9/11/2001
I remember being a senior in high school and seeing the events unfold on TV while in gym class picking our sport for the quarter. Everyone was stunned (obviously), but when the plane hit the second tower many people still couldn’t connect the dots that it was AQ declaring war on the US…it seemed I was the only one who remembered the 1993 WTC bombing.
146 miles away from me, my good friend Mark was on a “bus” (yes, that slang is used in real life and not just on the various Law & Order TV shows). As an FDNY Paramedic, he was one of the first on the scene, and got there before the first collapse. He still remembers the strong smell of burning building material and the complete silence (aside from sirens) when 2 WTC collapsed.
Here is a great thread to read on Arfcom (AR15.com) written by an FDNY Firefighter; unfortunately, the hosted pics are gone but it’s an excellent account of those first hours:
If you’re reading from an employer or coffee shop that blocks gun related forums, here’s the first post: (Warning: It contains some pretty graphic details if you have a weak constitution.)
—Matt
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(Disclaimer: Do NOT take this as a “historical” record. “Time” at that point, was an elastic concept. To this day, I still have trouble lining shit up in a neat little row. It all gets… jumbled. But, everything I say, did happen.)
September 10th was a great night. My house was a pretty busy place, but that night was quiet. We had a good meal, and afterward, a bunch of us stayed up really late, BS’ing in the kitchen.
Almost like we knew. (Not that I believe in that kind of stuff.)
The morning of September 11th, I was a lazy sack. No joke. More often than not, when you work a 24, you work from 6PM to 6PM. In the morning, you gotta get up and check the rig, do your thing, for the day tour. I was so tired. I knew there was at least one bop coming in, so I slept late. I was lying in the rack, staring at the ceiling, dreading having to get up for roll-call when someone got on the bitch box.
“The World Trade Center is on fire.”
Well, I popped out of my bunk like I had a firecracker in my ass when I heard that. It’s not something you hear every day. The Trade Center is never “on fire.” Just doesn’t happen.
ETA: Like a lot of other guys, I ran the fuck downstairs to the housewatch booth to see what was going on. And, I fucking knew, right away. By then, they were saying on the TV that a small plane had hit Tower 1. Bullshit. I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I can count. That was a big hole.
Someone asked me, “What do you think?” I said, “The worst pilot, on his worst day, doesn’t hit the Trade Center by accident.” After a few minutes, I gave a nod to a buddy of mine. “Follow me.” That sort of thing. And I took off for the kitchen. And I started eating. I was pulling everything I could find out of the refrigerator and stuffing my face. My buddy was like, “What are you doing?” I told him, “Eat. Now. We aren’t gonna get to eat again for a long time.” We were alone in the kitchen, eating like animals when the second plane hit. We watched it live. I went to the sink, cleaned my plate, and put in in the dishwasher. Then, I went out to the apparatus floor and started putting my bunker pants on. I was just getting the suspenders over my shoulders when the tones went off, and we were off to Manhattan.
ETA: We decided to go into the city by way of the Grand Central. We figured, stay away from lower Manhattan. Go over the Tri-Borough, take 125th across town and then go down the West Side.
Let me tell you, it was a fucking tower of smoke. I thought of Tom Sizemore in “Strange Days.” “They’ll see the fucking smoke in Canada.” That’s what it was like. My buddy was flipping because his closest friend was a PA cop who worked at the Trade Center. I did every thing I could to pump up his spirits. I was listening to the radio (No, FDNY rigs don’t have radios, but if you have guys that are “handy” in the house, they wire one in. We had AM/FM and a CD player on our backstep.) and I was telling him that I heard reports of folks getting down from high floors, so he shouldn’t worry. (Guess he should have. His friend was killed in the collapse of Tower 2.)
