NYC-WTC_000152373

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

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Edward Keating/The New York Times THE SEARCH FOR SURVIVORS Firefighters on the rubble two days after the collapse of the twin towers. Gradually, a rhythm descended upon the rescue efforts and order emerged from chaos.

Ground Zero Diary: 12 Days of Fire and Grit By C. J. CHIVERS The inhabitants of ground zero ate together in abandoned restaurants and beside piles of putrid gar­ The last of the big fires erupted at 3; 30 a.m., a bage, they fell asleep together wherever they could, rushing orange-and-red wall that swiftly over­ they sobbed and prayed together, and, as they be­ whelmed the ruined Marriott Hotel. Dozens of fire­ came familiar with Lower Manhattan’s emerging fighters sat in office chairs in the open air at the cor­ new landscape, they shared directions to working ner of Liberty and West Streets. Their faces were phones and bathrooms that were not splattered with brightened by flames. Some slept, slumped backward vomit. in fire-retardant coats. Much of what happened is lost. But there were This was a command post, the night after the at­ actions on the ground and words in the air, traveling tacks on the World Trade Center. It was also a triage in profanity-laced shouts and mumbled prayers, that center, although there were no wounded to treat. are burned into memory, captured by cameras, writ­ Mixed in were doctors and nurses and an actor from ten on scraps. “The Sopranos” who helped drag out the dead. A The restoration of order began slowly, with tasks young man with a ponytail dangling under a Con Edi­ that could seem necessary and nonsensical at once. son helmet weaved his way through. He was sneaking Eventually, a village emerged. snapshots of human remains. The people who were there in the predawn “I’ve got some unbelievable stuff,” he said. gloom, the last hours of pure chaos, can close their “Want to buy some?” eyes and remember it all. The remains of the north In the hours after the twin towers came down, as tower to the left. The remains of the south tower Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani began imposing a media straight ahead. A ladder truck to the right, spraying blackout at the rubble, hundreds, then thousands, of people converged at ground zero. They were a mis­ at the unrelenting fire chewing through the looming matched mass of motives and skills; police officers, Deutsche Bank building. Profiles of firefighters, firefighters, part-time soldiers, bureaucrats, dog some resting, some working, some sitting as straight handlers, contractors, military veterans, staffs from as if it were the first day of school. emergency rooms, civilian survivors still coated with The ears remember; predictions of the bank stinging ash, chaplains, massage artists, utility work­ building’s imminent collapse (that one’s gonna go!} ers, misfits and thieves. A smell: your own stale breath under a Stepping from the confusion and wreckage ..damp respirator. A memory in the spine: around them, they bonded on a first-name basis and that tingling in anticipation of the next in­ strung together the tens of thousands of small deeds sane sprint, just like whe.n the towers fell that transformed the nightmarish bedlam into a new city within the old. To spend 12 days among them — 6 down. as a volunteer digging and lugging trash, 6 more as a reporter covering the National Guard — was to be privj- to a universe more bizarre and more ordinary than the vignettes that found their way out. Nyrimss 9 PCWe I 5 NYC-WTC_000152405