lc_story172.xml

lc_story172.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-12-25

I am a volunteer firefighter. I was driving into work when my fire department pager started to vibrate. I hate it when it goes off in the car because I always manage to get it tangled up in the seat belt. I managed to unholster it and read the message, which read, A small plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. I thought that was odd as I imagined a Cessna dangling from one of the top floors of one of the towers. It was probably some inexperienced pilot taking flying lessons I reasoned.

The one thing I knew was that with something like this, I would probably get an update every few minutes so it was no surprise to me when my pager began vibrating again. The message was not quite what I had expected. Instead of an update on the Cessna, the pager flashed, A second plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. Boy, its a bad day for pilots. I really did not think to turn on the radio since the messages did not reflect any urgency. Now I just imagined two Cessnas dangling instead of one. At work I could just watch CNN and they would summarize the whole story in 30 seconds and I could go on with my day.

As I entered the office, I noticed people huddled around the television in the glass enclosed conference room. I went in to see what was going on. The pictures I saw were far worse than anything I could have imagined. Ash falling like snow; People with frightened faces running; Fire; Confusion; Amazement.

What is that high pitched noise? one woman in the office asked.

It is the PASS Alarm. I informed her If a firefighter does not move for 30 seconds, the alarm sounds letting everyone know that a firefighter is down and possibly hurt.

I observed that there were several activated PASS Alarms with their unique high-pitched sound. My pager went off again Report of plane crash at the Pentagon. My God! What was happening? I felt like the world was coming to an end. Within minutes, CNN had begun coverage of the Pentagon. We all watched, stunned. After a few minutes, some of us meandered to our offices. We were at work after all. As much as the wheels of business tried to turn, there was no steam in the engine. We all sat at our desks staring into space.

My pager chirped again with the message All hands report to duty. As members of a volunteer fire department, we all carried the pagers to inform us of working incidents within our jurisdiction. A working incident was just that, a structure fire or perhaps a school bus accident. The volunteers responded to working incidents regularly but since the department is combined paid and volunteer firefighters many of the volunteers did not take off work to go to incidents during the day. This message was asking everyone including paid firefighters on their day off and volunteers at work to come in. I sat at my desk, still too stunned to move when it was announced that the office was closing for the day.

I did not think that I could really go anywhere. Some people in the office had said that the police closed main roads and bridges. Then it was rumored that there was an explosion at the Capitol. This was later revealed to being the sonic boom of the fighter jets as they approached mach one. Within 20 minutes of the incident, the US Air Force had jets in the air ready to shoot down any threat. When I am upset, I like to go for a drive, so I decided to go home. To my glee, my path home had not been closed to traffic as previously reported.

As I pulled into the fire station, I was not sure what I was going to find. Our station was overflowing with firefighters, fire engines, ambulances, and rescue squads. It was so cramped that everyone was parked on top of one another. Units from as far as 40 miles were here to provide a supplemental roll. While units from our station were at the Pentagon, these supplemental units were assigned to the station to make sure there was sufficient coverage in case there was an emergency in our area.

At first, there was a lot of waiting. Incident Command had determined that the best way to attack the situation was to have several shifts. I waited to get onto the next shift. As I sat waiting, I couldnt help but think of the incredible nature of what had happened. A common salutation among firefighters is See you at The Big One. The Big One is the mythical 100-alarm fire that brings out all the firefighters from all the surrounding jurisdictions. It is the event where you see every firefighter you have ever met in your entire life. The Big One is a concept; it is not real. I soon realized that it had in fact become real. This became even more evident later in the day when I met an old friend I had not seen in five years. He was just standing there, next to me. I was spooked. Another phrase I recalled was training for if a plane crashed into the Pentagon scenario. This scenario seemed so far fetched that it was like training for an alien attack. I quickly decided to remove these two phrases from my vocabulary.

I heard my name called. I had been given a mission. The mission was for my partner and I to go and bring back a piece of apparatus that had gotten a flat tire while in the performance of its duties. We were to repair the tire and render the vehicle operational. We did not know in what situation we would find the vehicle, so we decided to first go to the auto parts store. My partner walked in and asked to speak to the manager. I trailed behind. We explained the situation to the manager and told him that we needed a tire and a jack strong enough to lift the truck. Oh, and we also explained that we did not have any money to pay for it. Within 15 minutes we were on our way. The store and located everything we needed in the correct size. My partner and I got to the site and noticed that the tread had been sliced off the tire. We managed to change the tire with just a bit of trouble and returned to headquarters.

We got back to the station and noticed that Dominos had been nice enough to deliver pizza and Safeway had sent over deli platters. Since there was nothing else to do for the moment, I grabbed a slice of pizza. The phone rang. It was the Command Line. I was asked if we had two units ready and available to which I answered in the affirmative. I was told to stand by for a dispatch. This was it, I was going to the Pentagon. I hung up the phone and recruited sufficient staff to man two units. Just then, the loud unmistakable tones that proceed a dispatch sounded.

It was an incredible sight. I saw people walking around everywhere and rows and rows of military helicopters. The alphabet soup was there (FBI, CIA, NTSB, FEMA, FAA, ATF, SWAT, etc).The first thing that hit me was just the shear size of the operation. Every imaginable resource had been tapped everything from the busses and drivers from the public transportation system, to flood lights from the Department of Transportation, to equipment provided by construction companies to security provided by local and state police as well as the military.

We saw a firefighter we knew so we stopped. He asked that we take him to the medic station because he was having chest pains. Since we had just gotten there, we did not really have a good lay of the land. We drove around. While driving I noticed several military units camped out including a bio-chem warfare response unit and a nuclear warfare response unit. After we dropped off the firefighter, I saw an older rugged looking man. His uniform was of an army colonel. His eyes were sad as they looked at me as if to say Thank you. They were the eyes of a broken man. I wondered what battles he had fought and what hardships he must have endured. Sometimes, when I close my eyes I can see his staring at me.

Behind him, I saw it; the hole. The dark, black empty space left by the airplane. I starred at it for a while. It amazed me that there was no sign of an airplane. The plane had for the most part, disintegrated. I saw offices with papers. Some were probably marked Top Secret I thought. I saw the computers and desks, everything you need to run an office except the people. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling.
For our next mission, we were instructed to drive to the middle of the Pentagon rings and collect any empty bottles of air. We were to bring them to a location to be refilled. As we drove in, I couldnt help to think that there had been a building collapse earlier today here, not to mention the WTC collapse. I prayed that the walls would not fall on top of us. Also we were driving over hoses. These hoses were highly pressurized and not designed to have a heavy vehicle drive over them. I had witnessed one hose burst earlier. If the hose burst under our vehicle, we would surly be dead. I figured another prayer was in order. We entered the center and stopped. We both got out and I first noticed the smell. It smelled like gunpowder. If war movies had smell-o-rama, this is what it would smell like I thought. There was a thick white smoke in the air. It looked like someone fired a civil war cannon and the smoke had not cleared, only worse. Finally, I noticed everything moving in slow motion. It probably had to do with the fact that everyone was tired and therefore moving slower, but the whole scene was surreal. We made many trips back and forth and each time I was nervous. I was assigned to do a few other tasks throughout the day.

Patriotism brought the country together, I fear that patriotism will seperate us. There is a deep and growing riff between democrats and republicans. I think many people are afraid of future attacks.