From the August 2002 Firehouse MagazineFirefighter Mike FenickLadder 48 - 15 years
Firehouse: I think somebody said that there were 14 teams of six guys each. Is that what they had?
Fenick: Yes.
Firehouse: Was that each tour?
Fenick: Each tour.
Firehouse: You worked with different guys from all over the city?
Fenick: Yeah, there were Bronx guys, Brooklyn guys, Harlem guys.
Firehouse: Did you work with the same guys every night?
Fenick: We worked with our same team every night.
Firehouse: What would your basic day consist of?
Fenick: You would get either the transfer station where the excavator would shake out debris in front of you and then you would go through it with the rake.
Firehouse: In the pit?
Fenick: They had one up high in front of 10 and 10 and they also had two or three of those down in the pit.
Firehouse: They told you what to look for and that if you found anything, you were supposed to stop?
Fenick: Yes, any kind of clothing, body parts, of course, and it’s common sense, purses and anything that could be related to a human being.
Firehouse: So what were the kind of things that you’d see when you were there, let’s say down at one of the transfer points?
Fenick: At the transfer stations, not much. Bags, handbags, really not like a woman’s handbag. Attache cases. Small bones. Sport bags, some clothing, some shoes and sneakers.
Firehouse: Did you find any fire tools?
Fenick: No fire tools. A couple of radios we found smashed up.
Firehouse: Could you tell where they were from?
Fenick: Not the ones that we found, no.
Firehouse: Did you find anything that was recognizable besides rebar or steel?
Fenick: As far as debris, recognizable debris? You mean structural type?
Firehouse: Anything, like a desk or a computer or a chair?
Fenick: Most of it was pretty crushed. You would find a lot of books. One area was filled with books. It must have been in the library. You could tell some chairs.
Firehouse: Could you smell when you found a body?
Fenick: Usually you could smell it. You would also get a lot of smells and there would be nothing around. If you got by a body, you were going to smell it first.
Firehouse: Was it difficult to take a body out of the debris? Did you use other tools besides a rake?
Fenick: Rakes and rebar cutters. It could be difficult. Some of them took quite a while. We had a sifter. They were pouring buckets of dirt into that sifter, sifting it out, finding a lot of bone fragments in there. I did some torch work. That’s about it as far as tools.
Firehouse: Did you ever have to go over to the SOC truck? They had the SOC truck over there with extra tools and supplies.
Fenick: No, they had a tool shack at 10 and 10 and you would just say send me this or that and the guy would come zipping down.
Firehouse: What would you ask for?
Fenick: Basically, rebar cutters or that’s where they would bring the body bags from, buckets, the sifter.
Firehouse: When you did find a firefighter, was the company called after the extrication was completed, if you knew where he was from? For most of the remains, did you know where they were from?
Fenick: Somebody said there was like 80 in March. I don’t know if that’s true or not, 80 bodies they found. I would say close to it. I thought it was more like 50 firemen. Well, it could have been other people, too. There were civilians.
Firehouse: Out of the 50, many of them could not be identified?
Fenick: Some of them they couldn’t identify.
Firehouse: So now would you put them in the body bag in the Stokes and then carry them up or would somebody else carry them up?
Fenick: That depends. If you were right there when it was going into the bag, you helped put it in the bag.
Firehouse: They called them down there if they weren’t there?
Fenick: Yes.
Firehouse: If the guys happened to be there, they took them out or they’d wait for the company to come?
Fenick: If they were local companies, they came. You know 4 Truck came down.
Firehouse: Let’s say they couldn’t identify a guy, whoever was there walked him all the way up and everybody else got in the line?
Fenick: Right.
Firehouse: So if you were sifting, they just stopped?
Fenick: Time out, shut down all the machines. Everything shut down. Get the M.E. (medical examiner) down there, the chaplain down there.
The chaplain would say a prayer right over the body. The M.E., there was a little bit of a process with the M.E. He would tell you what to do, this and that and he would check all the I.D. Then they put a flag over it and then somebody carried it out. Put them in the bag, put the flag over it and put them in the Stokes.
Firehouse: So then they put an American flag on the remains?
Fenick: Yes.
Firehouse: Everybody then got into position?
Fenick: Everybody lined up on the ramp. Then they would have an honor guard.
Firehouse: So you have a 500-foot walk up that bridge?
Fenick: I would say that’s a good estimate. That was a long, long way. So guys took a position all the way on either side. Yeah, all the way up and the ambulance waiting at the top.
Firehouse: When they did that, did everybody go to work when the ambulance left?
Fenick: Yes.
