EVERYTHING CHANGED
The camera meeting I was in that had started at 8:30 am was still going when the first plane hit. We were in the basement of a 150-year-old synagogue in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, on Norfolk Street just off of Houston. When the first plane hit we were told and as we continued our meeting, we thought it was a poor errant sightseer who was blown into the Twin Towers. When the second plane hit, we knew that was wrong.
The show was “ Life 360", a new series produced by ABC for PBS. The director was the director of World News Tonight. When we watched the tape of the second plane impacting- only a few moments old at that point, the pager was beeping incessantly for the director to call in. No cell service or land lines were working. I ran outside with a few other crew members and we walked up to Houston, and from there saw the huge holes in the side of the Twin Towers. I went to my car to get my E.M.T. jumpsuit.
The director called a meeting and canceled the show immediately. The cameras were to be returned quickly to the remote truck, and the entire equipment package now belonged to ABC News for use on coverage. Anyone willing to work on that coverage was asked to stay. He could see that I already had my jumpsuit on the table, and he pointed to me, saying “ You, leave now.” He knew I wasn’t going to be involved with this event as a cameraman.
I walked away from the Steadicam knowing that it would be fairly secure inside the synagogue. The owner lives in the place, and lots of other gear was left in there. I ran for my car and got my jump bag and Oxygen tank bag, and walked west on Houston street. I had bought myself a badge when I passed my EMT Test and got my certification. It has the state seal of NY on it, and my Dept. Of Health EMT number in large numbers. It was mostly what we call a Buff thing; an item that is more a show of pride in what we do than a practical item of work. It turned out to save me heartache, walking and stress. It gained me access and IMMEDIATE recognition faster than almost all of the other Non-NYC EMS workers I met. It served the purpose very well, and I was glad to have it hooked on the breast pocket of my jumpsuit. At Broadway, I stopped and kept an eye on the ambulances that were speeding down with lights and sirens going. One driver saw me and slowed, rolling down his window. He yelled out to me to ask if I was looking for work, and I said yes. He let me hop on, and I worked with Citywide Ambulances for a few hours. We headed down Broadway, and stopped north of City Hall. In an intersection we were stopped by NYPD because there were victims there. I first worked on an NYPD officer who was sitting on the ground, in the midst of an athsma attack. Virtually all of the people we saw were coated with a thick layer of grayish flakes, stuck to their hair and faces and clothing. This was the ash and dust kick-up from when the buildings had gone down just a few minutes before.
I got the officer into the bus and then had two women walk up to me. Karen had lacerations to her right upper arm; perhaps a 2 inch long 1 inch deep gash. Her other wounds were superficial. Her eyes were deeply irritated, red and weepy. Her friend Theresa had a scalp hematoma with swelling, adjoining a scalp laceration that was fairly small but bleeding profusely. I tended Theresa first, since the NYPD lady cop was on the bus’s O2 and doing better. I wrapped gauze squares against her scalp to contain the bleeding with pressure, and cleaned her other cuts and scrapes. In addition to those two women, I was also keeping an eye on the woman we had in the stretcher. She was in severe respiratory distress, futilely sucking on an inhaler and diaphoretic. I took turns with the other EMT yelling at her to keep her conscious. Straddling the stretcher and rendering care to the three patients I had at once was something I’d never imagined having to do.
After we dropped them off at St. Vincent’s, we went back for more. We only had two patients this time, but having severe athsma problems. When we got them to the E.R., I was out of oxygen, and the crew I’d jumped on with was being dispatched up town. I got off their bus and thanked them for letting me ride along.
I wanted to find a cascade system to re-fill my O2 tank, and learned then that in NYC, they have filled bottles delivered. They don’t USE a cascade system. I either had to ditch my tank ( which isn’t my property, it belongs to my ambulance corps.), or find some way to re-fill. While I stood near the E.R. entrance to St. Vincent’s, a firefighter walked by. He asked me what was up, and I told him. He said his station would have spare tanks, and he flagged down an NYPD van that was tearing up the street with lights and sirens going. He and I got a very fast ride all the way across town to like 4th ave and 13th st. It was there that I was told no, they had no spares. Now I was back out of it, and had a long walk ahead of me to get back to it.
