Last year on October 9, 2023 I had combined all 500 PDFs (499 witnesses in total) of the New York Times database of 9/11 firefighters, paramedics, and emergency medical technicians (EMTs) into a single searchable 7,058 page PDF report. https://t.me/meslinks/20245
Here I take it 1 step further and demonstrate the unique and amazing capability of the Hive blockchain for storing vast amounts of text for dirt cheap. I will be including all 7,058 pages into this one article on Hive so that it is more convenient. This will also serve to make Hive the only platform in the world with the complete 499 witness testimonies in article format!
Note also that I used Grok AI on X to format the PDF text into proper markdown to paste into Hive.
I have also labeled the redacted portions as: REDACTED
File No. 9110001: DEPUTY COMMISSIONER THOMAS FITZPATRICK
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
Interview Date: October 1, 2001
Transcribed by: Elisabeth F. Nason
T. FITZPATRICK
ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER DRURY:
We can begin by stating your name and your rank.
MR. FITZPATRICK:
Tom Fitzpatrick, Deputy Commissioner for Administration, assigned to the Commissioner's office.
ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER DRURY:
Just for the record, it's Monday, October 1, 2:40 p.m., conference room 8N6 at headquarters.
MR. FITZPATRICK:
On the morning of the event I was in my office and I was alerted by Commissioner Feehan and one of the secretaries outside that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I looked out the window, saw a slice in the side of the north tower, and then Bill came down the hall and said let's go. So we responded from headquarters. I had previously had a meeting with Tom McDonald, so he came with us, along with Ray Goldbach. I think that was it in the car. En route to the alarm, we could see the smoke from the north tower. I tried to get an idea of how many floors and it looked like the upper third of the building was involved. We got across the Brooklyn Bridge, went down Broadway and stopped the car, I think it was at Broadway and Dey. We got out of the car and ran down the street. As we got to the intersection of Broadway and Dey or just a little bit down Dey, the second plane hit the south tower. And we continued down the street. By the time we got to the plaza, a lot of debris was coming down.
Q:
Did you witness the second plane hitting?
A:
I heard it but I didn't look up. The noise from the plane was enough to make you not want to look up. I thought the plane was actually going to land in the street to be honest with you. The noise was outrageous. When it hit the building it was even worse. I figured, as long as we didn't get hit by the plane, we were ahead of the game. The next thing I was worried about was getting hit by the parts. Various pieces of the plane were falling on the street. As we went down the street you could see parts of aircraft with stencil numbers on it and things like that. There was a wheel, or like a wheel housing or something else there in the street. There were a lot of bodies coming down but I didn't pay much attention to it. For some reason I was more focused on the airplane parts until somebody started pointing out the body parts. I was particularly concerned at that point with getting hit by something falling out of the building, so we ran under the canopy of 5 World Trade Center, to make our way towards the building, the north tower. We were under the canopy as far as we could go and cut through. There is a space between 5 and 6. When we got under the end of 5 we would have had to run across the plaza. We didn't believe that was a good idea, so we went through the space between 5 and 6 and went up an escalator on the side of 6. It was on the street side, on the Vesey Street side. There was a Port Authority cop telling us not to come up and we went up anyway. He directed us to an escalator which went down to the plaza to the concourse level so we could make our way to the command post at the northwest corner of the north tower.
When we got there, I saw --
Q:
So that was West Street near the pedestrian bridge?
A:
Yes, yes. I got there and saw Richie Sehrer had just come into the lobby, Chief Hayden, Chief Callan, a whole host of security people and people from the Port Authority. Bill Feehan and myself and then Tom Von Essen. That's all I can recall right now. There are a lot of other people, but they were the only ones I focused on.
Q:
Did you mention Chief Ganci?
A:
I didn't see Chief Ganci in the lobby at that time.
Q:
Can you tell us Commissioner, what the demeanor of the citizens or lay people were there in the lobby, or in the concourse?
A:
With respect to the security guards, they seemed to be fairly composed. They were going about their business, making a lot of phone calls. The only civilians we saw were coming out as we went through the lobby of 5. The Port Authority police were directing groups of people out of the towers, out on to the street. Seemed like they were mostly going - they may have been going across the walkway at that time. I didn't really see where they were going, but they were directing them out of the building, quite a few people.
We were in the lobby, it could have been 15 minutes. We were getting reports. People were calling the security desk with reports of people trapped upstairs. We were trying to get an idea of what was going on with our own people upstairs. We -- somebody told us in the lobby that they had information that the Pentagon had just been hit, so in addition to the second plane, the idea of terrorism was confirmed by the Pentagon. We were looking to, because the command post was so crowded, we were looking for a place to set up a second command post, essentially for communications because we couldn't get any out from behind the desk. It's a big marble desk. It looks like the security station there is a marble counter with a wall in front of it and you had to go around it every time to get to a phone, so we figured it wasn't going to work out in the long run.
Q:
The command center was actually inside number 6?
A:
No, inside of the north tower.
Q:
It wasn't in number 5, it was in the north tower?
A:
Yes, we used 5 for cover and we ran through 6 to get into the north tower.
Q:
So the north tower is the command post?
A:
Yes, that's at the level of West Street, but you've got to go down one level. We were there about 15 minutes looking for the secondary command post. We started briefly talking about who was going where. We were trying to figure out, if somebody was going to go to OEM or somebody was going to stay on the scene. I think the Commissioner had been told that the Mayor wanted to meet him. I'm not sure where the Mayor was but the Mayor wanted to meet the Commissioner and some of his staff just north of the tower.
I looked in the concourse level where the shops are. It was too congested, too deep in the building for the units coming out in the street to see anybody. So we went back out to the lobby and dropped back to a position right outside that had 6 escalators going up to the walkway. I thought there might be an opportunity to have people staged there before they came into the main lobby.
Q:
Those are the escalators that lead to the pedestrian bridge that takes you from one World Trade Center to the Financial Center?
A:
Yes, it is. I looked around. There was no communication. We didn't think that was a good spot. The longer we stayed in the lobby we realized that with the second building and with the command post getting as crowded as it was, we were not going to be able to manage anything from that point, so we decided to move, Bill Feehan, myself, and I believe Commissioner Tierney at that point. I met her in the walkway or I might have met her before, but she was there anyway. I decided to look for a second place to go. I believe the Commissioner left to go north and Bill Feehan and myself, went up to the walkway to go across West Street.
Q:
You mean the bridge there?
A:
Yes, we went across the north bridge into the Winter Garden. When we got into the Winter Garden, just as soon as we stepped through the door I looked and said to myself this is a perfect command post, because they looked like they were having some type of an event. There were tables set up and there was a big - around the tables were two rows of tables across the front of the Hudson River side of the Winter Garden. That would be perfect because if you had a phone at each position, you have an emergency command post, an OEM type set up going right away.
There were two security guards, one of which I met later on, but there were two security guards who asked us if we needed anything. We told them we needed communications set up in that lobby. Because we figured that would be the command post. We could come out and do staging at West Street. He told us he would try to get it set up there. It was not a standard part of the lobby set up, but he would try to get us some communications. It appeared at that time that the whole building had been evacuated. It was empty except for security.
While he was doing that, we made our way back out to West Street into the driveway of 2 World Financial Center. There were two garage doors behind us. When we got out there we noticed that the apparatus were coming in and starting to fill up West Street. Ambulances were responding, and it seemed like they were coming from two different directions on West Street. So we didn't think that would be a good idea for the long term if we were going to have an event this big. We had to stage the ambulances down from Canal Street south, so that we could bring the ambulances down, pick up patients and either go through the battery into Brooklyn or Queens or back up the west side into Manhattan or wherever else we were attempting.
It was evident that we weren't going to be able to get to people above the fire. Based on the number of jumpers, we could only assume that hundreds of people were trapped.
We were there for, seems to me 10 minutes maybe. Time was all out of whack for me. I don't know. We were all -with all the running around and the time we spent in each place, it's kind of compressed.
Q:
Are we still in the time period from when you saw the second plane hit from east of the World Trade Center?
A:
Yes.
Q:
You made your way over here. You told us your story about where you went to the Winter Garden back out on the street?
A:
Right.
Q:
Both of the World Trade Centers are still standing at this point?
A:
Both still standing, both heavily involved, but both still standing.
Q:
You then followed the driveway into Two Financial Center?
A:
Yes, Tom McDonald was there and they asked him to go north and start to control the ambulances and the trucks that seemed to be stopping right at that point. What we wanted to do is get them to the side of the road to keep the street open. One of the things in the driveway -- while we were talking, we noticed there was groups of people with stretchers and EMS equipment running south on the sidewalk. At the same time there was a group of people with EMS equipment running north. And I thought it was at that point that we needed to coordinate which direction they were going in. If we were going to have a triage area in one set, which we presumed would be south and the ambulances were moving north, that the triage area should all be south.
Chief Gombo was in the driveway at that point. I asked him to take some people and set up a triage area wherever they thought it would be best to set up. I believe they left the driveway and went south towards Albany.
Right after that there was a camera crew there from somewhere. I remember Frank Gribbon saying to me is there any chance this building would fall down. I don't think I gave him a real good answer, but he did tell the camera crew to step back because we were concerned about falling glass. We assumed from the last explosion that there were big big chunks of glass coming down from somewhere. So he told them to get back against the building.
At some point I believe Bill asked me to call somebody. But I can't for the life of me remember who or what. I was looking for a phone and the security guard who was in the driveway, there is a little stone wall with a railing or something on top of it, that you could climb up on it right at the end of the driveway, so Bill said to make a call. I jumped up on the wall and ran in right off the street. There was an office there, a security office, and the guy directed me to an office that was 5 feet away to use the phone. I made a phone call and came back out in the driveway.
Q:
Is the driveway now on the west side of West Street, so it leads to the World Financial Center or does it lead to the World Trade Center?
A:
No, the driveway goes right into 2 World Financial Center on the west side. There were two double doors there.
Q:
Just to clarify, Commissioner, this is where the command post was set up?
A:
Yes, yes, they were setting up the magnetic board and stuff. Came back out. Met Bill and I - forget who else was in the driveway at that point. Came back out and stood somewhere near Bill in the driveway. We were right at the raised driveway, which went down to the street, came up and went down to the garage. It was sort of raised in the center. We basically stood on the raised portion. I started to look up the building.
Q:
Was Chief Ganci present in that area at that time?
A:
I didn't see him. I don't remember seeing him. I came back out. I remember seeing Bill, but I don't remember. I don't remember clearly who else was there, but I know there were about - I would guess between 40 and 50 people in the driveway.
Q:
All Fire Department personnel?
A:
No, I think aside from Fire Department personnel, there were some other civilian people. I seem to remember somebody in a T-shirt. The only reason I remember that is because -- I think I remember that because I ran into him later on at the back of the garage. We looked up at the building straight up, we were that close. All we saw was a puff of smoke coming from about 2 thirds of the way up. Some people thought it was an explosion. I don't think I remember that. I remember seeing, it looked like sparkling around one specific layer of the building. I assume now that that was either windows starting to collapse like tinsel or something. Then the building started to come down. My initial reaction was that this was exactly the way it looks when they show you those implosions on TV. I would have to say for three or four seconds anyway, maybe longer. I was just watching. It was interesting to watch, but the thing that woke everybody up was the cloud of black material. It reminded me of the 10 commandments when the green clouds come down on the street. The black cloud was coming down faster than the building, so whatever was coming down was going to hit the street and it was pretty far out. You knew it wasn't coming right down. Judging from where people were jumping before that, this cloud was out much further.
Somebody yelled we've got to take cover or get out of the way or something like that and the only place to go, because we were in that driveway area, was into the garage. I didn't, at that point, expect the building to come down, I guess, but I knew you wanted to be out of the way of this black cloud. I ran into the garage and I would say ten or 15 feet into the garage, the building hit the street. It wasn't very loud but it was big. A big noise, it wasn't like a crash, like a car accident, more like a big thud. And a blast of air and debris came through the garage. I think the thing that is unusual about going in was when I ran in the garage there was a railing, where the driveway of the northern most part of the garage went in and split. It split with a yellow railing and as I was going in, two people fell back. I fell over them. To keep my balance, I reached out and put my hand on the railing. The people there were scrambling to get up.
When I got up, I just kept running straight ahead but I realized that I was on the other side of the railing. Not the driveway side, but what looked like a walkway. In this garage, that would be where you pay your ticket to get your car out. So I kept going straight with the railing. Some people ran down the driveway. I don't know to this point, still don't know if the driveway's southern most point was parallel to this or if it went down another level. I really don't.
Anyway, I ran into four or five people straight ahead with the railing on the left. Eventually, I ran into a corridor, a long corridor with a door at the end of a long corridor to get out of the debris that was coming through the door. We just kept going down the corridor, assuming it was going to come out through the side or the lobby or a hallway. Unfortunately it turned into a dead end, like a locker room, like an electrical closet or where they put lockers in. There were really no doors to the place. We just kept going to the end and at the opening where you assume it's going to open up into another lobby, it opened up into a room about this size. It had lockers in it. That was it.
So by this time we couldn't see anything, the noise was over. It was very quiet, but this plaster was in the air so you couldn't breathe normally without inhaling a mouthful of something.
Q:
Were there lights or any lighting?
A:
There were lights, but the stuff was dark. With all the stuff floating around, it was almost darkness, like a white out or a gray out. It seemed like the guy in the T-shirt was the guy - I thought he was a construction worker. He may have been a maintenance guy. But we got down to the end and he was saying is there a way out? Is there a way out? I couldn't find any. All I could see were lockers, after getting close to them, and conduits on the wall. There was no way out of that room, so we started to go back to where we came out and I think we ended up past the way we came in.
Q:
How many people were with you, Commissioner?
A:
I think there were about 5 or 6.
Q:
Anybody that you know personally?
A:
No.
Q:
Did you have a Fire Department radio with you at that time?
A:
I had no radio, no. I just had my turnout coat. Unfortunately, my helmet was in the car. Richie said he was going to go to - I think the Commissioner wanted Bill Feehan to go across the street to OEM and he said to tell Bill to give me his helmet, because I didn't have one. So we came back out of the hallway and somebody said there is a door. There is a door. Let's go out this way. I couldn't see it. So whoever said it stayed at the door, see, and kept yelling this way, this way, this way. You couldn't orient yourself. With the dust you didn't know which direction it was.
Q:
Did you pass any people on the way back out?
A:
I don't think I passed anybody who was walking around, because we were all together. I think there was only one guy I worked with next to me. But there were people behind him, so when we turned around to go back out, they were in front of us. I saw there was a door, I remember going and feeling my way around. There were a couple of door knobs. One of them said it was a locksmith shop. I saw an electrical closet and something else. It was a typical maintenance door. But I remember the locksmith one. It was stupid, I know. I assumed that the building had fallen on the other building. I couldn't get out of the garage. I keep remembering thinking that the locksmith would always have the keys to the doors and they were probably in the locksmith's closet. But who knows if he ever got out.
We came out and went into this door. I think we went up one landing into a store which seemed like a bagel shop or something. I seem to remember cameras or something, on the right side. That led around through the store into the lobby of the Winter Garden.
Q:
How was the visibility at that time?
A:
It was all -- it was still - the cement - you know the cement they put in, as you got further in towards the Winter Garden it cleared up. By the time you actually get into the lobby of the Financial Center, it was a little bit of stuff, but not nearly as bad as what it was before. I went to the lobby. We went across.
Q:
Was there anybody in the lobby that you recognized?
A:
I don't remember.
Q:
Were there people in the Winter Garden?
A:
No. I don't remember seeing anyone over there. There may have been people there, I just may not have been paying attention to that.
Q:
Did you hear a lot of people yelling or screaming?
A:
There was some people yelling, but I don't know exactly where they were. I didn't look to see. I didn't look back to see what had happened. But I knew that down to the right was the entrance - was Vesey Street. So we went down that way. Passed a - it was like a restaurant in the courtyard there. I think there is one on either side. I went down and I saw out on Vesey Street, I saw Tom McDonald, who we had just sent to move the rigs. So as soon as I saw him I knew he was alive. I went down there and I think he was looking for Tom Curti, might have been with Tom McDonald going down the street.
At that time I saw Tom McDonald, who looked more like a snowman than me, but it seemed like he had a real mouthful of stuff. So I went back in and grabbed a couple of bottles of water from the diner that we had just passed or the restaurant or something. I grabbed a couple of bottles of water and gave them to him. I then proceeded down Vesey Street to West Street, figuring that now I could come around to the right and back towards tower one and towards the driveway.
Q:
Heading east on Vesey Street?
A:
Yes, but you couldn't go that way. Between the dust and everything else you couldn't see much, but I think the walkway was still up. I also knew that the second tower was up. But Tom McDonald said what had actually happened. So I went out and looked and I could see the north tower, but I couldn't see the south tower, but sometime when you are down there if you are in the right position, it only looks like one building to begin with. So I walked a little bit down further and saw that all you could see was the radio tower sticking up through the smoke. But you couldn't really see anything else. But based on where the sun was shining through, where there was a shadow before, I said to Tom, the whole building is gone. I came back to him and thought more about the guys who went in the garage but they didn't come up the way I came up. I assumed that the garage at 2 World Financial went down and came back out and there had to be a driveway. I knew there was a driveway in the back of the building, so I went around the back of the building.
Q:
Back by Vesey towards the water?
A:
Yes. (inaudible). Back around behind 4 World Financial Center. I had actually come out of 3. I went back around behind 3 looking for the garage exit that should be coming out of 2.
Q:
You went between 3 and 4 and you walked behind 3?
A:
Yes, south and west.
Q:
Behind the Winter Garden?
A:
Behind the Winter Garden.
Q:
So you were back near the boat pier?
A:
Yes. As I got back here, I met the same security guard that was in the lobby. He had a ponytail. He told me he was retired secret service. Something official. I think he mentioned retired secret service. I thought that was pretty reliable. So I asked him if there was an entrance to the garage from this side, if the garage went through. He said he didn't know. He wasn't sure. There was somebody else that said it doesn't go through, it's a separate - because there's a wall between garages. So I started to go south behind Merrill Lynch near the park. So we came around and come around to that little bridge area where they took the families down. As I got around there, it just started to come down towards the building and all of a sudden a whole bunch of people started running. The second one --
Q:
Towards you?
A:
Yes, now they are all running towards me. I said the second one is coming down. This is getting to be a little bit too much. So we started to run straight out towards the water. Right near Liberty Street and then real close to 2 Financial Center. Ran out to the water where the marina is, and then ran north on the World Financial plaza till we came to the water. By then the second building went down. The cloud from that debris had already blown out through the street, but the people who were in that area were sort of protected because they didn't get the direct brunt of the second cloud because the building took the brunt of the hit. The cloud seemed to be, the Financial Center seemed to, you know, clear a path. The cloud went on both ends but didn't come straight at you, so you were a little bit better off there.
I went out to the water and tried to figure out what was going on. There were people out there in boats, starting to pull up to the pier.
Q:
You noticed a lot of people out on the pier?
A:
Yes, there were a lot of people out against the fence. I think some people had gone out there and stopped to watch what was going on after the first building came down, because it looked like if they had gotten that far and the buildings came down they should have kept running. It seems like they may have run out there with the first building and decided to stop and watch the second building. And then the second building came down, and they had no place to go except into the water, over the railing. As you got further north, you could see that they were getting hit by the cloud. Some people were trying to get into boats.
Q:
Was there anybody in the water that you noticed?
A:
I didn't see anybody in the water. I saw some people going on the boats. Some of the boats were having difficulty with gates that dropped down to let people on, but they couldn't get them down because of the railings. So we tried to figure out a way to get people up over the railings on to the boats. Some firemen were helping some civilians. Then I met a Chief out there, Raynis, I think his name was, who started to take a head count. I told him to get -- there was another Chief further down. It looked like he was doing the same thing. I told him to get together, to get everybody and send somebody down and get all the firemen on the pier, to try to get them together in one group. At least get a preliminary head count and we were going to take them out to meet -- the only thing I could see was the big arch in front of BMCC.
Q:
That's up by like North Moore? Chambers and West?
A:
Yeah, I told them take all the guys you can get and meet in front of the arch, and when we got there, we would figure out what to do next. By then -- the school, the high school started to let kids out, Stuyvesant High School. There was a lot of kids. The firemen were stretched along the pier there. So we went down this way and it looked like the kids were starting to come out of school, I'm thinking in my mind. So we made our way across towards BMCC to regroup. We came back down West Street, and I don't know what the time frame is, but I ended up running into a Battalion Chief and I asked him if he had anybody with him. It seemed like he had a group of a lot of different people. So I asked him if he had anybody with him. He didn't. I had gone, come down West Street and tried to get down as far as I could in front of 3. After the smoke cleared you could see that 3 was clear, but the bridge had come down and I thought maybe the guys were in the driveway of 1 North. I was hoping they were on this side of the bridge. I looked as much as I could in front of 3 World Financial Center. It was just six inches of debris. If there was someone laying there, it would be hard to distinguish them from the mounds of paper. I didn't see anybody, so I got Shaun Reen. I said get some guys. Get some companies. I think Bill Feehan is right here. I assumed that they were between the north bridge, laying in the street, and Vesey Street. You could see right away that if they were on the other side of that, forget about trying to climb over it or get through or past it. About the only way to do a rescue was from around the other side, the south side, which I hadn't seen. So he came down and told me he had about a dozen guys. Searched everywhere and couldn't find anybody. And then we started to - then people started to drift in.
Q:
So just prior to the first collapse, you were at the driveway of Two Financial?
A:
Right.
Q:
Was Commissioner Feehan with you at that time?
A:
Yes.
Q:
Then he was out there also, but you weren't sure if Chief Ganci was there?
A:
I didn't remember seeing Pete, but again that was after I had just come out of the building, making a phone call. When I came out, if you jumped off that wall there. I walked past - you might not have noticed anybody who was closer to that wall. If they were closer to the wall or if there were more people in front of him when I jumped off, I didn't see him. It's hard to tell. The only thing I could figure is that when we ran backwards, either they ran into the other driveway, which was separate, and made their way out, somehow got out. The debris had fallen and they couldn't get across the first one or if it was on a different level, they would have been at the second entrance. They must have came up next to that little wall to get out.
Because later on when I got back there, it looked like the little wall had been shielded from the direct hit of debris, because the building deflected it. I assumed they came back up next to that wall and made their way out to the street where the magnetic board was previously and must have got hit by the second building. But I never saw either of them after that.
Q:
Did you ever see Tom McDonald?
A:
Tom McDonald, when I came back the second time I found Tom McDonald on West Street. Because he was limping. He was sitting on a car. He was worse than he was the first time. He was sitting on a car or bumper or something like that. He had torn a muscle in his leg. He was having trouble walking. I think then he told me he found Tom Curti. So that was one less guy to look for. That's about it. The rest of it is a blur.
Q:
When you went out between the first and second collapse and as you made your way back to West Street, that north bridge was down?
A:
Right, I don't know if --
Q:
It was down after the first collapse?
A:
Was it? I didn't know. I really couldn't see. You could see the debris, but with the cloud, you couldn't, from where I was -- I was standing at the corner of 3 World Financial and looking up Vesey and West. All you could see was the top and the street. You couldn't see anything. It was like a snow storm. But you could see through the sun, every once in a while, you could see the north tower and the antenna sticking up. The reason I knew the second building was gone because the smoke drifted for a second, and the sunlight came through and I knew it wasn't an optical illusion, it was just gone. So that's all I know about the second one.
I don't know if the bridge was down or partially down. It could have been in the street. I didn't spend a long time looking.
Q:
Commissioner, when you came back out after the first collapse, from the rear or the inside of Two World Financial, did you ever see Dr. Kelly down near that bridge area?
A:
No, not by the north bridge. I didn't see her. I met David Prezant. He was in the driveway. The first one. As a matter of fact he was there when we came out. We were on the driveway the first time. Either before or after I came out he was there. Because I think he went with Gombo or someone from EMS. They went together to build a triage area. But no, I didn't see Dr. Kelly. For some reason, it's real blurry. I can't remember why I went to make that phone call. I went to find out something. I ran in that building and made a phone call. I can't remember what it was. That's all.