Firehouse: So did that happen sometimes several times in a day or a tour?
Fenick: Yes. The first couple of days I think they found – what did they find, nine guys in one day. They took them up three at the time or two at a time. We must have broke four or five times in one tour.
Firehouse: Were the guys happy that they found them or was there some other feeling that you felt when they found them?
Fenick: It’s not a happy feeling. It’s a rewarding feeling. I know it’s a hard emotion to put a finger on. It’s nothing to be happy about.
Firehouse: It’s a tough job to do, but was that rewarding?
Fenick: Very rewarding.
Firehouse: That’s why everybody was down there?
Fenick: I think so. Most of the guys were volunteers. It seemed like most of the guys had at least 10 years and over that I saw down there. The young guys I think were ordered. You could tell who wanted to be there.
Firehouse: Over the course of time when you were working, did you find a lot of bodies?
Fenick: Yes.
Firehouse: So the same process continued, with the medical examiner and the chaplain, and then getting the remains boxed up and bringing them out?
Fenick: Right. Stage them. Sometimes, they would stage them in an area and wait for the company to come. Everything was pretty much shut down. A couple of times, the fathers came down. I saw a wife go down there one time. We had a bunch of women.
Firehouse: Did many top chiefs come down there?
Fenick: Yes, Commissioner (Nicholas) Scoppetta led the procession. He would walk in the front with the chaplains and chiefs. And the guys would carry. A construction worker said something about what do you do with the civilians? We said we’ll have an honor guard for them. Then the construction workers would carry them. We’d have an honor guard for the civilians when the construction workers carried them out which I thought was nice.
Firehouse: Did everything stay shut down when they did that?
Fenick: Everything shut down. They would stop every five minutes if they had to. If they found two guys, that’s two recoveries. Then they would carry them up two or three at a time. If they found one, stop everything, honor guard, go back to work. Five minutes later find another one, stop everything. It slowed everything down there, but —
Firehouse: Did you see any apparatus or anything?
Fenick: They pulled out an engine, I think, and a chief’s car from the northwest corner.
Firehouse: Were you there when they removed the two trains cars?
Fenick: Yes.
Firehouse: How did they remove them?
Fenick: They put them on a big flatbed lowboy and drove them up the new ramp.
Firehouse: Did they have a crane lift up the train cars?
Fenick: Yes.
Firehouse: Were those the two rail cars that were smashed or were they in good shape?
Fenick: They were in good shape.
Firehouse: That’s the lowest level?
Fenick: Yes, I would say they were down to that in most of the area except for where they had built those two dirt roads.
Firehouse: How about the “bathtub”? Were there parts of it that you saw that were cracked?
Fenick: There were some good cracks. There was some pretty good water seepage here and there.
Firehouse: Did you see anything unusual down there like some pieces of glass?
Fenick: The biggest piece of glass was about two feet by two feet. That was the biggest piece I saw. That’s it.
Firehouse: Where were they, all the way down in the bottom?
Fenick: They must have came from the bottom of the south tower. Then some big chunks of concrete came out of that too after a while. One strange thing was we found a bag, an attache. It had the newspaper on Sept. 11, the morning before the planes hit.
Firehouse: How was the weather most of the time you were there?
Fenick: Most of the time good, a couple of cold nights. We had a couple of wet nights, a couple of rainy days. Those weren’t too bad. There was plenty of rain gear to be had.
Firehouse: That tent across the street where they put those lights up – what did you do there? Did you eat in there or did you shower?
Fenick: We ate in there. They had a little area you could take a nap. You could take a shower. They had bathrooms. You could wash up, brush your teeth, eat. We got in there together to chitchat, have something to eat, gather, meet. It was nice. They had lots of volunteers all over the place – what do you guys need, can I get it, do you need this, do you need that?
Firehouse: So you felt rewarded that you did it? Are you pleased that you did it?
Fenick: Yes. It was very rewarding, probably the most rewarding thing I’ve done on this job.
Firehouse: And it was probably the busiest month that they had for recoveries?
Fenick: It was good month. The guys going off told us we were going to have a good month. They didn’t find much. They were very disappointed. I kind of felt sorry for them. They were full of good advice, pace yourself. They all gave us their lockers with locks and everything. They knew that when they dug up that road, that that’s where everybody would be.
Firehouse: When you left, how much would you say was still there? I know there was still a lot of work to do, but in the areas closest to like the bathtub and certain areas that they hadn’t touched before, were they getting into those areas?
Fenick: I’d say 80% of it was to the bottom. Eighty percent of the bathtub was right down to the foundation.
