Tower Stories

by Damon DiMarco

  September 11 was supposed to be Roger’s day off. This is how he spent it.

  IT WAS LIKE Vietnam going over the Brooklyn Bridge. You saw all these refugees spilling over the bridge, the smoke billowing out behind them. And then I heard … you know how you’re driving near an airport? That sound? Hwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh! It was the sound jets will make when they land.

  I remember thinking, wait a minute, that’s too low.

  But let me backtrack a bit.

  My girlfriend woke me up about a quarter to nine. She said, “The Trade Tower’s been hit by a plane.”

  We went up to my rooftop in Brooklyn, and you could see the Tower smoking. I took pictures of it.

  Back in the apartment, we heard a call come over the television set for anyone who could help, people with skills that’d be useful in a state of emergency. I work at NYU Downtown Hospital, so I figured, not only am I a paramedic, but I knew the area well. Ten minutes after I got up, I was driving into Manhattan.53

  I took my car because it’s equipped with lights and sirens. It was pandemonium running through Park Slope, Brooklyn. There was an orchestra of sirens goin’ off.

  The first plane had already hit and, like I said, I was driving over the Brooklyn Bridge when I heard the second plane come in. Hwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh! I couldn’t see it hit, but I saw the explosion. I marked the time at 9:03 A.M.

  My first thought? Oh shit. That’s another one. The people on the bridge heard the plane and they seen it, too, I think, ’cause before, the crowd had some sense of calmness. They’d been walking over the bridge. Now they started running. Suddenly a big cloud of smoke covered the Brooklyn Bridge, totally engulfed it. And here I was, driving right into it.

  Despite the confusion, the police had everything cordoned off well, so I made it from my home to work, door to door, in literally ten minutes. Police respected the fact that I was in uniform, driving an official car with sirens.

  I went to NYU first off and picked up an ambulance, then I grabbed my bags. A paramedic ambulance carries two main bags, a trauma bag, and a medical bag. In the trauma bag you’ve got an intubation kit, fluids, IV setups, drip administration, trauma bandages, that kind of thing. We’ll also carry some equipment for crichs, in case you encounter a crushed airway and have to cut into the neck.54 In the medical bag, we carry about sixty different drugs for cardiac arrests, diabetic and respiratory emergencies. Morphine, Valium, Versed, Ativan, and Narcan, which is a reversal agent for heroin overdose. Vasopressin. Benadryl. Lasix, for removing fluid from the lungs. Adrenaline. Lidocaine. Atropin. Magnesium sulfate. Sodium bicarbonate. Different types of cardiac drugs. Calcium channel blockers. For cardiogenic shock, we carry dopamine.

  There’s a whole slew of other drugs, too, but what’s the point? None of that came in handy on September 11. Neither did my training, for the most part.

  My partner and I parked at the base of the World Trade Center while the Towers were still standing. How can I describe it? Pandemonium. Bits of bodies, office furniture, luggage, shoes, handbags, mementos, and personal items had scattered everywhere from the impact and the explosion. Bodies were falling out of the sky, and people scattered in every direction while emergency workers were trying to get people out.

  This was not a structured call like you’d get on a regular day over the radio dispatch. You can’t imagine what it was like. Thinking back on it, it’s hard to comprehend the amount of people swirling around.

  “This guy you see here in this photo? That’s Ronnie. I told you I’d teamed up with another girl who had lost her partner, right? Well, that’s him showing up five hours later. If you see us smiling, it’s not because we were having a good time. It’s because we thought he was dead.”

  Our first patient was a young girl approximately twenty-five years of age who had third-degree burns across her entire body, head to toe. Some people ran toward us, calling, “You’ve got to help this girl, she’s badly burned,” and they thrust her toward us.

  We intubated her—passed a tube down past her vocal cords to her lungs so she could breathe. That way, she could receive oxygen and medications. And we took her straight to NYU Downtown, along with a couple of walking wounded, where she was stabilized before we brought her up to Cornell Burn Center.

