FRIDAY
September 14th saw more steps back to normalcy. President Bush journeyed to New York City, to Ground Zero, where he stood atop the wreckage and spoke to rescuers using a bullhorn.
Dan Bartlett, deputy communications director, White House: The real change in the president, in my opinion, didn’t actually happen until that Friday, when he traveled to New York. The situation on Tuesday, you really didn’t have time to reflect. In New York, the range of emotions that he went through—standing on the rubble, the bullhorn moment—but just as important, when he sat there in that room in private and met with those people who were still trying to learn the whereabouts of their loved ones, and hugging them.
Robert Beckwith, retired firefighter, FDNY: We kept working, and all of a sudden we heard the president was coming. I saw a couple of guys put their shovels down, and go out to the street. So I went out to the street. I see this pumper that we found—it was 76 Engine—and nobody was standing on it, so I jumped up. Right across the street was the command post. It was a tent with microphones all set up in front of it.
The president came right in front of me, and put his arm up. I grabbed his arm, I pulled him up—he’s only got a little spot, 12 inch by 12 inch—and I turned him around. I said, “You okay, Mr. President?” and he said, “Yeah.” Then he put his arm around my shoulder, and there he was with the megaphone, and he was talking, and talking to our right side. The guys on the other side, on the left side, were yelling, “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” Then they stopped, and they said, “We can’t hear you!” He turned and said, “Well, I can hear you. The whole world hears you, and when we find these people who knocked these buildings down, they’ll hear all of us soon.” Everybody melted.
Lt. Col. Rob Grunewald, information management officer, U.S. Army, Pentagon: Friday, to me, was mental anguish. Our office was having a muster formation at the AMC movie theater nearby. We were going to get together and the senior leaders of the army were going to come talk to us. Everyone who was physically capable was going to go. To see all the wounded and injured people, it was horrible—people with their arms bandaged, people on crutches, people in wheelchairs, people with burns to their scalps. A friend of mine, Ann Parham, the army librarian, just had her head wrapped up, bandaged on her ears that had burned. It was a terrible, terrible thing to see.
We got into the movie theater and what was left of the leadership—because the plane came in and took out the senior leaders of [the army personnel office, known as “G-1”], including General Maude. His wife, Teri Maude, got up and gave a speech. It was remarkable. We were all blabbering and blubbering idiots, and she was strong as strong could be.
That was why that day was the hardest, because not only were you seeing all these badly burned and broken bodies, but every few minutes you would hear of another person who was unaccounted for, another person who was confirmed deceased, another person who was in the hospital, badly burned. It was very, very difficult to get your hands around what was going on and the magnitude of this.
Linda Krouner, senior vice president, Fiduciary Trust, South Tower: That Friday was my birthday. There’s a woman from my firm—Carmen Rivera—who was my trust officer on many accounts, and so I spoke to her a lot. She had a young family, and she was one of these beautiful younger women. She had the most engaging smile. My daughter wanted to give me a birthday present by locating Carmen Rivera and telling me that she was alive. She looked through different websites with her friends, but they searched and searched and they didn’t find her.
Ali Millard, whose stepfather, Port Authority executive director Neil Levin, was killed in the attack: The Friday after September 11, there was a candlelight vigil, and a bunch of friends of mine were sitting on the sidewalk. My friend Lani said, “Ali, don’t think of it as you losing a person; think of it as you gaining an angel.” I don’t really believe in angels or the afterlife, but the way I interpreted what Lani said was that people are only put on earth for a certain amount of time, and you’re lucky to get to know them for as long as you do.
SATURDAY
Lisa Jefferson, Verizon Airfone supervisor: I was concerned because [United Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer] wanted me to call his wife and relay the information to her. I didn’t know how to call her and how would I tell her this, being a stranger. It didn’t sound right by me to call her and say, “Hello, Lisa. This is Lisa. I spoke to your husband.” I talked to the FBI and they told me not to mention anything, not to contact her until they finished their investigation. I told them I wouldn’t. All the while, I was thinking, How would I contact her? What would I say?
The FBI got back in touch with me on Friday and told me that I could call her. We contacted the United Airlines crisis team member who was in contact with Lisa Beamer and told him that when she was ready to talk, she could call me at home or at work.
