First Impressions
My very first impression of NYC on early Friday morning September14th was of the hundreds of ambulances lining the West Side Highway on my drive downtown. Sadly, these crews would never have the opportunity to help someone as there were few survivors found after the first 48 hours. Arriving at the Canal St barricade on a rainy and gloomy Friday morning, I was directed to the Jacob Javits Center uptown at 34th St. I stopped there briefly. The scene was wild and chaotic. A bus parking lot had been turned into a staging center/supply depot and their was a giant throng of helmeted construction workers, muscles bulging and testosterone pumping, waiting to be cleared for entry into GZ for duty on the “bucket brigades”. They were amped, boisterous and dying to get on with it. Along the sidewalks were dozens of food trucks/food stands from restaurants all around town passing out hot meals to cops, volunteers and passersby alike. In the sky above, a fighter jet flew in circles. An NYPD official dissuaded me from this scene and directed me again to the Red Cross Center further uptown at 66th and Amsterdam. It was here that I found purpose. The Red Cross was outfitting ERVs (Emergency Response Vehicles) to GZ and the next fleet would be leaving at 6 a.m. the next morning.
Waking at 5 a.m. I was greeted in the basement garage staging area by a chaotic scene. A small crew of blood-shot eyed college age volunteers were trying to assign crews to the Red Cross ERVs. The problem was that in their exhausted state (this was the 94th hour since the attacks) they were having trouble organizing and sorting through the clamoring crowd of a hundred or more. People seemed confused and frustrated with the procedures. Working my way to the front of the crowd, I asked a tired young man with the clipboard exactly what he needed. He explained that each ERV crew needed 4 people: 1 senior Red Cross worker, 1 certified Red Cross driver and 2 assistants. That was all. I retreated to the back of the crowd, grabbed a box to stand on and announced what I was looking for. Three men came forward. The first, a man in his mid 60s (I forget his name) was a certified RC driver from West Virginia. The senior Red Cross person was Willard Dreisbach from upstate New York and Rod Richardson, a glass sculptor from Manhattan, rounded out the necessary four. We pushed our way back to the front, presented ourselves as the team and were handed the keys to an ERV and a checklist of supplies to load and drive to Public School #234 at Greenwich & Chambers in lower Manhattan, just a couple of blocks from the Trade Towers. Rod later wrote an insightful and accurate account of volunteer activities at Ground Zero for a local NY magazine and I have attached it. Also at www.facebook.com/PS234.Anniversary you can see photos of Public School 234 as well as student accounts of 9/11 and how it affected themselves and their school. The school yard was a supply depot, their cafeteria became a 24/7 feeding center and their hallways lined with clothing bins. The upper floors were used as sleeping areas. In the gym was an impromptu medical clinic. There was so much GZ dust settling day after day on that school, I don’t know how they ever decontaminated it. In the school yard, you could brush the dust off a box and in a few hours the box would be covered again. The dust was a grayish yellow color and was blowing in a steady stream in a north by northeast direction straight up Broadway and streets parallel. Everyone was concerned about it and the poor people who lived in the neighborhood had it blowing their way for weeks (months).
In this “lead, follow or get out of the way” environment, the person somewhat in charge of the school was a young man who took it upon himself to use the abandoned school as a rendezvous spot and supply dump-off. He was there since the beginning and was the “go to” guy. However, he was fading fast when we arrived and within a few days he was removed by the NYPD who demanded he go home and rest. I never saw him again after that. Things like that were common at GZ.
