“So Many Lost, So Few Recovered” Diary of a 9/11 First Responder
By BOB KECSKEMETY
On the morning of September 11, 2001, while the world watched in horror as the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were first hit by two passenger jetliners and the two massive buildings collapsed into a pile of rubble of few hours later, hundreds of brave men and women (the first responders: fire fighter, police and paramedics) witnessed the horror firsthand, trying to save as many lives as possible while preserving
their own lives.
One such first responder is Shane Cook, a paramedic of ten years and a resident of Fort Lauderdale today.
“The four days I was on the scene,” said Cook, “is kind of a blur. You slept for a few hours here and there, then you’d wake up and do the same thing.”
Early on the morning of September 11, 2001, Cook went off duty at 7:00 a.m. taking continuing education classes to update his skills as a paramedic. At 8:46 a.m., the first plane hit the north tower and the first call went out. At first, it was believed that it was a small plane, such as a Cessna, that hit the tower. “New York City had the resources to deal with something like that,” said Cook, “but no one was ready for the type of magnitude that took actually took place.”
Cook’s unit responded when the second call went out. “We got down there about five minutes before the second plane hit. It was when we all looked up and saw it, we understood what we were dealing with,” said Cook.
“As a paramedic,” explained Cook, “your first rule is to ‘do no further harm’. But there is an unwritten rule that is for your own safety.
The first thing you are taught is to ask yourself if what you are about to do is safe. Are you safe? Is your team safe? That’s the golden rule. The first thing you have to evaluate on any call you go on is: Is the scene safe. And obviously, the scene wasn’t safe — there was a whole lot going on. Then you have to ask yourself, is the risk to the citizens greater than the risk you would impose upon yourself or your group? And is that risk worth you or your crew’s life? You have to remember, a dead paramedic saves no one; a dead firefighter saves no one; a dead police officer saves no one. If you could save that person without doing harm to yourself, you’re good.”
At 9:59 a.m., after burning for 56 minutes, the South Tower, the second tower hit by the airliner, collapsed due to structural failure.
“Unless you were there, you really don’t realize what it’s like when that comes down,” said Cook. “The sound was just horrific. It didn’t sound like a hurricane – it didn’t sound like a tornado – it sounded like a thousand tornadoes and it felt like a thousand tornadoes. That rumbling – and you didn’t just feel it on the ground, you felt your whole body vibrate.”
After the first tower fell, it was only a matter of time before the second tower came down. Cook said that everyone was pushed back from the scene. He said there was no time to pick up the patients that were still on the ground and put them on a stretcher. Cook said the command was, “This thing is falling, you need to run and run now. I kept saying to myself, ‘Oh my God, what has really happened here?’” The second tower came down at 10:28 a.m. after burning for 102 minutes.
However, with the total destruction of the two towering buildings, so came down the command structure of the emergency services.
The command center was set up in the towers and the towers were equipped with the communications between the various departments.
“There was a certain command structure to follow,” said Cook, “but after the towers came down, everything became such a blur because it made such a huge impact on somebody to watch their friends disappear in a cloud of debris – a big black blanket overwhelms you. Your first thought was ‘where’s my partner’ and my second thought was ‘am I okay?’ That day, that night and every day thereafter, it’s almost like you didn’t know. You were thinking of your friends, you were grasping very strongly to hope and you were very disoriented as far as getting a grasp on what just happened to you and what is your next move.”
Cook remembers the constant chain of debris handed out by hand as searchers looked for survivors.
Cook recalls that while walking by a pile of debris, he heard a cell phone ring. He grabbed one of the firefighters and asked him if he heard the phone also, which he did. They ran over to where they heard the phone and started digging. They found the phone but there was no person with the phone. Cook then took the phone to an area the Red Cross had set up to drop off personal affects found in the debris such as shoes, watches, wallets – anything that could have been used to identify anyone who would have been there.
There was a morgue area where body parts were being brought and there was a triage area set up near the George Washington Bridge.