ETA: Now, you can’t believe what the Grand Central was like. People were fucking stopping, on the fucking highway, to watch, and we had to get around all that shit. In any case, as we were responding, the dispatcher re-directed us to to MSU (Mask Service Unit) on Randals Island. Our mission, (should we choose to accept) it was to pick up as many Scott bottles as we could and bring them with us. They were expecting extended operations. So, at the bridge, we jumped off to go to the Island and get bottles.
It was a fucked up scene. One thing I always loved about the FDNY was that we never got shaken. We could take anything in stride. At MSU… guys were frantic. They were literally throwing bottles at us. Bottles in the hose bed, bottles in every compartment, you name it. As we were loading up, my friend ****, the chauffeur, calls out, “BOSS!” On our job, lieutenants and captains are often referred to as “Boss.” It’s a term of endearment. “They’re saying Tower 2 just collapsed.” Everyone stopped. Collapsed? What the fuck does that mean? Then, **** says, “I dunno, they’re saying total collapse.” An interesting day just got more interesting.
ETA: So, “total collapse.” Whatever the fuck that means. We finished loading, and got ready to leave. As we were pulling away, my friend ***** says, “Wait, the chauffeur’s compartment!” And so, we backed up, and loaded up more bottles. (This is something that becomes VERY important later on.) And then off we went. Now, I have to say… I wasn’t afraid. No, I’m not a tough guy. I’m not a 10 foot tall beast man that bathes in vodka and feeds his babies shrimp scampi. (I’ll give you a dollar if you identify the reference.) The reason I wasn’t afraid was because it was all so… surreal. Shit like that simply DIDN’T. HAPPEN. I didn’t know what to think. But… whatever was waiting for us, I figured we could handle it. We always had before, right?
ETA: So, after MSU, traffic was a little better, and we blast into Manhattan. Now, some of this shit is starting to sink in. I mean, this is fucking real. This is my life. But again, I’m like, “Fuck it.” Shit, we’re the FDNY. We rock. In the fire fighting game, being a member of a large metro department like Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Miami, Dallas… that’s like playing baseball in the major leagues. Being a member of the FDNY? Fuck, that’s like playing for the Yankees. I’m Babe Ruth, and I’m working with DiMaggio. We WILL handle this. Well… not so much. We got down to the Trade Center… and it was just about as bad as anything I’ve ever seen.
Remember those jumpers you saw on TV? Well, the networks censored your reality. Tower 1 was fucking RAINING bodies. It was, without question, the most heart wrenching, tragic, awful, thing I’ve ever seen. You’re reading this. I’m telling you this. And yet…. you have no clue. It was fucking… BAD. It’s one of those moments that I wish I could “un-remember.” My dad is a retired fireman, and he had to go out the window once when a job went sideways. Afterward, he told me… runcible, I didn’t care if I was on the second floor, or the 50th… I was GOING. It’s better to fall than to burn. To this day, I try very, VERY, fucking hard to not think about what those folks went through.
ETA: Okay, where were we? Oh yeah, we were “there,” as it were. So, we get off the rig, and my boss… the best lieutenant I’ve ever worked with… a man in his 50’s… that I trust, implicitly, with my life, who is going to get me out this if anyone could… looks around, like it’s a day in the park, and says, Okay, you do this, and you do that, and then, let’s head in… Now, you have to understand, the training wheels had fallen off of the world… and this man was cool as ice. It was like he DIDN’T FUCKING NOTICE THE WORLD TRADE CENTER BURNING BEHIND HIM.
(I know a lot of guys here are military, and have seen combat… have you had an officer like that? A guy like that does wonders for morale.)
So, I started puling our EMS gear off the rig, because I figured folks were gonna be fucked up. And, I made sure that my flashlight was working, and that my gear was all tight…
And that was when I saw the kid.
He was maybe 20 or so, and he was looking at me, mouth agape. Looked at me like I had two heads. And I looked a him, winked, and said, “Hell of a day, huh?” I’m 44, and that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever done or said. I’ll bet he tells that story to this day.