Q:
(inaudible)?
A:
I called Sandy from the lobby when I went back in to get the water, because my sister lives in Battery Park City. Tom McDonald was sitting outside, I was going to get him some water. I went back in to steal the water. There was a phone right next to the counter, so I called Sandy. I told her to call my wife and find out where my sister was, because I didn't know if the building had fallen on her building. I couldn't tell. Find out how my sister was - call my wife, find out how my sister was and call my father, because he's in Florida. Just let them know that I'm still alive. And then I went on with the day.
Q:
You mentioned earlier that you had a conversation with Commissioner Von Essen about a helmet.
A:
Yeah.
Q:
Did Commissioner Feehan give you his helmet?
A:
No, no. He kept it. We never had a chance to make that. That would have been a difficult swap. I don't think he would have given it up so quick. I don't think he would have been so willing to go to OEM either. I'm glad he did, but that was the plan - it was going to be that. Once you started talking to Richie Schirer about recall, which we knew was going to be a mess, somewhere in the conversation Richie says to me "We'll do recall". I said to him "Make it quick, Yankee Stadium or Shea Stadium." Commissioner Von Essen said "I want you to go with the boss and I want Bill to go to OEM." He was going with the Mayor. But obviously that didn't work out. That was the last conversation between the three of us that day. Then Richie was at staging. I think he was on the phone, actually calling OEM, trying to get Shea Stadium or Yankee Stadium opened up. That's the last time I saw him. I guess he went off towards where the Mayor was going or back to his office.
Some people, I think when we went up across the walkway, I think some people were contemplating running out through the glass windows on West Street. But they were having second thoughts because of the jumpers. If you got hit by a jumper, you'd be out of business. So we went up through the walkway to get out, but I don't know who might have gone out through the windows.
Q:
Do you recall ever seeing Father Judge down there?
A:
I didn't see him.
Q:
When you were at the command post on West Street, across from the south tower, was it?
A:
The north tower.
Q:
North tower, could you see firefighters on either side of that tower?
A:
I didn't notice. I know there were rigs. I could not actually see any people, but I could see the rigs there. When we were in the north tower, just before we left, there was a report of a third plane coming in from the Port Authority. I don't know if anybody knew whether to take that seriously or if it was true or not. But I heard Chief Callan telling guys to come down, to get out of the building.
Q:
You heard him, or it on the radio?
A:
No, I heard him say it. I was standing right there next to him. He told people to come down, to get out of the building. He wanted all personnel out of the building. I don't know if he was communicating that to the second tower or to both or to the people in the building, but I did hear him say that.
Q:
This is when the command post was still in the north tower?
A:
Still in the north tower. A lot of the marble in the lobby was falling off the walls, big slabs of marble were falling down. From the impact, I guess. The lobby didn't look too good. The integrity of the elevators - I started to think about the elevators. They had either blown out, cut off or could possibly have the cars coming down. The lobby was becoming an untenable place, especially if we wanted to continue operations.
Q:
Elevators (inaudible)?
A:
I didn't see anybody coming down the stairs in the lobby. I don't think there is an exit in the lobby.
Q:
So you saw no civilian personnel coming out from the lobby?
A:
No, when went I down and when I went back. We were in the lobby by the command station. You go east in the lobby. There are a couple of doors there that lead to the concourse. Three little doors. Those doors lead into the concourse where there are shops and stores. But as soon as I went through those doors, I figured that would be a crazy place to set up a command post, because who would find you. Where's the phones. There's nothing useful in there, so I came back out.
Q:
So the first command post in the north tower was in the area of where the airline ticket booths are?
A:
The first was at the street level in the northwest corner of the building.
Q:
So it wasn't where the ticket booths are?
A:
Right, there was nothing in the lobby that was commercial and the command post was a big marble desk which had a console behind it, but you couldn't see over it. About a five foot wall and there was all Port Authority cops and security people behind it. I went back there because somebody had given me a report. One of the cops behind there said we have people trapped on the 22nd floor. Some company was calling down to the lobby. They were trapped. Debris had come down in front of their door and they were looking for companies or firemen to remove the debris so they could get out. I gave that to Chief Hayden. I said I don't know what we can do at this point, but just put it on the list. A list of places that we had to search or get to, because everybody was calling us up. And the 22nd, I thought at that point seemed like a relatively safe place to be. The 22nd would probably be the best.
Last thing we saw, as opposed to (inaudible).
Q:
I just have one last question.
A:
(Not recorded).
ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER DRURY:
If no one has any further questions, Commissioner, I thank you and we will end this interview at this time.
File No. 9110002: CHIEF FIRE MARSHAL LOUIS GARCIA
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
Interview Date: October 2, 2001
Transcribed by Nancy Francis
MR. McALLISTER:
This is Kevin McAllister from Administration. It is October 2nd at 11:06 a.m. We're with Chief Garcia in his office. I am joined by --
FIRE MARSHAL CAMPBELL:
Fire Marshal Campbell.
MR. GILBERT:
Steve Gilbert.
FIRE MARSHAL STARACE:
Fire Marshal Starace.
CHIEF GARCIA:
And Louis Garcia, Chief Fire Marshal.
MR. McALLISTER:
We're going to direct Chief Garcia's attention to the morning of September the 11th, 2001, and we're going to ask Chief Garcia to tell us about the events of that morning from his perspective.
CHIEF GARCIA:
Okay. That morning I was due to play in the charity golf tournament at Douglaston Golf Course. I probably got there somewhere about 7:30. I got to the golf course. I was in a foursome with Supervising Fire Marshal James Kelty, Captain Gene Kelty, who was the captain of 10 Engine located near the World Trade Center, and also Captain James Johnson, who works over in the Training Academy.
From the first tee of Douglaston Golf Course, ironically, you have a view of the World Trade Center. In fact, those are the two buildings you can see from Douglaston Golf Course. Douglaston Golf Course is in Douglaston, Queens. It's approximately between 15 and 20 miles from Manhattan. From the first tee you see the World Trade Center.
We teed off. I was on the second hole when I was notified through my alphanumeric beeper that a plane had gone into the World Trade Center. I got on my cell phone, called EOC and said, in my exact words, "is this a fucking joke?" And they said no, it's a confirmed hit of a plane; it's confirmed the plane has hit the World Trade Center.
At that point I turned around, James Kelty was in my cart with me, we turned around, went up to the first tee. I was going to go back. When we got to the first tee, a police lieutenant -- and I don't know his last name but his first name is Don. I can get his last name. He's on the Mayor's detail. He's a lieutenant on the Mayor's security detail of the City Hall street detail. And right from that vantage point you could see that the tower, the World Trade Center tower, the north tower had been hit. There was smoke billowing out from the tower and it was an unbelievable sight, and Don was on the phone with City Hall. I remember saying to Kelty get me over to my car. So we were taking the golf cart down to the parking lot of the golf course.
On the way down to the parking lot of the golf course, we heard a rumble. We looked around. We thought it was right near us. And we looked up and Don, who was still on the tee box, the first tee, said two planes hit and put up two fingers.
On my way down to the parking lot I told James Kelty, I said I hope this is not a terrorist attack. When we were notified of the second plane hitting, I knew it was a terrorist attack and I said I've got to go to the site.
So I left him there, got in my car. I'm on the way to the city, Manhattan. I stopped at my house, which is right on the way. I don't live too far from the golf course. I changed my clothing, got on the Cross Island Parkway and then onto the Long Island Expressway. At that time other emergency vehicles were heading into the city and we kind of made a caravan along the Long Island Expressway on our way into the city.
Q:
Were you in radio contact at that point?
A:
Yes. I could hear them doing two fifth alarms. There were two fifth alarms being called in. I was calling Hooper Street on my cell phone to ask if Chief Richard McCahey had gone. They said he was on his way. I got on the radio and I could hear fire marshals responding from Manhattan, from Manhattan base, also McCahey responding. He was trying to get through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. And I also called Hooper Street and I said the fire marshal of Hooper Street, they should respond also. At that point Bobby Byrnes was responding with fire marshals from SIU. I didn't know if other fire marshals were needed, so I didn't bother to call other bases to get Brooklyn, Bronx, or Queens to respond.
As I was responding, as you're going down the expressway, of course, you get closer, you could see the World Trade Center, both towers are burning.
Q:
You're still on the Queens side of the tunnel?
A:
I'm still on the Queens side, yes. I'm going over that hill right before you go through the tunnel and you could see the skyline of the city.
Q:
So you're west of the BQE at that point?
A:
I'm probably -- no. The BQE? I'm past the BQE.
Q:
So you're west?
A:
I'm west of the BQE, yes.
I went through the tunnel with my caravan of cars. They turned to go south down Second Avenue. I went down Second Avenue south but I turned down 34th Street. Let me see. Let me get this straight. In fact, let me take that back. I don't know if I turned down 34th Street or Houston Street. But I went south for a while. It was either 34th Street or Houston Street. But I wanted to go down the West Street side. I was headed toward West Street because I wanted to go down West Street and approach it from that side. I thought I would have a better chance of getting closer because West Street is a large street and I'd have better chance of getting by the apparatus because it would be parked on the side.
I went down West Street, went past Chambers on West. Of course, you can see the towers burning all that time. Every time you saw them.
Q:
Both towers were still standing at that point?
A:
Yes, both towers were still standing. I went down to West Street. I went past Chambers and I probably parked a block and a half up from Vesey. I parked right behind a rig. I don't remember whose rig it was. I parked behind a rig, got out of the rig. I remember there was a chaplain there. He called himself a chaplain. I think he's a rabbi who works in counseling. But he calls himself a chaplain. He had his badge out and I know that this rabbi works in counseling and the counseling unit will be able to help you identify him. He helped me on with my coat and I got my helmet, I got my turnout coat and started walking down the street.
In front of me I could see the two buildings were burning. I'm walking down West Street. I'm passing rigs. There were a lot of other rigs parked there. I don't know the numbers. I didn't look at the numbers of the rigs. I was on the west side of West Street, walking on the west side of West Street. I walked underneath the north bridge. I was trying to find a command post.
On the way down there, I could hear McCahey establishing a command post on the south side of the World Trade Center, and after looking at the buildings, I found that I probably had more space on the north side, so I really wanted them to come to the north side. I was trying to contact them by radio in the car to get them to go north. Well, first in the car I was in radio contact and I was asking them exactly where he was and he was trying to describe to me where he was on West Street. I knew it was south from the position I was at. But I hadn't assessed it yet until I got out of the car.
So I get out of the car. I'm walking towards him, going south on West Street. I go underneath the north bridge and at that point I come across Chief Ganci, Commissioner Feehan, and Chief Downey and they're standing across the street south of the north bridge looking up at the buildings and they're talking about what they're going to do.
Q:
Were they on the west side of West Street?
A:
They were on the west side of West Street. They were on the sidewalk on the west side of West Street. There were other firefighters around them. I could see them. There were firefighters across the street, but I didn't take note of who they were.
Q:
And this would be on the west side near the north bridge outside the World Financial Center?
A:
South of the north bridge nearest the World Financial Center on the west side of West Street on the sidewalk. I could see there was grass behind them, like a hilly grass behind them. And they were talking about we're going to move command posts. They were really involved in trying to decide what they were going to do here, so I didn't really disturb them too much. My concern was moving my command post to where I thought it would be safe.
Q:
Both of the buildings are standing at this point?
A:
Both buildings are standing. And I did not take my radio out of my radio charger in the car and I couldn't see McCahey. I was looking south. I couldn't see McCahey. I was trying to use my cell phone. My cell phone didn't work. I was trying to call Hooper Street or headquarters so that they can get on the radio and tell McCahey to meet me north.
Before I got out of the car, by the way, let me backtrack, before I got out of the car, I was telling McCahey I'm north of the bridge. I'll meet you down there. By the time I got down to Ganci, I felt that being north of the World Trade Center was better than being south. So now I wanted to get a landline. I remember at one point -- and I don't know if it was the first time I encountered them or the second time -- people were talking about moving their Fire Department command post north. So I felt that the fire marshals' command post should be north. I guess it may have been the first time I saw them because for some reason I started moving north on West Street again.
I went back underneath the bridge, walked north on West Street. I couldn't use my cell phone. I was trying to use my cell phone. Then I thought maybe I should get a landline so I could at least call headquarters, call Chris Tempro and have them radio Richie McCahey and the rest of the marshals to meet me up north.
Q:
Can I ask you one follow-up to something you mentioned before? You saw Chief Downey, Chief Ganci, and Bill Feehan outside the World Financial Center. During the time you were there, did you ever see Tom Fitzpatrick with those three?
A:
No, I did not see Tom Fitzpatrick.
Q:
Okay.
A:
I walked north. Now I'm north of the bridge and there's some firefighters around me, there's firefighters walking down past me south and there's some firefighters milling around. I don't know exactly what they were doing. I turned around, I heard something, and I thought the facade and just the facade of the south tower was coming down, and one of the firefighters near me was saying holy shit, and I think he felt the building was going to collapse. I wasn't convinced of that at first. I thought maybe it was just some facade falling. All of a sudden there was a rumble and you see the building starting to collapse. At that point I ran north on West Street as fast as I could possibly run.
Q:
At the point where you noticed the building was falling, were you south of Vesey?
A:
I was south of Vesey. I was probably midway between Vesey and the north bridge, that north overpass. I was probably midway there. And the building started falling and I started running and a lot of people started running. Whoever was around me started running.
Q:
Northbound?
A:
Northbound. We were running northbound up West Street. At one point I could turn around. I turned around over my shoulder and I just saw this cloud. I mean, the building collapsed. There was a cloud coming at you. You knew you couldn't outrun the cloud. You just kept on running trying to get away from it, but you're not going to outrun it, so you kind of resign yourself to the fact that you're going to be overcome by the cloud. You don't know what's in the cloud. You saw a lot of papers flying around in the cloud, but you didn't know what solid material was in the cloud, what structural members or facade was in the cloud that could be coming at you, so that you just kept on going. You're overcome by the cloud. You heard things hitting around you and you say to yourself I hope nothing hits me. What can you say?
Q:
At that point, or just prior to that point, did you know any of the people around you? Did you see anybody you recognized?
A:
No, I did not. I remember before the cloud got to me there was a fireman near me running with me, but when the cloud overtook us, you can't see anything. You had zero visibility. What I did was I ran into some fire trucks. You ran into them. All of a sudden you saw a light in front of you flashing where the flashing lights were on and you just kept walking. You couldn't breathe. You can't breathe. You had a very tough time breathing and you're just saying to yourself I hope I get out of here. Your mouth is full of dust, concrete dust, whatever other kind of material there was in the dust and smoke. Your mouth and your nose is full of all that and you're just choking and you're trying to breathe. There comes a point in time when that dust cloud settles or the wind takes it away from you and it becomes easier and easier to breathe and all of a sudden it's clear.
Q:
Any concept of how much time passed before that happened?
A:
I mean, it seemed like a long time, but it could have been only two or three minutes. It seems like a long time when you're in the middle of it. At that time you looked at yourself, you're just full of this dust from head to toe, your helmet, your coat, everything. And I turned around and started walking back to see what was happening. The second building, the north tower was still standing, smoke coming out of it. I'm walking back to see if I could find Ganci and Feehan and the rest of them and see what we're doing here now. I still didn't have communication with the rest of my troops. I don't know where the rest of my troops were. I don't know how this collapse affected them. So I'm walking back towards where I last saw the command post.
Now, at this point I'm north of Vesey. I'm probably a block north of Vesey. So I turned around and started walking south, got to around Vesey Street or past Vesey Street and I saw some Chiefs there, I saw a lot of people were there full of dust and trying to clean themselves off, spitting, getting it out of your mouth.
Q:
Nobody you recognized in that group?
A:
No, not yet.
Q:
Okay.
A:
And at one point someone comes along with a water bottle and gives me a water bottle to wash my face off and wash my mouth out with. And I'm walking now -- here is where my memory might be off. At one point I thought I saw Ganci and Feehan and I'm not sure if I really did. I'm very hazy. But I do remember seeing a Chief and it may have been Ganci, but there was a Chief there that said we're moving the command post two blocks north, which is the last thing, when I heard Ganci and Feehan the last time, they were considering moving the command post north. Now we're moving it two blocks north and people are walking north now.
Q:
The second building is still standing?
A:
The second building is still standing. People are starting to move towards me north and everybody is full of this dust and ash or whatever you want to call it. And the reason I'm saying I thought I saw Ganci, it may have been someone saying Chief Ganci is ordering.
Q:
So you moved north on West Street, you were moving toward --
A:
No. I'm moving south on West Street now. I've turned around and I'm moving south. So now I'm up to Vesey Street. I moved back towards Vesey Street where I'm encountering people moving north and these people are saying either Chief Ganci ordered it or I saw Chief Ganci, either one, or I might have seen Steve Mosciello. I'm not sure. But they said the command post is being moved two blocks north and Ganci's name is being mentioned. At that point I encountered Jerry Sheehan. During that time, during the time period before Jerry Sheehan, I might have seen Chief Pete Hayden over there. I believe Hayden was over there around by Vesey Street.
Jerry Sheehan is the lieutenant in charge of the NYPD Bomb Squad. He's an old friend of mine. I've known him for 20 years. And Jerry and I were trying to use our cell phones. At this point I want to get ahold of the marshals and just tell all marshals to stay away from the building and Jerry wants to get ahold of his Bomb Squad people. Neither of us had radios and neither of us had cell phones that were working.
So I walked one half block west on Vesey Street, on the north side of Vesey Street, one half block west of the West Side Highway, of West Street. There was a building and there was a parking lot in front of the building with cars in it and on the bottom floor was a bagel shop, like a bagel coffee shop type place, and Jerry and I went in there and we started using landlines. So Jerry made his phone calls and I made my phone calls and I was on the phone with Chris Tempro at headquarters.
A VOICE:
That's the Embassy Suites?
CHIEF GARCIA:
I don't know what the building is but there's that shop. It's the north side of Vesey.
A VOICE:
Is it all the way down towards --
MR. McALLISTER:
The movie theater; is that the one you're talking about?
A VOICE:
Yes. The movie theater is on the corner there.
CHIEF GARCIA:
Well, there was no movie theater in front of us. There was a parking lot there. The movie theater might be in the building on the upper floor.
A VOICE:
Yes.
CHIEF GARCIA:
And I got on the phone with Chris Tempro and I was going to tell him just get on the radio tell all fire marshals to retreat from the building, anybody south go south, two blocks south, anybody north go two blocks north of the building. I also had encountered James Devery, Jim Devery, Supervising Fire Marshal. I encountered him on the street, on West Street, and I saw Fire Marshal Sal Rignola. This is while I was walking down on West Street before I went on Vesey. Fire Marshal Sal Rignola was there and he had a radio and he couldn't raise anybody, which made me worried about what was happening. He couldn't raise anybody on his radio. But I later found out that McCahey lost his radio when the building collapsed. I told him I was going to go down to the shop.
So Jerry and I went down to the shop. I was getting on the phone. I got Chris Tempro on the phone when the second building suddenly collapsed and we could see the second building collapsing through the windows of this coffee shop. We were half a block from West Street and the collapse was just on the other side of West Street and we saw it collapse. To me, it was a faster collapse than the first collapse.
Q:
That was the south tower?
A:
The first collapse was the south tower. The second collapse was the north tower.
Q:
Okay.
A:
The north tower was now collapsing, but to me it was a more violent collapse. I don't know why. I think because the first collapse, to me, I thought at first, before it collapsed, it was just the facade going. This seemed to all of a sudden go down. To me, it was more violent. It may not have been in reality, but to me, it was more violent.
We got away from the windows. I dropped the phone and we told everybody that was in the coffee shop -- because the people who worked there were in there -- to get away and there were some firefighters or EMS workers there and they were giving us a bottle of water. We got away from the front windows because we thought they were in danger of blowing into the establishment. We went around into a kitchen area. There was a door right in through a kitchen area right by the phones and we were looking around the corner to see what was happening.
The collapse occurred. This cloud again. Once again, we've got this cloud, this dark cloud of dust and smoke and whatever else is there. We get that coming towards the windows. The windows did not break inward.
The collapse was subsided, so we came out. I got on the phone with Tempro. I told him the second building just collapsed.
Q:
Was it dark outside the window?
A:
Yes. You can't see anything. It was zero visibility. The building had just collapsed. I said get the marshals on the radio. See who you can get on the radio, number one, if you get anybody on the radio, and, number two, tell them to get away from these buildings.
We went to the front door of the coffee shop and myself and Jerry Sheehan started calling to people. So we were right outside of the door of the coffee shop. We started calling to people to see if people would come to us because we wanted people to get into the coffee shop. And some people did hear us. We could hear them out there and we were calling to them, calling to them. We got them into the coffee shop to get some water on them, on their faces. The people who owned the establishment were trying to help out with the victims.
When it started clearing a little bit, I saw Chief Brian O'Flaherty. Chief O'Flaherty said to me don't touch my arm. He was injured. Obviously, he was injured. His face was cut up. He looked like he had a broken nose because he was bleeding heavily from his nose, and he was holding his arm, so I knew he had a broken arm or something seriously wrong with his arm. I sat him down in a chair and I started talking to him. I know Brian for over 20 years, probably 25 years, and we got an ambulance. There were ambulances west of us. On the water there were ambulances. There was a triage station set up. So we were trying to direct Brian off the chair after we washed off his face to go to the triage. We were going to get him to the triage station and get him an ambulance.
Also coming in from West Street down Vesey Street was Pete Hayden being carried by two firefighters or two officers. He could hardly walk. He really needed help walking. We were trying to get him an ambulance also. We got him into the bagel shop and we did some treatment. We gave him some first aid, very little first aid, but just washing their faces off and helping them try to get their breath back. At that point I got some EMTs that had some of those gurneys or whatever.
Q:
Back boards?
A:
Not even back boards but gurneys, the ones that roll along the ground, and they were starting to take people back to the ambulances.
Q:
About how many people came into the coffee shop?
A:
It could have been as many as ten, twelve. You know, they were coming in and out. If they were able to leave, they would leave. They would wash off and get themselves composed and leave.
Q:
Uniformed and civilian people?
A:
Mostly uniformed people. EMS people, too. Mostly EMS people and firefighters. I do remember one woman being carried was a civilian.
When I went back out, now it's cleared, Brian O'Flaherty has been taken care of, Pete Hayden, Chief Hayden has been taken care of. Myself and Sheehan walked back towards West Street. West Street, of course, is a mess. The bridge is now collapsed. The north bridge is now collapsed. I see Fire Marshal Rignola and he has a radio with him still and I said to him can you get somebody on the radio? He did get somebody on the radio. I forget who it was. But they were south of the World Trade Center. They were south on West Street, way south.
He told me that he jumped into a tower ladder when the second building collapsed and that a piece of metal went right through his tower ladder, his front windshield. He was down on the floor and it just missed him. So he survived because he had gotten himself down on the floor in his tower ladder. But I saw the tower ladder. The cab was like demolished.
Q:
So the tower ladder was stationary at the time; nobody was operating it?
A:
No, nobody was operating it. It was just stationary. It was just parked there by West and Vesey. He just jumped in there to get away from the collapse and this piece of building went right through the front windshield. Luckily he had gone down. He was on the floor.
At that time Chief Fellini -- and I can't tell you how long after. Everybody was kind of wandering around on West Street wondering what they were going to do. Some of the fire Chiefs were saying we're moving north, we're moving north. That seemed to be the theme for a while, moving north, moving north, you know, before the second collapse, and then after the second collapse it was the same thing, let's move north. At one point I saw Chief Fellini finally arrived. He was there for some reason and he started taking some charge of the situation and he told everybody we're moving north.
I think everybody's concern at this point was, of course, who was trapped. There was no order here at all. They were talking about where Chief Nigro was and someone said Chief Nigro is in the command post south; he's all right. People started realizing Chief Ganci wasn't around. And this is just general talk.