We arrived at PS 234 just as the National Guard was putting up a cyclone fence around GZ and a two block outside perimeter. Greenwich & Chambers was a main gate for GZ and there was much activity and traffic through there 24 hours a day. GZ was a round the clock effort without let up. Our first duty was to set up a Red Cross feeding station at the school. The RC delivered breakfast, lunch and dinner from their mobile kitchen uptown. Hour by hour, supplies were dumped off at the school necessitating a non-stop need to organize and distribute throughout GZ. Many of these supplies were coming from private sources who would hear through the grapevine what was needed. Speed and urgency had far outpaced official sources for timely delivery of supplies. (see Rod’s article) Items pouring into the school were: metal cutting saw blades, portable generators and tool chargers with channel strips, Rebar cutting tools, fuel and fuel cans for the generators, truck loads of hard hats (to be assembled), flashlights (especially small, thin ones that could be duct taped to firefighters helmets – thus freeing their hands), AA batteries (couldn’t keep these in stock), misc batteries, duct tape, knee pads, work gloves (constantly discarded), anti bacterial waterless soap, anti bacterial wipes, eye wash, (there were eye wash stations along the school sidewalk – as well as chiropractic and massage areas) coveralls, work boots and rubber boots, 5 gallon buckets, small shovels, anti bacterial wipes, water and Gatorade, back packs, ponchos and rain slickers….and on and on ad infinitum. Our duties for the next ten days would be to get these supplies to the thousands of workers coming and going in this hectic place.
Two blocks south of G & C was “the pile”. It was a huge five story heap of smoking steel and god knows what else. Besides the two towers there were a number of other crushed and burned buildings. One of them had a huge crater/hole in it’s middle where a portion of Tower #1 had fallen on top of it. The Marriott Hotel, just west of Tower # 2 had been squashed down to 6 stories. West St. was impassable and a large effort was taking place in clearing it. Most of the buildings surrounding GZ were severely damaged, blackened and scarred. Buildings facing the pile had all their windows blown out (falling glass was a constant hazard) and a few still had huge steel girders sticking in them like giant arrows. Adjacent the severely damaged American Express Bldg on West St. was the Winter Garden bldg/Atrium Restaurant. This was a large, white tablecloth establishment built of glass and most of the tables were still eerily set for lunch although covered in spongy dust. The flowers on the tables, although a bit wilted, still showed signs of life. Only one part of the building was damaged where some girders had crashed through the glass ceiling and were strewn on the restaurant floor. On the second floor of the AMEX Bldg was a hustle of activity as a husband and wife volunteer team from Ohio had set up an impromptu clothing and shoe depot for the fireman who lined up by the dozens to get outfitted. Water was draining along the lobby floor.
Between the piles of Towers 1 and 2 was a sort of crater. When the towers fell, they had collapsed right through into their foundations which were around four stories deep. So, the visible piles which could be seen and were about 4-5 stories high were actually 8-9 stories total of twisted, compacted steel. In the center crater one could see firefighters and other rescue crews climbing up and over the outer “hill” and disappearing into this “no man’s zone”. Amazingly enough, the bronze globe in the smashed courtyard between the towers was still intact and standing. In some places, i.e. the top of the Marriott Hotel there were still small fires burning.
In the shattered streets, which in some places had been reduced to a mix of mud and fragmented debris, there was a constantly expanding array of cranes for removing steel, special bulldozers with pincers for grabbing and pulling at the steel (appropriately called “grabbers”), flat bed semi trucks for hauling out the steel (to Battery Park, where it was shipped over to a holding area/dump on Staten Island) and fire trucks with their ladders fully extended and manned with fireman shooting water onto the Pile from every direction. Some cranes would hoist cages holding rescuers up and over the Pile and slowly swing them along the tangled mess looking for any signs of life or remains. Some would be equipped with cameras on telescoping poles for insertion into holes or dangerous crevasses. In some of the surrounding damaged buildings the FDNY had run hoses up to the higher floors and were spraying water from those vantage points. In the middle of all this were the “bucket brigades”. These were long lines of firefighters and assorted volunteers who would pass back through the lines five gallon buckets of debris being dug by fireman (and only fireman) at the front of the line. The FDNY officers would try to gauge where they thought people might have been trapped and then dig accordingly. The brigades were digging around the clock in constantly changing locales. Along the edges of this scene were various tents set up as command centers, supply depots and even a temporary morgue. On the edges of this scene, in the nooks and crannies and along the sides of buildings, were dirty, exhausted firefighters trying to grab a little rest before they would plunge back into the maelstrom. The noise of all these engines and activity and the constant warning/beeping of large vehicles caused people to shout to each other to be heard.
It was in this environment that I would spend my next 10 days.