  In the midst of all the confusion, I lost my partner. I teamed up with a girl I knew, a fire department EMT from Brooklyn who’d lost her partner, too, and we headed back into the thick of it.

  On our way back down the FDR, the South Tower crumbled right in front of us as we were driving. That was at 9:50 A.M.

  Nobody believed … you know, you used to hear so much hype about those buildings. You didn’t think they were ever gonna fall, and you never in a million years imagined you’d be under them when they did. But when the first one came down, we pretty much knew that the other was gonna go, too.

  At that stage, the visibility was down to around ten feet from the debris. Flames were everywhere. It was like a nuclear snow. Hard to believe it was New York City.

  We got to within a couple hundred yards from the base of the Towers, quite close, and set up a triage area. There’d been a few ambulances positioned closer than us, but we soon learned that they’d been wiped out in the collapse of the first building.

  We were starting to dispense treatment to people who were collapsing all around us when everyone started shouting, “Look out! It’s gonna collapse! It’s gonna collapse!” And everyone scattered. Concrete started falling everywhere, and we ran under an overhang. And then this huge engulfing cloud of smoke blew in. I looked at my watch. It was 10:29 in the morning.

  As soon as the cloud settled, you could hear voices screaming and shouting from people not knowing what direction was what because the smoke was so dense. Then—this was peculiar. You heard all these high-pitched, whining electrical screams. Reeeeee. Reeeeee. Reeeeee. Reeeeee. At first I didn’t know what it was all about. But then I remembered that the fire department guys wear motion trackers programmed to go off if they stand still for more than thirty seconds. The whines were the sound of the boys who’d been trapped in the rubble.

  As soon as the smoke started to clear, I saw people getting up and going toward the rubble to get whoever they could find out of there.

  We stayed there the rest of the day, administering treatment to emergency and fire personnel. But after the buildings came down, it became clear there were no survivors.

  One guy in particular we helped was a firefighter in his early to mid-forties who’d been burned around the sides of his neck, head, and back. Could have been caused by hot metal hitting him, fuel, burning debris, I honestly didn’t know. His blood pressure was very low, and we tried to get an IV started. And while we were treating him, he started wrestling with me to get back up and get back into the rubble. I said, “No, no, man. It’s over for you, now. Your job’s done.”

  In the FDNY, ladder companies’ primary function is to conduct rescues while engine companies focus on extinguishing fires.

  And he said, “My whole company’s in there, my whole battalion. I need to get back in.”

  I ended up literally having to wrestle this guy back down so we could treat him. I couldn’t even take him into the ambulance, he was just sitting on the edge off the back. And then he disappeared when my back was turned. He just got up and left.

  I told him not to go, but what can you do? If I were in his position? If I’d come out with maybe fourteen of my buddies still in there? I probably would’ve gone back in, too. There was a camaraderie and a selflessness right when it all happened that I’d never experienced before.

  This guy you see here in this photo? That’s Ronnie. I told you I’d teamed up with another girl who had lost her partner, right? Well, that’s him showing up five hours later. If you see us smiling, it’s not because we were having a good time. It’s because we thought he was dead.

  You’d bump into different people down there throughout the day. You didn’t know who’d come down and who hadn’
t made it out. There were a lot of different rumors floating around, too, about who was missing and who wasn’t. Nothing was verified. You just worked and worked and hoped for the best.

  After the second Tower came down, we didn’t transport any more patients to the hospital. Instead, we treated people for smoke inhalation, respiratory heat emergencies, and a lot of irrigation of the eyes.

  You see in some of the photos I took where the fire department guys are sucking on the oxygen. Those particle masks people were using? The kind made for painters? They didn’t work, so I didn’t use one. We kept wet cloths over our faces instead. Breathing the air was pretty horrible. You weren’t suffocating, but just the force of the blast coming toward you was enough to make you gag. And you didn’t know what had gotten into the air.