Q:
Can you describe what you saw as you looked down West Street?
A:
Down West Street, well, what I saw was two buildings down, smoke coming from two buildings. The cars that were in the parking lot, there was a fire in the parking lot in front of that bagel shop I was in. It was like a big, open, empty lot with cars in it. There was a fire that started there and it was spreading to other cars and once in a while you'd have some explosions there and the fire actually after a period of time got pretty big because it was multiple cars. Several cars were going at once. So some debris from the building was burning and must have landed there and started these cars on fire. So you had this black smoke coming from these cars that were on fire, which no one paid attention to. We all said so what; let them burn themselves out. And you also heard what I thought were gunshots.
Later on, in a conversation with Jerry Sheehan, he told me those were real gunshots. Police officers that were trapped were shooting their guns off to try to draw attention to where they were trapped. I found out later on that Commissioner Dunne was trapped in a car in the first collapse and before the second collapse had happened the Bomb Squad had brought a car down because Dunne couldn't walk. He has a bad knee. If you noticed, he's been on crutches for a while.
Q:
Right.
A:
So a Bomb Squad car had gone down and gotten Commissioner Dunne right before the second collapse occurred. Commissioner Dunne had been north of Vesey Street when the second collapse had occurred because he was taken out by car. He had been first trapped in a car in the first collapse. These are stories I've heard afterwards. And when Fellini got there things started to come into order.
My concern, of course, was the fire marshals. So I was concentrating on trying to reach fire marshals. At one point I found out that Rignola, McCahey, and a bunch of marshals were south of the World Trade Center and they had moved towards Battery Park. And I knew I had fire marshals down there.
What I didn't know was that Supervising Fire Marshal James Kelty had left the golf course and was in 10 Engine when the collapses occurred with his brother, captain of 10 Engine. He described to me what happened there. When he got there, there were people injured coming out of the buildings and they were trying to treat people and bring them into 10 Engine and try to treat them, and what they thought was a third plane hitting was really at that point the first building collapsing.
Q:
10 Engine is on West Street?
A:
No. 10 Engine is on Liberty Street, on Liberty Street just east of the plaza. Why they didn't get touched, I don't know. I mean, the firehouse is a little beat up, but it was still standing. It's right on Liberty. Here's Liberty.
A VOICE:
Right here?
CHIEF GARCIA:
Yes. Where is the Trade Center?
A VOICE:
This is 2 World Trade right here.
A:
Yes. They're right here.
Q:
Okay. Got it. It's directly south of 2 World Trade?
A:
Yes, 2 World Trade Center.
Q:
Got it.
A:
And they were treating people and everybody was just trying to get to radios to see how they were. As time passed, I was able to determine where the rest of my marshals were. Chief McCahey came around to meet me north of the World Trade Center because I insisted on everybody coming north, but he said they were safe down south, but he also told me Chief Nigro was in a command trailer by Battery Park, that he was okay, that Chief Cassano was okay, but no one had seen Ganci or Feehan. The word was circulated that Ganci and Feehan were trapped or had been involved in the collapse. There was no talk about Ray Downey. But Ganci and Feehan definitely. I saw Steve Mosciello.
After that they were just trying to organize parties to go in there and try to get people out, and I saw my marshals. Basically what we were going to do at that point was stand by to see what we could help out with the digging and we would later decide how we were going to conduct an investigation and what kind of investigation was going to be conducted.
Q:
Did there come a time then when you did set up a command post north of the site?
A:
Not really. What we did was we used the site south. I had more marshals south than north. But there was no real formal command post ever set up. I hung around. I was near the command post they were setting up north of Vesey. I was near that command post. And the concentration at that time, it's not investigation, but everyone is thinking about how to get people out, and people were trying to break up into crews, it seemed like they were trying to break up into crews, but there was a lot of confusion. There was a lot of confusion.
Q:
Any idea approximately what time it was now, at this point in time?
A:
This has got to be I'm going to say about a half an hour after the second collapse. Before then really everybody was in a daze. Everybody was just trying to assess the situation, and it was a tough situation to assess.
Q:
Sure.
A:
I don't think anybody had ever seen anything like this.
MR. McALLISTER:
Are there any follow-up questions? It's pretty clear to me.
Q:
Chief do you have anything else that you'd like to add, any other observations that you may have had on that day?
A:
Not really. My observations are that, I mean, we've never had a situation like this. From an operational point of view, even though I'm not a Chief in operation, a fire Chief, I was a firefighter at Rescue 1, I was a lieutenant in the South Bronx fighting fires, and I had never seen so much fire in a high-rise building. Never. Even when I was in Rescue 1 as a fireman in rescue in Manhattan. I have never seen more than one floor going and an entire floor. You're talking about multiple floors and the entire floor from west to east, north to south, an entire floor burning. That's a lot of fire. I don't think we were capable of putting out that much fire in a building.
My other observation is that the airliners crashing into the building may have weakened the building, but that is not what caused the collapse. What caused the collapse was the intense fire from the jet fuel that continued burning along with combustible materials on multiple floors and the fact that the building was built with a core construction. The floors were supported by the core and also by the skin of the building, the steel outer skin of the building. That's how those floors were supported. So here you have an airliner coming in, one airliner came in straight and hit on an upper floor, that was in the north tower, and it hit probably in the 90s, the floors it hit. The upper 90s it hit. The second plane, which caused the first collapse, as it came into the building banked, it banked, so the wings, if you saw the film, the wings hit multiple floors now. Now the amount of floors that were hit were greater because the wings had banked. So then you have the wings going into floors above and below the main fuselage of the plane, and it also hit near the corner and it hit on a lower floor, probably 20 floors below, somewhere in the 80s, in the low 80s, 83rd floor, somewhere along there, 83rd floor, 81st floor. That's where the second plane hit. Now, that's in the south tower and that's the first tower that collapsed. So you have that plane hitting.
Now you have all this intense heat, you have heat probably up even close to 2,000 degrees burning here. Steel joists and steel I-beams, at 1,200 degrees of heat they'll expand nine inches per hundred foot of steel. So per hundred foot of steel, steel will expand nine inches. So you have this expansion going on because they've been subjected between 45 minutes to an hour and a half to heat now. The second tower to collapse was the first one hit. That was an hour and a half after it was hit.
Q:
What do you estimate the temperature was at that time?
A:
Reaching 2,000 degrees in those towers. So now we're going to have this steel expanding and also it starts warping and twisting. So once it was weakened to that point, the steel, besides the crash, it was weakened by the fire, which really caused it to collapse, one floor started collapsing into another floor, and that's what caused the collapse. So it was really the fire more than the plane crashing into the building that caused the collapse.
How do we operationally treat that in the future? I don't think we can. I think we restrict our efforts to try to get people out of the building, but we don't have enough water or enough manpower to get up in that building and put out a fire that's that extensive in one of these buildings.
Q:
In the period of time?
A:
In any period of time. It will burn itself out before. Either the building is going to collapse or it's going to burn itself out. In the Empire State Building, the Empire State Building would not have collapsed. It's different types of construction. It's not core construction. It's masonry, it's columns, it's heavier built. But then, of course, you don't have these big, open spaces. In the Empire State Building, it's more compartmentalized.
Q:
Right.
A:
So a building like the Empire State Building would not have collapsed. You would have had a huge fire there, you would have had a lot of floors burnt out, you would have never put out the fire, it probably would have burnt itself out also, but the building would have stood. This type of construction, I don't think we'd ever be able to put out a fire like this. We restrict our actions to evacuation rather than trying to put the fire out, and that's the only observation I could make.
MR. McALLISTER:
Does anybody else have anything? Okay. It's now 11:48 a.m. on October 2nd, 2001. This concludes the interview with Chief Garcia of the Bureau of Fire Investigation. Thank you, Chief.
File No. 9110003 CHIEF MARK STEFFENS
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
Interview Date: October 3, 2001
Transcribed by: Laurie A. Collins
M. STEFFENS
MR. McALLISTER:
I'm McAllister from the Bureau of Administration. We're interviewing Chief Mark Steffens of Division 1, formerly the commanding officer at the Office of Medical Affairs. The date of the interview is October 2nd, 2001. It is now 2:47 p.m. This conversation is taking place in conference room 8E13 at Fire Department headquarters.
I'm also joined by --
MR. CAMPBELL:
Patrick Campbell, fire marshal.
MR. STERACE:
Fire Marshal Michael Sterace.
MR. McALLISTER:
And Chief Mark Steffens.
Q:
Chief Steffens, I'd like to draw your attention to the date of September the 11th, 2001, and I'd like for you, in your own words, to describe your experiences from that day.
A:
I normally start work at 9:00, so at 8:50 I was still home showering, getting ready for work. I saw what happened on the television going on. I heard what happened. I saw initially the first tower on fire.
I got dressed as fast as I could. I got into my department vehicle, and I proceeded all the way to the Kosciusko Bridge down the BQE. My next recollection is being on the FDR Drive. I don't remember how I got from the BQE to the FDR Drive.
My next recollection is I'm coming down the FDR Drive. I get down to about the Staten Island ferry terminal, and I couldn't get any further. Civilians were running everywhere. There was smoke in the air, and the white powder was in the air. I think only the first tower had dropped at that point.
Q:
Had dropped?
A:
The people who were running, they said the first tower had dropped already. So I would imagine this is probably like about -- I'd say somewhere between 9:15 and 9:30, thereabouts, by the time I got into Manhattan.
I abandoned my vehicle at about the Staten Island ferry terminal. I pulled over there, by where they have the chopper pads on the East River. I abandoned my vehicle. I put a mayday on the radio that I was abandoning my vehicle because I did not have a portable radio with a charged battery at that time.
So I got out. I was on foot. I was heading up South Street to Division 1 on foot. That was as far as I got. Coming down South Street was Jerry Bacchus, who was the ALS coordinator for the EMS command. He picked me up.
Q:
He was in a vehicle?
A:
He was in a suburban. He had the suburban stocked with medical supplies. He picked me up, because I was on foot at that time. I got in the suburban with Jerry Bacchus. We went down the drive, under the hole, out onto West Street. We got up to about the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.
When we got to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, about that point on West Street, there was a Port Authority cop standing there. They were shouting, "The tower's going to come down. The tower's coming down. You've got to get out of here."
Q:
What were you able to observe at that time around there?
A:
Black smoke. Black smoke and people running everywhere. A lot of fire apparatus on both sides of West Street. I didn't see any guys, just apparatus. I saw some stretched lines and things like that.
So we continued to drive into the smoke cloud. We got to maybe one block north of where the Battery Tunnel exits onto West Street there, and then, boom, a massive explosion. Right in front of us we saw what looked like a fireball and smoke. It was rolling this way.
I said, "Jerry, we've got to get out of this fucking car." I'm afraid --
Q:
That's okay.
A:
I'm afraid -- so we bailed out of the truck.
Q:
This is your recollection.
A:
We bailed out of the suburban. We went underneath it. The thing blew over us. I had my turnout coat on. I put my face in my helmet. The thing blew over us. I felt heat. I felt all kinds of debris and stuff hitting my body.
When I opened my eyes, it was pitch-black. I closed my eyes again. I was praying. When I opened my eyes a second time -- and it feels like each one of these instances was a long period of time, but I don't know how long it was.
When I opened my eyes a second time, it was like skiing in a blizzard. It was just white, a sea of white, and everything blowing all around. So I felt okay. "Jerry, we've got to get out of here."
We got out from under the vehicle. We got back in the vehicle. We jumped over the divider and started driving back down West Street to the battery. We got to battery -- we put the vehicle up against where that old fortress is right by the Holocaust memorial. There's an old fortress right where the Statue of Liberty ferry terminal is.
Q:
Sure.
A:
We put the vehicle up against that wall, and each one of us climbed into one of those cubbyholes.
Then there was another -- it sounded like an explosion and heavy white powder, papers, flying everywhere. We sat put there for a few minutes. It kind of dissipated. We pulled the vehicle out, right down to the battery. We turned on the emergency lights, and it became a casualty collection point.
Q:
Had you been in radio contact from the time you were on West Street?
A:
The last radio contact was when I maydayed when I bailed out of the vehicle. No other radio contact after that point.
Q:
There wasn't a radio in the suburban?
A:
There was a radio in the suburban, but I don't recall that we were using it. We were running at that point. We were coming down West Street. One of the EMS guys was running. He was just dressed in blue, covered in soot, bleeding from under the face like this. We grabbed him. We threw him in the back of the suburban. We pulled down to West Street.
When the smoke and all of that dissipated, we turned on the lights. It became a casualty collection point there. All the EMS people were running down West Street. They collected by our vehicle.
All kinds of vessels, barges, little small pleasure craft, everything was just pulling up to the dock, and we were putting civilians -- there was one police lieutenant -- I don't know his name. He did a fantastic job. And we just evacuated as many civilians onto these boats and sent them to Jersey.
My guys established that casualty collection point. We were doing eye washes and boo-boos and giving out whatever masks we had to civilians and to cops like that. We were there for what seemed like a couple of hours at the battery until the point there was nobody left, just the emergency service people.
At that point I became aware of an EMS operation that was going on in the Staten Island ferry terminal. So I gathered up my guys, and we walked on foot to the Staten Island ferry terminal, where I was reunited with the other folks that established the casualty collection point at the Staten Island ferry terminal there.
I was there for a couple of hours, and then we were all directed to report to the command post which was at Chambers and West.
M. STEFFENS 9
That was early afternoon. We regrouped and were given various assignments. I was sent to command the Chelsea operation.
Q:
So you think that when you were on the drive the smoke you saw was probably from one of the aircraft and not from a building?
A:
No, because it wasn't heavy smoke. You could smell fire. I know the smell of fire, and I have been around long enough. So I recognized the smell of fire. But there wasn't all of that debris or anything flying around in the air. There was just people, people everywhere, people running.
I got to the point where I couldn't go any further with my vehicle because there were people in the streets, on the drive. So that's when I decided to bail out of the vehicle, figuring I could make better time on foot.
Q:
Sure.
A:
My thought was let me go to Division 1, group whatever I could so we could go to the incident site.
Q:
When you were on West Street approaching the World Trade Center site, do you think that's when the first tower came down?
A:
I think it was the second tower came down, although I don't know for sure.
Q:
Was there a lot of debris while you were still going on West Street?
A:
No.
Q:
Powder?
A:
No. A lot of fire apparatus, a lot of engine companies like that.
Q:
The street was clean?
A:
It seemed wet. There were stretched lines. I didn't see my guys. This seemed weird to me, all this apparatus but no guys. There were lines stretched on the ground but no guys.
Q:
So it was clear while you were going up West Street?
A:
Yes. That's when we heard this massive explosion and I saw this thing rolling towards us. It looked like a fireball and then thick, thick black smoke.
Q:
Is it possible the second one occurred while you were in the battery?
A:
The second one had to have occurred while we were at the battery, because that's when all this white stuff started flying around.
Q:
That sounds right.
A:
But the timeline -- I don't know when these things actually occurred in real time. I was home at 8:50. I had to be in the car before 9:00. I was just about dressed. I was shaving, putting on the finishing touches, when I saw the thing on the news. I ran to the car. You can look at my unit history in the CAD system, see what time I logged on and proceeded down there. It took me a while to get down the BQE.
Q:
It seems like there was about a 45-minute period, between about 9:45 a.m. and 10:30.
A:
8:45.
Q:
No, I'm talking about where the both the buildings came down. I'm not entirely accurate on that, but that's what it seems like to me, at the time.
A:
It seemed like the time frame between what we saw on West Street and what occurred when we were at the battery, it seemed like they happened close together. But when I think about the things that occurred during that period of time, it couldn't have been close together because too many things happened. But it seemed like they happened very close to one another.
The whole thing seemed like it happened very quickly from getting no further with the vehicle so let me just pull this car over and bail out, what I can do on foot. I didn't get more than a block or two -- you know where the fire station is on South Street?
Q:
Yes.
A:
That's where I was. Jerry picked me up right there. We went right into the hole, came around up onto West Street. I didn't know what the hell -- when the Port Authority cop tried to stop us -- he waved and said, "No, the building's going to come down."
At that point I wasn't listening to any cop. My thought was I've got to go there. My guys are there. Then boom and the cloud. I didn't want to stay in the vehicle. I was afraid that the windows were going to blow out. My reflex action was to get underneath it.
Q:
How did the vehicle survive when you got out from under the vehicle?
A:
Just covered with soot. It didn't blow out any windows or anything like that. I guess we weren't close enough. So the vehicle survived. It had a lot of powder and stuff on the windshield like that. At that point I was just grateful to be able to get in and get the hell out of there.
Q:
Is there any follow-ups? I want to know, did you see anybody on the way that was present that you knew besides the guy that picked you up, Bacchus? Anybody else? Did you see anybody else from the Fire Department?
A:
No. No, I grabbed the one EMS guy. I never saw him before. I remember his name is Badillo, Benjamin Badillo, an EMT in the Bronx. He just came out of the cloud, poor kid, covered, bleeding down the face. I grabbed him and said get in this truck, and the three of us bailed out to the battery.
Q:
Any follow-ups?
Do you have any other observations, Mark?
A:
When I went back to recover my vehicle, I recovered my vehicle and caught up with Chief Basile and Chief Villani. We were going to go look for their vehicles. We drove out onto West Street. I came from the Statue of Liberty ferry terminal. My car was on the east side, so it was fine, it was okay.
We drove back down again. We weren't able to go down the hole. We went onto West Street. When we pulled onto West Street, it was just like nothing I've ever seen in my life. All the apparatus, the fire trucks, everything all blown out, the windows were all blown out, body parts lying on the street, mud, soot, people walking around dazed.
I saw one proby -- he had a proby on the helmet -- by himself, walking by himself. I tried to get him to come with us. He said, "No, no, I've got to go back. I've got to go back." We washed his eyes. I gave him something to clean his face. Then he turned around and went back into the cloud. I never saw him again.
There were lines stretched --
Q:
Do you recall his name?
A:
No. Young, young guy. He had a proby on the front of the helmet.
Q:
Any numbers on there?
A:
I can't remember. I can't remember at all. I didn't want him to go back, and he wouldn't listen to me. I wasn't going to hold him back. He walked off.
Q:
That was after the second or after the first collapse?
A:
After the second. He just walked back into that big, black cloud.
That's as much as I recall.
Q:
I appreciate your time today. Thank you very much. Thanks, Chief.
A:
I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help.
MR. McALLISTER:
It's 3:01 p.m., and the interview is now concluded.
File No. 9110004 PARAMEDIC MANUEL DELGADO
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
Interview Date: October 2, 2001
Transcribed by: Nancy Francis
M. DELGADO
MR. McALISTER:
This is Kevin McAlister from the Bureau of Administration. It is October 2nd at 2:03 p.m. We're in conference room 8E13 at Fire Department Headquarters, and in a moment we will begin interviewing Paramedic Manuel Delgado. I'm here today with...
FIRE MARSHAL CAMPBELL:
Patrick Campbell, Fire Marshal.
FIRE MARSHAL STARACE:
Michael Starace, Fire Marshal.
MR. McALISTER:
Now we'll start with Paramedic Manuel Delgado. He's assigned to the Office of Medical Affairs.
Q:
Drawing your attention to September the 11th, could you describe where you were working that day and when you became aware of the World Trade Center incident?
A:
It must have been about five to 9:00. I got a call from Joe Farrell, who is a DOH rep from the Bureau of Emergency Services, the Department of Health, calling me saying what's going on at the World Trade Center? I had no knowledge of it. I looked immediately to the CAD, the computer-aided dispatch system, in the computer. I noticed that there was a 1040, a plane into the World Trade Center. I called him back and advised him of such.
At this point, one of the doctors that was here, Dr. Cherson, I advised him of the fact that there was a 1040 going on and maybe, you know, it's part of our response matrix.
Q:
What's a 1040?
A:
An airplane into a building.
So I called Commissioner Clair, who at that time was up in Albany in a CMAC meeting, let him know what was going on, and I told him I would get back to him as soon as I got to the scene. Myself, Dr. Cherson, and we met up with Dr. Guttenberg, who is the EMS fellow in the office downstairs, us three proceeded to get in Dr. Cherson's car and drove across the Brooklyn Bridge.
Obviously, when we were driving across the Brooklyn Bridge, it was very obvious that there was something serious going on at the World Trade Center. There was a gaping black hole. It seemed like the upper floors, and I don't know exactly -- now I know through press reports what floor more or less was hit, but it looked to me like the top ten floors were fully engulfed in smoke at this time.
Q:
How many of the towers were burning; one or two?
A:
One. Only one at this time.
So we went across the Brooklyn Bridge, had a little trouble navigating through the traffic, and finally arrived at the corner of I believe it's West Broadway. Let me look on this map real quick. West Broadway and Vesey.
As soon as we arrived, a massive explosion goes off, and at this point we didn't know what it was. We thought it was a secondary explosion. We didn't know that it was a second plane. In fact, I didn't know there was a second plane until much later in the evening.
An explosion goes off. I immediately tell everyone to get out of the car and hide somewhere, go underneath something. It's interesting because, as we were there, there was a police car, I guess, on Vesey, on the corner there, and some debris comes down from whatever this explosion was, at the time we really didn't know, and it just crushes it, I mean, crushes the top front of the police car, which really scared me at that point.
Q:
Could you tell if it was airplane parts?
A:
It looked like an airplane part afterward, yes, it did. It looked like part of an engine. It was pretty big. It was probably the size of the hood because it kind of hit it, bounced, and then rolled off.
So then at that point we were approached by a police officer holding one of his cops with a massive evulsion of the forehead. I need the car, I need the car.
Q:
What does that mean in layman's terms?
A:
An evulsion is the scalp sort of like was peeled back. So there was some heavy bleeding. It was worse actually than the injury. She still had her consciousness. He says, I need the car, I need the car.
So Dr. Cherson proceeded to West Street to the temporary command center at that time. Me, the cop, and the cop who was injured and Dr. Guttenberg got into the car and drove this cop that was injured down to Beekman. We drove the cop to Beekman, dropped her off. At that point people were being mobilized at the hospital itself.
Dr. Guttenberg and myself then jumped back in the car and went back to the site.
Q:
When you say you went back to the site, where exactly did you go at that point?
A:
Well, we couldn't get back to where we were on Vesey and West Broadway, so we ended up on -- now, let me look on the map here. Up further. Broadway itself, Broadway between, I would say, Fulton and Ann Street, I guess it is. Fulton and Ann, yes. We kind of left the car there in the middle of the street and proceeded to walk down to the West Street command, which was a command post at this time.
When I got back to the command post, I was able to secure -- because everyone's cell phones seemed to be dead at that point. Luckily, one of the lieutenants there handed me a cell phone. I was able to call Commissioner Clair, who was still in Albany, telling him at this point we had a very, very serious incident going on, and that I don't know how he and the other physicians who were up there could get themselves down here as quickly as possible because this was a major terrorist attack. So he told me that basically the state police were securing a chopper for him and the other two physicians to fly them down. That was my last communication with him.
So we were at West command for a while.
Q:
Can I ask you a detail question before you get there?
A:
Yes.
Q:
The West command, I see it located here on the map roughly at the corner of -- what is that, Vesey and West?
A:
Yes. That looks like Vesey and West, I guess?
Q:
Yes. That's the north bridge, I think?
A:
Right. We were just in front of the north bridge.
Q:
Could you describe, were you on the east side of West Street, the west side?
A:
We were on the west -- well, no. I would say the east side of West Street. I guess, on the middle, there's like a barrier here, sort of like a potted, planted barrier before you get to the financial district area. So we were all standing there. The vehicles or the staging, which is the area where the ambulance was set up, was back here on West Street.
Q:
Who was with you at that point in time?
A:
At that point, Dr. Cherson was with me. I saw Commissioner Drury showed up at the scene. He was with us there for a little while. He was looking for Commissioner Gregory. Captain Jace Pinkus from Communications was there and an assorted amount of EMS Lieutenants and Fire Operations people were around. I remember at one point seeing the Mayor. I saw Commissioner Von Essen. Really, at that point, I really lose sight of what was going on because there was an horrific site. I mean, people were starting to jump or fall from the top.
