Reflections of a retired

NYC Paramedic

“I was on the Staten Island Expressway heading in to my station on Coney Island when PD closed the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. I was using my volly lights and was being followed by a carload of firefighters in a private SUV that may have come out of the Rescue-5 Station nearby. To this day I don’t know if any of them survived, as many from that company died. We were the only two vehicles on the bridge, with a bird’s eye view of the lower harbor, when lower Manhattan just disappeared in a cloud of smoke. I remember watching the sky as we crossed, afraid that the bridge could be the next target…”

“I was hooked up with another off-duty medic from my station in a spare ambulance. We were assigned to a pier near 58^th Street in Brooklyn. We received a lot of minor respiratory complaints, but no significant patients. All were handed off to BLS (Basic Life Support) units there. My partner and I sat listening to citywide radio for hours, trying to identify voices and radio numbers of friends as the reports of who was found, hospitalized, and still functioning came across the air. We also had a perfect view of the harbor as 7 WTC fell several hours later. The events of the day played out. I returned to the station around 11:00 PM and traded information with others who had been in Manhattan…”

“For the next few weeks staffing of the WTC functions was done primarily on overtime. My first and only shift was that Saturday. I was assigned to Liberty and Church, with a primary assignment to care for anyone injured while working the pile. I sat for almost sixteen hours just watching the devastation. I treated no one. The images on TV could not prepare you for the sights and smells…”

“After days of watching the replay of the events and entering the restricted zone, I just felt numb. I could not volunteer to go back in [to Ground-Zero]. I still consider myself pretty hardened and unaffected by the day-to-day things I’ve seen over the past 38 years, but I just could not bring myself to sign up for the overtime. I guess it was partly psychological and partly self-preservation, but I believe it’s the only reason I’m still hear today instead of joining my friends and partners who have died, or have cancer, or still suffer with severe respiratory illnesses and psychological disorders."

(Retired NYC Paramedic)

Tell Them to Never Forget

As told by…

Gary Smiley, NYC Paramedic

Part One

He wasn’t on the schedule to work that day. He had signed up for overtime hoping to make some extra cash. He makes no claim that God protected him, or that his survival had an eternal purpose, but he doesn’t deny it either. He was simply a paramedic doing his duty, an average guy called upon to do a terrible job. And for Gary Smiley the cost was high. He lost 27 people that he knew very well, four or five who were very dear friends. Here is his story…

September 11, 2001

It started out like any other day. I arrived at the station at 0630 and said good morning to the off-going crew. We chatted about the shift, the two to three calls they’d run since midnight, what the truck needed and other routine stuff like that, then they handed over the keys and my shift began. My partner, Danny, and I checked the ambulance and then headed over to Engine 207 to get some gas. Danny topped off the tank and removed the nozzle. I was just replacing the fuel cap when we heard a police officer shouting over the scanner saying something about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. Danny glanced at me and frowned. “A plane?” I just shrugged. Who knew? Curious, I keyed my radio mike.

“Thirty-one V,” I said to the Brooklyn Borough dispatcher. “We’re available for coverage at the plane crash if you need us.”

After a short pause the dispatcher responded.

“Thirty-one Victor, ten-four. Start responding to the M-C-I…One World Trade Center.”

Danny and I exchanged glances and just said to each other, we’re going! “Ten-four,” I said climbing behind the wheel. “Show us [en route] ten-sixty-three.”

Danny jumped in the passenger seat and buckled up, and before I could even get the ambulance turned around the guys from the firehouse started pouring out of the station. And then everyone just started going over the bridge. Fire trucks. Rescue vehicles. And you could see the smoke coming out of the building, and I remember saying to Danny, “That just looks really bad.” And I don’t even know why I said it, because I figured it was just a small plane. Big deal, right? Stupid Cessna pilot. But it turns out it was a very big deal. That day changed my life.

Danny and I were the first paramedic unit from Brooklyn to arrive on scene. And as we pulled up the streets were littered with bodies, and I’m just like, what’s going on here? Stuff was raining down out of the building, people were screaming, it was just chaos. And there were some other ambulances and no one seemed to know what to do, so I just said to everyone, “Listen, put on your jackets, put on your helmets, and just start taking care of people.”

So we went to work. Some people were cut to ribbons, others were burned, it was just unbelievable. And there were things falling out of the building that were hitting us, like tar balls. And it wasn’t until later that we realized they were actually charred pieces of, well, people. I felt totally confused, but I knew it wasn’t a safe place to be working so I said to Danny, “There’s too much stuff raining down. We’re going to get killed.”

