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How 9/11 Changed Key Jobs
By GINGER ADAMS OTIS
'It'll Happen Again' In the five years that have passed since 9/11, she said, she's been given increased training for hazardous-material and chemical incidents, and prepared herself mentally and emotionally for what it means to be a first-responder in a country that's declared a war on terrorism. "I do believe it's just a matter of time before it happens again. This time I hope we deal with it better," she said. "The extra training makes me feel good. I think that, five years ago, the department as a whole wasn't prepared for this; not at this level at least." Despite her conviction that the city remains a terrorist target, she won't stop working. "I figured that the best thing I could do was continue with the job that I know best, which is to take care of New Yorkers," said the married mother of two. "I can't sit here and feel sorry for myself. I have to put it behind me." Vivid Memories Like all first-responders involved that day, though, Paramedic O'Carroll vividly remembers what happened to her before she got hurt. Within four minutes of the first 911 call on Sept. 11, initially stating that a small plane had hit one of the Twin Towers, the Fire Department had a group of firefighters creating a staging area across the street from the World Trade Center. As firefighters called in to report that people were jumping or falling from the upper floors, word went out to the city's Emergency Medical Service members to get to lower Manhattan.
After the second crash, as the smoke and debris in the air worsened, Paramedic Rodriguez scooped up two women who were having trouble walking. Paramedic O'Carroll grabbed an injured person who was upright but dazed. She recalled loading them into the ambulance. Horror in His Face "I was ready to pull out, but then I got out of the ambulance to ask the triage operator which hospital he was sending me to, because it's not my borough and I didn't know the area," she said. "I had my back to where the planes had hit, and I was facing him. I saw a look on his face, like horror; he went white. I turned around and saw the building falling." Paramedic O'Carroll took off running, but was knocked to the ground by falling debris. After she fell into the subway opening, she blacked out for several hours. As chunks of building rained down, her partner pulled the three patients into a nearby doorway, moments before the ambulance was crushed. Not three minutes earlier, just a few yards from where Paramedics O'Carroll and Rodriguez had been, Paramedic Gary Smiley and his partner had exited the Amex building near the Trade Center site and started toward the South Tower after being asked to set up a forward triage in the lobby. Working in the Dust The tower came down as they crossed the street, blanketing them in choking dust. The two made it back into the Amex building, where they continued to treat bystanders and first-responders. As the debris settled, the smell of gas filled the air. The group was moving its triage set-up to Vesey St. when a call came over the EMS radio.
He grabbed some other EMS workers and set off in search of his friends, hoping to track their location through the radio. Paramedic Smiley got as far as the north pedestrian bridge. 'The Building Exploded' "I heard a huge crack - they say it was the antennae on top of the building - and the second building exploded," he said. "I was sent flying by the force, and got blown underneath a truck on West St. I blacked out for I guess one or two hours. People have said they heard me on radio calling for help. I don't remember a thing. When I woke up, I started pulling myself out. And there was a firefighter, probably just dug himself out, who reached down to help me." Unlike his two friends, both of whom survived, Paramedic Smiley didn't retire after 9/11. Instead, he asked for more haz-mat training, and convinced the other members of his Fort Greene station to train with him. The 20-year EMS veteran will leave his specialty unit in six months, however, to join one of three new Urban Search & Rescue units the FDNY is creating. With the existing two, there will be one in every borough. The units have all the haz-mat training of other specialty units, combined with training in trench, confined space and collapsed building rescues. "I did think of retirement, to be honest. It went through my head," Mr. Smiley commented. "When you've been around a long time, like me, you get to know a lot of the guys. Two probie Firefighters who died - they'd just been stationed in my house. I knew the two paramedics who died. For a while I worked at Coney Island, always had a great relationship with the cops, so I knew some of them, too. It was rough." Paramedic Smiley credited the survivors' network with helping him deal with the emotional aftermath of 9/11. He maintains contact with many first-responders and said that support, along with his job, keeps him focused. "The people who flew those planes into the Twin Towers defeated some things for me for a while - I didn't fly in an airplane for three years," he said. "And I was pretty pissed that they'd instilled that fear in me. The whole point is to terrorize you, to make people afraid to do anything, and you can't let them do that. I'm happy now I can get on a plane and go somewhere with my kids." Rode With Firefighters Emergency Medical Technician Jim Scordus had the day off on 9/11 and was preparing to give a CPR class at a law firm in midtown when the news of the attack broke. A New York City Transit bus driver got him to 14th St., and from there he walked to a firehouse on Houston St., where firefighters from other companies were gearing up to respond. He hitched a ride down to Ground Zero with them. "I left them at Chambers and West Broadway, and I don't know what happened to them - I wish I could find them again but they were all from different units," said