Posted on 09/13/2001 3:32:13 AM PDT by kattracks
Bravest pluck survivors from debris
Buried beneath tons of rubble, a trapped Port Authority sergeant reached for his cell phone and called relatives in far-off Pennsylvania.
The unidentified sergeant's exact words were not known last night, but what he told his kin was enough for a Nassau County emergency rescue team to find him. He said he had been on the 81st floor of one of the World Trade Center towers when it was struck by a jetliner.
Somehow, he survived when the building collapsed around him — and he fell to the ground, buried under debris.
For three hours, the Nassau team dug. At that point, the space where the sergeant was trapped became so tight only one member of the rescue team could work.
For the next four hours, Nassau Officer Richard Doerler would dig alone.
Around 7:30 a.m. yesterday, Doerler finally reached the sergeant and last night he was in critical condition at a Manhattan hospital.
There were more miracles yesterday.
A Port Authority police officer was saved when he was able to poke a hand out of the rubble and signal for help.
The officer who reached out of the rubble held a firefighter's hand while another attached an IV in the dark to keep him alive.
"The guy was really happy and thanking us," said Firefighter John Cleary, 43, of Ladder 24 in Manhattan.
"You all be careful!" the gasping officer said when they dragged him out, witnesses said.
A short time later, two more survivors were found alive — one of them conscious.
"Dogs hit the spot," said Lt. Joe Barca, a Yonkers cop whose body-sniffing dog found the pair just after 2 a.m. "It's a nice feeling when you pull someone out alive."
And as the day wore on, rescuers battling dust, darkness and despair struck gold at least six more times — one more Port Authority cop and five firefighters.
Hopes were raised further by reports that several more survivors were trapped in what was once a wine cellar, using their cell phones to stay in contact with the world outside.
The rescuers — firefighters and cops, correction officers and construction workers, doctors and deliverymen — redoubled their efforts to reach them.
Then, shortly after 5 p.m., those hopes were dashed.
Several stories of the shattered south tower suddenly collapsed, raising another huge cloud that blanketed lower Manhattan with gray dust several inches thick.
Rescuers scrambled out of harm's way and the searches were suspended while firefighters sounded off to see if anyone was hurt — and everyone was accounted for.
Police said three firefighters suffered minor injuries.
Then, reports of a gas leak cast more doubt on when — or whether — the search could be resumed.
Someone wrote "Remember the Dead" in the dust shrouding an abandoned Emergency Rescue truck.
The new collapse was the latest setback in a frustrating day where the number of salvaged dead far outnumbered those alive at "the pit," which is what firefighters are calling the underground PATH Station and shopping center where so many are entombed.
With every passing hour, it became harder and harder for rescuers to believe that anyone — including their many trapped friends — were still breathing in the wreckage.
"I've been hoping and praying to God that all the people are in the basement of that place — and that they're alive," said Firefighter Cleary.
Mayor Giuliani urged firefighters to "keep focusing on how many people we can save." But as he rallied his troops, five refrigerated tractor-trailers pulled up to the Vesey St. entrance of the World Financial Center.
A short time later, National Guardsmen arrived with a truckload of bodybags — and began filling them with corpses.
"It's just hard to get everybody out, either to find someone living or to find the bodies," said Joe Meyers, a nurse from Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Brooklyn.
The stench of leaking natural gas hung in the air, masking the mounting smell of death.
Everyone wore masks to protect themselves from the coarse dust of pulverized concrete and insulation.
"We have recovered a lot of bodies — mangled, burned and in pieces," said Lt. John Graziano of Ladder 132 in Brooklyn.
Many of the firefighters on duty yesterday had worked through the night, having arrived soon after the first tower collapsed Tuesday. They'd collapsed in their trucks when dawn broke, then resumed their efforts in the afternoon.
Tears cut rivers into the dust-covered face of one firefighter who said seven of his pals had been swallowed by the rubble. He clutched the unlit cigar one of them gave him at a "Monday Night Football" party.
"That was my whole company," he said, declining to give his name. "They all had young families. They wanted to do something about all this. That's heroism."
While police officers using German Shepherds searched the visible areas for survivors, bulldozers moved aside the mountain of rubble covering the entrance to the pit and 120-foot cranes plucked gigantic pieces from the pile and placed them into dump trucks.
"I never thought I'd see the World Trade Center pass by me in a dump truck," said Craig Chester, a volunteer whose uncle is among the missing.
They used blowtorches and power saws to cut away mangled metal. They used state-of-the-art sonar to locate the dead, and heat-detectors to find those still alive.
They dispatched foot-high robots to explore pockets where survivors might be trapped. They shoved cameras mounted on long poles into crevices.
Small but stubborn fires continued to erupt in the chasm, preventing rescuers from getting deep inside. Periodically, dispatchers of the Fire Department could be heard yelling, "We're having problems with fireballs!"
Still, some firefighters managed to lower themselves by rope part of the way inside. It was so dark that even at noon generator-powered spotlights were needed to light their way.
"You can't really start a search until the fires are out," said Firefighter Joe Lennon, his eyes raw and red from exhaustion and dust.
"There's a lot of twisted debris down there, sharp metal, you've gotta be very careful," Firefighter Cleary added. "Visibility is poor, in some spots next to nothing."
Are they working from the PATH station up?
Could anyone describe the area for all of us?
The most I can understand from Fox News is the digging from the top down through 5 stories of debris.
I have heard/read some reports that firefighters have made it down to parts of the Mall.
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