So we started moving people. I spotted a middle-aged woman lying in the street with burns on her face and arms. She looked dazed. In serious pain. So I remember grabbing her. I was carrying her across the street to safety, and she started tugging at my arm and saying, “Plane! Plane!”

And I said, “Yeah, I know, a plane hit the tower.”

But what I didn’t realize was that she was looking south down Church Street, and she saw the second plane coming. The vision of that is still somewhat in my head, but interestingly I can’t remember hearing anything. All I remember is looking up and seeing the building explode. And my first thought as we dropped to the ground was, why did the second building explode? I threw myself over the woman, and you could feel the heat coming out of the building. That plane hit like the 70^th floor and you could feel the fireball at ground level. It was just unbelievable.

Danny and I stayed where we were for a while, treating people and doing our best, but it just got to be too dangerous. I realized we couldn’t stay there any longer, so we drove around to the other side of the building to get to West Street. And I remember driving around the North Tower and that’s when you started seeing stuff in the street that you never want to see. I wasn’t sure what to do. The road was blocked, but behind us things were falling. “Gary,” Danny said. “Just go!” We had to. We had to drive over it, and so we literally drove over, people basically.

So now we’re on West Street standing in front of the AMEX building, and that’s when the jumpers started. And I remember there was a guy—a black kid, an EMT—that was looking at the jumping people, and he said, “These people are jumping, I’ve got to go catch them!” And I remember we had to hold him down, because he was literally trying to run to the front of the building to catch people. You know everybody just started to lose it at that point. I’ve been told that we actually sat there and counted people jumping, and apparently we got into the twenties before we got distracted by the fire guys calling for help. Apparently they needed paramedics in the lobby of the tower. Of course Danny and I volunteered, but as we were getting ready to walk over there, people started running out. And I remember thinking, why the heck are they running? And that’s when the first tower started coming down.

We ran back to the AMEX building and rushed inside the lobby. And then the whole world came down. A powerful ungodly wind of dust and flying debris enveloped us, and for the next few moments the lights went out. And there were people screaming and choking and coughing, and you couldn’t breathe, and we were like, what the heck happened? Some people were saying the top of the building collapsed and you could see part of the building on the ground and the street was on fire. I mean, you couldn’t see, and you didn’t know what had happened. It was just nuts.

We did what we could, treating the victims and getting them out of there, listening to radio traffic as we worked, trying our best to figure out what was happening. Some people were missing, others were hurt. And at some point I remember hearing a familiar voice cry for help. My good friends Brian Smith and Brian Gordon were trapped. They had been working the Haz-Mat BLS ambulance stationed at the 10/10 house, the famous firehouse at the edge of the World Trade Center site. It is believed that their ambulance was crushed by one of the jet engines when the second plane hit the South Tower. They ran inside the station house for cover and soon became trapped.

So we left to go look for them. Danny went one way, I went the other. And I made it as far as the north pedestrian bridge when I heard a loud crack. Startled, I looked up, and I saw the second tower begin to collapse, so I turned around and started to run. And I think I took, maybe, three steps, and the wind from the implosion blew me down the street. I mean it literally picked me up and threw me down the street and blew me underneath an ambulance. I’m under there now, and the building’s coming down, and everything’s coming down on this truck, and I feel like it’s sinking. And I’m like, “Oh, my god, I’m dead.”

*   *   *

It Wasn’t Hell

As told by…

Charlie Edmond, NYPD

“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

2 Chronicles 7:14

There was no way to even begin to comprehend the size of that disaster. It was gigantic. A pile of rubble. People. And it’s also a hallowed ground at the same time. A lot of people were never recovered…

I was raised an atheist. It’s not like my dad sat down with a chalkboard and explained it to me that way, I was just raised with nothing. No God at all.

I got married at the age of twenty-two. I had been a cop for about two years at the time. My wife was already a Christian, and I believe that, if not for her prayers, we would have become a statistic. You know the divorce rate, 50% or more. And I was just living all wrong. My life was headed for trouble. I came home one night drunk as a skunk, tore up the kitchen, made a big mess. I knew that it hurt my wife. So I was lying in bed later thinking, and there was this cross on the wall, and I knew right then that my life just wasn’t right. I needed to change. So I cried out, “Lord, I can’t live like this anymore.”

I called my wife into the room and told her, “You’ve got to pray for me.”

