We Were There, December 2, 2014

I'm gonna welcome you officially to the 911 treatment center presentation all who were there my name is Judith Pucci I'm a tribute center walking tour guide as you heard Lee explained to you in the film we attribute all people whose lives have been directly affected by the events of that day what Lee did not tell you is how enormously diverse a group of people we are we range from seventeen to 90 so we're are vastly different ages we are of enormous Lee different backgrounds so much so that in the normal course of life many of us would never have met and now we share a powerful bond and tribute brought us together it's when we find support and it's where we tell all the stories about what that day was like from the inside so this afternoon you're going to be hearing two of these stories they're going to be told to you by the people who lived the events they will be telling you about and they are also my fellow tribute center guides so let me introduce you next to me are Julie Roth and Fred Sager I got it right good night yes I tend to want to put an N into Fred's last name so that's what he's laughing about Fred does something that he is proud of and I think he should be fred is a volunteer firefighter on Long Island he has also been the chief of his fire department fred was here at the trade center after the attacks he arrived on September the 12th and he worked here on and off until May of 2002 which is when the recovery effort ended and all the debris had been removed so it took about nine months for that to take place Julie's husband Brian D Sweeney was a passenger on United Airlines flight 175 that is the second plane that was crashed here into the second or the South Tower that took place at 9:03 on September 11th the difference in time between the first attack and the second attack was only 17 minutes Julie has since remarried and she now lives in Massachusetts with her family we're going to begin with Fred so let me just briefly set the scene for you like Fred many of New York City's firefighters and live on Long Island so he knew about 20 of the men who were killed that morning when Fred arrived at the Trade Center on the 12th he had a very clear mission to find his friends still buried in the rubble and particularly the one closest to him was Jonathan ILP you saw Jonathan's photograph just a little earlier in the film I'm gonna let you take it from there friend hi hi here's my problem my problem is I could talk about this for three hours and we have about 10 minutes so let's need to talk with really really fast or just pick a couple of things that we you cover so what drove me to come down here what role people like me to come down here the FDNY covers New York City that's multinational ready knows that but the FDNY clearly suffered a devastating loss on September 11th so that was all kind of supplemented by surrounding fire departments and once you get out of New York City you know we're in Manhattan we're in New York City but once you go over to the you know crust of orbits in New Jersey or over the Queens border into Nassau County it's all volunteer fire departments like most of the United States the United States is far and above more volunteers than it is paid it's probably a four to one or five to one ratio give or take only the really large cities have paid departments so it was a monumental task to have that be done by lots of people and the FDNY had already suffered suffered a devastating loss so in we came and it was like organized chaos you came in you knew the job that you had to get done there was really no clear leadership in place September 12th you know generally when you go to a fire scene you know a police department seen you checking in a command post you were given an assignment by an officer you could complete that assignment you come back and say okay I'm done what's next there was really none of that there were command post post set up but we're talking 23 acres of debris so it was very easy and almost practical to walk around the command post and just go out and start working which is what most of us did so my first impression was because there's a south walkway in a north walkway the north walkway had collapsed onto the Westside Highway so the Westside Highway was now cut off from the northern part of Manhattan so you couldn't just walk under it like you normally could you had to go around through the World Financial Center which is across the street the other side of the West Street and when you came out under the south walkway which was still intact you made it you came out you made a left and you saw that the enormity of the site I tell people it's like going to a sporting event that you've been watching on television all your lives football game soccer or whatever it is and you go for the first time it looks nothing like what you've been seeing on television you either consider it really much smaller or much bigger than what you've been seeing on television depend what it is and this was monumentally larger than the news is portraying it we were getting very little snippets on television there were no news helicopters allowed because there was no there were no air traffic there was no way I shopping at all so generally gonna seem like that you'd get in helicopter shot of the scene and you'd see the whole thing there was none of that so you're getting little snippets of 23 acres so when you made that turn you saw the whole 23 acres and the first thing that that impressed me that that colder wounds me was the buildings were 110 stories tall one square acre each times two and there were smaller buildings surrounding them six seven story