Taken with a disposable camera… originally as proof he was there so he could combat a hefty parking violation from the city.
Coffee and Cigarettes (and hash browns)
Believe it or not, there were lighter moments at Ground Zero. Hard to believe in that smoking volcano of twisted steel …but true. There was the sanitation department worker who would come through with his crew and be constantly and loudly whistling some amazing bird calls/noises. You could hear him before you would see him and he had a countenance of pure good nature. He came through once in the middle of the night and had everybody cracking up. He became “locally” famous and all looked forward to his arrival. It might seem funny that there would be trash pick-ups at GZ, as the whole place was one gigantic clean up project, but with so many aid stations, supply depots etc., there was a constant build up of personal trash that needed removal. Ironically, the NYC plan for a collapsed building was for the Sanitation Department to remove it but this was way past the capabilities of normal clean up.
And there was the time that again, in the middle of the night, a short, spark plug of a fire fighter came into our supply depot gleefully announcing that he had “real Half and Half” for our coffee. He had the half and half in an emptied water bottle and giddily insisted on sharing it with all present. (real cream or ½ and ½ were in short supply and we mostly had coffee creamer in the little one shot fast food containers) So there we were in the middle of the night, with screeching cranes, bulldozers and semi-trucks all around us, having a little short lived coffee party with smiles all around. I ran into that fireman the next day along muddy West St and asked him if he had any more cream. He had no helmet (a bad sign) and blood shot eyes and he just grunted and barely looked at me and kept walking.
Another light situation was the struggle between OSHA and the iron workers concerning the wearing of dust masks. Now with the plumes of dust and smoke at GZ, the wearing of dust masks was a serious issue. In fact, on my very first entry into GZ at the Greenwich and Chambers gate, there was a large hand written sign tacked to a telephone pole that read “Do not take your dusk mask off – not even to talk!!” Right below the sign were hundreds of people with either no dusk masks or the masks down around their necks. For the first week, there were only the most rudimentary of dusk masks which dirtied quickly, were not taken very seriously and often discarded. After a week or so, OSHA finally showed up with some sophisticated masks and sent teams around GZ with the masks and on site instructions on their proper use. Now picture a tough as nails ironworker (welder or truck driver) with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth listening to a mandatory lesson from a young OSHA worker, instructing him on the finer points of protecting his lungs. On one occasion, as soon as the short instruction was over, an iron worker pulled down his mask, smiled, lit a cigarette and jumped on to a flat bed which carried him back to the pile. They would joke that they would poke holes in the masks for their cigarettes to fit through. At a premium with some of these guys were cigarettes. Sometimes boxes of cigarettes would come in to the supply depot and we had a senior Red Cross official (non smoker I’ll wager) who would hide them and just as fast, someone would dig them up and pass them out to the iron workers and truck drivers who were constantly requesting them. Hey, what did it matter in this smoking heap?!
And even though security at the gates was super tight, for some mysterious reason the McDonald’s guy (or gal) always managed to get through around dawn and would stroll through the confines of GZ like a carnival barker announcing fresh coffee, hash browns and maybe even a precious Egg McMuffin. Cranes would pause, trucks and Dozers would stop in a welcome reception for this popular person.
And seeing the crowds of citizens congregating at the gates of GZ and calling to the firefighters as they came and went from their duties would always cause me to clear the lump from my throat. They shouted their encouragement, gratitude and praise to these weary men in such a heart felt way that to experience it was to never forget it. It was like football players going through the stadium tunnels but on a much more visceral, serious and emotional level. And the firefighters, in their humble way and with so much weighing on their shoulders, would wave shyly back at the crowd (sometimes even smile) and plod onward through this gauntlet of well wishers.
Hand trucks, dollies and small ATVs were at a premium at GZ. And it wasn’t long before you would learn not to take your eye off of them as they tended to sprout legs. It was not uncommon to stash or hide them when not using them. In fact, my Texan friend Richard Ford showed me the trick of removing the steering wheel on an ATV while he grabbed forty winks. His ATV looked a bit strange with no steering wheel as he also had a couple of flashlights duct taped to the sides as headlights.