Mercifully she did. And I got on my knees and asked Christ to come into my life. And that’s the day I got saved and my life began to change, but I wasn’t exactly the spitting image of a Christian. Like, I’m at this bar having a couple of beers. And the language coming out of my mouth is inexcusable. And God’s like, “How’s that working out for you?”

And I would try to preach at guys in the bar, and they’re like, “Are you serious? Look at you, man, you’re still drinking!” And on the streets, I mean these guys that grow up in the ghetto? The only thing they understand is filthy language. You’ve got to talk to them like that. You can’t be soft with them. You gotta be hard. And so I’m cursing at them, and their coming off the wall shouting at me, “Why are you talking to me like that?” And I’m like, “Because that’s the way you’re talking to me!” And it’s coming out of my mouth all wrong, and again, God’s like, “How’s that working?”

And so one day I listened to Him. I just stopped cursing. It’s wrong to do anyway, it’s not like I can curse at work and not at home. There’s no light switch for bad language. So I stopped, and God showed me a new way to do my job, and it worked flawlessly. I mean they should teach this to cops, because you show the people out there something they’ve never gotten—respect—and everything changes. Not weakness. I wasn’t any less firm with them, but I started to treat them like human beings. “All right,” I would say instead of swearing at them, “I’ll listen to you, man.” And suddenly I was able to talk these 6’4” guys into handcuffs instead of trying to fight them into submission. And if you can do it that way, it’s always better. That was God. It was totally God.

I spent almost two years on the force as a non-believer, so I got to see it from the critical side. Back then we had a name for the homeless, the dirt bags, the crack heads. We used to call them “skells.” It meant they were losers. And that’s the negative attitude you get working the streets. And in time, unchecked, you go through this downward spiral: First the skells are the bad guys, and the cops are all good. Then the midnight cops are all good and the other cops are skells. Idiots. A bunch of cry babies. And then soon your squad, they’re the good guys and all the other squads become skells. Then your partner’s a good guy and all the other guys in the squad are losers. Next thing you know, your partner’s a skell and you hate the world.

And that’s the way it goes for so many cops. And many guys end up eating a gun because they become so embittered, and they forget why they became cops to begin with, to help people. And they’re looking at everybody else like they’re idiots. I mean we always see the negative. People never call a cop when they’re happy. “Hey, how you doing? Come on in guys, have a cup of coffee.” No, it’s always, “I’ve been in a car accident,” or “I’ve been robbed.” Always something negative. And cops have the means to do it. They have the hardware, and they are constantly exposed to the negative, so they end up putting the gun in their mouth and pulling the trigger. The suicide rate among police officers is high. Too high.

So I’ve got to say that my faith in Christ is the only way I got through it. Like I said, I was a drunk, I was going to lose my job, I definitely was going to lose my marriage. But God in His mercy just took that all away. Took it completely away. I don’t know how you make it twenty years in the force without God. It’s a tough, tough road.

September 11, 2001

I was working the late tour—midnight to eight—the night of September 10^th. Got off at 7:50 on the morning of 9/11. We were on the Long Island Rail Road going home when one of the cops that worked with us called my partner, Mark. He told him an airplane had just hit the World Trade Center. That it was a terrorist attack. He didn’t have any inside information, it was just his suspicion, but he called it right. So we’re on the train going home, and Mark says, “What are you going to do?” I said, “I’m gonna go home, get a bag and some clothes, and head back in.”

While I was home the first tower went down. I grabbed my stuff, kissed my wife, and went to Mark’s house to pick him up along with two other guys from our squad, and then we drove to Home Depot and bought 25 pairs of leather gloves. Gloves. I can’t help but laugh now. We had about twenty guys in our squad and, I mean, we didn’t have the slightest concept of what we were driving down to. No concept at all. That’s where my mind was, you know, we’d have some gloves to help dig people out. Simple. We just had no idea.

And so the four of us drove the Long Island Expressway in. They’d shut it down so that only emergency personnel could get in. Cops, firefighters and paramedics, they were about the only ones other than military who could get into Manhattan at that point. And you could see it on the faces of the cops who were managing traffic. You know, we’re talking 40 miles away on Long Island, and their only job is to divert traffic, but you could see such intensity in their eyes. They’re like “Come on, come on, come on! Go, go, go!” The level was so high at that point. You know, that was their function, and they were giving all they had for it.

