9.11b

Business as usual.


I have witnessed many tragic situations - including death when I served with my county fire department back home. Some very graphic. Somehow, the ability to spring back from these calls came easy to me - I would go, do my job and come home to my family and resume a normal routine. I think that was true for most I worked with. I assumed that my time spent at the WTC following the attacks would be the same.

I find myself retyping this paragraph over and over because I don't know where to start. The scope of the disaster (on every front) is impossible to articulate. Fear like I have never experienced before, pain like I have never seen and the knowledge that these people were just like you and I - going to through the motions of an average day. The weight of this experience, without notice somehow faded to black in my mind and heart. I wasn't sure what to do with it - so BSing my way through it seemed like the right thing to do - after all, I had a family at home where life was "as usual" that I needed to blend back in to.

Checked out Added 9/15

The dreams were like no other. I am not even sure they were dreams - I could smell, taste and hear as if it was absolutely real time. It seemed like a rerun of the same scene over and over and over. I was assisting with the recovery of some firefighters that were killed in the stairwell of Tower 1. The terrain was extremely rough, hot from fires below and the smell was horrific. The environment was especially hazardous - but the resolve to bring home these heroes was steadfast. As the heavy equipment would pull the stairway up, it unfolded like an accordian, revealing the ultimate sacrifice of these 13 men. We navigated into the hole created by the machinery and carefully worked to free each man. I remember one of the engineers commenting that if one of us fell into one of the crevices that we would be vaporized by the heat of the fire still buring deep in the rubble. It was an emotional scene, especially for FDNY as it had been some time since they recovered some of their own and to do so in this manner was particularly devastating. Rudy Giuliani (without cameras and press) arrived and briskly navigated his way across the pile to where we were - it took his security team some time to catch up. He dug in and helped - nice suit and all. After every man was recoverd, I ran back to the the on-site morgue on Vessey Street to gather another U.S. flag (we were one short) to place over one of the firemen. A few words were shared by Mr. Giuliani, I shared a prayer and one at a time, the deceased were loaded on to Gators and carefully brought out to a waiting ambulance. Word always traveled fast that a rescue worker was being brought out. Every thing stood still - and every person stood at attention until his/her remains were led offsite via police escort. It was always a breathtaking experience - a moment to soak in what this man or woman did to help save others. A moment to pray for the spouse and children left behind. (My mind would always race to the dozens of wives and children I spent time with that would stop by the firehouses looking for information about their husband or daddy. Have they been found?)

Somehow though, my dream would take terrible twists, seeing my oldest son, Elijah buried in the rubble, or my wife, Jennifer mangled in the steel. The dreams were so real. At times, I would race through the house trying to "rush to their aid" in a terror dream state. When I would wake up, my heart would be pounding so hard that I was sure I was about to have a heart attack. These dreams seemed to be exacerbated by earlier visits to the grocery store (the odors from the meat department) or driving by a construction vehicle in reverse when the "beep-beep-beep" alert was sounding. I had entered a whole new world - and fear dictated.