Once, late at night, three of us took a flatbed truck uptown to the Jacob Javit’s Center to pick up a large load of supplies. On the way back down West St, we passed through a crowd of people waving flags and shouting their thanks to us. It was strange and made me feel a bit uncomfortable.
Citizen Volunteers
One thing uplifting about such a tragic place as Ground Zero was the myriad of interesting people who had come to help as unpaid volunteers. There was Richard Ford, a retired fire fighter from Houston, Texas who took a bus (the airlines were grounded) to New York and helped set up and run an important supply/tool depot at the foot of the crushed Marriott Hotel for almost two sleepless weeks.
There were a dozen or more Chicago fire fighters who went against orders from their superiors and drove down route 80 in two rented vans to work search and rescue on “the pile” for a week while sleeping on the floor in the auditorium of Public School 236 at Greenwich and Chambers.
There was the husband and wife team that left the Midwest even before the second plane hit and immediately set up their own clothing supply depot in the American Express building on West St (before it was even declared safe). When I first saw them there were long lines of fire fighters waiting to be fitted with Carharts and work boots from them. In the search and rescue on the pile with the hot sun and even hotter steel environments, the heavy coats and boots that the firefighters normally wore were not appropriate gear. And since many of the fireman refused to leave or break off the search, they needed the change of clothes right then and there. I can’t imagine how many fireman that husband and wife team outfitted in the first important days of the emergency. And they did it all with cell phone calls to outside donors and a 24/7 hustling service.
There were coal miners from Kentucky that I met on Saturday the 15th. They were very young men whose expertise was setting support posts and props in the many holes and caverns in the treacherous and constantly shifting pile of steel and iron. They were filthy, tired and a bit overwhelmed when I ran into them at the cafeteria at Public School 236.
There were construction workers and iron workers who were some of the first to show up and filled the ranks of the bucket brigades.
There were brigades of police cadets who came to work the bucket brigades. They came with just their uniforms and nothing else. We would spend hours outfitting them with helmets, masks, goggles and gloves as the work and safety regulations demanded it. Their appearance changed considerably upon their exit from GZ.
There were the legions of Hispanic works sent in to clean up the buildings surrounding GZ. Like the police cadets, they were totally without equipment (except for cleaning equipment) and it was downright criminal to send them into the toxic environment without helmets, masks etc. Many workers would exchange clothing upon exiting GZ. They didn’t want to bring contaminated clothing home with them.
There were Red Cross workers from all over the U.S. and the world and many physicians, nurses and hospital personnel.
There were the ubiquitous Salvation Army with their encouraging smiles and amazingly delicious mobile food stations.
There was a building demolition expert from North Carolina who sneaked into GZ and stayed for almost 4 months, becoming the volunteer expert-consultant on picking apart the tangled pile of steel safely and efficiently.
…And the above list is woefully inadequate in describing the thousands of people who made their mark on Ground Zero.
The writer himself: John Corr
Richard Ford
Richard Ford was a retired fire fighter from Houston, Texas. On the day the Towers fell he packed a duffel bag with clothes and personal items and headed for NYC to pitch in with the emergency effort. As the airports were closed, he took a three day bus trip to the Big Apple. Arriving in Manhattan, tired and dirty and knowing not one person in the city, he headed downtown and volunteered at a Tribeca firehouse. At first he was in charge of organizing and giving homes to the thousands of bouquets of flowers that were stacked daily outside the fire stations by the grieving and sympathetic public. But seeing his energy and sincerity, and realizing that he was a fellow fire fighter, he was quickly upgraded to running a FDNY supply depot in the damaged but intact American Express building along West St. This was directly across from the remains of Tower #1. Later, because of space concerns, the depot was moved to the corner of West and Liberty, directly across and within 50 yards of the ruined Marriott Hotel. Just beyond the Marriott was the hulking skeleton of the lower section of Tower #2’s leaning frame.
