Dear readers,
The story you have just read was a work of fiction. But that's not to say that the events described in it are not true. In my 27 years working for the Port Authority of NY & NJ, you could say that I have seen it all. But I beg to differ with you. There are many things I have witnessed that will never see the light of day. The 1993 bombing is one of these moments.
I was younger then and I thought the world was all mine for the taking. Sadly, it wasn't. On that February day, my eyes were opened to the cruelty of what this world can throw at you. And I thought being in the military was the worst it could get, I was mistaken. In 1993 I had been working for the "PA" as we called it for six years and was assigned to the George Washington Bridge. Six people died because a man wanted to make a statement. I knew three of these people who worked in the B3 & B4 levels of the WTC.
But as with everything in life, we rebuilt the damage, honored the men and women we lost, and moved on. If you were a PA employee the twin towers were a symbol to everyone in the tri-state area and could look up at and see that the New York skyline had a distinct silhouette. We nicknamed the towers the ivory towers.
Then 9/11 came along and woke us up all over again. In the summer of 2001, I had transferred to the Lincoln Tunnel from the George Washington Bridge. While I was there I worked the overnight shift 10 pm to 6 am and met patrolman John Skala.
Now if this isn't luck I don't know what is….
I was hired by the Port Authority of NY & NJ on 9/12/86. Every year on the day before my anniversary date (9/11) I needed to head to the 1 WTC north, 61st floor east, to the PA medical department to have my annual company physical. I was taking the PA shuttle to the WTC from the Lincoln Tunnel for this at 6:30 am on 9/11/01 completely oblivious as to what was already in motion. I arrived at the 61st floor promptly at 7:30 am. The medical department had just opened for the day. I was met by the receptionist/records clerk Gloria and I checked in for my appointment. I had all the routine tests performed, respirator fitting, hearing test, eye exam, blood work, weight and height measurements, and the dreaded chest X-ray. But it was just my luck when the X-ray tech gave me the bad news, the machine they normally used was not working at all that morning. Mario the X-ray tech had told me to report to Journal Square in Jersey City to have one done over there. He wrote an order and handed it to me and the MD Dr. Duke gave me the once over and released me. It was 8:36 am when I headed to the elevator to leave. By the time I was able to catch an elevator it happened to be an express down to the lobby. The elevator opened in the lobby at 8:44 am. Not even the second I walked out onto West street to catch the shuttle back to the tunnel, the North tower was struck by American Airlines flight 11 at 8:46 am. When I witnessed the plane hitting the building I had lost all sense of what was right and wrong.
Two minutes later, the upper floors of the building were overcome by flames. Gloria and Mario never made it down from the 61st floor. I knew these two people and only saw them once a year unless I had a medical issue. Even though they were acquaintances, I still missed them. Bruce Reynolds (GWB) and John Skala (LT) were two Port Authority police officers I knew and will never forget. These two men gave their lives to save people and they did exactly that. Many people lost their lives on that day and I am brought back to the 1993 bombing. This was another attempt to take down the twin towers, but this time they succeeded.
I never went to Journal Square to get that X-ray, instead, I returned back to the Lincoln Tunnel and by 10:45 I was in my supervisor's office. My supervisor asked if I was medically fit for duty and I told him that I was, to hell with the chest X-ray I never told him about it anyway. I was sent home to sleep to be back at 7:00 pm that night. When I arrived home that morning I noticed that my supervisor had been frantically calling every 15 minutes and leaving a message on my machine to return his call ASAP. Since we had already spoken earlier, I had asked him why he left so many messages when I came back into work that night. He did so because he could not get a hold of me through my cell (since the cell towers were down) and thought the worst. He thought that I went down with the North tower when it came down. Luckily this was not the case.
We were assigned to the tasks I wrote about in the story. But while I did this everyone including myself became very closed off during this whole time. There was so much happening around us to not be able to keep our morale up. But with every person who was recovered during the three months, I worked the pile it gave us a sense of closure that another family would be able to receive the very same closure. To us, everything was okay because the EPA and other agencies told us it was safe to be working the pile. It wasn't until years later when they were laying the new foundation for 1WTC that the EPA might have made a gross error in judgment. Many of the first responders and people who lived in lower Manhattan are being diagnosed with respiratory problems and just about every type of cancer known to man.
2,753 people died in New York alone when the towers came down. Since the attacks on 9/11/01, 177 first responders from the FDNY, 23 NYPD members (the same amount lost on 9/11) have lost their lives to the events that changed our lives. In total, to date, over 3000 people have died from the toxic air and contaminants that hung in lower Manhattan right after 9/11. There was an article in this past Fridays New York Daily News. In it there was a quote from FDNY Fire Commissioner Daniel Negro;
"These memorial services, each time, demonstrate that we will always be by your side. The loss of life on Sept. 11th, as you see this list of heroes grows every year … We will surely lose even more people from World Trade Center illnesses than there were from the attacks on the World Trade Center itself."
He is not wrong. The FBI, Secret Service, FDNY, NYPD, PAPD, and New York State Police, & FDNY EMT's have all lost men and women since 9/11. Before long, their numbers will double or even maybe triple the initial lives lost when the towers came down.
I am one of the lucky ones. While I do have spots on my lungs, they are not cancerous and have not multiplied or increased in number, (yet) for that I am grateful. I retired in July 2013 from the Port Authority just two months short of the twelve year anniversary of 9/11. I still make the time to be at the memorial for the men and women who we lost on that fateful day as I have done since the first anniversary, I will also be there for the 17th and future ones until I can no longer make it there under my own power.
I hope that this story brings you a little closer to the events on that day. This was my goal and I hope I achieved it. Now if you'll excuse me I need to head down to lower Manhattan from Northern NJ for an event that I won't miss and that can be a very perilous trip!
P2P
Tom