Q:
You were able to observe that?
A:
Yes, definitely. We saw them jumping from here down and that was really horrific. There was nothing you could do for them. We wanted to go in after them and they basically told us don't because it's very dangerous at this point.
Somewhere along the line Dr. Cherson was told that -- and I don't know who relayed this information to him. I guess it's Vesey command, but actually it was on Church between -- I was closer to Cortlandt and I don't know what street this is. Dey Street?
Q:
Dey Street.
A:
Actually, that's where the command post was, a triage command, and we were told that they were getting hammered. So what happened was that myself --
Q:
That was a staging point for medics and EMTs?
A:
Yes, right. Exactly. That's where mainly all the medics and EMTs were starting to treat people as they were exiting the building. So myself -- well, first, before that, Dr. Cherson tells Dr. Guttenberg to go back to the car and get the weapons of mass destruction kit, which is basically the TUPAM, the atropine and the narcotics that we carry in case of a biological incident. That's what immediately we started thinking. So Dr. Guttenberg goes back to the car.
At this point, also, at the north bridge, we ran into Dr. Asaeda, who got down there on his own response. So Dr. Asaeda was going to set up a command over in the lobby of OEM. What building is that, 7? Tower 7?
Q:
7 World Trade Center.
A:
7 World Trade Center. So Dr. Guttenberg and Dr. Asaeda were to set up their command -- there were already some medics and EMTs in the lobby of 7 World Trade Center. So they were going to set up their own triage and command center there. Dr. Cherson and myself then walked back to the Vesey command. But at this point it wasn't right on Fulton. I remember Cortlandt more than I do Fulton, although it might have been. I don't know. I remember the opening of the building and seeing the north tower right in front of me. That I remember very clearly.
We were getting hammered with patients. At one point we wanted to move forward and again we were told do not. Dr. Cherson made it very clear, don't go any more forward because of the bodies and everything else that's coming down.
Q:
So now, just stopping you at that point, both of the towers are still standing?
A:
Both of the towers are still standing, yes.
Q:
You're looking basically straight at the north tower?
A:
Right.
Q:
You're looking across the plaza of the World Trade Center?
A:
Yes, right, and people are exiting this way in droves. I mean, there was just a stream of people running, running, running, and basically at this point our triage was, if you're walking, keep walking, and if people are being carried or people were falling, we would move forward, and we moved forward as much as in between towers I believe this was 4 and 5, buildings 4 and 5.
Q:
That's right.
A:
I know we went in there and helped some people come out, some lady, who she ended up in the pictures, in a red dress, who was extremely burnt. There was another guy who had to have second and third degrees over about 80 percent of his body, and he was carried out halfway and I guess collapsed or someone dropped him and just ran. We picked him up and started bringing him out.
At this point we were getting an influx of equipment, LSU unit, like the logistical support units who carry the oxygen and all that stuff. They were coming into the area to give us oxygen, to give us blankets, and then units were also coming in. But we were getting inundated with patients. We had more patients than we had ambulances. We were stuffing four and five people in an ambulance at this point. I mean, it was just to get people out of there with minimal treatment. There was nothing you could do.
Q:
At that point in time, did you see anybody you knew either from the fire or the EMS side working the ambulances?
A:
Yes.
Q:
Who did you see?
A:
Quite a few people. There was Carlos Lillo, who I later found out he's deceased.
Q:
Where did you last see Carlos?
A:
Carlos was with me and it's interesting because Carlos always had a smile on his face, and Carlos has been around for a while, and I remember at one point on Church we had like four or five critically, critically ill people who were laid out and there were people still streaming out, and this is after, where we're moving back and forth trying to get people in and out, I remember turning and seeing Carlos with his helmet and tears pouring down his eyes, and at first I thought maybe this guy is overwhelmed, maybe he needs to get out of here, you know? I go to him, Carlos, what's the matter? What's going on? He says, my wife's in there. I said, listen, man. This is God's will. You've got to help me with the people. Snap out of it. We've got a lot of patients. You've got to help me here. So he does and he begins to do what he has to do, which is to help me treat people and start sorting who is bad and who isn't.
Now, time, I have no idea, time factor here. I don't know what is five minutes, what is two minutes, what took ten minutes. I know that a Lieutenant showed up with the LSU unit, again, and says, I need help getting oxygen out of the back of this vehicle. I remember seeing oxygen tanks in a milk crate.
By the way, the other people who were here were Lieutenant Bruce Medjuck, who is from the EMS operations, Captain Janice Olszewski. I remember seeing -- Dr. Cherson was there with me. I lose track of who was there really. I mean, I remember Lillo because it sort of stuck out in my mind that this man was crying so hard and like it kind of -- he was out of place because I was wondering for a slight moment, said, what's he doing here? He's a Queens unit. But at this point I figured everyone was being brought in and who knows what the heck is going on.
Q:
Did you lose track of him then or did you see him?
A:
Well, it's interesting because I didn't lose track of him because I was concerned. I was concerned of the fact that he was overwhelmed, I think, by the fact that his wife was in the building.
Oh, you know who else I saw there? Gabe Delapena.
Q:
Delapena?
A:
Delapena, yes. I saw him also there because at one point he goes, Manny, Manny, what's going on? He's another one that was searching for his wife because I believe his wife was in the tower.
Q:
I think that's right.
A:
Yes. But I tried to keep my eye on Carlos as much as I can. I'm dealing with the people that are coming out. There's some other people there that I don't really know their name. I know their faces. A black gentleman that works down for operations also. In fact, there's a picture of them both treating that lady that I'm talking about with the red dress in one of the Time magazines that I forgot his name. It will come to me in a minute. But anyway, we're treating.
I remember at one point or another this Lieutenant coming in and asking for help to get the oxygen out of the vehicle. I go to help him, and at that point I remember not seeing Carlos, and I don't know if he was there or not there. But immediately once I put the oxygen down, I hear the rumble, and I heard a rumble that we thought was another plane. That's what immediately everyone said, there's a plane coming, there's another plane coming.
So we all looked up and what we saw was tower, I guess, 2, the south tower, begin to do this. The top kind of did this and there was a horrendous rumble.
Q:
Now, your hand is showing that it's kind of tilted in one direction. What direction did it tilt?
A:
It was tilting towards us, so it had been to be tilting eastward.
Q:
East?
A:
Maybe southeast. I'm not sure because at this point it's total pandemonium. At that point we hear the rumble and, you know, this is it. I figure I'm dead. I thought this tower was going to topple.
So I start to run. I remember running -- I don't know which way I ran. I don't even know what street I ended up on to be very honest with you. I ran -- it must have been either this or Fulton. One of these two.
Q:
Dey Street or Fulton Street?
A:
Yes.
Q:
Do you know if there was a church next to you?
A:
I don't know. I know there were stores up the block. So I start to run --
Q:
So you definitely headed east; you're just not sure down what street?
A:
Yes. I didn't want to go west. I figured let me go east. There's a subway station somewhere here, so it may have been Fulton maybe?
Q:
Yes, it was. It's a major station there.
A:
I remember seeing that and I remember saying I'm not going down there because I don't want to be suffocated, I don't want to be suffocated. But as I ran, I got knocked down by it seemed like even someone punched me in the back, like a blast it seemed. It just kind of picked me up and knocked me down. I scraped my elbow, I twisted my ankle, my pants got all ripped, my glasses got blown off and the helmet came off. I get up quickly and all I can see now is just -- it had to be on Fulton -- the blast, this dark cloud coming at us, at me anyway, because I don't even know who's around me at this point. You kind of lose all -- I lost all track of time. I lost basically all body movements and I was going on, and then we're engulfed in the smoke, which was horrendous.
One thing I remember, it was hot. The smoke was hot and that scared me. I've treated in 18 years many, many people with smoke inhalation, and I know the consequences of inhaling heat. So I got really scared. I tried to put my T-shirt over me. That didn't work. I couldn't see because my glasses were shot. I couldn't see because my eyes were irritated. Like one guy said, it was like breathing cotton balls, that's what it felt like, because your mouth was just full of this shit and your nose, everywhere. I'm running -- not running because I'm walking now. I'm afraid. I'm thinking in my mind I'm going to die of suffocation or somebody's going to run me over, because you couldn't see your hand in front of you. That's how dark it got. I walked into one or two poles.
Then out of -- I don't know. It was God's miracle, basically. I don't even know how I ended up there. I was on the corner and, as I was telling them just before you walked in, I heard a banging and I walked towards the banging and there was, as later I found out, it was a Fire Marshal and a cop, a detective in plainclothes, who were banging, trying to break the door down in one of these computer stores on the corner there.
Q:
Do you know the marshal's name?
A:
No. He did take our names down, so he should have a record of it. I haven't been able to find out who he is. So they're banging on the door, and I remember telling the cop, you know, you have a fucking gun, you have a fucking gun, use it, use it, we're going to die out here. REDACTED
Q:
Sure.
A:
That's exactly what he does. In between his coughing, he takes out his gun and the first bullet doesn't break it. Second one, the glass comes down. It must have been a thick glass. We were able to get inside.
Q:
So he fired off two shots?
A:
Two shots, yes. Then inside there's, I guess, like a gate, sort of like the gate that we have downstairs in that store, an inside gate. So we see that and we're like, oh, shit. So, finally, us three, we hold it up and we let the civilians get underneath. I think there were one or two of them. There weren't a whole lot of them. Or maybe three. I'm not even sure at this point. They go under and we hold it for each other and we go under and we go into the store. We walk up some escalators to the second floor, which looked to be like a computer store. We started looking for water or anything to wet ourselves to clean off our faces because we're all coughing and hacking. We find a water fountain and we all basically drink from that and wait for the smoke to clear a bit.
Q:
Is the smoke in the building, though?
A:
Yes. And the smoke alarms are going off and who knows what else is going off. There's smoke but it's not that bad, though, so you could see. It's a haze. It's sort of like when you're in a club and you see the haze, you know, it's hazy, it's not necessarily black, pitch, acrid smoke that was outside. I would say about five or six, seven minutes go by while we're inside. It seemed like an eternity, you know what I mean? So we told the civilians, look, just head towards the water. Leave. Get out of the store. Go towards the water and keep walking. Just keep walking. Don't go this way.
The three of us proceed -- and I don't even know what street it is. I think it was Fulton. It might have been Dey Street. I don't even know what street it was. We start heading back. I believe the store was probably on Broadway. I think I made it that far up. I'm not even sure, though. It had to be because it couldn't have been on Church.
Q:
It wasn't J & R was it?
A:
No. I know where J & R is over by City Hall. No, I wasn't that far. It had to be around Broadway. So I remember we go outside and I lose track of where they went and I start heading down I guess it's Fulton Street and I heard the rumble again. So now it's the second tower coming down.
Q:
Now, just prior to that, had the air cleared outside?
A:
Yes. It had cleared to the point where you could see. It was still smoky. There was still a heavy smoke condition in the area and dust, I mean, and papers and debris and God knows what else was in the air. But it looks even like snow sometimes because that's kind of coming down from everywhere.
Q:
Were there any people out on the street at that point?
A:
There were people walking around, yes, in a daze. It looked like a moon landscape really. The lights were on, cars were driving by, and then more dust would be kicked up. I remember walking down and then I heard the second rumble, and I don't even know where it was now. I'm not even sure if I went back to Church or what. But we heard the second rumble, turned right around and started running again and went -- and I remember just going -- I don't even know what street. Now that I look at this map, I don't know what street I was at to be honest with you. I don't know if I got back to Broadway or -- I know I ran backwards, not backwards, but I turned around and started running back up again and went into there was this liquor store -- not a liquor store. It was a clothing store and there were some people in there already, and I got in there, and there was also, I believe, another Fire Marshal in that store. I don't know who he was. I think he was a Fire Marshal. I'm not sure because he wasn't a cop. We were able to use the phone in there to try to call out, but whoever I was calling, I was trying to call some of my people but their cell phones weren't working. That was it.
Then, at that point, five, fifteen minutes went by, I guess, before the smoke cleared again. There were very few people in the street at this point. I ended up on I guess it must be Fulton over by Beekman Hospital. There's a little triangular square. It's not even a park. It's like a little square. I ended up there and I ended up running into Dr. Cherson. That's the first time I saw him since the incident went down. Then we ran into Bruce Medjuck, Lieutenant Medjuck, and Bruce had a radio, because Alan's radio was blown off of his pocket or whatever and I don't know where it went, and he told us that we were assembling down at the ferry. That was going to be the main place to try to get people treated there because we weren't going to get around to West Street or to Chambers Street where they were trying to set up another command post because both buildings at this point were down.
So that's what we did. We walked -- I don't know where we walked, but we walked downtown all the way to the ferry terminal, and at that point Chief Basile was there with his aide and some other people were there and we started to get ready for mass casualties to see how many people were coming and who we could try to help. But there were no patients. Nobody was coming.
Q:
Not a single patient came to the ferry terminal?
A:
A few scratches, bumps, bruises, people who had already left the building way before, some people with some difficulty breathing, one guy with a broken ankle, another one with some trauma to the chest, but nothing life-threatening, that was the big thing. Nothing gory. I mean, they were walking wounded for the most part, and that's all we treated.
So a bunch of physicians came from surrounding hospitals, nurses. We got all our resources together, established a critical and a noncritical area, and that was it.
Q:
How long was that area set up?
A:
Well, from the time we got there, they had already started to move the benches to cordon off the area, and I guess within 20 to 30 minutes the site was set up to accept critical and noncritical. Then our resources started coming in more rapidly, so we were able to get a lot more stuff like extra equipment, blankets, cots. So we had about 20 or 30 critical areas to treat and Dr. Cherson at that point was the Chief medical officer there and started assigning physicians and nurses who were there and medics to certain areas. Then at the street level we had a staging area where the ambulances were being mustered and somebody was taking care of that area. I don't know who he was, some Lieutenant. But nothing ever came.
Q:
How long did you stay there?
A:
We stayed there until about, I guess, 4:00 o'clock, and later on I found out this happened about 10:00, I guess, when this thing collapsed. It must have been about 10:00.
Q:
Roughly, yes.
A:
So it must have been about 4:00 o'clock. What we did is we found out that they were setting up a command post on Chambers and West. So we said let's go back and try to find Dr. Cherson's car, see if it's still viable, which we did. We went back to Broadway where it was between Fulton and Dey. Is that Dey Street or whatever it is? There it was in the middle of the street. Amongst all the dirt and everything else that was there, the car was there. It was full of dust on the inside. We ended up driving to Battalion 8 first to wash it off and try to clean off some of the dirt and dust that was all caked onto the vehicle, and then we went to Chambers and West, where the command post was set up, stood there for a little while, and then building 7 collapsed.
We were very far and at this point I remember being there and they said it's collapsing and I didn't even give a shit anymore because, first of all, I was far enough away from it that I kind of knew it's not going to freaking hurt me and, really, I don't know if I was just in a mood that I just didn't give a shit or I felt kind of safe. People started running back and I was just...
At this point my leg started to hurt me, which is interesting. All through the day it didn't hurt me. But I started feeling a tinge in my ankle.
So building 7 came down, the OEM building, and then they moved back forward and the command post was set up and we started hearing of the casualties. That was sad. That was sad because a lot of my friends are dead. A lot of them. On both sides. And that's a shame. That's a shame. But basically that was it.
I'd say about 9:30 at night, I hitched a ride with some vehicle that was coming to Brooklyn and they dropped me off on Tillary and Flatbush and I hobbled in here. They gave me clothes and stuff and told me to take a shower and that was it. I came back to work the next day, still not understanding, still not really -- which was interesting because, when I got home that night, I got to see the incident. I lived it, but I had never seen it, because I had never seen the planes hit or anything. We thought they were bombs going off. We didn't know. We were being told later on that the Sears Tower was hit and the Pentagon, and you hear all this shit, but you don't know. Actually, when I got home that night, that's when I got to see the actual footage of the plane hitting. It was horrendous. More so when this thing collapsed. That noise? I can never forget it. And the people jumping, the people hitting. I mean, 18 years I've been a medic in this city. I've been through two plane crashes. I have never seen the destruction.
Another thing I've got to tell you is, when we first got there, when we were walking down Vesey towards West, there was a ton of -- or I could say a lot of body parts and like baggage, clothes and stuff, along Vesey.
Q:
From one of the airplanes.
A:
Yes, from one of the airplanes. I don't know if it was the first or the second because this was after the second one had hit. So it could have been from either one. But I remember walking --
Q:
Where was it, though? On Vesey?
A:
Right in front of the OEM, because on the OEM building side there was a scaffolding and I remember I was walking underneath there. We kind of felt that there was some protection underneath the scaffolding. I remember as we were walking down, after we had dropped that person off, when we were walking down Vesey, I remember probably between -- what's this?
Q:
Church?
A:
No. Probably between Broadway and West, I remember seeing body parts.
Q:
That's West Broadway.
A:
Yes, West Broadway and West on Vesey. I remember seeing body parts and I remember saying to myself where the hell did these freaking body parts come from? Where are these coming from? There was a few. I mean, some recognizable, some that didn't look -- like they were probably charred, and also like luggage stuff, like we saw a lot of shoes, even some luggage, airplane parts, engine. There was an engine on the left here. If you remember, building 7, there used to be that overpass over by building 7. Just in front of it.
Q:
The concourse.
A:
Just up before that, there was like a little plaza?
Q:
Right.
A:
Right there, there was like a big engine part. It seemed like a whole engine was right there, lying right there in the middle of the street.
Q:
Covered like the way the jet looks?
A:
Yes. In fact, you could see the fan. I remember that because I could see -- now, it wasn't the whole engine because the engine is big, but I know the front part of it, it looked like the whole engine because I could see the fan, and that's what stood out in my mind. There was an airplane tire also there and then these bodies and luggage from the thing because there were shoes everywhere also. Some shoes had what looked like blood in it, other shoes didn't, other shoes were burnt, and this was just a first impression.
I guess the severity of this whole incident kind of struck me as I was walking to West Street. I knew that this was a serious, very serious event going on, because in my lifetime I have never seen that much destruction, that much carnage. Never. Never in my life have I seen something like that. Everything from bombings that I've been to, to airplane crashes at LaGuardia, I've never seen something to this magnitude, and it kind of woke you up to say the least.
Then over here people, you know, the guys were going into the building. I mean, it was horrible. It really was. It really was. And that was it. I'm here today because I think the grace of God. REDACTED. I had a few patients who I wish I could have carried away, but you didn't have time. You didn't have time to think. I don't know where Lillo went. I don't know if he went this way or he went that way. Where did he go? I don't know. It's interesting because, of the seven or eight people who were there at this location, none of us ended up in the same place. It's sort of like roaches and you turn the light on, you know what I mean? Everyone scattered. Wherever you saw or you thought there was an opening, that's where you went. Obviously, no one went towards the building, but we all scattered in different directions.
We eventually ended up meeting after the second explosion, three of us met up here, but I didn't see a lot of the people that were with me until two, three days later. I got word that they were okay. For instance, Dr. Guttenberg and Dr. Asaeda, who were at 7 World Trade Center, they got trapped in there and had to like climb in and out and get out because that building also became very damaged supposedly and they were there. We thought they were dead. I guess he was in an area where Commissioner Tierney might have been, I believe. I think she was in 7 also.
So it's just the grace of God. I mean, there was a tremendous loss, but I think that more people survived than really should have to be honest with you with the destruction that occurred there. I mean, you guys have been to collapses. You know what I'm talking about. You have a three-story building collapse, you know the destruction that occurs there. Magnitude that now by a hundred freaking stories coming down on your head.
Q:
And by two.
A:
Yes. And two of them. So it was the grace of God that any of us that are alive are here, truly it is, because it just should not have been. Luckily and unluckily, I guess, the building pancaked. But if that building toppled, there ain't no way. It took less than ten seconds for that blast of air to knock me down because I remember saying to myself, I got ten seconds to hide, thinking that I may have that long. I don't know why it came into my mind, ten seconds, but I figured I got ten seconds, and I could only maybe have run 50, 60 yards in that time period, and it just knocked me over.
Q:
Just the force of the air?
A:
Yes. It just knocked me over and just threw me, and that was it. I thought that something had hit me. I thought like a piece of metal or something had hit me, and there was no metal, because when I turned around, I saw the blast of black air coming at us, at me anyway, and that was it. That's it. That's the story.
MR. McALISTER:
Do you guys have any follow-ups?
FIRE MARSHAL CAMPBELL:
No.
FIRE MARSHAL STARACE:
No follow-up for me either.
MR. McALISTER:
I appreciate your time.
THE WITNESS:
Sure.
MR. McALISTER:
Thank you very much.
THE WITNESS:
No problem. Thank you.
MR. McALISTER:
It's now 2:35 p.m. and we're going to conclude the interview.
File No. 911005 DR. MICHAEL GUTTENBERG
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
Interview Date: October 2, 2001
Transcribed by: Maureen McCormick
DR. MICHAEL GUTTENBERG
MR. MC ALLISTER:
This is Kevin McAllister from the Bureau of Administration. It's October 2, 2001, at 1510 hours. We are here with Dr. Michael Guttenberg from the Office of Medical Affairs.
Also with me are --
MR. CAMPBELL:
Patrick Campbell, Fire Marshal.
MR. STARACE:
Michael Starace, Fire Marshal.
Q:
Dr. Guttenberg, we'd like to draw your attention to September 11, and in your words, we'd like you to describe what you experienced on that day.
A:
Okay. Actually, I was just coming in to the office and was on line waiting for breakfast when the pager went off for the assignment for the World Trade Center.
I picked up the cell phone and got in touch with Dr. Shearson and Manny Delgado from the office, who were also leaving to respond, as well. I met them in the parking at MetroTech, and we proceeded to respond. I don't recall the exact street, but we went over the Brooklyn Bridge, and as we were about one block away from the assignment, there was an extraordinary loud explosion.
M. GUTTENBERG
There were people starting to evacuate from the area, and then we noticed the tower that was burning -- and as we were one block away from the assignment, we heard an extraordinarily loud explosion, and with that, many more people went running in the opposite direction, at which point there was, I guess, a few seconds of radio silence, and then somebody came over the air and said, "A second plane just hit the other tower." At that point --
Q:
Can I talk for a second? I apologize. As you were coming over the Brooklyn Bridge, do you recall approximately what time it was?
A:
48 -- I'm going to say it was approximately -- the second plane hit at what, 9 -- I don't recall the exact time.
Q:
Roughly 9:10, I believe.
A:
It was 9:10? So we were coming over the Brooklyn Bridge. Had to be about just a couple of minutes after nine, five after nine.
Q:
What were you able to observe at that point on the Brooklyn Bridge?
A:
From the Brooklyn Bridge and actually from Flatbush Avenue and Tillary, as we were going towards the Brooklyn Bridge, we noticed the tower that had been hit, and the upper floors were -- well, we could see flames and a large amount of smoke billowing from that one tower, and that's all that we observed from a distance.
Couldn't see much else, and at that point, actually, it was picking up the cell phone and attempting to start making some, you know, notifications and just that this was a real assignment.
Q:
And what did you notice from the time you were on the Brooklyn Bridge until the moment you alluded to a few seconds ago, about the second plane hitting? Could you describe what you observed from the streets?
A:
I was actually -- I was in the back seat of the car, so I didn't see anything above me per se without having my head out the window, which it wasn't.
What we noticed was actually a lot of people of various assortments. Most people in suits, people on their way to work, being -- and in a somewhat orderly fashion, being evacuated.
Everybody was sort of between the traffic department and the police was trying to pull everybody away from the -- away from that area. The buildings were evacuating and people -- the streets were packed with people, all -- most of which were attempting to move in the opposite direction from the towers.
Like I said, I don't recall the exact street. Manny was driving, and we were coming down that one block. I wasn't looking up, and just out of nowhere was this tremendously loud explosion.