Cook was finally relieved of duty at 5:30 a.m. on September 12th, and he went to rest at the building set up with food, drinks and military cots so the emergency workers could get some rest. On hand were also stress relief counselors.
“Everybody was exhausted and the look on their face – there was no emotion, they were just covered with soot and dirt. When I went to get some sleep, I saw a firefighter leaning against one of the equipment trucks and I remember looking at his face. You could see the outline of his mask and his jacket and there was no emotion on his face. I remember reaching out and touching him to make sure he was alive. That was the mentality that kept on going.”
Cook said that he woke up around noon and, like any other day, he sat up in the bed and put his feet on the ground and wondered what the new day had in store for him. Then he looked up and saw where he was and suddenly remembered where he was at and what had happened the day before.
The next day, the emergency workers had somewhat of a grasp of the coworkers they lost in the collapse of the two towers. Cook knew they had lost two companies. Seven people he personally knew were killed, his best friend John was gone, as well as a cousin and a total of 12 medics from his EMT service. No one cared about the equipment, but there were crews in the equipment when the buildings fell on the trucks. According to Cook, the hardest part was that you really just didn’t know. They weren’t responding to roll call, but he kept telling himself that they’ll check in eventually. Cook says that is what he kept telling himself for the first week – refusing to accept the knowledge and hardship he was going to have to face.
“You get to know that each one of them has saved hundreds of lives, perhaps thousands,” said Cook. Not all calls are the big life-saving calls that require extraordinary measures like the ‘oh, my stomach hurts’ calls. But you are saving lives every day and every day you don’t know if that’s the call that’s going to get you. That’s a simple fact, that’s what you signed up to do.”
“Every one of those people did their job and paid the ultimate price for doing their job. But more importantly, they did that job because that’s what they loved to do. And whether it be me or any other firefighter or paramedic or EMT that’s out there, we get into this knowing the great benefit of helping others: of saving other’s lives. But we also know in the back of our mind – and many don’t want to admit it – that we may be called upon to sacrifice our life for somebody else.”
September 12th was simply an extension of September 11th, except it was post-impact, Cook described. He said that everyone would get an adrenaline rush every time someone said they found someone, and if they didn’t, there was a letdown. Cook remembers spending most of that day constantly handling the debris and taking care of the firefighters that were actually working in the debris piles.
Cook finally went home on the evening of September 12th because he was no longer needed on that site. “Occasionally you heard about some of the jubilations about some person being found and rescued, but at that point I wasn’t much needed anymore.” Cook also was not trained in search and rescue. Plus, as he described, the world kept going on and there were still regular EMT shifts to be filled – people were still getting sick and injured and the rest of the world went on. It was now time for him to go back to work and show up to do his job.
Cook ended up leaving in October, not only saying goodbye to the EMS but also to New York City. “When I had left,” said Cook, “it was because I had a great job opportunity in radio production, which is something I went to school for. At least that was my excuse; that was my easy way out. There were a lot of others that did the same thing. A lot of people don’t realize after something like that how hard it is to deal with – it’s not the fact that you know they’re dead, the hardest part was that you go in and every single time you go in, or go on a certain call, you expect to see their face. And those faces aren’t there anymore. They’re there in your heart, there they in your head, but they are not there anymore. Not because it was their time or that they were suffering from some kind of disease, but because someone else in the world had different ideas and felt that they must take the most extreme measures to enforce those ideas on someone else. The truth is, if you weren’t there, you don’t know. And if you don’t know, you can’t say to somebody with absolute certainty the reason they did or did not do something for someone.”
“The big thing for me is that it could have been me,” concluded Cook. “If I would have worked a double while I was doing my continuing education, I would have been dispatched down there and that could very well have been me. What I have a hard time accepting is who we did save that day. So many were lost, so few were recovered, so few were rescued. And that is the hardest thing I have to grasp from 9/11, was the ultimate sacrifice worth the ultimate sacrifice?”
The Teardrop Memorial at the World Trade Center opens on Sept. 11, ‘11