I made it to the first traffic light. There I saw a large panel truck with it’s back door up. It was filled with people, almost all sitting down. There must have been 25 people crammed into this truck’s back area. I ran up to it, and climbed in. They were all very kind- I was clearly doing EMS work and they had supportive things to say. I was fed Coke and some strawberries, and dropped off at St. Vincent’s by them. They were headed out of town, to the Bronx.
It was there that I got onto a FDNY ambulance. The EMS service in NYC was folded into the Fire Department a few years ago, and so they are the “official” city EMS service. When you call 911, you most likely would see one of their crews. I walked up to one and asked if they needed a hand. In I went, and we did a few more calls down close to the Site, picking up people who were sitting or standing in the streets, either hurt or just having such trouble breathing because of the dense matter in the air. Not only the Jet-A fuel burning, but the dust clouds billowing up made it hard to breathe.
For a while we had other EMT’s and Paramedic’s in the back. I was sitting next to one man, and I asked him how he was doing since he was sitting there very quietly. He said, “ I lost my bus ( ambulance), my partner and my radio” and he gestured towards an empty radio holster. I figured that he meant that he’d lost his crew because he jumped onto another ambulance during calls, and now he’d lost his radio and couldn’t find out where his people were. I asked if that was what he meant, and he said, “ No…I mean, I LOST my bus and my partner”. When the first plane hit, his crew was in the area. Triage area was set up immediately on Vesey Street. That is the street bordering the WTC to the north. There was a line of fire trucks, ambulances and MCI ( Mass Casualty Incident ) vehicles being staged there, when the first tower came down.
He had been sent to run for some supplies, and so was not with his partner in their ambulance, when it was destroyed by the falling tower. He literally lost his bus and his partner. I didn’t know what to say to the man. Saying “ I’m sorry” somehow seemed very inadequate. And yet he needed to keep working. It seemed the be the rule of the day- if you were walking and working, you kept on doing so even if you knew you had lost someone else in the attack.
We wound up being staged at the Chelsea Piers, in long lines. Volunteer crews from all around NY and NJ and Conn were showing up, and were mixed in with the FDNY ambulances. Everyone was showing up and wanted to help. ( This became a problem later on, and as of this writing- 9/14/01- is still a problem at the site. ). I stood with the crew I’d been with for about an hour, and then I started to think about how things were going at that point.
Several times during my time at the sites, I got the same feeling and tried to act according to that feeling. I have to describe this carefully. In the initial hours, all hands were desperately needed and so I was accepted into other people’s work environments, their ambulances- out of pure need. That was great, it was what I assumed would happen. But, by about 2 p.m. on Tuesday, we were all staged there at the Piers and I began to feel as though I was an outsider with the FDNY crew. For one thing, they could be sent out on a regular 911 call at any moment. For another thing, the trips downtown had passed and lacking any work, I was standing with strangers as they talked about their crews, bosses, etc. They were all TOTALLY professional and kind in their attitudes towards me, but I figured that I ought to thank them for having me along and find other work to do before the crew chief had to gently tell me that I had to not go along with them on their next call.
My instincts were right, because when I went to her and shook her hand, and thanked her, she looked VERY relieved that I’d taken the initiative there and saved her the embarrassment. I just felt like it was unprofessional to hang on at that point. I went inside of the Chelsea Piers, which at that point were still just about completely unsecured.
The Piers are a multi-use area. There are film stages, sports areas, an ice hockey rink, etc. “Law & Order” shoots there but luckily was dark this week. Two immense sound stages were empty, wall to wall. Air conditioned and huge, they were the perfect field hospital site. Supplies were already pouring in from the FDNY EMS Supply people, and so I attached myself to the supply guy and he got me going with stuff to set up an Oxygen Therapy station. I learned how to use some gear I’d not seen before, and was in the Basic Life Support room. After an hour or two of that, I realized that I wanted to be on the other side, where a Trauma Operating Room was being staged. I thought that would be more interesting. I’d no idea if EMT’s were needed in there, but I walked over and started helping to set up the tables.