  “Around noon, these firemen you see here came out of the rubble and just threw themselves down against my ambulance. Wrecked. Dog tired. They fought their way in and had fought their way out.”

  One thing I seen, it was a bit bizarre. It looked like a Halloween mask lying on the ground but it was somebody’s skull with all the skin fried off it. It looked like a joke mask, you know? Like one you’d see in a window that doesn’t look real? But it was.

  The body parts. It was hard to see anything clearly. If you got a big lump of meat and threw it on the ground, covered it with dirt and rolled it around … is that a body part? Is it not? Obviously, if it was a torso or an arm … we’d go up to it. Look at it. Ooop. Yes, it is. But we didn’t do anything about it. It wasn’t our concern. At that point, cleaning up body parts wasn’t anybody’s priority. At that point, we were all still looking for survivors.

  There were a lot of people down there who weren’t part of any special structure. For instance, there was a cop from New Jersey who’d just come down with his search dog. I guess his thought process was like: Right. I’ve got a dog. I’m ready to go. What do you need?

  There’d been an initial organization in response to the planes hitting the buildings, but it all got wiped out when the Towers came down. So you had a lot of fire crews and paramedic crews who were freelancing, going in, search and rescue. There was no tabs on any of them. And a lot of boys were very emotional, you know? They’d lost friends and brothers, so you knew they weren’t going to listen to reason. If you’re my boss and you tell me to stay put when I’ve just lost two of my best pals in a flaming pit of ash, I’m gonna go, “Fuck you,” and go back in. I mean, you can see from these photographs. These boys are really fried.

  Around noon, these firemen you see here came out of the rubble and just threw themselves down against my ambulance. Wrecked. Dog-tired. They fought their way in, and had fought their way out. There’s another photo of an ambulance that was parked at the foot of the Towers when they collapsed. See? Crushed.

  Our ambulance was right beside those boys who were raising the flag.55 There was smoldering rubble everywhere. Smoke and chaos. We were all waiting for something to do. So I seen these three fire department guys climbing up on top one of those broken buildings near Vesey Street and the West Side Highway with a flag post they’d set up. You could see the Stars and Stripes come out as they started to raise the banner.

  “You might think, looking at the pictures, that there was this massive noise and chaos going on all around. But they were raising that flag in this very eerie silence.”

  I’m not into any form of patriotism, but I was very moved by what was going on, this symbol of defiance in the midst all the rubble. It was very reminiscent of Iwo Jima; even as I took the photo, I was struck by that. And there was total silence.

  You might think, looking at the pictures, that there was this massive noise and chaos going on all around. But they were raising that flag in this very eerie silence.

  I didn’t come down emotionally until I got home that night. I’d gotten to Ground Zero at around 9:00 A.M.; I got back to my apartment around one in the morning. I came back with two friends from the site, Robbie and Trin, and we met with a couple of friends who live downstairs from me—a Scottish couple, Mark and Tara, who set us up with a couple beers. We sat down to chat, but no words came out. We all just sat there with the thousand-yard stare.

  It’s … I felt something but I couldn’t describe it. There was a numbness going on in my body. We were still very hyped up when we got back, not quite sure what to think. And then we put on the news. And we hadn’t seen it, you know? We hadn’t seen the media coverage. So all of a sudden, we’re looking at the destruction through a camera lens, the buildings, the chaos … and we’re going, “Jesus Christ.”

  Then one of the fire department guys came ’round and picked up Robbie and Trin. I was sitting with Mark and Tara, watching the news, when I felt this well of emotion brewing inside and I broke down. I couldn’t contain myself. I cried like a baby for twenty minutes. Uncontrollable sobbing.

  Our spirits had held up while we’d been down there all that day. We were working and joking with each other a bit to keep morale up. But the enormity … when I actually came home and sat down, away from the work area, I realized what had actually happened. And then the emotion set in.

