Because emergency personnel were desperate to save lives and had no way of anticipating the ultimate scope of what would soon prove the worst terrorist attack in American history, they may have operated on the false assumption that the damage was complete after Tower One was struck by American Airlines Flight 11 just before 9 a.m. That assumption might have dramatically increased the death toll among fire fighters and other rescue workers who were the first arrivals at the scene of the disaster. New York Fire Department casualties are expected to reach the low hundreds, and are already known to include Department Chief Peter J. Ganci, and the First Deputy Fire Commissioner William M. Feehan.
Shortly after the first attack occurred at 8:48 a.m., rescue workers moved in on the building site, setting up a temporary fire-command post and a medical station close to the base of WTC 1. One of the triage stations, a temporary location to treat evacuated victims from Tower One, was located close to or underneath a pedestrian bridge connecting the World Trade Center to the World Financial Center at 200 Liberty Street. The temporary fire-command post, where high-ranking fire officers were reportedly directing the early stages of the rescue operation, was located a few meters just northwest of that bridge. Shortly after those two posts were established, 2 World Trade Center was struck by United Airlines Flight 175. And shortly after that, falling wreckage brought the bridge crashing down on top of the rescue operations.
“Just look around,” said Ray Charles, an emergency medical technician (EMT) who was helping with rescue operations at the smoldering wreckage site early Wednesday morning. “The ground here is covered with fire equipment. There’s breathing apparatus, defibrillators.” Indeed, the muddy sludge that coated the streets near the tower base was littered with debris from a rescue effort, including coiled fire hoses and dozens of oxygen tanks. “When it collapsed, they ran from the bridge,” says Charles." A lot of people got smashed." Charles said his brother, with the NYPD, was one of the first officers on the scene after the first plane struck. As of 2 a.m. Wednesday, he still didn’t know where his brother was.
Tracy Kraus, an EMT from Connecticut, pointed out a Fire Department of New York emblem on one of the fire trucks peeking out from under the bridge wreckage. She says firefighters dove into the wreckage to help their colleagues after the collapse. “They were just tearing metal apart with their bare hands, trying to get there to get them out,” Kraus said. “They’re friends, they’re colleagues, they’re family-a firefighting family is so close-that’s why they’ve been here, and that’s why they’re not going to stop.”
Ray Kiernan, chief of the New Rochelle (N.Y.) Fire Department, confirmed accounts of the bridge collapse and acknowledged the number of Fire Department casualties likely increased because of the location of the first fire-rescue operation. “They lost some of their chiefs today,” he said surveying the wreckage and the exhausted crews of firefighters combing the heaps of wreckage. “They have to feel terribly. Dozens of guys were in there. The loss is going to be terrible.” As of 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, Kiernan said he’d seen about 12 bodies pulled from the wreckage, and no survivors. “We thought the bomb [in 1993] was a big deal but this is something else.” Unconfirmed estimates circulating at the wreckage site Wednesday morning estimated the New York Fire Department death toll at around 200.
Brother John Delendick, an FDNY chaplain, said he’d given last rites to a number of victims throughout the day. “This is staring in the face of evil,” he said. “It’s never easy. But no one has ever experienced anything like this. They’ve only taken four or five bodies out tonight, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’m exhausted, and I’m doing a lot of praying.” FDNY casualties also included Delendick’s colleague, Chaplain Mychal Judge, who arrived early to the scene after Tower One was struck.
Yossi Stern, captain of a firefighting unit from Crown Heights, said he’d been in the wreckage with his crew since Tuesday morning, searching for bodies. “We were in the belly of the beast,” he said, as he emerged from the wreckage about 3 a.m. Wednesday morning with his exhausted, dust-covered men. In the course of the day, his crew was involved in the successful rescue of just two people, a man and woman, who were trapped by collapsing debris. “It’s a great sense of relief when you pull someone out alive. But then you think about what they represent, and the others that didn’t make it out.” There were plenty of reminders for Stern’s crew: “We saw a hand with a ring on it.” he said. “A wedding ring. We saw a burned foot. And a lot of burned parts.”
Stern said the toughest parts of the day came in the afternoon, just before 7 World Trade Center collapsed. “We could see people in WTC 7 giving us the SOS signal with flashlights,” he said. His crew knew those signals were probably from fellow fire crews and police officers, who were hoping to be rescued before the building crumbled “There was an order saying we couldn’t go in after them because the building was going.” They had no choice but to watch helplessly as the building collapsed, swallowing up the firefighters, police officers and their flashing lights into darkness.
Firefighters were not the only ones who may have received emergency instructions developed on the assumption that the damage was complete after WTC 1 was hit. Workers in WTC 2 report that they were told to stay in the building after the first plane struck WTC 2. “They told us to go back to work,” says Tom O’Brian, a consultant who was working on the 55th floor of WTC 2 on Tuesday morning when Tower One was hit. “The alarm went off, but they said [over the PA system] that the trouble was in Tower No. 1, the alarm was meant for Tower One. They said it’s not necessary to leave. They said there’s no fire in building two. Fifteen minutes later, the second plane hit, and they said ‘get the hell out of here’.” O’Brian, who had triple bypass surgery a few years ago and a heart attack this past Christmas, escaped from the burning building by walking down 55 flights of stairs. Other employees in Tower Two began evacuating after the first building was hit, but the number of casualties in that building was likely increased by the failure to issue an immediate evacuation order.
The explanation for the rescue effort miscalculations is simple: the magnitude of the disaster was completely unfathomable until it occurred-and it proves no easier to comprehend afterward.