The truth of the matter was, we didn't see the other plane coming in. I thought it was a second explosion from the first plane, and then it was some radio silence for just a couple of seconds. I guess people were kind of floored by what they just saw, and then there was somebody keyed up on the radio, from the EMS citywide radio, that said that was a second airplane, and then at that point we were within a block.
As we were actually coming down -- and I'm going to presume, but don't hold me to this, it was possibly -- it was actually one of the side streets, and I just don't recall.
At that point, we were getting ready to actually park the car a couple of blocks away, and we got out of the car, and we were approached actually by a couple of police officers who were in plainclothes, one of which was holding her partner up, was holding her partner, and she was bleeding from the forehead and had some other assorted injuries, but was walking and was just screaming, "Just take me to the hospital."
So Allen, Dr. Shearson, got out of the car, started to proceed up to what was at that point the designated command post, and myself, and Manny and this other -- and the two police officers, we threw them in the back of the car and brought them over to New York downtown, and then we proceeded back to the incident site.
Q:
Do you recall the injured officer's name?
A:
No, we didn't even get that far. It was about a one to two-minute ride. I was holding direct pressure, talking to her. It was a female officer, who had a laceration across the forehead. We pulled up to New York downtown. There were people already outside some of the -- and we assisted her in, and we just left.
Q:
Did she say how she received that injury?
A:
From something flying, flying off, you know, off the building, and Manny was probably better off at this. I'm not totally familiar with this area, but Manny proceeded back to the incident location.
Once again, at that point, there was a greater urgency on the part of the police to move everybody out of the area, and --
Q:
Were both buildings still standing at this point?
A:
At this point, yes, both buildings were very much standing. We parked the car, and I don't recall what street it was on. Myself and Manny proceeded up to the command post, and at this point actually we walked -- we probably -- that is what I was going to say. We probably parked on Church, because we walked -- I remember we walked down Vesey past Building No. 7 and some other buildings and went to the initial EMS command post, myself and Manny Delgado.
We met up again with Dr. Shearson, and Dr. Asaeda at this point was also meeting us on the scene, and the rest of the EMS operations were commencing from there. I, at that point then went back to the car and grabbed the poison antidote kit out of the car, not knowing what to expect or what was next, came back to the site, and at that point, you know, the decision was made we were going to split up a little bit, and there were going to be some forward triage and treatment areas.
Q:
Before you go forward, could I backtrack for one second?
A:
Yes.
Q:
When you went back to the car to get the kit, could you describe what the conditions were like during the walk both to the car and back, anything you may have observed?
A:
It was actually -- the streets were, at least the walk down Vesey Street, the street was remarkably empty. The only people that were out there were some firefighters, police, FBI-type agents.
There were some fire trucks, which were unattended by and large, and some hose line, and there was some meager attempts at putting up some police tape. The other thing that I noticed, like I said, and it was very few -- they were, like, few to no civilians at this point, and it was really an effort to move people forward.
The other thing that was actually evident, though, is what appeared to be some plane parts, like some circular pieces of a plane, and lots of shoes. I don't know if that was women jumping out of their -- jumping out of their heels to run, but there were -- just impressed me there were no -- you know, there were no injuries on the street at that point, but there was lots of shoes all over the place and plane parts. It was the same thing in both directions.
At that point, like I said, I went back to the command post.
Q:
Just one other follow-up. I'm sorry. Did you see any of the unit designation numbers on the engines that may have parked out there? Do you recall any of the numbers?
A:
No, no. The only thing that was kind of bizarre actually -- and I don't recall if it was -- which direction I was walking at the time, but actually I think Chief Nigro was walking down Vesey Street at this point, too, and he was actually by himself, but he was walking down the street somewhere.
The -- went back to the command post, and at that point we decided to split up a little bit. Allen, Dr. Shearson, and Manny went off somewhere, and myself and Dr. Asaeda proceeded to the loading dock of World Trade Center No. 7, which would be preQ. No. 7 is on -- this is No. 7, here, I believe. Where is the loading dock?
A:
It was on the Vesey street side. On the Vesey Street side, and we were in the process of setting up. Not anticipating the buildings were going to come down in such a fashion, we proceeded to set up a triage treatment area in the loading dock. Myself, Dr. Asaeda -- there was one or two EMS bosses there. I don't recall who they were, and lots of personnel. Most of the EMS personnel that were there were actually from the voluntary hospitals, some Lenox Hill paramedics there, and from some other voluntary hospitals, and there were some FBI agents down there, as well, some people from the Office of Emergency Management, who were actually upstairs and supposedly brought some supplies down to us.
There was only one patient in there at that point, and that was an elderly gentleman who was really there more for exhaustion, not claiming any injury, but anticipation was obviously our patients were going to come down.
While we were there, we started to hear this rumbling sound, and this was probably five, ten minutes after we got into the loading dock. We heard this rumbling sound and, you know, the rumors were there of additional planes missing, and actually, my initial thought was this was actually another plane, and there was the loading dock, and then it was like the top of the dock, the garage, and then the loading dock.
Just off to the right, there was a door with a fairly long, narrow hallway, and at this point, there was probably between police, and FBI and EMS people, was probably about 20 plus people in this loading dock area.
Q:
Do you know anybody there?
A:
All of us -- Dr. Asaeda, and just by face some of the EMS providers. We all stuffed ourselves into this hallway, pulled the door shut, and the noise just got very loud and the room filled with dust. The noise stopped, and we opened up the door, and everything was pitch black.
The way we got into the loading dock was not the way we were getting out. It was obstructed.
Q:
The door was blocked?
A:
Yeah, and we found our way -- we walked across the loading dock area, and we found there was another door. We went in that door, and from there we were directed to -- I really guess it was like a basement area of the building, but we were directed to an opposite door.
Q:
What looked like was blocking the original entrance?
A:
You know, there was a couple of people who actually pulled some of the -- that pulled the actual garage doors down. I think that and some debris. It was too dark at that point.
We walked our way through the loading dock by feel. We got to the opposite side. We found our way out of one of the back doors of No. 7 and came outside, and actually the truth of the matter I still hadn't realized that it was the tower that came down. I thought it was another airplane, and I looked up, and it was after, you know, everything was sort of pitch black, and there was dust flying everywhere, and I looked up, and it didn't strike me at first, but when I looked up, all I saw was -- I saw the tower with the antenna, and I remember when we went in, that was -- it seemed to be the more distant tower when we started, and you know, there was -- and now, that's what struck me.
It wasn't making sense just yet. We found some patients, who were just walking around in a daze or experienced some inhalation type of injuries. There were a few ambulances there. We basically threw them in the back of the ambulances. We told the providers who were there, just go far, go to another borough, take them somewhere else, and with that, the rumble started again and the second tower came down.
Q:
Let me stop you there.
A:
Yes.
Q:
When you came out of No. 7, do you recall what side of the building you exited on?
A:
We -- I ultimately ended up back on West Street, so I'm going to think -- and it was some parking lots and stuff like that. So I actually -- I think I came out by Barclay, and proceeded back down -- ultimately proceeded back down to West.
There were some parking lots in the area. There were other some buildings around, and just by where I ultimately ended up and continued to run, I was on West Street.
Q:
So that's where you were treating patients prior to the second building coming down?
A:
We were treating patients, yeah. We were treating patients around here, and from there we proceeded up to -- and then the second building came down, and not really knowing what was going on, we ran a few more blocks.
Q:
At that point, we settled the street just past -- just after Chambers. We passed the school. We saw Stuyvesant. Just right around Stuyvesant, Chambers, in that area, within one to two-block radius above and below.
We tried to re-establish ourselves one more time in some sort of triage treatment area, not knowing what was happening. We were just tracking down who was around, trying to get some ambulances into that area to stage in that area. It seemed at that point that we were a safe distance away, and then all of a sudden everybody started running again and saying there's a gas leak under West Street, and literally, fire engines, police, whoever was left standing at that point, everybody just started running north on west towards the piers, and --
Q:
Did you know anybody there at that point in time?
A:
On West Street?
Q:
Either at the time you were treating the patients before the second tower came down or in the time you were heading north toward --
A:
Yeah, Dr. Asaeda from this office. Joe Cahill, who is one of the ALS coordinators who works out of MetroTech. He was actually on a -- I guess on a train on his way in to work, and so he came on his own, but he was assisting us there.
I just -- a lot of faces that I knew from the voluntary hospitals who were there, and I guess those were the people who stand out most.
Another person was actually one of the nurses who works at the hospital where I work, and mostly by face, not really by name.
Q:
So what happened after you heard of the possible gas leak?
A:
Started running. Everybody sort of picked up and ran. There was a passing police van with very few passengers. As they were driving, I opened up the side door and dove in and got away a few more blocks, got out and started to, you know, I guess attempt to regroup.
At that point, the decision was over the radios that everybody was -- the attempt was to get everybody to stage up at Chelsea Piers and regroup up there and define what resources we were going to need, so that's where I -- at that point, I went up to Chelsea Piers and up to the EMS command post.
Q:
Any idea what time it was at that point?
A:
At that point, it was probably getting close to eleven o'clock in the morning, and that's where I spent a good chunk of the rest of my day.
Q:
A long two hours.
A:
A horrible two hours. I mean, there was a lot of running more than anything, and, you know, by and large, it was bizarre only because I really -- I actually felt more numb than anything throughout. I didn't know what to feel or what to expect, and I think a lot of it was just bizarre that way, not knowing what was next.
Q:
Did you have a radio on?
A:
Actually, I didn't.
Q:
Transmissions throughout?
A:
Actually, you know, I didn't. I'm sort of low man on the totem pole here of the fellows, so I actually didn't acquire a radio, which they needed up at that point at Chelsea Piers.
Whatever radio stuff I heard was when standing next to other people. I didn't have a radio in my possession for several hours.
Q:
I think we need to -- transmissions or anything that's going on that you might have -- that stuck in your head?
A:
From that whole day, actually, the two things -- well, initially, I don't know what happened as the buildings fell. There was nobody close enough with an EMS radio at that point when the buildings came down, but I guess initially it was a relative calm on the radio.
As much as this was not a routine thing, a plane into the World Trade Center, this was sort of something that the resources were available that were being sent. Everybody was sort of following instruction and doing and operating in a normal fashion. It was what you would expect at an MCI.
The part that was really bizarre is actually -- what seemed bizarre is there was the second explosion, you know, the second plane explosion, and then it was -- at least on the EMS radio, there was absolute silence for probably 10 or 15 seconds, you know, which to me, it seemed like 10 to 15 seconds, but it was absolute radio silence for a few seconds. I don't know if everybody was just sort of --
Q:
We were told that the air was so thick with debris that radio waves weren't able to travel.
A:
That was after the towers came down.
Q:
After the collapses, immediately in the immediate aftermath?
A:
I wasn't really -- you know, at that point, I was running, and I wasn't close enough to anybody with radio in hand. It was frustrating as hell, I can tell you, when the cell sites went down, which was right -- really as soon as this incident began. All I wanted to do after I got out and a safe distance away was actually just call my folks and say, you know, I'm alive, and that was the worst thing.
I mean, it took hours and hours for the cell sites to come back up, at least at Sprint. That was really for me the worst part of this whole thing, was not being able to make a phone call.
In a bizarre way, the best person on the street there that day was some little old Spanish lady who says I live a couple of blocks from here. She had a pad and a pen, took down a list of names, a list of phone numbers -- took down a list of names and phone numbers and called, and she got ahold of my parents about two hours before I did, and -- so.
Sorry I couldn't offer you more.
Q:
No, that's great. I appreciate your time, doctor?
A:
No problem.
MR. MC ALLISTER:
Thank you very much. It's now 1530 hours on October 2, 2001, and we are going to conclude the interview. Thank you.
File No. 9110006: PARAMEDIC JAMES MURPHY
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
Interview Date: October 3, 2001
Transcribed by: Elizabeth F. Santamaria
J. Murphy
KEVIN MC ALLISTER:
This is Kevin McAllister from the Bureau of Administration. It's October 3, 2001, 1224 hours. We are in room 8E13 at headquarters and we are speaking with Paramedic James Murphy from the office of medical affairs. I am joined by --
MR. DANIEL:
Patrick Daniel, Fire Marshal.
MR. STARACE:
Michael Starace, Fire Marshal.
KEVIN MC ALLISTER:
And James Murphy is with us.
MR. MURPHY:
James Murphy, Paramedic.
BY MR. MC ALLISTER:
Q:
Mr. Murphy, we are going to draw your attention to September 11, 2001, and I would like to get your recollections of the event of that day.
A:
I was here in the office and someone came down the hall. I think they got one of the group pages that there was a job at the World Trade Center and we looked in the computer in the CAD system and saw that there was one, an aircraft incident at the World Trade Center, and then we heard yelling from the office of public information, so we all ran down there. Because we knew the televisions were there. And we saw that something had happened to the World Trade Center. A couple of people from the office, two of the doctors and one of the medics, took off right away and the rest of us sort of stayed around getting ready to do whatever. And we ended up preparing to go get an ambulance.
We left here, went to Cumberland, got equipment that belonged to one of the guys that worked here who couldn't go out and then went to Woodhull Hospital and got an ambulance and responded from Woodhull Hospital with the ambulance.
When we went across the bridge, it was the last time we saw the towers. We went across the Manhattan Bridge and they were both still standing. We went across, I think, Canal Street.
Q:
Were both of the towers burning at that time?
A:
Both towers were burning at that time. We didn't leave until after the second plane hit. By the time we got through traffic to Woodhull to get the ambulance, I'm not -- the timing on that I'm not sure. The only timing I really know is that we arrived between the time the first tower fell and the time the second tower fell somewhere on Broadway, around City Hall and I don't remember whether it was at the junction of Park Row and Broadway or higher. I know Warren Street is there somewhere. Whether that was the first place we stopped or whether that was where we actually ended up stopping, I don't know.
We went across Canal Street and then I went and turned and went down Broadway. We were heading into the staging area, which I believe was like on Church Street, somewhere around there, and --
Q:
Do you have any idea what time it was at that point?
A:
No. We had the radios on in the ambulance, but we didn't hear anything about the buildings collapsing because the siren was on. The truck was not the newest or the quietest thing in the fleet, so we couldn't really hear the radios that well.
We turned down Broadway and as we got down in the City Hall area, there were people running everywhere and a lot of smoke and dust. We really weren't sure what it was. Which sort of surprised us, because the last thing we saw was the smoke was really up high.
We saw, then, an EMS Captain, Janis Olszewski, standing in the middle of the street covered with dust waving at us. That's where I'm not sure where we stopped with her.
Q:
Somewhere on Broadway?
A:
Somewhere on Broadway, around City Hall. And whether it was up by Warren Street or farther down, I'm not really sure. I just know that Warren street was involved in our stopping at one point.
We started treating some people at that point as they were running by. It was mostly like eye injuries from the flying debris. People were covered and they were having trouble breathing.
Then we did hear a report that the second tower was starting to collapse and the Captain who was with us said, "Let's get out of here." Because she had heard the rumble then. It had reached us and we turned and started running and then I realized that I could drive a lot faster than I could run, so we grabbed the truck and I grabbed everybody else that I was with.
That's when I'm not sure where the stop came. Whether I stopped first at Warren and then we went on, but the Captain just kept going, kept going. I know we didn't stop running until Canal Street.
Q:
What did you observe at that point while you were running and what was the state of the street, if you recall?
A:
More people running, lots of people. The dust cloud I saw sort of in the mirror, the second one, as it was coming down. But I was too busy trying to avoid hitting the people that were running in the street.
When we finally stopped to start treating people, we decided -- the Captain felt safe and we decided we would go as far as she was, because she was obviously under the first one when it came down. She was a little, you know, a little, I guess, stressed. I don't know a better way to put it. When she finally felt comfortable, we stopped and started setting up.
We ran into two EMT's and I'm not sure whether it was before we left or after, who had been at the staging area and had to run from their ambulances that had patients in them. Which was not good for them. It wasn't good for us to hear it either. But they started helping us to treat people at the scene. Again, it was very minor stuff, because nobody got to us that was pretty badly hurt.
Q:
The other EMT's you ran into left ambulances with patients in the back near the collapse?
A:
Yes. I'm not sure where those ambulances were. They ended up going a different way than us afterwards. Oh, because we had the Captain. They told her to report to the command post, so those EMT's stayed with ambulances that were staging somewhere else and we responded to the command post with that Captain. REDACTED
Q:
Which Chief?
A:
Mittleman REDACTED and then went back to the command post and ended up at Chelsea staging.
Q:
Where was the command post that you are referring to?
A:
It was -- I don't even remember where we went. It was on West Street somewhere. It was on West Street somewhere.
Q:
Was it north of Chambers?
A:
Yes. At that point we didn't get anywhere back down there until -- I didn't get back down that way until the next day. We stayed up at the Chelsea -- the Chelsea Piers, and the three of us got assigned to do various things there: Assist the doctor who was there in setting up the hospital, in arranging which doctors and nurses were going to work in which areas. Because they set up a whole hospital in the Chelsea Piers and we had various tasks of organizing the medical assistance and stuff like that.
That was it until I went back the next day with the doctor. We actually started walking around the site and looking at what was going on. Telling people that they should put their masks on and that kind of stuff. That filled up the whole next week pretty much.
Q:
Any other recollections about the date of the incident? Anything you might have seen that you recall? Any people you might have run into that you recall?
A:
I know by the end of the first night -- well, by 10:00 o'clock the first night we had heard that all of the people from our office were safe, but that some of them, like the doctors, had lost things like their glasses. Dr. Cherson was working at the ferry terminal without his glasses and he can't see. He's like me. I have contacts on. He had lost his glasses so we don't know how he was working, but he was. But everybody from our office was okay and then we had heard that there were hundreds of firefighters trapped and it was just -- everybody was -- you know, and then you started seeing people from the outer areas. We wondered how they got there so fast. You know, some of these guys were covered in dust and going back in again.
The first hour went so fast for us. It didn't seem, because we had to get from here to the place and then back again. We didn't realize that it had taken so long. It was just like moments, it felt, from the time we left here to the time we were running from the second building coming down. We didn't even know the first one came down. We had no idea when we pulled up that that's what that was.
Q:
So it was still burning when you were in Brooklyn?
A:
When we came over the Manhattan Bridge, you could clearly see both towers standing there burning.
Q:
Anything else? Radio transmissions that you recall?
A:
No. We took -- we had radios from here with pretty bad batteries. That was on our portables. But the truck radio, we got a truck from -- the actual vehicle radio wasn't very loud and the truck was really loud, and the siren, so I didn't hear. I'm sure there was a transmission about the first building coming down, but we never heard it. And there were three of us in the truck listening to the radio and none of us ever heard it. The first we knew was when Captain Olszewski told us that one of the towers had fallen. That was the first we heard.
Then just before the second tower came down we heard a radio transmission about the second tower is falling. And then the Captain heard the rumbling. We all heard it, but she recognized it for what it was and told us, "Let's get the hell out of here." Because she heard the first one coming down. We never heard that one come down.
Q:
Was it a distant rumble or was it really loud?
A:
It started off distant and got loud and then as we started running the sound sort of disappeared in the background with all the other stuff that I was doing and the sound of the ambulance engine as I started driving.
Q:
Did the cloud of debris ever catch up with you or were you far enough?
A:
No. Never caught us. That's why I'm thinking that maybe we never got any farther than Warren Street. Tracey and Dee -- we don't know -- we were talking about it and we couldn't figure out whether we stopped farther down or whether we stopped at Warren Street. We are just not sure whether we got any farther down.
The one thing I do remember is after we stopped running, people were actually -- one guy passed us. Everybody was offering us food, drink. We were sitting treating people and some guy ran past us with three knapsacks. One on his back, one on his chest and one in his hand and he stopped and handed everybody a bottle of water in the ambulance and continued on. We could see the dust cloud and he just ran in with bottles of water.
Q:
A civilian or --
A:
A civilian. Other people who were walking away said, he said, "I brought my lunch for work but obviously I'm not going to be working today. Would you like it?" People were offering us stuff all over the place.
A city sheriff came over to us and said, "Do you guys need water to treat people?" We said yes, because we only had the little bottled water in the truck and we knew that wasn't going to last very long. The next thing we know, there is a city sheriff and two other guys with 5-gallon jugs, probably from -- it said "Poland Spring" on it so it must have been a Poland Spring truck. I guess the guy just opened the doors and started giving it out to people. We had huge bottles of water in the truck to rinse people off.
Then people wanted to rinse their mouth out. You can't keep having them all put their mouth on the same thing. Then I went to a little -- a little tiny, hole-in-the-wall deli and asked the guy for a couple of cups and the guy comes out and gives me a whole case of cups. It's gotta cut huge into his profit margin, but he didn't care. He just gave me a whole bunch. So then we started giving sleeves of cups to the ambulances that were sitting there. Then we moved on. That's actually before we moved to the command post.
Captain Olszewski had to actually go into a store and use a phone, because all of our cell phones were dead. I guess there was just so much going on on the radio that she decided not to use the radio, just to call somebody. I'm not sure who she called, but then she said, "You gotta take me to the command post."
Q:
Any other recollections?
A:
No.
KEVIN MC ALLISTER:
Thank you very much. Interview concluded at 1237 hours on October 3, 2001.
File No. 9110007: EMT DULCE McCORVEY
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
Interview Date: October 3, 2001
Transcribed by: Laurie A. Collins
D. McCORVEY
MR. McALLISTER:
This is Lieutenant McAllister from the Bureau of Administration. It's 1252 hours on October 3rd, 2001. We're in Room 8E13 at Fire Department headquarters, and we're about to interview EMT Dulce McCorvey. I am joined by --
MR. CAMPBELL:
Patrick Campbell, fire marshal.
MR. STERACE:
Michael Sterace, fire marshal.
MR. McALLISTER:
And.
EMT McCORVEY:
Dulce McCorvey.
Q:
I would just like to draw your attention to September 11th, 2001. Give your recollections from the events of that day.
A:
The times are a little blurry. I don't remember -- I know we had gone downstairs. It was like around 8:00, and I went downstairs with someone to get coffee. As we were coming up, everyone was running out of the buildings, the elevators. I almost got run over by a lot of white shirts and a lot of gold.
We came upstairs. Everyone was running. We walked by OPI. We saw on the TV screen that a plane had already hit the building, the first building. I pulled the job up on the CAD screen, and that's what it said, it was a cargo plane (inaudible).
So at that time I went over to my supervisor. One of the docs and one of the paramedics was going out already. She told us to hang back and wait and see what happened. I don't know exactly what she said.
By the time the second plane hit, I had already gone downstairs, gotten my equipment out of my car that was parked outside on Flatbush Avenue. You could see the smoke coming from the buildings, because you could see the buildings from the back of this building. I could see the smoke coming back -- in the back of the building.
I came upstairs. She said, "We've got to go find an ambulance." There was myself, Jim Murphy, and Tracey Mulqueen. We tried calling the different stations. Cumberland down the block, they said to come down and get an ambulance.
We got in my car, all the equipment and the three of us, and drove to Cumberland. They couldn't give us an ambulance. The captain said they didn't have any available at the moment. We went down to Woodhull. We went through a lot of traffic. We finally got an ambulance. It wasn't stocked or anything. So that delayed us a bit.
We got in the ambulance, and we drove down to the Brooklyn Bridge or the Manhattan Bridge. I don't remember which bridge we took.
Q:
Did you have a radio with you?
A:
We had a radio. We had a portable radio. The battery died, so we couldn't get any communications out. The KDT in the ambulance was broken, so we couldn't log on. So we were getting -- I don't remember hearing what they were saying, because I was sitting in the back of the ambulance, and Tracey and Jimmy were sitting in the front. I couldn't really hear what they were saying.
We were listening to citywide, and there was a lot of communication. I couldn't tell what it was. We had the siren on, and there was a lot of confusion trying to get around traffic, people trying to get on the bridge, people blocking us.
It was the Manhattan Bridge. We got off the Manhattan Bridge, because I remember getting off at Canal.
Q:
There was a lot of non-emergency traffic on the bridge?
A:
Yeah. Well, no, they were blocking off the bridge.
Q:
Oh, I see.