When I met Richard, I had just recently helped the FDNY move a few truckloads of miscellaneous supplies from a little known supply dump to one of the main storage areas closer to Ground Zero at Public School 236. One group of 20 or more boxes contained anti-bacterial field wipes. Thinking that these would be a welcome item on “the pile”, I made the rounds to all the inner supply depots in the heart of GZ. It was there at the West and Liberty depot that our paths crossed. The depot was in the middle of great activity and I remember it was so loud that we could hardly hear each other. He was glad to have the field wipes and when I asked him what else he needed, he emphatically stated that bottled drinking water was in short supply in that area. I was dumbfounded to hear this and replied that we had water stacked up to the second story of Public School 236 just three blocks away. We were actually starting to turn water away there because we had such a surplus. The problem was that security was so tight that supplies were having a hard time making it in to the inner “pile”. I had developed a way to move freely throughout GZ but many people would not make the effort or risk the wrath of security personnel (NYPD) and so supplies tended to pile up in the back areas with few taking the initiative to move them to the front. Also, people like Richard were so harried and overwhelmed at the front that they didn’t have the time to go looking for things. Things can be like that in a high security yet chaotic environment.
Within minutes we had piled into two ATVs and spent the rest of the night, until about 4a.m., running water to the forward supply depots. Gatorade was another favorite as the weather had been warm and dehydration was an issue. At a premium were small 6 ounce bottles of water that could be chugged and discarded by ironworkers and fire fighters making their way through the pile, which was an unbelievable tangle of hot smoking steel. As soon as we were done with the water run, we were on the search for clean 5 gallon buckets to take the water to the bucket brigades. Contamination was a great concern and all consumable items had to be clean and disposable.
Around dawn we made a list of other needed items and that kept me busy for the next 48 hours. Richard knew what the GZ workers needed and always tried to stay a step ahead of situations. If it rained we would be running down rain gear and boots. If it turned hot the fireman would trade their heavy coats for lighter gear such as Carhart overalls and tee shirts. Much of this would be discarded daily for fear of contamination.
As the days dragged on, fatigue set in and Richard hit the wall. He laid down on a plastic tarp in a ruined office building behind the depot and slept for 6 hours, the longest sleep he had in almost two weeks. While he was at the front depot Richard was always tuned into the needs of the community there… and in an environment that was extremely transient, he was a rock of stability both day and night for weeks. His charisma, stamina, dependability and outgoing personality was a bright spot in a tough place and he was the “go to” guy for FDNY, ironworkers, utility workers and volunteers alike. He was as cordial and relaxed with members of the press or high officials as he was with the trash crew. He had never been surrounded by so many Yankees.
Finally on Sunday the 23rd Richard gave it up and returned to his wife in Houston. At this time the search and rescue operation had turned into a recovery and removal operation and his duties were complete. We got separated on our last day there and never had a chance to say goodbye, a common occurrence at Ground Zero.
The Bible
Thursday, Sept 20,2001 –
I knew that something was up when I saw this young, very tall and athletic looking fireman coming in to our supply station without his helmet. Everyone at Ground Zero had a helmet and the fire fighters were never without them. In fact, the FDNY leaders were about to break out their antique fire fighters helmets from the 19th century as a way to build morale among their mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted legions. So seeing this hatless young man got my attention. He had a dazed and distraught look on his face but in the usual courteous and respectful way of the FDNY, he quietly asked me if I had a Bible. This was my first request for a Bible. But just an hour or so before, while performing the ongoing and endless reorganizing of our busy and chaotic supply depot, I had come across a rain soaked box within which were three or four small, damp Bibles. The sun had come out a few hours earlier and I had the Bibles sitting open on the ledge of a battery bin to dry out. In the previous week, not one of the countless workers looking for supplies had requested any religious material (although there was plenty of it around Ground Zero) and it seemed strange and surreal that I was getting this request so soon after my recent discovery. I directed the grateful fellow to the holy books, apologized for their condition and gave him his space as I dealt with another issue. When I turned around just a bit later to see if he needed anything else he was gone, drifting off into the busy sea of humanity along battered West St in the afternoon shadow of the smoking and hulking remnants of the ruined Marriott hotel.