ETA: You want to hear the story of the collapse, don’t you? Well, here it is…We were gearing up, and suddenly, I got afraid. A bit. Suddenly, I started having a conversation with a voice in my head. A voice that sounded a lot like my voice.
Voice: You know, don’t you?
runcible: Yeah, I know.
Voice: You okay with it?
runcible: I guess. Lot of stuff I wanted to do, though.
Voice: But, what are you going to do?
runcible: I’ll do my job until I die.
Voice: Good. Just don’t embarrass your father.
runcible: Never.
And that’s kind of “it”… isn’t it? Some dumb fuck walking off to die. Not sure exactly how to describe that. I wasn’t brave. It was just my job. I don’t know that I can really tell you what that felt like. It was quiet, I’ll tell you that.
ETA: And then the building fell down. Right in front of us. We fucking watched it.And, I knew that I had to say something meaningful, so…I pulled off my glove and said, “MOTHERFUCKERS!” And then I punched the rig. And then I punched it again. And again.
ETA: Well, shit runcible… then what? Well folks, there was lots of dust. One of the stranger stories you’ll hear about 9/11… I ran into the cloud, looking for… anybody. Fuck, I just wanted to pull anyone out. First person I hit? A guy from my firehouse. Yep. Ran right into him. (The truck in our house had gone into Manhattan before us.) Ran right into *****… grabbed him and said, “This way!” He just looked at me and said, “We just lost half the fucking department.”
And, you know what, I KNEW he was right. Now, I’m no pussy, but I backed off from the cloud. I really felt I’d be better able to help if I stayed out of that shit. It was bad. Then… the cops came… and we all had to run.
ETA: So, the cops came and we had to run? Yeah… fucking “suspicious packages” everywhere. Car bombs, suicide bombers, shit it was like MW3… “Suicide bombers with C4 strapped to them in your location.” We heard EVERYTHING! Terrorists hit Camp David, the Eiffel Tower… car bombs in DC… you name it. And, at that point, it all seemed plausible. Finally though, I was like… Lou, fuck this, I’m not running anymore. This is bullshit. Have you ever had to sprint in bunker gear, with a Scott bottle on? Fuck that. Time to hold up, and figure our next move, to which he agreed. But… what was our next move?
ETA: Well guys, this is where my story starts to suck. Truth is, there was NO next move. See, we were on the clock, the chiefs could tell us what to to do. So, we were held back… while lots of off-duty guys ran in and worked. But hey, the Red Cross gave us soup. In the end… did it matter? No. Everyone was dead. But… did runcible want to get in there and do his thing? Of course. And guess what? In the the next few weeks and months… runcible would get to do his thing. A lot.Wanna know how that went? Well, if you care… I’ll tell ‘ya.
ETA: Okay bitches, let’s get this back on track. So, the World Trade Center fell down. And, we had to dig. A lot. Lots of buckets. How do you feel about buckets? Me? I could take or leave them. All I know is… every once in a bit… you get something horrible in your bucket. Shovels were better. But then… shovels could fuck you too. Had a shovel at one point, and I kind of froze. And my boss, Capt. ******* said, “runcible, you okay?” And I said, “No Cap, I think I found a face.” And… that’s exactly what it was. (And that’s exactly what I said, too.) Hanging off the end of my shovel was a fucking face. Have you ever dug up a face? Eye holes, nose hole, mouth…
But… THIS WAS A FUCKING FACE… ON MY SHOVEL.
At some point, just recently, this was attached to someone’s fucking head. Now it’s on my goddamn shovel. So, I had to stand there, while folks came and put in a bag. A FACE. Oh no… no, no, no… I DID NOT sign up for this shit.
ETA: One of the toughest things about working on the pile, was working with “The Dads”… as I always thought of them. Retired firemen, digging, hoping to find a piece of their son. You felt humbled when you worked with one of these guys. NO ONE worked harder, longer, dug more… than these guys.
I can’t imagine what it was like for them.