EMT Scordus. He spent the day searching for survivors, helping the wounded, trying to keep track of the many firefighters he knew from his working-class neighborhood in Staten Island. Familiar Faces "I ran into my priest that day - he married me and my wife - and then later I saw a firefighter friend, Vinny, he lives across the street from me," said Mr. Scordus. "I said to him, 'If you reach your wife, tell her to cross the street and tell my wife I'm okay, and I'll do the same if I reach my wife.''' EMT Scordus was running a triage on Church St. when the second tower came down. He dove into the Cosmopolitan Hotel on the corner for cover. For the next seven days, he was detailed to Ground Zero, and later, as the holiday season neared, he was assigned to the morgue. "I really pleaded with the department not to do that, but they said I was the senior guy, and there was nobody else," he stated. "I'm not going to retire, because this is the only job I know, but if I were coming in fresh today, yeah, I'd think twice about it. They knew we were a target - but I'm just getting my new [bunker gear], I'm just getting a mask. And now it comes out that the Federal Government lied to us about the air - it sucks." Many EMS members are worried about becoming sick with 9/11-related illnesses, and are equally concerned about their colleagues who already have symptoms. Three EMS workers have died since 9/11 of diseases their families and union believe to be linked to their time at Ground Zero. 'City Is Ungrateful' "Can it be that the city is so ungrateful to its heroes that it will challenge an unexplained illness in an otherwise healthy person who can prove they were there on 9/11?" asked Paramedic O'Carroll. "Five years later, what concerns me the most is that the children of EMS workers who die get the benefits they deserve and need. Sure, I'd love to see a memorial built to replace that big hole in the ground, but I'd rather see the workers who are sick treated with the respect and the dignity they deserve." Within hours of the collapse of the Twin Towers, as the FDNY, Police Department and Port Authority police frantically searched for survivors among the wreckage, New York City Transit dispatched a team of its workers to help with rescue and recovery operations. For the first days after 9/11, transit workers from the Maintenance of Way Division set up and ran the emergency generators that provided light for round-the- clock excavation. Transit workers operated 95 percent of the heavy machinery, and NYC Transit Telephone and Signal Maintainers wired significant amounts of the emergency communication network that was thrown together. Its mechanics kept the big machines running, and its bus drivers ferried first-responders in and out, and brought in food and supplies for workers. Part of Debris Detail Additionally, hundreds of transit employees came down after finishing their shifts with NYC Transit in the days and weeks after 9/11 to staff the bucket brigade, the painstaking work of sifting and passing debris from the Twin Towers. Jay Carrasco, a Track Worker in the MOW Division, remembered being welcomed by the firefighters and other emergency workers when he and a team of others showed up after finishing their morning shifts the day after 9/11. "We know how to dig, because we do a lot of that type of work. We came with our own shovels, our own tools and we had a sense of purpose in coming there," said Mr. Carrasco. "It was physically taxing, but more emotional than anything else. I had friends who lost siblings, guys who lost wives. We just wanted to find survivors so badly - we all worked with the hope that we could find somebody and bring them out of that rubble." John Samuelsen, a Track Inspector and former officer for Transport Workers' Union Local 100, showed up at the pile early Sept. 12, after walking from Chinatown with another track worker. He came to help, but also to search for his cousin Michael, a firefighter stationed at the firehouse at Rogers and Flatbush Aves. in Brooklyn who had been reported missing the previous afternoon. A Helpless Feeling "I was frantic. I couldn't sleep. I grew up with Michael, and knew a lot of the guys in his house," said Mr. Samuelsen. "I couldn't think of what to do, so I threw on my clothes and just came." As he worked the pile, Mr. Samuelsen quizzed every firefighter he came across about his cousin's unit. Some of the members perished in the collapse. But his cousin, who had been separated from his colleagues amid the chaos, survived. Mr. Samuelsen stayed on the pile for two days, joined also by Kevin McCawley, a transit Telephone Maintainer. Both men recalled seeing hundreds of yellow, gray, blue and red NYC Transit hats, each color denoting a different unit. Mr. McCawley said everyone was anxious to help the firefighters and police officers. A group of NYC Transit workers even went below ground and tried to get to the site via the underground subway tunnels. Hopes Quickly Fades "We were kind of thinking that, just like in an earthquake, there might be some survivors who found a little space, a little pocket with some air, and we had to get to them," said Mr. McCawley. "But when we got down there, you could see that part of the tower had pierced the tunnels, and the debris and the steel, it was just packed in there. I don't think there was room for a dime. That's when we started to realize nobody could have survived." Mr. McCawley said the response from the transit workers - most of whom came down of their own accord - was mirrored in other non-emergency workers. "There were all sorts of workers who came down to help that day, but transit
was there in high numbers," he said. "I think every worker wanted to do
something to help the Fire Department and the cops. When you work for the city,
you understand that when one agency needs help, you step up. It's part of the
job." | |||||||||
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