A:
They were diverting them, so it was hard getting onto the bridge. When we finally did get on the bridge, the bridge was clear. So it was the Manhattan Bridge.
I don't know what road we went down, because I couldn't see too clearly. We ended up on Broadway. We were speeding down Broadway following -- there were traffic cops directing everybody go down that way. So we followed them.
We were going down Broadway. I don't know exactly at what point we stopped on Broadway. We saw a captain that I knew her from the academy, and she was full of dust. We didn't know where we were going. We were looking for the incident command center. We really didn't know. We were just going towards the building.
When we saw her, we pulled over to help her. She was saying an explosion -- she didn't say the building went down; she said she was under the building when the plane went down. That's what I remember. We tried to calm her down, because she was upset.
Then we heard this loud noise like another plane. That's what we thought it was, another plane. It was a real loud rumbling. I can hear a lot of people screaming. We didn't know what it was, and we turned around and saw people running the opposite way on Broadway, running north on Broadway. We could see this big, black cloud of smoke coming up. I said, "Oh, shit."
We turned around, and Janice says, "Run!" So we ran. We started running. We turned around and ran. Janice ran, and Tracey was running, and Jimmy was right behind us. I didn't see where Jimmy was. I stopped and screamed, "Jimmy!" I didn't see him. He had gone back and gotten the ambulance and turned around.
He pulled us into the ambulance. We ran into the ambulance. All I could see is behind, because I was in the back of the bus. All I could see is this big cloud of smoke coming and people just coming out from inside this cloud of smoke. You could see from the side streets, like you could see smoke coming down the side streets, swelling up the road.
So we just kept on going. At one point we slowed down and we stopped in front of 26 Federal Plaza. I said, "We can't stop here. We've got to keep on going." So we kept on going, and we went up close to Canal Street. I don't know what street we stopped on. We stopped there.
Q:
During that time when you were on Broadway and heading north on Broadway, did you notice any fire apparatus?
A:
I saw no fire apparatus. I saw no firemen at all.
Q:
Any other EMS vehicles?
A:
I saw two other EMS vehicles. Where we had finally stopped, there were two other EMS vehicles. Two guys came out. They were running. They came out without the ambulance. They work in Manhattan, I'm pretty sure. They said they weren't in shock. One of them was crying. I can't remember his last name.
He said there were two patients in the back of his bus. They were strapped to a long board. He had to run, and the building fell on the ambulance. So I don't remember (inaudible). I know the guy -- I can't remember his name. They were pretty upset.
Everybody coming out was cops. There were a lot of cops coming out, all full of that white dust. There were a lot of people screaming, crying, hurt, a lot of cuts and bruises.
We stayed there for a while. I don't know how long.
Q:
That's near Canal Street on Broadway?
A:
Yeah, because I could see Canal up the block, and we were on Broadway.
I don't know the times, really. Now it's like a blur, like a million years ago.
We treated people as they needed to be treated, and we tried to help where we could. Somebody brought us water, a big jug of water. Just a lot of cops were coming up. I don't know what precinct they were from.
From then Janice said she's got to find a command center, so we started going toward the west side and went towards West Street.
Q:
Janice is the captain?
A:
Yeah.
Q:
Olszewski; right?
A:
Olszewski, right.
So we went up to West Street. On West Street, there was a lot of commotion. There was a lot of units. I saw firemen walking, a lot of firemen walking. They were walking up, all covered in soot. There were trucks going down. I couldn't tell you what the companies were.
I saw an EMS captain and an EMS chief. We went up to them, and we saw one of our medical directors. I saw units from Bellevue.
Q:
Do you know any of their names?
A:
The medic unit was Artie Gonzalez and Al Siegel. They're a medic unit from Bellevue. I saw Dr. Richmond. I saw him. I saw Chief Mittleman and Captain -- I can't think of his name.
Q:
Where did you see them?
A:
West Street at West Street.
Q:
West Street and --
A:
West Street and -- I have no idea. West Street. It was below Chelsea Piers, way below Chelsea Piers.
Q:
Was it south of Canal, do you think?
A:
It was south of Canal.
Q:
On West south of Canal?
A:
Yeah. But I don't know names.
Q:
How close to the site?
A:
All I could see is a lot of smoke, so I really don't know how close I was to the site. Maybe Barclay Street? Maybe that far down, Barclay Street?
Q:
Did they tell you they were coming from the site?
A:
No, they didn't say that. We just went up to the chief and told them that Janice was under the building when the plane hit REDACTED. Then he said, "Well," to the captain, REDACTED We couldn't get out of the city, so we ended up at NYU REDACTED
Q.
REDACTED?
A:
Yeah.
REDACTED We saw a couple of cops in the hospital. Actually, we saw a lot of cops with injuries in the hospital, minor, not serious.
We went to Bellevue to gas up, and as we're gassing up we hear that loud rumble again. The three of us knew already to hide under the ambulance or go into the garage, because we didn't know what it was. We thought another building was going to come down or another jet was coming. But the fighter jets were flying over Manhattan. We're like, are they ours?
After that we went back. We had seen Dr. Richmond, and Dr. Richmond said, "Come back here." We ended up here. We went back to Chelsea Piers, and we ended up in Chelsea Piers.
We were trying to find Dr. Richmond. We didn't see him right away, but we saw a lot of ambulances.
The people I saw I know from Manhattan. Most of the people I know were Manhattan ambulances. I didn't see any fire trucks. Police cars, I just saw police cars blocking the entrance going down that way towards the Piers.
While we were at the pier, they were setting up the hospital. We were in there for a while. Then we finally caught up with Dr. Richmond. He said to help out with the volunteers. There were a lot of volunteers coming up that wanted to help.
So we set up with the medical volunteers and tried to set them up and tried to get their names down and see if they could come, they could stay. We didn't know what the situation was.
Around I think it was maybe 4 or 5:00, one of the cops said that the buildings were collapsing still and there were people still in need. They were pulling out anybody from the area. So we just told the docs to hang out, the volunteers to hang out and wait and see what happens.
We just helped set up blood donations. People wanted to come and donate blood. People wanted to come and help and do anything they could. So we just helped set that up a little bit.
Q:
Did you treat anybody?
A:
Not there, not at the Chelsea Piers we didn't treat anybody. Later at night, maybe 11:00, we had like a bus load of cops that came in from ground zero. They were treated in the hospital. Maybe about 10, 15. Then after that we started getting a couple bus loads. We saw some firefighters come in. I don't know where they were from. It seemed like everybody was from all over the place.
I stayed there until about 1:00 and then hitched a ride with an ambulance. I was going back to the academy, and then I went home.
That's pretty much it. I really didn't see any firemen. I saw fire trucks. I remember seeing fire trucks coming down that way from West Street to Chelsea Piers.
Q:
Any other recollections, things that you may have observed that were odd or unusual or just things that you recall that you can tell us about?
A:
Unusual in what sense? The whole day was unusual. I don't know.
The things that stick out in my mind is the fire in the towers when we were going down. In my car, we were going down towards the station, and we could see the fire in the towers. The cloud of smoke coming towards us.
Just standing at Chelsea Piers and not seeing the towers. A lot of police, a lot of Secret Service, a lot of ambulances. People from every voluntary hospital that you could think of was down there, from all over. Fire trucks from volunteer fire departments were down there, ones that I know, from all over, as well as from God knows where, towns I never heard of before. A lot of people coming down. If you needed water, you asked for water, they gave you water. You ask for a bottle of water, and you got a jug of water.
MR. McALLISTER:
I'm going to conclude the interview. It is now 1306 hours, and we are going to conclude the interview. Thank you.
File No. 9110008: ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER STEPHEN GREGORY
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
Interview Date: October 3, 2001
Transcribed by: Nancy Francis
S. GREGORY
MR. McALLISTER:
This is Kevin McAllister from the Bureau of Administration. It's October 3rd, 2001, 1540 hours. I'm with Jim Drury from the Bureau of Investigations and Trials and with Commissioner Stephen Gregory of the Bureau of Communications. We're in Commissioner Gregory's office and we are now commencing the interview.
COMMISSIONER GREGORY:
On Tuesday, September 11th, I was sitting in my office, it was just shortly before 9:00 o'clock, having a cup of coffee, and I heard on the scanner in my office on the PD SOD frequency police units frantically screaming about a plane that had just crashed into the World Trade Center. At first I didn't realize what had happened and then it dawned on me. I immediately got up and left my office, went around the corner.
At that point in time I saw Chief Ganci, Chief Nigro, a couple of the other chiefs coming out of their office talking about a plane that had struck the World Trade Center. At that time I had no idea what type of plane. I assumed, and it was only an assumption on my part, that it was a small plane that had strayed and winded into the Trade Center.
I proceeded back to my office. I gathered up my driver and I took two EMS captains with me because I figured a situation like this would probably need medical assistance at the scene. We proceeded to my vehicle.
We left headquarters, went over the Brooklyn Bridge, around by City Hall. We went down I believe it was Barclay Street, all the way down to West Street, made a left turn. As we were going over the bridge, we could visually see the upper floors of the World Trade Center with emanating heavy smoke and fire, at least 1 World Trade Center I should say.
When we got to West Street, we made a left turn and we went back down I believe it's one block to Vesey Street. At that point in time the driver stopped the car and debris was falling from the building. I told him to turn the car around and to park it on the other side of West Street, which we did. We went on the west side of West Street, up a slight incline, which I think is Vesey Street, parked the car, proceeded to put on my turnout coat, my helmet, and we walked back down to West Street.
At that point in time I proceeded with Captain Frank D'Amato from Emergency Medical Dispatch. We started to walk down West Street. Probably 25 to 50 feet into our walk we encountered several what appeared to be bodies or human remains in the street. We proceeded past that and headed down looking up at the building. There was a lot of debris falling down. There was very heavy fire on the upper floors of the building. We worked our way down going south on West Street to ultimately arriving close to Liberty Street, where I encountered Assistant Chief Jerry Barbara.
I spoke with Chief Barbara and he informed me that he was the incident commander of 2 World Trade Center and he asked me if I would give him a hand running the command board. I indicated that I would, at which point in time we stopped at Liberty Street. Jerry was sizing the building up. I proceeded to get on the radio.
I called the Manhattan Central Office on the radio. I asked them to give me the rundown of units that were assigned to 2 World Trade Center. The Manhattan dispatcher came back giving me the rundown, I jotted all the companies down, and we proceeded to wait. After a few minutes we weren't receiving any companies. Chief Barbara asked again where are the companies? It appeared that the companies that were responding were coming from north to south and that they were being all grabbed at 1 World Trade Center, the furthermost north building.
I suggested to Chief Barbara at that time that we possibly transmit a second alarm for a tunnel box and bring Brooklyn companies through the tunnel. He agreed with my recommendation and I requested a second alarm assignment to be brought in from Brooklyn through the Battery Tunnel. The companies in a short period of time started to arrive. I went out into the street. I flagged the companies down. We started to have them come in and report in to our command post.
At that point in time Chief Art Lakiotes showed up. At that point Chief Barbara, Chief Lakiotes, Chief Barbara's aide, Gary, I don't know Gary's last name, and myself were at the command board. The command board was roughly on the corner of Liberty and West Street, but then at that point in time, looking at the building, we observed people jumping from the building, we observed debris falling from both buildings. This is after, naturally, the second plane had hit 2 World Trade Center, which happened while we were there. We observed people jumping.
So Chief Barbara suggested that we move further south. He said let's head down towards Albany Street. We actually went down somewhere between Liberty and Albany Street to a point that we were actually right in front of the World Financial Center, which is just a little bit south of Liberty Street and just south of that south bridge that goes across West Street. We set up the command post at that location. So we were between Liberty and Albany, about halfway down. We set up the command post there. The companies started to come in.
At that point in time Chief Barbara said that he was going to head into 2 World Trade Center. He told me that as soon as a battalion came in with an aide that I felt comfortable with I should tell Gary to meet him in the lobby. Chief Barbara turned, started walking towards 2 World Trade Center, looked up at the building, sized it up, and that's the last that I saw Chief Barbara.
My time estimation of how long he was gone before the building came down? I would venture to say it wasn't any more than maybe four minutes, five minutes, somewhere in there, but time was a little hard to figure out. But I would say it was somewhere around four to five minutes.
At that point in time we heard a rumble, we heard a noise, and then the building came down. All we saw was dust and everything just started to get very chaotic. At that point in time all of us at the command post, firefighters, chiefs, myself, we turned around, we started to run south, down West Street towards Albany. Looking back over my shoulder, I realized that I wasn't able to outrun whatever was coming because it looked like a giant wave behind us, so I went up against a chain-link fence, I got down on one knee, I put my hands over my head to hold my helmet on so I wouldn't get hit in the head with anything, and we just proceeded to get clobbered with all kinds of debris.
It got very black. It got very quiet. It was very peacefully quiet; so peaceful that I thought I was dead.
Q:
Were you on the west side of the street or the east side?
A:
I was on the west side of West Street up against a fence in front of the World Financial Center. There's like a chain-link fence. It's about a six-foot fence that separates their property from -- actually, right over here. This is exactly where we were, right here.
Q:
He's denoting a space in front of 1 World Financial Center, which on our map is denoted as the home of Dow Jones.
A:
Originally we were right here. This was the number one location that we were at. We wound up to be at number two location over here, number one location being immediately south of the south bridge across the West Side Highway, number two being the location in front of 1 World Financial Center.
The air got very thick, very dirty. It was very difficult to breathe. I was choking. I proceeded to at some point in time -- again, I lost track of time -- to give an urgent or a Mayday message on the radio, which I subsequently listened to myself and I have a cassette of that, indicating that something had happened. I asked a dispatcher if they were aware of it because during the time that it got very black and very quiet, my radio cut out completely. Apparently the dust in the air cut the radio signal out. The radio just hummed for maybe about 30 seconds and then it came back on again.
At that point in time I called Manhattan. I was answered. I asked them if they were aware of an explosion at the World Trade Center. I told them basically what I thought had happened and they came back and they answered me, and then subsequent to that I gave them a radio transmission indicating a major collapse of the World Trade Center. There were some conversations going back and forth.
At that point in time the atmosphere started to clear slightly. It started to lift. It went from total blackness to gray. I could now see vehicles, I could see lights on vehicles, I could see some people moving around, I could see some people laying in the street, laying on the sidewalk. I got up. I was with another firefighter. I have no idea who it was. We went around. We had picked some people up, people who were bleeding. We tried to administer to them whatever we could, but everybody was covered with this white powdery substance.
We found a firefighter that was injured and we took him down further south on West Street to Albany and we went up Albany Street. We went west on Albany Street towards the water. At that point in time we took the firefighter into a garage. There's a parking garage, a little street on the south side of Albany just a little bit west of West Street. It's a parking garage that has something to do with the building. We took the firefighter in there. He had a groin injury and he was bleeding from the back of his head.
At that point in time Dr. Kelly appeared. She looked at the individual. She said we had to transport him, get him out of there. We had him on a back board. We picked him up and started taking him out when all of a sudden -- later on we found out that 1 Trade Center collapsed. So we went back inside, put him down, tried to secure him as best we could because the whole scenario started all over again. It got black, the dirt was flying, there was debris all over the place. We tried to stay out of the way because things were flying all over. How long we were in there? I don't know. A couple of minutes. It started to lift again.
We went over and administered again to the firefighter. Dr. Kelly was still there. We picked him up. We brought him outside. There was an ambulance outside, which we took. We put him in the back of the ambulance and we drove him down Albany Street to the water, where he was subsequently put on some type of police launch or something.
At that point in time I was at Albany Street and the Hudson River on I guess the promenade over there. There's a sidewalk promenade. I saw a fireboat. A marine company was out in the water. They were standing offshore. I flagged the marine company down. I told them to come in. They came in and they came up alongside the seawall.
I spoke to the pilot. I asked him where his officer was. He said he didn't have an officer; he didn't know where he was. I told the pilot to tie the boat up. He said do you want me to take people off? I said no, I want you to tie the boat up and I want you to stretch two lines from the boat onto Albany Street, because they had a water problem down at West Street. So I felt that, since there was nobody else around to do anything, stretching the lines would be the best thing.
At that point in time fire officers started to appear. They came up. They wanted to know what they could do. They had rigs with them. We wound up ultimately stretching two lines from the boat supplying pumpers. The pumpers also stretched lines to the West Side Highway where they supplied the manifold. After that we were basically tending to injured firefighters and injured civilians along the water. Subsequently, I worked my way back down to West Street.
After that, I don't know. Everything is a blur. Somehow I wound up on the other side of the bridge, which we couldn't get by. We had to go through a building to get around. I don't even know what building I went through, but somehow we got around and I wound up back up on Vesey and West or the other side of the incident, and then subsequently I wound up back up onto I guess Chambers, somewhere around Chambers where the command post was, and from there I worked my way east and we wound up at City Hall Park where I met up with one of my guys from the Field Com Unit.
When we left City Hall Park, we walked down I believe it was Barclay Street, Barclay and Church, I think. There's a church on the corner, right? Yes. St. Peter's Church.
As we were passing St. Peter's Church, the captain of Ladder 102 and the lieutenant from Ladder 102 were coming out of the church and they informed me that they had Father Judge's body inside the church. They had brought it from wherever they recovered it into St. Peter's Church.
At that point in time Tom McGonigle from the Field Com and myself went into the church. We went up to the altar. They had Father Judge on the altar. He was wrapped in sheets, some type of white sheeting, and they had him laying on the altar. We knelt down. We said a prayer.
We left the church at that point in time and proceeded down Barclay Street and again somehow worked our way around back to West and Vesey -- how I did that I have no idea -- where I met up with Father Delendick and another chaplain who I know him but I can't recall his name, and I informed them about Father Judge and where he was, and at that point in time they said they were going up to the church to see what they could do for him.
After that I just wandered around the site for a while, I really don't recall what I did, ultimately winding up in a McDonald's finding a telephone, and that's about it. I met Commissioner Fitzpatrick, Commissioner Drury, and Commissioner Fitzpatrick and I ultimately came back to headquarters to try and get things together back at headquarters since everybody else was at the site, and that's basically it in a nutshell.
Q:
Do you recall at any time, particularly when you were on West Street, any companies whose vehicles may have been parked near where you were?
A:
No. I know I was with an officer from Ladder 146, a Lieutenant Evangelista, who ultimately called me up a couple of days later just to find out how I was. We both for whatever reason -- again, I don't know how valid this is with everything that was going on at that particular point in time, but for some reason I thought that when I looked in the direction of the Trade Center before it came down, before No. 2 came down, that I saw low-level flashes. In my conversation with Lieutenant Evangelista, never mentioning this to him, he questioned me and asked me if I saw low-level flashes in front of the building, and I agreed with him because I thought -- at that time I didn't know what it was. I mean, it could have been as a result of the building collapsing, things exploding, but I saw a flash flash flash and then it looked like the building came down.
Q:
Was that on the lower level of the building or up where the fire was?
A:
No, the lower level of the building. You know like when they demolish a building, how when they blow up a building, when it falls down? That's what I thought I saw. And I didn't broach the topic to him, but he asked me. He said I don't know if I'm crazy, but I just wanted to ask you because you were standing right next to me. He said did you see anything by the building? And I said what do you mean by see anything? He said did you see any flashes? I said, yes, well, I thought it was just me. He said no, I saw them, too.
I don't know if that means anything. I mean, I equate it to the building coming down and pushing things down, it could have been electrical explosions, it could have been whatever. But it's just strange that two people sort of say the same thing and neither one of us talked to each other about it. I mean, I don't know this guy from a hole in the wall. I was just standing next to him. I never met the man before in my life. He knew who I was I guess by my name on my coat and he called me up, you know, how are you doing? How's everything? And, oh, by the way did you... It was just a little strange.
Q:
On the television pictures it appeared as well, before the first collapse, that there was an explosion up on the upper floors.
A:
I know about the explosion on the upper floors. This was like eye level. I didn't have to go like this. Because I was looking this way. I'm not going to say it was on the first floor or the second floor, but somewhere in that area I saw to me what appeared to be flashes. I don't know how far down this was already. I mean, we had heard the noise but, you know, I don't know.
Q:
You talk about your drivers. Who were they?
A:
EMS personnel. I had Sam Harris, who works up here, I had Captain Frank D'Amato and Captain Jason Pinkus. Four of us were in the car together. Captain Pinkus and Sam Harris went in one direction and Captain D'Amato and I went in the other direction. So, when the collapse happened, we didn't know where the other people were. We were sort of separated in the middle. And then ultimately I lost Captain D'Amato even in my section. I didn't know what happened to him. When it started to come down, I ran south and he ran sort of west into a building and that was the last we saw of each other.
Q:
What about Chief Artie Lakiotes; did you ever see him again?
A:
I saw Artie Lakiotes a couple of times after that. We were in the same area. I guess we ran in the same direction. I saw him after the collapse. We both went over and hugged each other and realized that we were both still there, and I saw Artie a couple of times after that.
Q:
Where did you last see Dr. Kelly?
A:
Dr. Kelly I saw last when we put that firefighter in the ambulance and after that I didn't see Dr. Kelly. I didn't know where she went.
Q:
And you mentioned a Tom McGonigle?
A:
Tom McGonigle was assigned to the Field Com Unit. I met him at City Hall. I think Tom was either coming in to support the Field Com Unit, he may have been coming in from home, but I met him on I guess that's Broadway that runs down from City Hall. I met him on Broadway and then Tom was with me for a while and then I think he went to the mobile command vehicle to work over there and I lost track of him after a while.
Q:
Where did you park the car initially when you arrived at the scene?
A:
Sam parked the car initially right here. This was spot number one. And the stuff was falling down and I said get the car out of here. We turned the car around and we parked the car over here.
Q:
Just for the record, you parked it on Vesey Street near West?
A:
Vesey --
Q:
West of west?
A:
Initially we parked it on the southeast corner of Vesey and West Street, ultimately moving it immediately to Vesey Street about two, three hundred feet west of West Street. My car was wiped out over there, too. All the windows were blown out and shrapnel and damage and everything. But that's where Sam parked the car, over here, and once we parked the car there, we came down here. I walked down West Street, I guess by the first tower, and then right about here we started to encounter people laying in the street, and then we continued on to here and I met Chief Barbara over here. We set up the initial command post over here, which is near Liberty.
Q:
Which is the south bridge?
A:
Right. And then we ultimately moved it in front of this World Financial Center building, No. 1, which is Dow Jones.
MR. McALLISTER:
1 World Financial Center.
Q:
Now, as you proceeded down West Street, did you see a Fire Department command post set up on West Street?
A:
No. I didn't see any command post. In fact, it was like a ghost street. There was nobody there. I didn't see anybody. That's the part that really it was like a ghost street. There was nobody there. I didn't see people. You know, I saw nobody coming out of the building. I guess, after a while, thinking about it, I assumed all the people went out through the promenade and came out this way, but I didn't see anybody here. I didn't see any people here. I saw parts of the plane laying here. I saw, again, bodies laying here, pieces of bodies, and then coming down here I met Chief Barbara, and then there were people down here, a lot of civilians down here.
MR. McALLISTER:
Again, referring to West Street in the proximity of World Trade 1?
COMMISSIONER GREGORY:
Yes, exactly.
Q:
Now, you mentioned Chief Barbara's driver or aide, Gary?
A:
Gary. I don't know Gary's last name.
Q:
Did you see him after the collapse?
A:
No, I didn't see Gary after the collapse. I spoke to Gary the other day. Gary came here to see me and Gary said that he was blown down, ultimately got up, and then somehow worked his way down, after helping some people, worked his way down, and then he wound up in a hospital somewhere, whether it be in Staten Island or Jersey or wherever, but he wound up in a hospital, I know that.
Q:
The airplane parts that you referred to, they were on West Street or on Vesey Street?
A:
I saw airplane parts on West Street.
Q:
How did you know they were airplane parts?
A:
It looked like pieces of a plane, skin of a plane. I mean, they weren't really discernible. I couldn't say this was this part of a plane or that was that part. Just knowing a plane had hit the building and I looked and I saw it looked like the skin off a wing or a fuselage or wherever it came from.