We faxed the letter over to United on Friday evening. My phone rang at about 10:00 a.m. Saturday morning. It was Lisa. She said, “I understand you spoke to my husband.” I totally froze. I didn’t expect her to call. I wasn’t thinking about it at that time. I said, “Yes,” and I said, “Are you ready to talk?” She said, “Yes.” We sat and we talked. I told her everything her husband told me to tell her.
Lisa Beamer, wife of United Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer: As much as obviously 9/11 was traumatic for people like myself, for someone like Lisa, it was also a life-changing event. We keep in touch periodically to catch up and see how we’re doing. We probably will continue to do that. The first couple of days after 9/11, not knowing the facts around what happened on that flight, not knowing what Todd’s role was, was difficult. Having all that concrete information from Lisa, as well as Todd’s final message to us was a great encouragement.
Mary Dettloff, communications staff, Michigan legislature: I remember my partner and I watched nothing but CNN for days until I couldn’t take it anymore. I finally broke away on a Saturday and went for a walk in a nature area near Jackson, Michigan. I remember a plane flew overhead while I was out there and I just stopped and watched it. I did that for a long time after 9/11—watched the planes fly over our house.
Adm. James Loy, commandant, U.S. Coast Guard: Maybe the fourth or fifth day, it dawned on me that the church at the end of Wall Street, Trinity Church, was within spitting distance of the Tower site and was part of the rest of the city that was deluged in debris. I sat in my office for a second and said, “Alexander Hamilton is buried in that cemetery.” He’s considered the founder of the modern-day Coast Guard because he established its predecessor, the Revenue Cutter Service. I couldn’t stand the notion that he and his headstone were probably inundated with debris.
I called Master Chief Vince Patton into the office and I said, “Vince, I need you to get some senior enlisted folks from the captain of the Port of New York’s office. I know they’re up to their ass in alligators right now, but we’ve got to go fix that.” He got a senior chief in New York on the phone. They went and began the cleanup of the entire Trinity Church yard. The word got out to the Trade Center site, and people, after finishing their unbelievably difficult work for a 12-hour cycle, came over and joined with these Coast Guard people to finish the job. I was damned if I could go to sleep that night without doing something about it.
SUNDAY
Tracy Donahoo, transit officer, NYPD: The mayor had said for people to resume their lives, start shopping, and support New York City. The Sunday after, I remember working on Fulton Street again. People were coming down, and they said, “Oh, I wanna go shopping at Century 21 [department store].” I would say, “There is no Century 21 right now.” They said, “Oh, but the mayor said we can go shopping.” “There’s no Century 21 at this point. There’s no Brooks Brothers, there’s nothing at that area. He means go to 34th Street, shop there, and have a nice lunch.”
On Sunday, September 16th, President Bush spoke to the press after a weekend war council meeting at Camp David. He noted the resiliency of the American spirit and that the New York Stock Exchange would reopen Monday after its first prolonged closure since the Great Depression.
George W. Bush, president: The markets open tomorrow, people go back to work, and we’ll show the world.
THE COMING WEEKS
For nearly two weeks, the rescue effort at Ground Zero continued around the clock as firefighters, police officers, rescue workers, other first responders, and skilled tradesmen hunted for signs of the missing. Finally, on September 24, Mayor Giuliani announced there was no further hope of survivors.
Capt. Joe Downey, Squad Company 18, FDNY, and son of Ray Downey, FDNY head of special operations: Chuck [Downey, my brother] and I, we didn’t leave the site for the first five or six days. We stayed there. We slept on the floors, we slept wherever we could find a bunk. We wanted to be there, in case we did find him.
Lt. Mickey Kross, Engine 16, FDNY: September 15th or something like that was my first night here. When I saw the site, it was at night, I saw the red glow, the smoke, and it was pouring rain. It felt like I was going into hell. I said, “Oh, jeez, maybe I made a big mistake coming here.” After a few hours, it was a job again. We were looking for people, and I was back to work. From that point, I got better. I came back to reality.
Det. David Brink, Emergency Service Unit, Truck 3, NYPD: We would go down there with either steel rakes, we’d go down with shovels. We had plastic, five-gallon buckets that we were using to remove some of the debris. We’d also have little shovels and hand picks because oftentimes the only body fragments that we’d find were very, very small.
