Posted on 09/13/2001 3:13:59 AM PDT by kattracks
Tears streaming down his face, Fire Lt. Vincent Boura stumbled yesterday out of The Pit — and wondered if anything would ever be the same.
Along with thousands of other soot-covered firefighters, Boura spent hour after exhausting hour climbing in and out of a huge hole rescuers carved into the rubble of the World Trade Center.
They rappelled down 30-foot ropes as bright sunshine glinted off their helmets amid clouds of smoke.
They stumbled through the debris-choked blackness that once housed stores on the twin towers concourse. They searched — mostly in vain — for any signs of life.
"I'm going to go home and kiss my daughter," said Boura, who lurched down the street, soot covering him from head to toe. "She's just starting to say 'Daddy.' Unfortunately, a lot of kids are not going to be able to say 'Daddy' anymore."
Ground zero of the World Trade Center looked every bit like a scene out of a war movie a day after the devastation.
Piles of rubble smoldered on street corners. Giant cranes grunted under the weight of mangled beams. Pancaked cars were piled three and four high.
All over, firefighters trudged with a deliberate sense of purpose.
"We've been going down there. It's just a nightmare down there," said Howie Smith, 38, a public works employee from Mount Vernon. "Everything is still burning. I want to see my three kids."
For rescuers, The Pit was the portal for a horrifying journey into the depths of despair.
After tons of rubble were cleared out of the way overnight, team after team of firefighters scrambled down ropes into the gaping hole.
A handful of dramatic rescues buoyed the spirits of firefighters struggling with the horror of finding torn and bloody bodies.
But mostly, firefighters encountered numbing, backbreaking work. They passed 40-pound chunks of concrete out hand-to-hand. They searched through the remnants of the Mrs. Field's Cookies store and the Warner Bros. store.
"I didn't see anyone in there," said Boura. "I haven't seen any survivors, nothing. Everything's in tiny, little pieces. It's pulverized."
Amid the rubble, the yellow tip of the giant television transmitter that once stood atop the World Trade Center poked up through the piles of twisted steel and concrete.
"It just went straight down 110 stories," said Capt. Matt Nelson, a firefighter from Queens. "It's standing straight up like a dart, in The Pit."
The firefighters and other workers had to flee The Pit around 5:30 p.m. when there was a secondary collapse of one of the towers and another nearby office building began to buckle.
Hours earlier, around dawn, firefighters, volunteers and cops awoke after catching a few hours sleep on mattresses and couches on the ground floor of the Embassy Suites hotel on Vesey St.
Inside the hotel's Manhattan Prime Restaurant, one firefighter was slumped in a chair and another trembled as he tried to light a cigarette.
A soot-covered cop sat in a chair, trying to get a few winks, his arms resting on crisp white tablecloths.
The hotel had some of the only bathrooms in the area, but they overflowed during the night, causing an overpowering stench.
Open briefcases and laptop computers lay on tables where hotel guests had left them Tuesday morning. Chairs lay where they'd been tipped over in the mad rush to escape.
Outside, on West St., dozens of heavy construction vehicles lined up waiting to get to the rescue scene. Hundreds of out-of-town firefighters sat in the sun, waiting for orders to relieve exhausted comrades.
A stream of huge trucks ferrying smoking rubble from the scene rumbled up West St., where firefighters hosed them down. Then they headed out to an East Side depot, like some sort of bizarre, late-summer snow removal operation.
Two huge, refrigerated 16-wheel trucks backed up to the atrium of the World Financial Center, and National Guard troops carried piles of plastic body bags inside.
A handwritten sign pointed up a set of marble stairs. It read: "Morgue."
Dotted alongside the grim-faced firefighters were doctors, nurses, clerics and other volunteers who had rushed there to help.
The Rev. Gary Benventi drove 12 hours from his home in Augusta, Ga., to help counsel rescuers. He caught a ride across the Brooklyn Bridge with some firefighters before dawn.
"I can see the pain in their eyes," said Benventi, 33. "God didn't condition us for this type of pain and sorrow."
Volunteers from the Salvation Army set up a table at Chambers St. and West Broadway, handing out bologna, salami, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and spring water.
An exhausted Dr. Jeff Roberts walked dejectedly away from the rubble. He had hoped to treat injured survivors.
"None of us think anyone is coming out of that," Roberts said.
Does anyone know if there has been a fund set up for the families of the men and women of the New York City Firemen and Police that were lost when the towers collapsed?
If you do, could you post the details here so they can be confirmed and then we can organize to support these families that are obviously going to need help?
I have seen much grief, sadness, desire for justice, and desire for revenge posted here. This much energy should be channeled into contructive efforts to help the families of the passengers of the planes, the workers in all the buildings destroyed, and the rescue workers.
Some of these families will have insurance, but how much is enough? And what is going to tide them over until the bureaucratic monster gets checks out.
In God We Trust.....Semper Fi
RELIEF EFFORTS
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