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Two things connect me to this guy...

“They’d run the sirens, thinking a building was going to fall,” Gaudioso said. “You’d have to drop whatever you were doing and run.”

I worked GZ before the 42ID got there and he is right about the fear that Liberty Plaza was going to come down and the blasts on the sirens warning that they thought it was happening. The difference was that we were in the pit for much of the time and there was no way of running for cover. It took fifteen minutes to crawl, climb into the pit, and there was no easy way out. All we could do when the sirens blasted was hunker down and pray. We left late at night on the 13th as the ANG trucks were pulling in. It was still wild but we had nothing left to give by then.

Another eerie happening there was that whenever there was even the smallest sign of life from the rubble someone would blow a lifeguard whistle and all work on the pile would stop. Everyone would hold his breath as a FF near the point of contact would call out "Firefighter...what's your name!" then listen for an answer that never came. After a minute of calling without response the whistle would blow again and we'd get back to work.

The other connection...42ID HQ at FOB Danger in Tikrit flies a flag that I took to GZ and ran up the pole right before they deployed then donated to them.

Everytime this forum goes on one of its NY is hell junkets I think about these guys, the ones who showed up to dig in 2001 and the ones who left their families back here to go to Iraq in 2005. These people are the real NYers and real Americans.