  If the Towers hadn’t have fallen, we’d have been busy, busy, busy. But they fell and they crushed everybody and that was it, that’s the long and short of it. If 110 stories of concrete and steel is coming down, what’s it gonna do to you? I mean, you’re only human.

  The thing I had the most problem with was finding the personal stuff. A shoe. A handbag. That sort of stuff still sticks in my head, not the body parts.

  A shoe would turn your imagination around a little bit. “Well, where did that shoe come from? Where did that person go? Is that from luggage? Is that from a person on the plane, or is that from a person that fell? Was that person burned?” Whereas if you look at a body or a body part, it’s like, “Well, that’s a body part, and that’s it, that person’s dead.”

  Maybe it’s the paramedic viewpoint. We’re so used to seeing the gore that our interest gravitates more toward the intimate things.

  I treated this firefighter guy, Sal. He works for Ladder 7, Engine 16, and I met him on the first day. He was suffering from heat exhaustion. He was badly dehydrated, with muscle cramping, feeling a bit dizzy. We started a couple of IVs for him, to give him fluid therapy and get him going again.

  I kept bumping into Sal on that first day and I thought, you know, it’s quite uncanny that, in the midst of all this, I keep bumping into the same person.

  Then on the fourth day, September 15, we did Search and Rescue and I kept bumping into Sal again. And I thought, there must be something in this.

  I told Sal, “Wherever you guys go today, I’m going, too. I’ll be your paramedic.” I was down there on me own time, wasn’t getting paid for it. I had my trauma bag and all me equipment. So I went Search and Rescue with their company, right into the rubble of the Towers.

  After thirteen hours of searching, all we found was a rag doll and a bag with a journal in it.

  The journal? It was a little notepad and it had these words written in it: “Flirting is just an innocent way of getting to know somebody.” I found it in the rubble and I remember thinking, huh? That weird sense of, did he write that just before it happened? I believe the writer was a he. There were bills in the bag with a man’s name on them. Personal stuff. Damp and wet. I didn’t bother flicking through. I picked it up and thought, well, that’s somebody’s personal stuff.

  After I checked the journal, I put it back in the bag and handed it back. That was the procedure we followed if we found any personal items: we passed them back down the line to where people were collecting them. Probably the Red Cross, the fire department, somebody like that. There was so many agencies there, I really don’t know who was doing what.

  A couple other things I seen. There was a big glass paperweight, a solid ball paperweight that had sat on somebody’s office desk, I guess. I didn’t know where it came from and I certainly didn’t know how it didn’t shatter during t
he collapse of the building. But there it was, lying atop the wreckage as if somebody’d placed it there after all was said and done.

  There was an unbelievable amount of paper lying around, too; paper and luggage from the fuselage of the plane. All the bags were charred and broken, but intact. Everything was there in every possible stage. And there was such an influx of the senses, too; your sense of smell, what you were taking in with your eyes … it was demoralizing. Overwhelming.

  The day I found the journal and the rag doll was the day the president came, September 15. The rubble of the Towers was still smoking very badly, and—you know where the gold ball was?56 We were like, twenty feet away from that.

  I found myself looking around and, in some strange way, it was like being on a movie set. The surroundings didn’t seem real. I was waiting for somebody to holler, “Cut! That’s it! Action!” But maybe that was just a coping mechanism.

  Then the next thing we heard was the whhooooopp, whhoooopp, whhoooopp of the big Chinooks coming toward us, two big helicopters. Then, out of the smoke, the Tomcat jets banking in, making that awful screeching sound we’d heard before it had all happened: hwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaahhh. And I was standing there in the rubble of the World Trade Center, in the middle of New York City, watching these war planes swoop down on us. It was too surreal. You know that scene from The Terminator, when those big robots come in and start blasting everything from the sky? A postapocalyptic nightmare, that’s what it reminded me of, and I was standing right there in the middle of it all.