The Third Wave_ A Volunteer Story - Alison Thompson [4]
Just about every shop window had been smashed by the collapse of the Twin Towers. There were destroyed storefronts with jewelry, cash, and expensive clothing lying everywhere. All any of us wanted, though, were basic necessities such as bottled water and toothbrushes, which we’d grab whenever we could find them. The only store that had remained locked shut was the athletic shoe store on the second floor of the World Financial Center. So, in a strange twist of fate, the one thing I most desperately needed—a solid pair of running shoes—was the one thing I couldn’t get. By the evening of September 12, my waterlogged feet were in dire need of protection. When two firemen walked by with a dead body on a stretcher, we blessed the body and then took off his size fourteen shoes. I needed them more than he did now. My feet were only a size seven, so Michael cut off the front part for me and my toes wiggled through like creatures poking their heads out of a cave.
With Michael Voudoras at our Ground Zero first aid station
We ran purely on adrenaline as the hours raced by and our fatigue increased. It was tough work, but I couldn’t bring myself to walk away. I could never have lived with myself if I had. This was a front-line war zone, and every second that passed could mean life or death for someone buried beneath the rubble. Even a million rescue workers wouldn’t have been enough to help. Some volunteers left to get supplies or meet loved ones, but they always came back. Most refused to leave until they collapsed in exhaustion and had to be carried out on stretchers.
On the second night, Michael and I and the others who had joined our camp sat around St. Charlie’s broken bar and held hands as we sang patriotic songs by candlelight. We then quietly passed around a bottle of Scotch from behind the bar. For about an hour, I caught some flashes of dreamless sleep against the wall. I woke up with a red rose in my hand. I am still not sure who put it there.
On the morning of September 13, we could still hear people buried alive under the rubble making tapping noises, and this kept us going. Tragically, we had no way to get down to them. Ironworkers dug for hours but made only a small dent in the seemingly bottomless pile of steel.
Many of the friends I had worked with during my days as an investment banker had been in the World Trade Center buildings when the planes hit. Initially, finding them had been my primary motivation for going down to Ground Zero. I quickly discovered that that was the case for many of the volunteers I met. But after only a short time, we each realized that it didn’t matter if we knew the victims or not; we wanted to help everyone. “Nobody goes home until we all go home” became our quiet motto. Even after the tapping noises stopped, we never gave up hope.
Michael and I stuck side by side, continuing our work as first aid volunteers. The fires underneath Ground Zero were still burning out of control and black soot filled the air. It smelled ghastly, a combination of dead bodies and burning electrical wire.
By the third day, we had collected a team of ten or so nurses and medics and volunteers who had also somehow snuck across our path. Our gang climbed onto the piles of rubble when the rescue dogs found a body and helped pass small buckets full of rubble and body parts down the long line of hands, sometimes forty workers strong. They led to a dump truck that whisked the remains away to an unknown destination. These lines became known as the “bucket brigades.”
Along with a constant stream of firemen and policemen, people from other agencies began to pour into Ground Zero: the FBI, the U.S. Army, the Marines, ironworkers, Con Edison technicians, and medics, just to name a few. Although I was already deeply entrenched in the recovery effort, I now had to contend with the Army, the National Guard, the FBI, the NYPD, the CIA, and a line of large tanks that were locking down Ground Zero and preventing volunteers from entering