When we got into Manhattan all the rules just went out the window. Everyone received orders to go here or there, but no one obeyed. Everyone went to their home precinct. You had to be with your squad. And they immediately plopped us at churches, synagogues, mosques, whatever. They put us all over everywhere trying to set up security, because they knew that someone was after us and they wanted to start locking down. But later that night we ended up getting rounded up and marched down to Ground Zero. And there’s about an inch or two of dust everywhere. I don’t know what it was, it must have been sheetrock dust, or whatever, but it looked like the moon. It was just a disaster. And there’s debris hanging everywhere. And you’re looking up as much as you’re looking around wondering what’s going to fall. And nobody knows what they’re doing. It’s just a total cluster. I mean, there’s I-beams lying all around, bent like you’re bending a straw, and here I am with my leather gloves, handing them out to everybody. “Here, here you go.” I just had no idea.

So they get us all set up. And they have a laser on one of the buildings. I guess they figured it was gonna fall. And so we said, “Guys, if it starts to fall, we’ll all just run down into this tunnel (subway) and come out in Brooklyn. It’s only about two miles. So that was our game plan, to run into the hole to get away from a falling building. It was nuts. And the most surreal thing, I remember this as clear as day: There’s this cobblestone road close to where we were set up, and I start hearing this clickety-clickety-clickety-clickety sound. And then this silver push cart appears— clickety-clickety—a room service cart. And two guys dressed in white wearing chef’s hats come walking up and go, “Are you hungry?” And they had smoked salmon. And steak. And it wasn’t the Waldorf, but is one of those, like, high, high-end hotels, and they sent these people out. There was just so much coming in at that point. Tents and tents of stuff. Cell phone batteries, ponchos and socks. Food. It was strange. It was like you walked into the wrong set, you know? “The Tonight Show’s over there.” It just didn’t make any sense. The outpouring of help was incredible.

We were setting up security. Trying to create a perimeter. And there was this reporter who was caught wearing a fireman’s jacket trying to get pictures, trying to sneak in. I don’t know what happened to him, but he probably ended up with a bloody nose and a kick in the pants. But everybody’s trying to get in, so we were trying to set up a perimeter, to make it as safe as we could. Keep the criminals out. And this isn’t me, but I realize as I look back, that I wasn’t scared. I knew I had this little church out on Long Island praying for me, and I wasn’t feeling any fear. I mean, I get as nervous as anybody else, and we’re out there looking at all this stuff, but I just had this peace. It was the peace of God. And I was like, if this falls we’ll run this way, but if I don’t make it, it’s okay. I just wasn’t afraid. I think God did that so that I could be support for everybody else, I don’t know.

One of the best feelings I had was watching the planes, whatever they were—the F-14’s or F-16’s—flying over Manhattan. I was like, “Whew, we’re safe!” You knew at that point, nothing’s getting to us. If they’re going to do it, they’re going to do it a different way. They’re not coming through the air. It was a secure feeling. But it got me to thinking about America. About Christians. Sometimes we get to feeling too secure. We’re all going about our happy lives, and suddenly, out of the blue, the enemy attacks. And that’s what happened. They hit the first tower. Then they hit the second tower. Then the Pentagon. And then the Christians start going, “Oh, Lord, we need you.” I feel in my heart that it was the concerted prayers that inspired those men on that last plane to stand up. God strengthened them. He thwarted the enemy, because the enemy—he’s taking us out. He’s hitting buildings all over the place, and now the Christians all over are going, “What’s going on?” And they begin to pray. And it’s like the prayers started and that last plane didn’t reach its destination, because God intervened. He had those brave men throw themselves on the grenade for everyone else. They were heroes. God used them. But could it have been different? Would any of this have happened if the Christians in America had been awake? We were sleeping. Christians all over America, we had fallen asleep.

It’s, um, it’s not a game. The only reason we’ve not been hit again is the hand of God. We’re not great at stopping these guys. We’re not invincible. There was another attack planned in Brooklyn, but one of the attackers got a guilty conscience at the last minute. He ran up to a Transit cop and said, “I don’t want to do this,” and they stopped a whole subway attack. It wasn’t great research on our side that stopped it, it was the hand of God. So I would encourage Christians to pray. To develop a closer relation with Christ. To read his Word, and to let it speak to you. To pray for our country’s protection. Pray for our leaders. Pray for those overseas on the front lines. I mean, you just never know when that security guard at the airport is going to check this bag or another. We need to ask God daily for a hedge of protection. We need to pray.

9/11 woke us up for a while, but I believe people have already forgotten. After 9/11 cops were liked for about 30 days. After that people didn’t like us any more. They went back to, you know, they weren’t cheering for us anymore. I mean the days after 9/11 you’d be going back down to Ground Zero and people would be holding up signs cheering for you. Crowds of people cheering as you drove down the west side highway. But after 30 days it went back to business as usual, and they forgot. Absolutely. We forgot. We’ve forgotten who our enemy is. It’s sad. I don’t want to get hit again.

