From the August 2002 Firehouse MagazineFirefighter Declan GrantLadder 48 - 6 years
Firehouse: Did you volunteer to go down or were you detailed?
Grant: I volunteered.
Firehouse: There was 14 crews of six working every tour?
Grant: Yes, five firemen and one officer.
Firehouse: Did you always work with the same group?
Grant: Yes.
Firehouse: Could you describe the average day when you went in and where the different teams were situated? Were you always in the same spot or did you move around?
Grant: No, you moved around. Sometimes, you were at the base of what they call the tulley road. The first day we got there we got a guy. All we got was a piece of bunker gear with a bone in it, right above the knee, and it was cut and at the ankle. And like I said, it was all yellow and it was charred at the top right above the knee where it had been cut off, I guess, and it was all charred there. And the rest of it was yellow. Basically, it was just like a bone inside of it. I guess the other stuff had decomposed.
Firehouse: When the grappler was moving the material, was it easy to see around because it had bunker gear?
Grant: We smelled it first and then we went in with hand tools and dug it out. The grappler would take a couple of scoops. Someone watched what he was pulling up and what he was dumping out in case you’d see something. A lot of times, you’d see a flash of the yellow striping on the gear.
Most of the time, the grappler saw it before you did. Then he’d point and you would look through what he had. He may have seen something. Or once you got an odor, you’d stop him and you’d start hand digging.
Firehouse: Were you wearing the respirators and dust masks or what were you wearing?
Grant: We were given respirators and hearing protection and eye protection.
Firehouse: The ramp was installed two days before you started?
Grant: This ramp was put in service the second day we were there, our first two days there. They hadn’t tested the ramp yet, so they weren’t using it. They were still using that road to bring the trucks up and down. But they could see where they were, but they couldn’t get to them because they didn’t want them digging around at that. There was too much of a collapse hazard.
Firehouse: Did you find anything that was recognizable?
Grant: Parts of chairs, like the whole back of a chair or the whole seat of a chair or the wheels and the metal on the bottom. All the concrete dust was compacted and it was like clay, digging in it. So I’m digging around in it and I pull out an eyeglass case. The glasses were fine. It was like they were brand new, not a speck of dust or a crack or anything on them. And in the same area I got a ladies purse and I opened it and a calculator was on inside. Nothing in the bag was messed up. The outside of bag was dirty, but that’s about it. It was fine.
Firehouse: Did you find any firefighter tools or radios or anything?
Grant: I found a radio case, but it had no markings on it.
Firehouse: And you said one day you found a battalion car?
Grant: Yeah, we found Battalion 1’s car. That was the first week. It was all mangled up and we uncovered a little bit of it. The tires were all mangled up and the axles and we found the license plate and the license plate frame, not a scratch on them, about 20 feet away from the car.
Firehouse: Did they wind up uncovering most of the car?
Grant: It was pulled out by the time I got back there. They took it all out.
Firehouse: It said Battalion 1 on it?
Grant: Yes. We also found tool boxes. I guess they belonged to guys who worked in the building, tool boxes that were completely crushed flat. Others were half crushed. You opened it up and you found a lot of that kind of stuff. One was an electrician’s tool box. All the wire nuts were in it.
Firehouse: The one toolbox that was flattened all the way down, could you open it up to look inside?
Grant: No, we just threw it to the side. We found boxes of Metro cards and I found a guy’s credit card. It had expired on 9/11/01, that was the expiration date on the credit card. Literally and figuratively. I thought that was creepy.
Firehouse: What else?
Grant: We got a civilian. We just got an odor, so we were digging and we got a pant leg first and then you start going gingerly then around. We got his belt and from just above his waist and his full left leg with a construction boot on the bottom and maybe down to just below the knee of his right leg and his wallet was still in his back pocket. We got a name off his AAA card.
Firehouse: No other equipment or anything, Scotts or tools or axles?
Grant: A mask assembly. They got a serial number off of it.
Firehouse: When they were finding people, would you be in the procession and carry a guy out?
Grant: Yes, every time they carried someone out, everything stopped. Every machine stopped on the site.
What happened first was this: If you were digging a person out, the chaplain would come there to whatever spot you found them. They would do a little ceremony there, just you guys, and then they would line everybody up. A lot of times they waited for a company to show up or a family member.
A lot of times, if they knew there was other people there, if they knew there was another body, they would bring one to a waiting area at the bottom of the ramp and they would wait until the second recovery or the third recovery was made and then they would take them all out together up the ramp. So we would all line up on the ramp and they would call over the handie-talkie, the chaplain would do another little service at the bottom of the ramp and then uncover and they do the service over the handie-talkie and recover and hand salute. Then they would carry them up to the top of the ramp and put them in an ambulance that was waiting and then you’d finish your salute and then we were dismissed.
Firehouse: On the month that you were there, there were a lot of recoveries, so were there some days you had many recoveries?
Grant: I think we got 11 recoveries on one night tour.
Firehouse: All firefighters?
Grant: No, seven firefighters and, I think, one was a cop and a few civilians. One of the days I was working, they recovered one EMS guy. But everyone would come, like the cops. If they knew we were doing a recovery, they would come and stand on the ramp with us.
Firehouse: Anything else unbelievable or that stands out that you’ll always remember?
Grant: Yeah. When they took the trains out, not one pane of glass was broken on the train car. It was all charred outside. It looked like they could put it right in service the way it came out. I think there were X amount of trains. A couple of them were flattened down like pancakes. The rest of them were OK.
Firehouse: Did you find any helmets?
Grant: Yes, we found a helmet that was flattened. The whole helmet was flattened. Maybe it was an inch and a half to two inches thick, all the way from front to back, but you could make out the numbers and the company off of the frontpiece. Instead of being put it on your head this way, the thing was pushed down all the way down. I don’t know if you heard about the civilian they recovered. She was standing up. Her hand was coming up out of the dirt.
Firehouse: Were you telling me about that there was a guy in a box beam?
Grant: The guy we got was inside a box beam when we found him.
Firehouse: How tall would that section have been?
Grant: It was maybe a 30-, 25-foot section of beam and he was inside. Here’s the 25-foot, so he just fell and he was down over here. It was when it was lying flat that we saw it. I think they cut it and they moved it out of the way and we were digging through stuff. There was dirt compacted in there too. So whatever way he slid into it, he was inside there. We got wine bottles, full wine bottles, nothing wrong with them.
Firehouse: Is there anything else you could think of?
Grant: Just a lot of pictures, a lot of ID cards. They told us not to keep it. They said it doesn’t mean they were in the building just because the ID was there.
Firehouse: Did you feel that it was a rewarding experience? Can you describe what you felt when they made the most recoveries?
Grant: Good is not the right word. It was rewarding. At least I wasn’t there in vain. If I didn’t find anything, I would have felt like I was wasting my time. It was trying being there and just all the work we were doing. A lot of times, you got this little four-pronged rake and you were raking through stuff that was only a couple of inches thick and it just seemed absurd at times and you’d get really frustrated. And then you’d find a bone, maybe, that was only two inches long – and you knew you had to look at it like if that might be the only thing that someone has of someone. That could be the only thing that someone gets. And if someone’s religious, I thought it was real important because they can’t have a funeral without a body part, the church won’t give you a funeral without a body part. I guess most of guys all felt the same way?
We put it in a red bag and they would GPS where they found it and EMS would come and take it away. I think all those remains were going to the temporary morgue. I know when I was there someone told me they had 14,000 pieces. They were up to 17,000 the last I saw. It’s probably way up higher than that now.