What had he seen I wondered? Or more realistically, how much of everything to be seen in this outrageous place could one man take without reaching for a Bible, or a loved one, or a bottle, or whatever? Most likely he had been there since the beginning and God knows to what he had been exposed. Perhaps he felt that he was at the breaking point and he was reaching out for some strength in this, his hour of need. Like so many others whom I had encountered at Ground Zero, he disappeared into the crowd and I never saw him again. Hopefully, he took a break and rested up a bit with family or friends. Fire fighters were generally left to decide when they had had enough but it wasn’t uncommon for security personal to demand that volunteers and other assorted personnel leave Ground Zero and get some rest for at least 48 hours. They would physically remove people if necessary. The problem was that with such an overwhelming amount of urgent work to be done, people would push themselves to the limit and bleary eyed, exhausted people in a dangerous environment was a common sight.
The memory of that young fireman’s face still lingers.
The Iconic Photo
When I first approached Ground Zero on my first day in NYC, I went to the police barricade at Canal st and stood there for a few minutes and waited until the busy police officers came over to answer my questions. Along side me and also waiting to talk to the police was this man Bob Beckwith (I never knew his name until today). I remember him distinctly as he was shy, friendly and a bit nervous and revealed that he was a retired fireman and like myself he wasn’t sure if he could get through the security check. He also stood out because although he wore his fire fighters helmet he was dressed in jeans and a sweat shirt. We chatted very briefly but he was really my first impression of the scene there and I distinctly remember his friendliness as well his low ego and sincere personality. He explained himself to the police and as I recall they let him through and referred him to a FDNY tent over on Vesey and West st. while I was referred to the Red Cross headquarters uptown at 66th and Amsterdam. Finding work there I stayed that night in the hostel/bunk rooms upstairs as I would be departing for Ground Zero at 6:00 in the morning with a Red Cross ERV team. I was having a snack in the cafeteria and watching the 11:00pm news when on the overhead television they were showing the news of George Bush at Ground Zero that very afternoon standing beside an elderly fireman. To my surprise it was this same fellow that I had met at Canal st. I thought about the coincidence and what a small world it was. Since then, I had often wondered what his story was as I wasn’t privy to any of his interviews or new found celebrity as I spent the next 10 days within the confines of GZ and didn’t have access to much media. But I saw the famous picture upon my return and it always made me smile as he really seemed like a good man. I’m happy to hear that he is still active with the Burn Center.
http://news.yahoo.com/firefighter-tells-story-behind-iconic-september-11-moment-with-george-bush.html
Tommy Burke
At the forefront of the supply depot at West and Liberty was a mobile commercial cooler where we kept a constant supply of iced water and Gatorade for the convenience of the constant crowd of workers moving along the ruined avenue. Beside it we kept a few shelves with snacks and candy bars, etc. At one point someone dropped off boxes of homemade cookies in plastic bags from school children who had baked them and sent them to the firehouses. Inside the bags there were notes to the FDNY from the kids and some of them were quite moving as well as cute and sometimes even funny.
One day through this portal strode a firefighter looking to wash his hands. He was fit, with a granite jaw and a few days of stubble on his chin. I grabbed some anti-bacterial soap and some paper towels and we used the drain on the bottom of the cooler as a faucet. As he washed his hands he explained to me in a matter of fact and nonchalant manner that he had just come from across the street in the semi-collapsed Marriott Hotel where he had been searching the remaining floors for victims. With no signs of grief or sadness he described finding a dead fireman who was crushed and protruding upside down through a ceiling and riddled with rebar “like a pin cushion”. Try as he and other rescuers did, they couldn’t move him… and they were all a dripping mess for their efforts. Without success they were ordered to leave the building which was deemed too unsafe to continue. With a shrug of his shoulders he pointed to a fluorescent orange marking on a Marriott window and said, “he’s up there still”. We stood for a moment in uncomfortable silence looking up at that window while he dried his hands. Then he turned to me and with a warm smile, offered a handshake and said, “I’m Tommy Burke, thanks for your help”. Then he walked off towards one of the eastern gates of GZ. I watched him pick his way through this hell hole, framed as he was by the cases of Gatorade and those colorful piles of chocolate chip cookie bags.