For many days after 9/11 guys would still go back down there to maintain security. So I get a phone call from a friend, one of the cops on our tour, a good friend, I knew him well. He was not a believer. Like me, he was a recovered alcoholic, and he still lives the AA lifestyle. So he calls me and he says, “I can’t take this. I can’t go back down there, Charlie. I don’t know what to do.” He’d been exposed to one of the makeshift morgues, and he’d seen all the dead bodies and it had shaken him up. And just the fear in his voice…he sounded like he was unraveling, so I’m like, “Where are you?” And he says, “I’m down by the pumps.” Now the gas pumps are under the precinct. It’s dark down there, it’s like being under a building. And when I get down there he’s sitting alone in the dark on this wall, knees drawn up tightly to his chest, really frightened looking. And I can see it in his eyes. Fear. Uncertainty. So I told him, “You know me. You know my beliefs. The only thing that’s worked for me, the only thing that’s changed my life, saved my marriage, given me peace here…is Jesus Christ.”

“It’s not religion,” I continued. “It’s not theology, or Methodist or Roman Catholic, it’s a person. And all you’ve got to do is ask him into your heart. Say, “Lord, I’m sorry, I’m a sinner, and I want you to take over. I want you to be my savior.” And what I told him wasn’t a perfect gospel presentation, I mean I’m no evangelist, it was God speaking through me. But he just looked at me and said, “I’m not ready for that.” And for me that was the scariest thing about 9/11. That moment. I mean, with all that was going on, that was the most frightening thing I saw—a man who was literally having a nervous breakdown refusing the good news of Jesus Christ. I didn’t tell him you’re going to burn in hell forever, I didn’t say those things. I presented Christ. The Savior. The loving God. For me that showed the reality of who God is. That God is not this fictitious thing, because I presented Christ, and if you’re not willing to accept Christ, you won’t accept him. The reality is, do you want to live for Jesus or not?

“No,” he said. “I’m not ready for that.”

Our country needs of a savior. We are in need of a cure, and Christ is the cure. So today I’m praying for a revival—among Christians in our nation. Because many of us mean well, but there’s a part of this whole thing we forget. God said, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

God promised to heal our land, if we will turn from our wicked ways. If we will only remember that part. If we will only submit to Him, then He will heal our land, and then, in the name of Jesus, the enemy must flee. So I’m praying that the Christians in America will turn from their wicked ways. Period. The non-believers are doing their job, and they’re doing it well. Hollywood is doing a great job at what they are, and the rest of the world is doing a great job at being sinners. But if Christians turn from their sinful ways, if we turn, then I think we’ll see the revival.

God is good. Fallen humans did this, God didn’t do it. He allowed it because we turned away from him. I forget who said this, but someone once said, God is a gentleman. He’s a gentleman. And if we walk away from him he’s not going to force himself on us. God’s not the one who did this, we brought it on ourselves, all those years ago when we decided in the garden of Eden, “Hey, take a bite.” And this nation, a Godly nation founded on Christ, fell asleep and we walked away from him. And when these bad things happen, it’s not God punishing us so much as we didn’t put on our seatbelts. You know you’re riding in the car, you don’t put on your belt, you have a wreck and you’re going through the windshield. But if you call to Christ, he will grab you every time. And I don’t believe God sends people to hell either. He’s done everything he can to get us right. Look at the cross. But if you reject God, where else are you going to end up? God has no choice but to say, “You can’t come live here [Heaven] because you didn’t want any part of it.”

I’ve heard people say, “9/11 was hell.” But for me, it wasn’t. Hell is hopeless. Down there I saw lots of hope. The outpouring of help was just unbelievable. Like I said, they came with their little cart. There was so much help they had to turn people away. That was the Christian spirit. That selflessness. You remember Trudy from Facts of Life? She was there spooning out food for us. That meant a lot. She wasn’t there saying, look at me. We had to ask her, “Are you…” Yeah. She wasn’t boasting, she just wanted to do her part. And that’s why I say it wasn’t hell, because people just wanted to pitch in and help. And that was encouraging. It helped. No, 9/11 wasn’t hell. Christians across America awoke, and in the end, Christ was glorified. There’s still hope.

*

Coming Labor Day..."Tell Them Not to Forget" by Gary Smiley, NYC Paramedic