Q:
Clearly not building material?
A:
No. The building material was sort of gray and you could see it, you know, how it differed from the plane. I was listening to the tape this morning of the people calling up and they were describing the plane that hit the building. Actually, so many people saw it. They actually described the plane as it came in. They said it was a military-type plane and it was green and it was this. I mean, I never saw the color of the plane.
Q:
Where were you when the second plane hit?
A:
We were down at the command post between Liberty and Albany on the west side of West Street. And after the second plane hit, somebody said they heard rumors that a third plane was coming in. Where they got that from, I don't know. But somebody said the cops said there's a third plane coming in. We didn't know anything about that.
Q:
Did you see or hear the second plane before it hit the World Trade Center?
A:
I never actually saw the plane, but I heard it. You could hear it coming in and then we heard the explosion and you could hear the roar of the plane coming in. At first I didn't realize it was a plane. I thought it was like the roar of fire, like something had just incinerated, like a gas tank or an oil tank. It sounded like a tremendous roar and then you heard boom and then there was a big fire, a lot of fire, a big fireball. I never actually saw a plane hit the building. I never saw that. I saw it on television, but I never saw it while I was standing there.
Q:
I guess just one follow-up. You said West Street was empty. Empty as far as people being on the street or was there fire apparatus parked there?
A:
There was fire apparatus parked there. But I guess I had expected to see like droves of people evacuating the building and we would have to get the people out of there, but there were no people. When I say no people, I mean relatively no people. There were a few stragglers here and there, but other than that, there was no volume of people. Again, later on, in looking and thinking about it, I would have assumed everybody probably went out through the promenade onto the Church Street side of the building. But I was surprised that there weren't more people in the street over there.
I never did see Commissioner Feehan. I never saw Chief Ganci. I never saw Chief Burns. The only person I really came in contact with was Jerry Barbara. And I never saw a command post because maybe at that time they may have been inside 1 World Trade Center when we passed by and then maybe when we passed by they came outside. But I never saw them. They were probably in the building. So I can't actually say that I ever saw anybody. I mean, I saw chauffeurs hooking pumpers up and stuff like that, but I never really saw any of those individuals.
That's unusual because usually -- and, again, I still to this day don't know why I went down to No. 2. I mean, normally, in the normal course of operation, I would go to the command post, wherever Commissioner Feehan was with Ganci. For whatever reason, that day, I'm still racking my brain why I did it, I just walked right past the building and went down, further down, all the way to the other side. Why did I do it? I don't know. No idea.
MR. McALLISTER:
Any follow-ups?
ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER DRURY:
No. But I would just ask the Commissioner to put his name on the map and we'll add it as an exhibit to our file. So let the record reflect he's doing that now. Today's date is October 3rd, 2001.
MR. McALLISTER:
And just before we conclude, we'll offer the Commissioner an opportunity to give us any further recollections or observations before we conclude the interview, if he has any.
COMMISSIONER GREGORY:
REDACTED
MR. McALLISTER:
Thank you, Commissioner.
ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER DRURY:
Thanks, Commissioner.
MR. McALLISTER:
It is now 1610 hours, October 3rd, 2001, and we're going to conclude the interview. Thank you.
File No. 9110009: LIEUTENANT MURRAY MURAD
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
Interview Date: October 3, 2001
Transcribed by: Laurie A. Collins
M. MURAD
MR. CAMPBELL:
Today is October 4th at 10:30 in the morning. We're in conference room 4E21 at headquarters. My name is Patrick Campbell, Fire Marshal, here to conduct an interview with Murray Murad about the occurrence of September 11th.
Also present in the room is --
MR. STARACE:
Michael Starace, Fire Marshal.
LIEUTENANT MURAD:
Murray Murad, Lieutenant Investigator with Bureau of Investigations and Trials.
Q:
Okay, Murray, we're just coming here and trying to do a fact-finding mission of what you saw on September 11th in the morning of the plane crash and the incident that happened at the World Trade Center. Just tell us what you saw and did that day.
A:
Well, I was conducting business down on Greenwich and Liberty at Engine 10, Truck 10, on that day. I happened to walk through the quarters around 8:35 and I asked to speak to the officer in charge of the truck -- I think that was Captain Mallery; I think it's M-A-L-L-E-R-Y -- I needed to speak to one of the firemen. It so happens who I was looking for, the firefighter was there.
So we went upstairs and we started to prepare the paperwork. I was conducting a confidential investigation at the fire house. It was about 8:41 that we heard a plane hovering over the fire house. It sounded like the plane was right on top of us. At that time the captain was upstairs. He was taking a shower in the office and I was conducting the work with the firefighter.
The captain came out and said: "What's going on? This is a no-fly zone. There should be no planes over here unless this is a military plane, a plane in trouble." Other than that, there was really no clue.
So about two or three minutes after hearing it, you heard something like revving. We took a look, and, boom, then the north tower is hit. So what happened was everyone left the house except for the captain, because he already had his relief. What I'm assuming is that he's going to man the house. His relief was there.
They all took off. The engine and the truck took off. I guess they both were responding to a pre-arranged staging location when the World Trade Center is involved in some kind of major incident. And they all took off.
So what happened was people were running out of the building. We got a couple of injuries. We were treating them.
Q:
Out of the building, out of the Trade Center?
A:
Out of the Trade Center, yeah. I don't know which Trade Center building they came out of, but it was either the north or the south building.
It was very minimal, like five, six patients. They came with very, very minor injuries. There was a police officer in the fire house. I asked him: Listen, can you get an ambulance here, we have a couple minor injuries. We need an ambulance at the staging location here.
The ambulance comes in. The first EMT that walks in, he sprained his ankle. So he was not much of a help, but he tried to get these people as comfortable as possible.
Let me go back. Let me go back one second before this. After the first plane hit, we went downstairs after everyone took off. I was there downstairs for maybe seven, eight minutes.
I went back upstairs because I wanted to get something out of my bag. Maybe about 10 to 12-minutes after that first plane, I heard another plane. Then I said to myself, we're being attacked.
I ran downstairs. No sooner did I run downstairs and look up, that I saw the second plane strike the south tower. It was such a vicious hit and such a precision hit, it was unbelievable.
Still we didn't have that many more people coming into the fire house, just regular civilians hanging around. They were looking at everything else like that. So pretty much everything was pretty much stabilized in the fire house. The captain was still the only one there.
At that point there were two fire marshals that came to the house. They wanted to borrow some equipment. I can't identify who they were. I forget what they looked like. They got some gear from the house and then they took off. So I only saw them for a second. I only determined they were fire marshals because they had their jackets on.
So at this point what I did was I went around the corner to Liberty and Greenwich to tell the people listen, just keep walking, just keep walking as far as you can, just stay away from the buildings.
I got to the American Stock Exchange building. A guy came out and asked me what do you think we should do? I said listen, if it was me, I tell you in one word, R-U-N, run, just leave. Oh, we have a protocol, for this and that. Listen, you've got to get your people to safety. I don't think being in the building is that safe. But this is the American Stock Exchange. I said listen, you do what you have to do. We have a couple of retired cops on the job here. So one of them called me over. I told him the same story. I said listen, you guys need to get out of here, just for safety reasons. Again, he told me that they have their protocol that they do.
So I continued on my little excursion here trying to get people out of the stores, out of the buildings. I went to all of the shops right behind the fire house. I said listen, just leave your building, just leave.
Q:
This is on Greenwich Street?
A:
Yeah, right on Greenwich and Liberty, right behind the fire house, right on -- is it Cider or Cedar?
Q:
Cedar?
A:
Cedar. They have all the little coffee shops there, bagel stores, gourmet shops there with all the foods. I told them just leave, just -- don't even close your business, just walk out and leave. They're telling me they're okay, they're okay. Now it's getting a little frustrating because I said listen, you should really leave. Don't lock your door, but let your employees go. That didn't seem to work.
So I went back into the fire house to see what I could do. The EMS unit was trying to treat a couple of people. We had a guy with a broken leg, possibly, and maybe one patient with second-degree burns but nothing life-threatening. All the injuries in the fire house were minor. There were really no life-threatening injuries.
So in a matter of 15, 20 minutes, the captain yelled out and you heard this roar. All he said was run to the back, it's coming down. And we all started running to the back of the fire house.
I know the design of Engine 10, Truck 10. It's on the corner, pretty wide. Then as you go into the house it narrows into the hallway. It has a phone. It has a TV room. Then it has a bathroom and a kitchen, which I totally forgot about, the kitchen during the collapse.
Everyone's running down to the basement or upstairs. One of the firefighters, who must have come in when they were calling all these guys in, I don't know who they were, said go upstairs, go upstairs. A lot of people didn't want to go upstairs because they were afraid. The building is coming down upstairs.
So as we were running, we were picking up the injured people. They would fall, we would stop, two people pick them up.
Q:
Still in the house?
A:
Still in the house. Then it came down. From the implosion, we all got thrown and all that stuff came in the house, all that debris, all that concrete and all that fiberglass. Name it, it was in there. It was incredible. Then it started getting dark, darker. You couldn't even see in front of you.
Q:
Inside?
A:
Inside the fire house. You couldn't even see. I couldn't even see in front of my face. Then it became very, very black. We were trying to get out the door. The back entrance was blocked with all the rubble. Somehow they were able to get the door open. Again, I think most of us forgot about the kitchen. We were all trying to go out through the back. So everyone I think got out.
So what happened was I got out and I went to see what was going on. It was a nightmare. Cars were tossed. I mean, all that stuff was in the air, on the street.
So I walked up to Trinity Place. It just so happens I needed a mask, you know. I happened to see Matty James who was in a Jeep. I said Matty, you got a mask? He said: "I have a couple of Scott packs." I didn't want to take one because they had a couple of fire trucks that were hanging out right in front of him. I don't know what fire trucks they were, but they looked kind of beaten up from the explosion.
Q:
This was on where?
A:
On Trinity Place.
Q:
On Trinity?
A:
And Cedar.
Q:
Cedar.
A:
Right, right up there.
Q:
They were parked there, and they were smashed?
A:
I don't know if they were really smashed, but there was a lot of debris on them. I only saw one or two. I can't really identify them because there was so much debris in the air and on the ground. The pictures that you see, that's what was going on.
So he said to me: "Hop in my car, I'll give you a ride, because there's a cop, he's giving out masks on the corner." Meanwhile, I can't see, my eyes are so red and irritated and I'm coughing up all the soot and everything. So I got a mask from the cop.
Then there was like a little cappuccino store right there. I knocked on the door and was let in. Listen, can I use your facilities here? He said oh, yeah, come on in, wash up. I just wanted to wash my face and get all that stuff out of my eyes. He said hey, have some water. He gave me a bottle of water. I was there about 15 minutes. Then I started walking out.
I walked about two, three minutes, and all of a sudden I heard a plane. Now, I'm like the only one walking on this block. I said oh, my God, we're being attacked again. Someone said it could have been a B15, a U.S. plane up in the air. Actually, what I think it was, was simultaneously the plane and the north tower coming down. So that's what the sounds were. I heard that rumble.
So I started going back to the area where Liberty Street was. I went up to Liberty Street. Everything's destroyed, everything, all the buildings around it. The only thing standing was the fire house.
I re-entered the fire house. I spotted a chief. I think it was Philip Burns only because someone called his name. A couple of firemen were in there. There was Firefighter Peter D'Ancona. He was there. He was assigned there. I saw him. He was looking for gear. There was no gear to be found for these guys, no turn-out coats, no nothing. Everything was gone.
Guys were coming in. A couple of companies were coming in just trying to assist. It was still dark out.
What happened was everybody got out of the house safely. I asked the captain where is everybody? He said everyone's out, everyone's fine, everyone's good. There was nothing else to do. Then I spotted the two EMTs that were assigned to the location. I said listen, I have a car --
Q:
Do you remember their names?
A:
No, I don't. The ambulance was destroyed in the collapse. I don't know if it was totaled, but there was a lot of damage to the vehicle.
Q:
Where was that vehicle?
A:
It was parked right inside the 10 and 10 house.
Q:
On the side?
A:
Right inside.
Q:
Oh, inside?
A:
Inside, right. They backed it up. I don't know if they were going to do triage or going to transport.
Q:
How did the ambulance get damaged?
A:
All the debris from the collapse of --
Q:
So it was outside?
A:
It was inside. From the implosion, everything just came inside.
Q:
The doors were open?
A:
The doors were open.
Q:
Oh, the doors were open?
A:
Yeah. They should have been closed, but I don't think -- no one expected within an hour the collapse. It was an awful thing.
Q:
Where did you park?
A:
I parked down on Greenwich between -- I think it's Carlisle and Rector. That's where I was parked.
Q:
So you were down a little further?
A:
Yeah. Because what happened was when I got to the house it was almost changing shifts and I didn't want to take a parking spot up, because they double park there and everywhere right around the corner. It was still early. I said you know what, let me just park up further. I found a spot, I pulled the car in, and then I just walked up to the fire house.
Q:
You never made it to the towers? You never went near the towers?
A:
No, that was just from my location of being right at 10 and 10. That was the closest I was.
Q:
Philip Burns was in there during that whole time?
A:
I only saw him when I came back after the second tower collapsed. I'm only saying it was Philip Burns because someone said that was Chief Burns.
Q:
That was after the second?
A:
After the second collapse.
Q:
When the first one was hit, you were outside?
A:
No, I was almost in front of the house at the front doors. The doors were open.
Q:
Which is actually right across the street?
A:
Right across the street. It was on Liberty and Greenwich.
Q:
You looked up and you saw the --
A:
I didn't look up. What happened was the captain just -- we heard a roar, and he just yelled out it's coming down, just run to the back of the fire house.
Q:
Oh, no, when it hit -- did you see it -- were you outside when it hit?
A:
No.
Q:
You were inside?
A:
Yeah. We just heard all the rumble and all -- the collapse.
Q:
I'm saying you were in the house when the first plane hit?
A:
Yes.
Q:
Did you go out at all right after it?
A:
When the first plane hit? I did. I went outside.
Q:
What did you see then?
A:
I just saw the fire -- the smoke coming out from the top from the north tower.
Q:
Was there any debris?
A:
Not at that time.
Q:
No debris at all?
A:
No. Stuff was coming down, but nothing real major. After the second plane hit even more stuff came down.
Q:
I'm sorry, when the second plane hit.
A:
When the second plane hit, it was just a lot of fire, a lot of black smoke.
Q:
Coming out?
A:
Right. What happened was that we looked up and then within a couple of minutes one guy jumped -- an individual came out. It wasn't like a jump, because they came out backwards. Evidently from the explosion up on those floors they got blown out. Someone else came down and they were coming out. I only saw two people come out.
Now we had more people congregating in the fire house. We would just evaluate them, if they were injured. No, we're not injured. We need a phone.
Of course the cell phones were not working. The only cell phone that worked I think was Nextel. It's a two-way portable radio, practically, and you can have contact. You don't even have to worry about dialing. That's the only phones that were working.
Everyone's cell phones were just not working. My cell phone was dead. The beepers were dead. Everything in the fire house was dead. There was no communication whatsoever. So we just relied on whatever information we were able to get, which was actually really nothing.
Q:
Were there a lot of plane parts or anything when the second one hit?
A:
Not that I saw, no.
Q:
You said there were firemen around you. Did you hear any transmissions going on?
A:
No. It was all verbal among the firemen just discussing. The radio communication was fairly -- I didn't hear anything.
MR. CAMPBELL:
Do you have anything else, Mike?
Q:
Anybody else you actually recognized?
A:
I recognized the captain. I recognized one of the firefighters. I recognized a lieutenant that was from BHS. I don't know his last name. His first name is John. He was good friends with Geoff Guja. Actually they went down together. Geoff unfortunately didn't make it.
Q:
You don't remember the fireman's name?
A:
No, that was with him? I don't remember.
Q:
Captain Mallery, he stayed in the fire house the whole time?
A:
I believe so.
Q:
Anything else? Is there anything else you want to add? You can say anything about how you felt or whatever.
A:
It was something that if you were there, to describe it, it was horrible. It was a horrific act against us. It was something that you would never, ever think would ever, ever happen to this country.
When those towers came down, it was like a sign of something. When all these people -- I mean, war is war. They talk about Pearl Harbor. Bottom line is Pearl Harbor was a military base, installation. It was peace time. But here what happened was we got two planes, our own planes, going into two towers and killing almost 5,000 people. It was just an awful day. It was a day I'll never forget, just the sounds of everything and the planes hitting. The awful sound of hearing that plane over the fire house. It was like it was sitting right on top of the fire house. That's how close it was. And then revving up the engine and then hitting the north tower.
Q:
You had said earlier people in the fire house were alarmed when they heard the plane. They felt something was wrong?
A:
Oh, yeah.
Q:
Before it even --
A:
I was upstairs. There was only the captain and the firefighter. It was George Bachmann who was up there with me. George Bachmann was in Vietnam -- served in Vietnam. So he knows certain sounds. Like we said, this is a no-fly zone here. What's a plane doing here?
So as soon as that plane hit, they all took off. The only one left was the captain at the time. Anybody else coming back, coming into the house was either called in or off-duty guys coming in, grabbing equipment. I saw the two fire marshals. They were grabbing equipment. They asked the captain: "We need some gear."
But again, no one ever expected it to collapse like that. Just thankfully a pancake rather than toppling over. That would have been a nightmare. But in an hour the intensity of that heat must have been incredible.
Q:
Did any of the guys from 10 and 10 come back after --
A:
They were out. I understand that a lot of them didn't come back.
Q:
So none of them came back after, while you were around?
A:
No, no. They, I think, just went to the location where they were supposed to go and whatever assignment they were given. The problem was when the south tower went down, I guess there was no communication and people just went into the north tower. That's what they were saying. When the south tower came down, that was where the communication was. While the north tower is still up, burning, guys were just told go into the building. There was no radio communication. That's what --
Q:
You were by the south tower?
A:
Right.
Q:
After that got hit, were there any firefighters going into Two World Trade from Liberty Street or anything?
A:
No, they just -- everyone just got in and they went to --
Q:
No, I'm saying when the second one hit when they were responding when they made the other alarm for the second tower.
A:
Right.
Q:
Units were assigned to the second tower or the south tower. Did you see any of them go in?
A:
No, no. Actually, I didn't see any units from where I was. They must have all gone to Vesey or they were parked on Church right up on the street. I saw some fire apparatus up on, I think it was, Church or Trinity or right up there on Liberty Street.
Q:
Did you see any numbers or anything?
A:
No.
MR. CAMPBELL:
All right. This concludes the interview. It's 10:52. Thank you very much.
File No. 9110010: PARAMEDIC TRACEY MULQUEEN
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
Interview Date: October 4, 2001
Transcribed by: Laurie A. Collins
T. MULQUEEN
MR. McALLISTER:
This is Kevin McAllister from the Bureau of Administration. It's October 4th, 2001. We're at Fire Department headquarters in 8E13, and we're about to begin an interview with Tracey Mulqueen, who's a paramedic assigned to the office of medical affairs. I'm joined by --
MR. CASTORINA:
Ron Castorina, Bureau of Investigations and Trials.
MR. TAMBASCO:
Mike Tambasco, Bureau of Investigations and Trials.
MR. McALLISTER:
Tracey Mulqueen as well.
Q:
We're just going to draw your attention to September the 11th and ask you for your recollections about the events of that day.
A:
I guess to start with, the first time I started hearing -- I was actually in the pantry making breakfast. I started to hear people screaming. The first thought was that there was a bird in reception, like a bird had flown in or something. I don't know where that came from. I went out to see what was going on,
T. MULQUEEN
and I went to the eighth floor reception and I could see the flames and the smoke coming out of the first tower in the Trade Center. It was surreal. It's like you're seeing it but you're not really processing it.
I was watching for a few minutes, and the second plane came in. Basically the next thing I remember after that was we had all of our office's medical equipment on a chair and we were running out the building.
They had somehow worked out for us to get an ambulance at one of the battalions in Brooklyn. So we ran to somebody's personal car, because we didn't even try to get a pool car. We figured all the pool cars were probably gone at that point, which I wouldn't be surprised if they were.
So we're driving through Brooklyn, and three of us -- it was myself, James Murphy, who's another paramedic, and Dulce McCorvey, who is an EMT in the office. So we go into her personal car with all the equipment, and we're driving and we're hoping we don't get lost.
Again, we're in a personal vehicle. I'm basically stopping at the red lights. I'm jumping out of the car, stopping traffic so we can drive through, because we just needed to get there. I probably shouldn't be telling this to the BITS people, but anyway.
Q:
We've heard this story before.
A:
I know.
Just trying to stop. People looked at us like what's going on. I guess people didn't know yet. We were listening to the radio, the regular AM radio -- I forget what station it was -- and starting to hear the reports about what's going on.
So we get an ambulance, we throw our stuff in it, and we start heading over to Manhattan. We were driving and we come over -- I think we came over the Manhattan Bridge and went around City Hall. We were driving down Broadway, and there was no AM/FM radio in the ambulance, so we had no idea what was going on at this point.
Q:
What were you able to observe as you came over the bridge and after you entered Manhattan?
A:
Just there was a lot of cops. There was a lot of activity. I really wasn't seeing people, like the hordes of people like you see on the news. I think we were more concerned about going the right way and not getting lost. I was in the passenger seat of the ambulance, so I was kind of copiloting at that point.
We started to come down Broadway, and we could start to see people coming up at us, just all types of pedestrians, walking only in one direction. Like I said, we didn't have a radio in our ambulance, and nothing had come over the regular FD radio. So we didn't even know the first tower had collapsed at that point, and we were driving straight in. We had no clue.
One of the captains from operations, Janice Olszewski, if she hadn't stopped us, we probably would have been right underneath the tower when it came down. We had no idea what was going on.
We were coming down Broadway, and I'm not sure exactly where we ended up but I believe we were probably at Broadway and Vesey. We were probably right about here. She had flagged us down. We got out of the ambulance. We started talking to her. You could see that she had that look in her eye. She told us that the tower had come down.
Literally within like maybe a minute or two of being on the scene, you could start to hear the rumble again. Everybody just said, "Get out of here!" Everybody just took off running.
Q:
That was the rumble from the second tower?
A:
It was, definitely, because you could start to see the dust cloud was starting to come at us and everything. We were running up Broadway, and I don't know how he did this, because all I thought was just get the hell out of here. I had Captain Olszewski in my sight, and I had Dulce McCorvey in my sight, and we were together. I had no idea where Jimmy Murphy went.
The next thing you know, the ambulance comes up Broadway. "Get in!" Cool. So we all jumped in, and we just all sat in the back. You could see the dust clouds coming at us and going down the side streets.
Q:
You were moving, you were driving?
A:
Oh, yeah. So we actually beat out that cloud, because there's no way you could have driven through that. We were driving, and we stopped at one point and we looked and saw that we were outside the federal building. We ain't stopping here. So we went a few more blocks up.
I remember Janice Olszewski just sitting there screaming, "Keep going. We're not far enough. We're not far enough. Just keep going." We just were all sitting in the back of the ambulance, what the hell just happened. I don't think it really even sunk in.
We knew something had happened. I don't think we realized like the whole thing had come down, because we didn't even know -- she had said that something had collapsed, there was some kind of explosion, I don't know. We just got out, we stopped, and all of a sudden people just started coming out, all covered in the ash.
Q:
Where did you stop?
A:
I know we were outside of 385 Broadway at one point, because there was a lingerie shop there and the guy was so nice. He let us come in, let us use the bathroom, let us use the phones. I know the deli next had asked people for quarters to use the phones, which I could not believe. This guy was like, "Whatever you need. What can I do?" He was just amazing. I'm going to make a point to go back there and thank him, because he was absolutely wonderful.
I think we all sat down on the back of the bumper. We were trying to get dust masks, and we gave out all of our masks within a couple of minutes, because everybody was coming up. You could smell it. It's not a regular smoke smell. It's acrid concrete, whatever. We gave out dust masks.