Lt. Mickey Kross: It was very long hours. It was cold. It was very demanding. When we first got here there was no setup for food or shelter. They didn’t even have coffee. We were out in the rain all night, soaking wet. Eventually, they got it together and became better and better. The Red Cross came. They opened up the big tent and they had cots, and St. Paul’s Church opened up and they had food.
Joe Esposito, chief of department, NYPD: If you were on the outside, you were wearing a heavy coat. If you were handling the bucket brigade, we circulated people closer and closer. As you got closer and closer and closer to this pit that you were taking pails out full of debris, it got warmer and warmer. When you were ultimately the first guy in there, you were in your T-shirt because it was on fire. It was like you were in an oven.
Sgt. Joe Alagna, aide to the chief, NYPD: You didn’t even realize how dangerous it was. They would dig down and there’d be a void and you could see the beams glowing. They were still on fire and we were standing on top of it. It was tedious, hard work, and nobody complained.
Lt. Mickey Kross: They became my new family, the people that worked there: the firefighters, the police officers, the volunteers.
Det. David Brink: The fire department would take a sector. The NYPD Emergency Service Unit would take another sector, along with Port Authority and the corrections emergency service units. We also had the construction trades that were down here—heavy equipment operators, the operating engineers, the steel guys. I was very thankful for those guys because they had the heavy equipment that could help us do our jobs.
Norma Hardy, officer, PATH Command, PAPD: It always seemed dark, even when it was daytime. You did whatever had to be done when you got there. Even though there were hundreds and hundreds of people, machines, people talking, and rescue dogs—it still seemed very quiet and very still a lot of nights that we were out there.
Bill Spade, firefighter, Rescue 5, FDNY: Then the funerals started. You would go to a wake for either one or two days, and then the funeral. Everybody had a job, whether you were a pallbearer, gave a eulogy, or just stood in formation outside the church. It was very draining. With my injuries I could hardly stand, but I stood for every one out of respect.
On days when I wasn’t going for guys in my firehouse, I was going for other firemen, whoever was on Staten Island being buried, go to their wake or funeral. I tried to do even two-a-days sometimes. That became my life—besides seeing the doctors on the other days—for three months. I remember looking over the list of the 343 firemen and realizing that I knew 85 of them by first name.
Kenneth Escoffery, firefighter, Ladder 20, FDNY: It was a wake one day, a funeral the next day. Every week. Just for the 14 guys that responded from my house, that was more than enough. I would say that the average fireman probably went to 25, 30 funerals, not even counting the wakes. It got to the point where a lot of guys got burnt out. After a month or two, you had to shut down.
Tracy Claus, wife of Cantor Fitzgerald survivor Matt Claus: There were days we went to four [funerals] and could have gone to six. Matt didn’t sleep for a long while, so I didn’t sleep. I had a two-and-a-half-year-old at the time. From the chaos that was in our house, my daughter started to stutter. She started having nightmares. She said Daddy works in buildings that fall down.
Anthony R. Whitaker, WTC commander, PAPD, North Tower lobby: Four days a week, I used to stand in front of Banana Republic at the World Trade Center, probably for half an hour, between 8:30 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. I greeted people every morning, four days a week, for 28 months—thousands of people. One thing that really bothers me is that I don’t know what happened to all those many faces that I used to wave at. In the Daily News, they ran spreads of photographs. One of the things that hurt me was that I recognized almost 80 percent of those people.
Thomas Von Essen, commissioner, FDNY: The emptiness from the losses that day has never left me, not for a moment.
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Similar rescue and recovery efforts continued at the Pentagon. The fire and collapse so damaged the impact zone that it took expert urban search-and-rescue teams days of extensive, painstaking work to shore up the area before interior searches could resume. The Arlington County Fire Department didn’t turn over control of the site to the FBI until September 21, and the FBI spent more than a week searching and securing the scene before returning it to the military’s control on October 2.
Thomas O’Connor, special agent, FBI: We didn’t actually get into the building for several days. Chief [James] Schwartz and the firefighters were in charge of the entire event. The firefighting going on inside the building went on for a lot longer than people realize. The urban search-and-rescue teams were the ones that were shoring up the building to a point where we could go in and then we would do recoveries.
Jean O’Connor, special agent, FBI: The first time I went in, I literally had a rope tied around my waist so I would be able to find my way back out of the building because the debris piles were so high and there was no pattern necessarily, no logical pattern.
