. My skills as a paramedic could still be utilized elsewhere.
The thing was, there was this mix of emotions. "Shit, I'm glad to be alive." 14 total EMS workers were lost. But also this feeling of guilt: "How come them, and not me?" How come there's guys in there with families; here I am, a single guy, I have basically no ties?" But I understand that it's a normal grief reaction. Survivor guilt. To be able to identify with that. It's a normal grief feeling to have.
* * *
I was walking around in the rubble, bumped into this fireman who took one look at me and said, "Are you fuckin' kidding me?"
I said, "What?"
He says: "Take a look at your shield number."
My number is 9110. And here I was at Ground Zero. The coincidence of it. I felt that, in some strange way, when I was given that shield number, I was meant to be there.
* [Ed. Note: Some of the photos Roger took are displayed in the gallery section of this site. More are available in the book.]
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