Then within I guess a couple minutes, people started coming out, making their way out of that cloud. There were some injuries. A lot of just completely petrified, shell-shocked -- I guess when you see pictures of people from other parts of the world after bombings and stuff, that shell-shocked look.
When you see people in New York in business suits coming out covered in ash, looking like that, the whole thing -- surreal is definitely the only word that describes a lot of what went on that day, and afterwards too.
I know after a few minutes some guy came up, and he must have just run to the first deli he could find and bought all the water he could fit in his backpack and just came by and just started giving out water to people, which was -- I guess that was the beginning of people coming together and trying to do the right thing. People came by and bought sandwiches in a store and just tried to give us stuff. Somebody finally came by and was giving out like bottles of water, like the five-gallon ones.
Actually, this is interesting, just to go back. When we were driving up Broadway before we actually got there, there was a sheriff's car, and my husband is a deputy sheriff in the New York City sheriff's office. As we were driving by, I yelled at them, "Tell Paul Mulqueen that his wife is here."
Because afterwards, maybe about half an hour, all I could think of is I know my husband works in Manhattan, I know he was there. I'm trying to focus on what I need to do, and people coming up cut and having trouble breathing. We had a few different oxygen bags and regulators and stuff. You go into autopilot and you try to do what you have to do, and all I could think about was where's Paul, where's Paul. Nobody could get through on the cell phones.
I guess probably about 12-ish I saw another sheriff, and I said, "Could you please just try and raise him on the radio." He called him. Finally all I heard back, "What?" I thought, okay, he's okay, which I thought was very funny. The guy was like, "Lord, there was a family member looking for you." You could hear like the relief in his voice, and he was like, "Okay." But it was like "What?"
I found out later he was helping to evacuate the fire. There was a picture. He was in like Time magazine and Newsweek magazine evacuating some of the victims out. I understand where that "what" came from at that point, but it was the happiest word I heard.
I don't know how long we were there, but we were there for a while trying to just catch people as they were coming out, people were being carried out, limping up. Everybody was pretty banged up, although not as banged up as I expected. I think a lot of us really expected worse injuries. It seemed like people were mostly either walking wounded or they didn't get out. It's unfortunate.
Q:
What street were you getting these injuries at?
A:
We were still in front of 385 Broadway.
Q:
On Broadway?
A:
Yeah, which I think is just south of Canal Street.
It's funny, because the whole time too you don't realize how often you use the twin towers as your reference point, because for the next couple days I would look and I had no idea where I was. I would go to look up to see where the towers were. I guess that's something I'll have to get used to, but it was very strange.
I know once --
Q:
Were there other units there at that time?
A:
There was one other ambulance there. I think it was from the academy, because I know like Marlena Coffey was there and Jenna, she's from the academy. She was with a couple of other people and some other EMTs that were closer that didn't get out of the cloud had come up. I know one guy's name was Kevin. He was covered in ash.
I think after once we kind of got control of the scene there, everybody was just to the phone to try and call people, to just let them know that we're okay. I know when I got in touch with my aunt, she was hysterical, which started me off, the last thing you want.
We were told to 85 with one of the deputy medical directors, so we met up with him at wherever that first treatment sector was on the West Side Highway there. There was all the ambulances, and all other people started coming in. I saw ambulances from New Jersey. My friend lives on North Shore. This funky big ambulance thing. I never saw a truck like it.
We met up with Dr. Richmond, which apparently he and Commissioner Clair and Dario Gonzalez, the two physicians and the commissioner, were flown in from the state police from Albany, which was good.
At that point Captain Olszewski was who we kept with. REDACTED
I remember what struck me most is when we were on the east side and stuck in all that traffic, people were just going about their day. People were sitting at cafes eating. I know life goes on and stuff, but to see people -- it was almost like how could you just be going about your business? Don't you know what just happened?
REDACTED
I saw her I don't know when, a couple days later. I had slept here a couple nights, and I ran into her one night. It was good to see people. I never hugged so many people that I worked with in the space of a couple of days, ever.
From the hospital we went to Bellevue to restock, because our bus was trashed. They had everything set up outside for restock. We had no oxygen, we had no masks, we had no water left for doing people's eyes and stuff. We were flushing them out. We had no gas. It was like everything you could run out of, we ran out of.
We were standing at Bellevue. All of a sudden we hear this rumble of like a plane really low, and I started to freak out. Jimmy Murphy said, "It's okay. It's an F-15." I've never heard an F-15 before. I don't go to air shows or anything.
But that plane and the rumble, especially because you hadn't heard a plane since; maybe a helicopter or two. But that sound, that was -- and just to see all these fighter jets over New York City was very, very strange.
So then we restocked, and we were sent to Chelsea Piers. We pretty much spent the rest of our night there. Actually how did I get to Chelsea Piers? Honestly, I don't know where we went after Bellevue. All I know is at some point I got hooked up with Dr. Richmond and we ended up at Chelsea Piers. I don't know how I got there. Okay. That's pretty interesting.
Q:
It's common that people have gaps, because a lot of people don't recall big chunks of time from that day.
A:
I have no idea what I did. The next thing I know, it was night time and we were at Chelsea Piers and we were helping -- we got the morgue set up, which actually they never used, on the ice rink, which I thought it was actually a good idea.
Yeah, just getting everything set up, all the hospitals, getting all the people -- everyone was just rushing in. Everybody knows about how many people we had volunteering their time, and just stuff, equipment.
I remember at one point an unmarked truck pulls outside Chelsea Piers, and they start unloading it. You see just big brown boxes. I'm like, "Guys, I know I'm Miss Panicker here, but did anybody check those boxes? Where is this stuff from? It could be terrorist stuff." The FEMA guy standing next to me says, "Oh, maybe we should check the truck out." I was like oh, my God, you know. Who knew at that point? He was like, "Wow, that's a good idea."
At some point that night, we went to go check out some of the -- I went with Dr. Richmond to ground zero from Chelsea, and I got to see a little bit of it. Words can't describe. You can see all the pictures and all the footage. I don't know if you guys were there or not, but it just looks like the gates of hell opened up. I've heard that from other people too. You can't describe that.
Then we went back up, and we were finishing coordinating. I actually got home the first night, because my husband came and picked me up. That was good. That was very good. I was very, very thankful, very thankful. We're both the same type of people, we're there.
I know my parents were in Walt Disney World, and they shut the whole park and wouldn't tell people why they started shutting people out. A guy had a radio and told my parents, and my mom just flipped, because she knows where I work. She knows that when big things happen, we're out the door first.
The only reason why I wasn't out the door with Dr. Cherson and Manny Delgado was because I was making my frigging bacon in the pantry. Who knows what would have happened had I been there.
You hear all these stories. There were so many people that were just lucky because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time or the right place at the right time. That's two things: I had my bacon saved me, hopefully, and then Janice Olszewski stopping us in the middle of Broadway before we drove right into the thing. I'm very lucky and very happy.
I came back the next morning, and I had met up with Dr. Cherson at that point. I spent the next couple of days with him. That's a very big blur. All I know is that by the end of the day I could barely walk, my feet hurt so much. My big toes are still numb now, because we were just on our feet for so many hours. The next couple of days I ended up just sleeping up here in one of the doc's offices.
Oh, wait, no, I forgot this one. The next day we were -- after we were helping the setup -- they were setting up the northwest triage and treatment sector in the American Express building all of a sudden you started to hear that rumble again. Everybody just took off.
Q:
This is on the 12th?
A:
Yes. Apparently in the back some of the facade had been falling down, but you didn't know that. All you know is you heard that rumble again. We were all running. All of a sudden we're like "we're not far enough," which we heard a lot of them.
All of sudden I see one of our EMTs coming up towards West Street, and he's starting to go in the building. I started screaming, "Get out of there!" One of the cops turned around and said, "Why are you screaming?" "Because you know what, I just ran for my frigging life again. If I'm a little high-strung right now, then you're going to have to understand that."
This guy was going back in the building. He's like, "Oh, okay. All right." Why are you screaming? Because he's walking towards a building that might be collapsing? I don't know, you know. It was just funny.
We moved back, and then they checked it out. You see the back corner had collapsed a little bit. But they checked it out. Apparently the building was -- they used it for a triage and then the morgue. I think it's still being used, actually. I think the DMAT teams are in there now.
I don't know what else you're looking for.
Q:
That's great.
A:
Kind of a rambling story.
Q:
That's what we're looking for. We're looking for your recollections, a narrative from you as to what you observed. We appreciate that.
A:
I'm just meeting people. I met one guy, one of my old partners, and he was off. He said his whole fire company's gone, the whole company. Just running into people like that. When you look at people that you're not going to see again, it's hard. It's very difficult.
T. MULQUEEN
Thank you.
Q:
Thank you very much for your recollections.
MR. McALLISTER:
This is Kevin McAllister again. It is 12:12 on October 4th, 2001, and we're going to conclude the interview now. The interview started at 11:52 hours.
File No. 9110011: CHIEF SALVATORE CASSANO
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
Interview Date: October 4, 2001
Transcribed by: Elisabeth F. Nason
S. CASSANO
MR. TAMBASCO:
This is the interview of - I'm here with Salvatore Cassano. We are in his office on the 7th floor at 9 Metrotech. My name is Mike Tambasco. I'm the investigator assigned to the World Trade Center Task Force. Present in the room with me is Assistant Commissioner James Drury, Fire Marshal Michael Starace, Peter Campbell, Fire Marshal.
Chief, if you would - we are going to be starting this interview at 1350 hours. Just take your time.
Q:
I'm going to ask you some questions, Chief. Could you start from when you initially heard about a plane crash on September 11, 2001?
A:
Okay, fine. We were in the command center. I was in the command center at the time the first plane hit. We were sitting around the table and at the table was Chief of the Department Pete Ganci, Citywide Tour Commander Donald Burns, Citywide Tour Commander Jerry Barbara and Citywide Tour Commander Joe Callan. There may have been some other people there. I don't remember, but I know at least we were there.
Q:
Where was this command center, Chief?
A:
The command center was in the back. It was the citywide tour command center. It's right behind the fire operations center. There is a room back there where we have our offices.
Q:
On the 7th floor?
A:
Right, on the 7th floor. We were just talking about the day's events, the previous day's events, when on the Department radio, there was a message blurted out that - something to the effect that the outside of the World Trade Center was on fire. So that sort of perked up our ears, and not knowing what was going on, everybody naturally did what they do. They got up and started to move out, and I stayed there a little longer just to see what the transmission was, and I remember hearing something about a plane hitting the World Trade Center, so now I really got my gear and my motor in gear.
I came out of the office, came down to look for Chief Ganci. Pete was already on the road. I looked out the window and in the office with me was Mike Canty, Battalion Chief. We looked out the window and we saw that the plane had hit the tower. We actually saw a lot of smoke coming from the World Trade Center. I said wow. With that I turned around and I left. I went down to my car. My aide was actually driving Donald Burns the day before. So he had to stay with Donald Burns and had driven Donald Burns, so I drove myself.
I got in my car, drove out of the building and was naturally listening to the reports and all the reports we heard, you know, including a transmittal of a fifth alarm. I came out and over the Brooklyn Bridge. All I could see - being that I was driving, I really couldn't get a good look, but I did see a heavy column of smoke in the sky. I drove over the Brooklyn Bridge.
I went down and actually had 2 EMTs in my car. One was a black man. I don't know who the other fellow was. They asked me for a ride over to the Trade Center. I took Brad with me and Brad could tell you who the other fellow was, because I don't remember. And they were in the back seat. That's what I was doing. And we drove down, we came actually onto West Broadway. I parked right by - I was trying to park by 7 World Trade Center, so I ended up on West Broadway and Vesey, right on the corner, right adjacent to the Federal Office Building.
Then as we were getting out of the car, the second plane hit the south tower, just as we were stepping out of the car. We had some debris come flying down on us. Brad and the other fellow took off. I ran into a garage, waited till everything cleared up and then when it calmed down, I got back into my car and we went --
Q:
You were going to go pick up your car?
A:
We went down. I got back in the car after the smoke and all had cleared from the second hit and I ended up going down, possibly Murray Street to West Street. I parked my car on West Street, probably somewhere near Barclay, probably a little further north of that. I got my bunker gear out of the car. I suited up and I looked up and I could see the heavy smoke condition.
I started to walk down West Street and I got in front of tower two and saw where the command post was set up. It was set up on West Street. I looked up and I knew this was not the right place for the command post, so I told the field communications unit, I said this is too close to the building. We have to move this out of here and get it back.
So they took the command post and moved it further across the street, further west. I'm not exactly sure where the garage is, but it's probably in front of the Millennium. Not the Millennium. Sorry. It's probably in front of the Two World Financial Center and Winter Garden. There is a garage down there where we set up. You will know, if you have been down there. You will see it. It was there.
So what we did was we set up the command post there across the street, further away from the building. At the command post we had Chief of Department Ganci, myself, field communications and numerous companies. I don't remember. I remember seeing the 101 truck, 202 engine, I think it was 105; companies like that.
Then Chief Galvin reported into that command post, and he had been given an assignment to go to work with either Chief Burns in the south tower or go to the Millennium. Again, I'm not exactly sure what the instructions were that he was given by Chief of Department Ganci and before Tom went to the command post, he was getting all the channels right. He said one was going to be the tactical and either 5 was going to be the command in the south tower or 6 was going to be the command for the north tower and he was trying to get everything down pat before he left. With that he took off and he went on his way.
After looking over the command board and helping communications with the command board, talking to Chief Ganci, he asked me to go in there and rendezvous with Chief Galvin to see what was going on. So from the command post I walked across the street. I went into the Millennium, into the lobby, where I saw Chief Galvin, who was kind of overwhelmed. He was the only one there. His aide had gone someplace and he was very busy.
But inside the lobby of the Millennium it was very quiet. Very few civilians. In fact, I didn't see a civilian. All I saw were building employees. They were very calm. So I went into the lobby of the hotel. We saw 13 truck with Captain Walter Hynes, who I knew, and Captain Dave Wooley, who is usually with engine 54. I saw 11 truck in the lobby. Actually they were up on the mezzanine.
I saw 23 engine and I assigned 23 engine to be the command post company for the Millennium to help out Chief Galvin. We were getting overwhelmed with phone numbers and elevators and all that and keeping a record of the companies. So I gave 23 engine that assignment. Stay in the lobby and be the command post company for Chief Galvin. You are his aide.
After conversing with Chief Galvin for a while, taking his numbers on the desk, security desk, so we could converse with them if we needed to get in touch with them, I took the phone number. I took the companies that were in the lobby and went towards the restaurant. There is a restaurant, Tall Ships, in that building. Went in there, went to the bathroom. Came out. There were some people in the restaurant. They looked kind of confused. I told them stay here, it's safe right now. There's people jumping and stuff like that. I was afraid of them walking across the street and getting hurt by falling debris.
I left the lobby. I left the restaurant by way of Liberty. I came out that exit, started to walk up Liberty to West, where I met Commissioner Feehan and Commissioner Tierney. I talked to them. I actually showed them where the command post was. I told them to walk away from the building because there were jumpers and get close to a fence. There was like a chain link fence across the street. We walked along the chain link fence and walked close to the building. When we got to the building, I brought them to the command post.
We stayed at the command post for a while, helping out Chief Ganci, and then the south tower collapsed. When the south tower collapsed, what we did was we either ran, got blown or fell down that garage, into that garage. That's where we all went. And after the dust and smoke cleared, someone showed us an exit. I went up an exit stairway and came out the lobby of the building. Some people, I guess, just stayed there until it really cleared and came up out of the garage, the ramp itself.
So they had told us there was an exit out the rear of that building to - actually further towards the water. So we started telling people to go back into that building, go out the rear exit and go towards the water. Chief Ganci told me to set up a command post further north towards Chambers Street. And that's what I started to do. I started to walk north to try to get people to set up a command post further north and I believe that's when Pete and I got separated. Pete started to go further south.
At the corner of West and Vesey, I met Chief Turi. He had a bull horn. He had full bunker gear on and he wanted people to get further north. I told him I was setting up a command post on Chambers and let's move north, get out of here.
Then I met Chief Pete Hayden and Chief Joe Pfeifer. Deputy Hayden, DC Pfeifer. They were in the lobby of the north tower. And they got from - when the south tower collapsed, the lobby got pretty crappy. They came out of there and they were all full of dust and all that and I saw Pete Hayden and I looked at Pete and said where were you? He said I was in the lobby of two and he said Father Judge is dead. I had just been with Father Judge. I had seen Father Judge on Church - sorry - West Street. I realized - I said Pete we have people up there, the building is loaded with our guys. We got to get them out of there.
I tried to call Chief Ganci on the handy talky. I was calling car 3. For some reason we couldn't touch base. So I told Pete Hayden and Joe Pfeifer, we got to move the command post further north, start moving north. Get them out of here. I'm going to go look for Pete and tell him what we got. They started to move, I turned around and started walking down West Street to find Chief Ganci.
Q:
Going south?
A:
I was going south. I was trying to find him, to let him know we still got a lot of people in the north building. We got to get them out of there and that's when tower one came down, so I was on West Street. I looked up. There was a jet plane. It sounded - I mean it sounded like another plane coming over and I said holy god, I hope it's one of ours. I looked up. It wasn't ours. There was a building coming down.
I turned around and started running north on West and I looked up. I knew I wasn't going to make it any further. There was a rig on the corner of West and Vesey. I dove under the rig and waited out there. I got hit in the back with some concrete or something like that. As soon as everything cleared up - I don't know where it came from, but coming down - I met Pete Hayden again after that. He had gone up Rector. I met him. He gave me a hug and said are you all right? I'm fine, I thought, I was all right. I couldn't walk. I had gotten hit in the back.
A couple of EMTs with their stretcher put me on it and wheeled me up into a building. I guess there was a triage center there in the building on - right by the water. From there they took me to St. Vincent's Hospital. I got out of there about 3. I came back here and I started working here. That's pretty much what happened.
Q:
Let me start with a couple of questions, Chief. Going back to the command center on West Street, you said when the south tower came down, you ran down the driveway?
A:
Uh-huh.
Q:
Did you see Chief Ganci at that point --
A:
I saw him afterwards. We all took off, but I met him back on the apron afterwards. That's when he told me, he said, we got to get people up north. We are going to set up another command post. Send everybody up north. That's when I talked to Pete and that's what I was in the process of doing. Pete turned around and went south. I think he heard that we had people trapped and that's when he went south. I did see him after the first collapse. We were talking. He had given me instructions, and I was trying to carry them out.
Q:
What about Commissioner Feehan, did you see him running to the collapse?
A:
I can't recollect, but I believe I saw him afterwards. I believe I saw him afterwards with Pete. I believe everybody that was on that apron made it into the garage, because when we came back out we looked around. There was rubble, but nothing where we couldn't see somebody if they were trapped under there.
Q:
Now you said when you came around and you saw Chief Turi with a bull horn, you started heading south again, because you wanted to talk to Chief Ganci about possibly -- our guys in the north tower.
A:
North tower, yes.
Q:
How far down did you get in relation to where the command post on West Street was when the north tower started coming down?
A:
I really don't know. I thought I got -- I didn't get down too far, but I think I got down further than I thought I did because I -- people that were on the corner that were with me made it all the way around on Vesey. I couldn't. I made it just to the corner of West and Vesey. So I don't really know. I got down a little further than I thought.
Q:
Okay. Then you said they had the command center outside the north tower early on and then you said it's too close, we got to move it?
A:
Right.
Q:
Where had it been in relation to the north tower when you decided it had to be moved?
A:
It was right in the middle of West Street. They might have had it on the island. On West Street there is an island. They might have had it right on the island. Much too close. We moved it across the street and right against the building in that driveway, yes.
Q:
You say you parked your car originally at West Broadway and Vesey?
A:
Right by 7 World Trade Center.
Q:
Is there any particular reason you moved it again after that?
A:
No, I wanted to get closer -- I knew that that was too far away. So I wanted to get closer to where I thought the command post would be or get into the north tower and I didn't want to walk all the way around to there, so I drove my car, parked it on West Street with the intention of not being caught in all the other stuff that was there, get it out of the way.
Q:
Other than the ladder companies or engine companies you already delineated inside of the Millennium Hotel, other than the workers, how many civilians did you see in that restaurant?
A:
I would say probably six or seven civilians in the restaurant.
Q:
On Vesey Street when you first arrived there, what was the scene like? That was where the first plane hit. Was there any debris on that street?
A:
No, there was no debris on that street at all from the first plane. I drove right up there and then like I said, I had just opened my door and the second -- I thought it was the secondary explosion. I didn't know it was another plane in the south tower, because when I heard it, I looked up and I saw debris. It had to be debris flying over from the south tower. Not much, but there was enough coming down in the street where I took off and I ducked into a garage until it cleared up.
After the secondary explosion in the north tower, I didn't know what the hell - I didn't know it was another plane that had hit until I got around to the command post.
Q:
Do you know now that rig you dived under?
A:
Yes, I believe it was Rescue's collapse rig. I remember seeing rescue - they told me -- on that corner, it was Rescue's collapse rig.
Q:
It withstood the blast?
A:
Yes, thank god.
Q:
Was it the high rise unit?
A:
No, not the high rise unit. I think they told me the windows were blown out or something like that, but nothing heavy fell on me.
Q:
What time do you think it was that you actually left this building that day, that morning?
A:
Probably 5 to 9. I ran right out. I was a little behind everybody else.
Q:
And the last time you saw Chief Burns was?
A:
Last time I saw Chief Burns was at the command center and when he left the command center, I never saw him at the scene.
Q:
Did you hear him on the radio at all?
A:
No, in fact I was asking where they were working, because they told me that Chief Barbara had set up outside and I couldn't find him. I was looking for him too. I couldn't find him. That's where I met Commissioner Feehan and Commissioner Tierney and they asked me where was the command post. I said probably you just got to walk around the outside and get out of the way of anything that's coming out of the building.
Q:
Did you ever hear later on that the initial command post was inside one of the towers?
A:
No. I knew that there had to be a lobby command post, but we set up outside with Chief Ganci. He was the incident commander at that time and I knew exactly where he was going to stage, so that's where I staged.
Q:
When you left the restaurant in the Millennium, did you see Chief Galvin still inside the lobby there?
A:
Yes.
Q:
What block did you come down when you met Commissioner Feehan and Commissioner Tierney?
A:
I came out on Liberty and I met them right there, in fact, where the south walkway still is. I met them right around there, in that vicinity, and they wanted to know where, so I walked them that way across and came down on West Street.
Q:
On what street, West and Liberty?
A:
Yes, yes.
Q:
You actually walked north with them to bring them up to the command post?
A:
Absolutely right.
Q:
West across and then up?
A:
I don't know where. I think Lynn went into the lobby somewhere. I don't know. I don't know. I think they told me she was in the lobby and then Bill went to the lobby too. I stayed at the command board with Pete Ganci. I stayed there.
Q:
You mentioned jumpers before. Did you see them?
A:
Yes
Q:
Both towers?
A:
I didn't see jumpers from the south tower. I saw jumpers from the north tower and it sounded like concrete falling, hitting the pavement. That's what I was concerned with, those people in the restaurant, to get them out and getting hit with either the jumpers or something falling, windows. I was worried about glass.
Q:
You mentioned Father Judge. Where did you last see him?
A:
I saw Father Judge as I was walking to the Millennium. He was on West Street. And I saw him come out and I walked up to him, gave him a smile. I told him Father Judge, we are going to need a lot of help here. You better get some more chaplains. He smiled and said something. I forget what he said. I don't remember what he said. That was the last time I saw him.
Q:
Anything else?
A:
No.
ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER DRURY:
Chief, thank you very much. Mike, you can conclude it.
S. CASSANO
MR. TAMBASCO:
The interview is now concluded at 1410 hours. Thank you, Chief.
File No. 9110012: EMT FELIPE TORRE
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
Interview Date: October 9, 2001
Transcribed by: Elisabeth F. Nason
F. TORRE
Page 248
TO BE CONTINUED
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
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