James Schwartz, assistant chief for operations, Arlington County Fire Department: The arrangement was that you reported for duty at our training academy, and we bused you to the incident scene. Then at the end of your work period, you were taken back to the training academy. What we didn’t account for was—in a similar vein to New York—people didn’t want to go home. People would go back to the training academy, get dropped off by the bus, get in their personal vehicle, and drive back to the Pentagon. They’d get right back in and go right back to work.
Staff Sgt. Robert Walker, special agent, Office of Special Investigations, U.S. Air Force: That first week, we were there 14-, 16-hour days, long enough to go home, strip off the jeans and stuff we had, grab a couple hours’ sleep, and come back.
Thomas O’Connor: We were pretty new to our neighborhood there, maybe a year or so. It was amazing, people were bringing food over. At first we said, “We don’t really need anything.” But when you have three hours to get home, shower, wash your clothes, get to sleep, get back up, get dressed, go, then when somebody brings over a sleeve of hamburgers, it made a huge difference. Somebody took our dog for almost the whole month that we were there. Kids were coming by, walking the dog, small things like that that really made a difference.
Staff Sgt. Robert Walker: The debris and such was loaded into these long dumpsters and then taken to the North Parking Lot, which we called the Rubble Pit, the Rubble Pile. The trucks would come and they would spread out this debris. They had cadaver dogs go over them, and if there were any remains in the rubble, they would photograph it, tag it, identify it—evidence—and have it taken over to the makeshift morgue that we had set up at the Pentagon. From there, we led some teams to go through the pile. We were actually separating—was it equipment like telephones, computer systems, was it personal items, personal equipment, was it classified information, personal books? Was it airplane parts? It was very labor intensive.
Lt. Jim Daly, Arlington County Police Department: I remember going home, and my wife coming up and asking me how things were. I said, “Well, I found a femur bone and found a bunch of other personal belongings.” I remember my son coming up because I had put him to bed—he was five, and he heard the word “bones,” and he said, “Daddy, are there bones in that plane?” I said, “There were chickens, chicken bones in that plane.” He looked at me with a real quizzical look and he asked, “There were chickens on that plane?”
John F. Irby, director, Federal Facilities Division, Real Estate and Facilities Directorate, Washington Headquarters Services, Pentagon: It took a month before we got back to what we could call reasonably normal. That was more redefining normal than getting back to normal.
Philip Smith, branch chief, U.S. Army, Pentagon: For a long time in the Pentagon, the smells of the fire were there to remind you of what had occurred.
Sheila Denise Moody, accountant, Resource Services Office, Pentagon: It’s still to this day—and will forever be—a miracle to me that I’m still alive. I was in the hospital up until October 4th. I had skin grafts on my hands, but the rest of my body pretty much healed fairly well. I still have pretty severe burns, scars on my arms and on my back. But amazingly enough, my face healed pretty well.
* * *
In Pennsylvania, investigators worked tirelessly, often feeling that their efforts were overlooked by the nation.
David Zacur, special agent, FBI: For the next three weeks at that crash site, they brought in excavators. They started to dig it out.
Tony James, investigator, FAA: We found the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder somewhere around 25 or 27 feet. We stopped digging, I think, at 32 feet. We never did find what the FBI was actually looking for: the cockpit. That had disintegrated.
Andrea Dammann, special agent, Evidence Response Team, FBI: We’d leave the site and watch the news at night, and you’d see all these photos from all the other sites. Our colleagues would ask, “Well, how come we’re not getting attention?” It’s like, “Because we’re not at a place they can see us all the time.” But we were the ones who are actually recovering things important to the investigation. People were a little hurt by the fact that we weren’t getting the same attention, because we didn’t have the great loss of life that you had in the World Trade Center or the Pentagon.
* * *
Even as the U.S. launched a war in Afghanistan aimed at destroying al-Qaeda, the terror group responsible for the attack, in October 2001 the victims, coworkers, and family members affected by the attack tried to bring a sense of normalcy back to their lives, though returning to “normal” often required a redefinition of “normal.”
Rosemary Dillard, Washington, D.C., base manager, American Airlines, and wife of Flight 77 passenger Eddie Dillard: Eddie loved history, and when I was offered the job here in Washington, he was so excited because of the history, the things we were going to get to see, the changing of the leaves. We moved here in February 2001. He didn’t get to see the changing of the leaves.
