Posted on 09/13/2001 3:27:17 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Firefighters and rescue workers search for their own throughout the night By Chris Brennan brennac@phillynews.com NEW YORK - The giant shards of what were the twin towers of the World Trade Center were stabbed into the soil of lower Manhattan, looming above the police officers and firefighters picking through the terror below.
In the span of a sunny September Tuesday, they were gone.
By 2:45 a.m. yesterday, the task at hand was grim.
"If you find a body and it's dead, move on," a New York City Fire Department battalion chief told a group of firefighters heading into the rubble overnight. "We're looking for live bodies. We're looking for firemen and cops."
The crews worked with somber faces amid the strewn paper and twisted metal, knowing many police officers and firefighters were caught between the two plane crashes and killed as the towers later toppled.
Tower One had fallen in on itself. A shell that was Tower Two stood behind a massive plume of thick black smoke, appearing occasionally in the haze.
A fireman with tears in his eyes stood at the foot of the destruction.
"All my men, all my brothers are right in there," said the Brooklyn firefighter who was at a golf outing on Staten Island when he heard about the towers. "If they're in there, we're going in."
Asked his name, the firefighter looked around at the small army gathering and shook his head. "I'm just a regular fireman. My name is everybody's name."
His fears for his comrades were well-founded.
Yossi Stern was one of several members of the Crowne Heights Safety Patrol who waded into the debris before dawn, hoping to find survivors but emerging with just pieces of human beings.
Stern said his crew pulled a dead police officer and dead firefighter from the wreckage. They also found a man's torso dressed in what looked like a city uniform. And they recovered a woman's hand, her wedding ring still on her finger.
Stern said the woman's fingerprints and ring could help determine her identity.
"That little body part can make a world of difference to her family," Stern said. "It's these little details that have to be considered."
As the rescue crews worked, surrounding buildings continued to burn after being sprayed with the flaming debris from several explosions in the towers. The Vista Hotel, which stood between the towers and was demolished, burned throughout the early morning Wednesday.
Ironworkers used blowtorches to cut through massive toppled girders to clear the way for rescue crews. Rescue crews used their hands to toss scraps of metal away from where they suspected victims were buried. That work stopped several times as firefighters carried out black body bags holding their fallen co-workers.
Each time, groups of up to 50 firefighters surrounded the body, some taking off their helmets.
Doctors with no victims to treat stood ready, helping rescue workers who slashed themselves accidentally while working through the debris.
Among the many people who rushed to lower Manhattan to help was actor Al Sapienza, who portrayed Mikey Palmice on "The Sopranos" until his character was whacked.
Sapienza, who wore a red Salvation Army vest and carted food and water to the rescue workers, could barely contain his anger at the terrorists.
"They're psychotic," Sapienza said. "They're out of their minds. They should be eliminated from the face of the earth."
The crowd shared his sentiments. In the soot covering a marble column of the seriously damaged World Finance Center next door to the towers, somebody used a finger to write "Kill those bastards." Inside that building, on another column, a firefighter wrote a prayer to the Fire Department of New York - "God bless the brothers of the FDNY. RIP."
What a stupid thing for you to say.
The New York police and firemen were real heroes — who knew the risk of staying in the area of the buildings. The Port Authority source said fire and police officials put out an urgent call for Catholic priests, and several responded. Fire Department officials asked the Catholic priests to give firefighters and police entering or in close proximity to the buildings general absolution and the Last Rites, a sacrament Catholics accept before anticipating death. The priest told NewsMax's source that the police and firemen clearly understood their deaths were imminent as they continued their heroic rescue efforts.
Johnboy, you'll never be the man these men were. May God forgive you for your callous remark. V's wife.
My guess is that these were the only ones whom they had any slight hope of finding alive. Anyone who was in the towers when they collapsed is not only dead, but probably pulverized beyond identification as well. I have a low opinion of police, but even I don't think that they'd ignore a civilian survivor just to get one of their own.
In 1989 or 1990, I lived in an apartment building in Marina del Rey. One weekday afternoon (I worked at home), a fire alarm went off, and, after about 10 minutes, I looked out my window to see flames and smoke billowing. I immediately ran upstairs to find an apartment engulfed. I kicked in the door, and evacuated a woman (who was apparently too disoriented or scared to leave, as well as her cats (she must have had 10, even though you were not allowed any), and then attempted to put out the fire, which effort I soon abandoned when I realized that no way was I going to douse the flames, and, too, I was going to die if I continued.
Later, sitting outside, one of the L.A.P.D.'s came up to me and said: "Hi, Chris." Lo, it was my friend Lee from lawschool who had left to go to the sheriff's academy. When he found out that it was useless, stupid, no good, armchair sitting me that had done what the woman had told them, he said (respect in his eyes): "Man, you're a hero."
And then pointed out: "There's a reporter from channel 3? 4? over there, you should go talk to him."
I left without a word.
Nevertheless, it is going to take substantially more than what I have seen and heard thus far for me to revise my opinion of "New York's Finest" who stood by and did nothing just 12 or 14 months ago while women were assaulted in broad daylight in Central Park.
Why? Because they were ordered to? Huh. Because they might lose their pensions? Huh.
Let me tell you something ... You get attacked in front of MY house in broad daylight, and I will do my best to protect you, consequences be damned.
And, too, need I remind everyone that these fearless, selfless public servants have been supporting our enemies relentlessly, by voting Democrap, in exchange for ever increasing pieces of the public treasury.
All I see so far is that, for a change, they gotta put down their donuts and go play act heros.
Ugh.
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