Harry Waizer, tax counsel, Cantor Fitzgerald, North Tower, 104th floor, was burned over 35 percent of his body: It was many weeks before they were confident that I would survive. I woke up slowly. I found out about 9/11 by asking questions. The first thing I asked was, “What happened that day?” My wife, Karen, told me that a plane flew into the World Trade Center. I asked, “Was it terrorists?” She said, “Yes.” I asked, “How many died?” and she said, “Five thousand,” which was the number they thought at the time. I then started going through names, and I think that was almost as hard for her as it was for me.
Monica O’Leary, former employee, Cantor Fitzgerald, North Tower: Dave Kravette called and I didn’t know he was alive. He said, “When are you coming back? We want you back.” I was like, “I don’t know when I can come back.” He said, “Well, as soon as you’re ready to come back, you’ve got a space here.” Oddly enough, because I was laid off in the afternoon on September 10th, and because the Human Resources Department all died, I was never taken off the payroll. I went back to work again—it’s not like they had to rehire me. I was never gone.
Stephen Larabee, Cantor Fitzgerald, L.A. office, whose son, Christopher, died in Cantor’s New York office: It was hard coming back. There are a lot of ghosts there.
Charles Christophe, attorney, Broadway: Gretchen was, at that time, 11 months old. She didn’t speak very much. Her behavior changed, because I was the only one picking her up, taking care of her, feeding her. Usually Kirsten took care of her in the evening—bathing her, feeding her, putting her in the bath. She stopped talking. It was quiet most of the time. She had this sense that her mom was not there.
For a couple of weeks, after an exhausting search, I could not find her. I called Kirsten’s family, and we decided to have a memorial service even though we didn’t have a body. We had the memorial service at the end of September. It was September 30th. Over 400 people came—family members, friends, neighbors, Kirsten’s college friends—so many people came the church could not accommodate everyone. It was very sad. You have only a portrait and flowers. We did the memorial service, and a week or two thereafter, two policemen came to my house and told me that they found the body. I was a single father, taking care of my daughter. I missed Kirsten very much.
MONTHS
As part of a series of new air transportation security laws passed after the attacks, the U.S. government established the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, to help families who lost loved ones in the attacks. Washington lawyer Ken Feinberg was appointed in November to oversee the process and mediate how much each victim’s family would receive. As Feinberg said later, “I underestimated the emotion of this at the beginning.” He worked for 33 months, pro bono, to distribute over $7 billion from the U.S. Treasury; the average family received $1.8 million.
Kenneth Feinberg, special master, September 11th Victim Compensation Fund: I stated over and over again publicly on television and the radio, anybody who voluntarily wants to come and see me privately, I will see them. I remember [my first meeting] like it was yesterday. A 24-year-old woman came to see me, sobbing. “Mr. Feinberg, my husband died in the World Trade Center. He was a fireman, and he left me with our two children, six and four. Now, I’ve applied to the Fund, and you have calculated that I’m going to get $2.8 million tax-free. I want it in 30 days.” I said, “Why do you need the money in 30 days?” She said, “Why 30 days? I have terminal cancer. I have 10 weeks to live. My husband was gonna survive me and take care of our two children. Now they’re gonna be orphans. I have got to get this money while I still have my faculties. I’ve gotta set up a trust. I’ve gotta find a guardian. We never anticipated this.” I ran down to the Treasury, we accelerated the processing of her claim, we got her the money, and eight weeks later she died. You think you’re ready for anything and you’re not.
Richard Grasso, chairman and CEO, New York Stock Exchange: For the balance of that year, no one rang either the opening or closing bell other than a first responder that we would get from Ground Zero—a firefighter or police officer, an EMS person, a Port Authority Police officer, visiting firemen from around the country, visiting police officers, the iron workers—all of the tradespeople who were there—were welcomed, not to ring that bell as a symbol of what was going on, but to ring that bell again, reiterating the message of America rising. It was always an extraordinary moment because whether it was an opening bell or a closing bell, whichever of the uniformed services or the trades, would first come and walk across the trading floor and they’d get a hero’s welcome.
Lt. Joseph Torrillo, director of fire education safety, FDNY: The action figure Billy Blazes became the biggest-selling toy of the year. Because of September 11th, it became a collector’s item.