buildings in a 22 story hotel the highest point from ground level was 70 feet so 110 stories 1,450 feet collapsed into the street in 11 seconds and the highest point that was left was 70 feet above ground level and 70 feet below ground level there's a large parking garage so the whole thing was flat and it didn't take long to pick up on the fact that very obvious things were missing there were very large steel beams and mostly that gray powder that you've all seen the collapse isn't that big mushroom cloud kind of a cloud that came off of that that is the building itself the building is collapsing like this one floor hits the next floor it crushes and decimates everything in the office and blows it out the windows and that happened 10 floors for every one second so 10 floors in one second collapsed pulverized and shot out and that's that big gray cloud that you've seen and all the office contents and unfortunately the people that were in those offices that were still in the buildings and that's what's laying in the street so the first thing that we encountered it was 88 86 degrees sunny out nothing like today and it was beautiful out and we're wearing our fire gear immediately we took our jackets off threw them to the side we were a bunker pants with suspenders big clunky boots gloves helmet everybody always asked that you wear a mask and get back to that in a minute so you you go in you pick a spot and you would just start digging and the first two weeks you're looking to live people that's our goal let's save somebody and that goes on for about two weeks and two weeks rescue becomes recovery there's no more viable life and you change the whole mode of the operation there's no more carefulness and your commitment large machines and grab large pieces of debris and dump it and go through it you can't do that in the first two weeks because if you do that you may kill somebody who's alive under the rubble so everything's done kind of gingerly so you're in that mode for the first two weeks get in there start digging and immediately this powder like substance would puff up in your face it was like fine fine talcum powder and it would puff up in your face face now is carbon gray and in 20 minutes your face is gray and now your eyes start to get that's caustic it's got ly and lime in it your eyes immediately start to tear and your eyes are now gonna be red for the next 12 hours and the tears are running down your cheeks not cuz you're crying because you irritated your eyes it gets in your ears mask you wear a mask and get that question every time I do a tour did you wear a mask I wore masks for about 20 minutes put the mask on I'm wearing all that gear it's hot out I'm fat I sweat so sweats running down it's mixing with the dirt it gets to the edge of the mask now you have these clumps or that gray stuff and it goes brutal and it rolls inside the mask and now you're eating it so mask off off to the side and I wore a mask and that was it it's in your ears it's in your eyes it's drying out your skin after a couple of days everything's cracked it's it's it's in your nose it didn't it attacked every sense that you could imagine smell touch taste everything you every sense was being affected by what you were doing and what you were saying so we would dig dig dig you would hit large obstacles these large beams what else did I notice not long afterwards think of what you have in your office or in your home think about going to work your desk your garbage can your wheat your shoes your computer terminal the wooden door in your room the windows your mouse you know everything that you have inside your desk it was gone there were no office contents everything in that office was polarized the only thing that survived was something that was flexible a lot of carpeting we'd find the cloth back to a chair but not the chair itself a lot of paper a lot of small things a lot of silverware I found a lot of phones that's back on those StarTAC phones were you know invoke the little one sit folded found a lot of those intact broken but intact ID cards maybe a shoe he were there nothing bigger than that I as collectibles I could I took a couple of pieces of marble about that big I still have them the sheets of marble in the lobby were maybe 10 by 10 sheets of marble and it was marble in the entire building and if he found a piece bigger than that it was you kept because it was very rare no glass nothing just all this powder start getting your eyes so I into fast-forward to Friday we're taking Friday the first time it rains was Thursday night which was a godsend for us because when we came in Friday morning and we started digging everything was wet was compacted down so when you dug for the first few inches it was just clumpy or you pick it up a little you know dirt bombs they're balls I'm dirt bomb we grew in the Bronx we had dirt bombs dirt put them in that you know get rid of it and you go down anybody could become the powder again so there's like eight or ten of us digging it's Friday morning around 10:00 a.m. we're digging on the west side of the North Tower and we go down about this far and we find a foot so you know now you're trying to clearly the person that'll lie but you don't want to you know you don't want to damage the tissue so you kind of it's almost like an archeological site we use very small tools none of the traditional firefighting tools a little you know little brooms whisper ohms a little three-pronged things you garden within your backyard I carried one of those with me and you dig it and you don't uncover it and then you might hit something small and you go around it you know we go ankle calf that might take a half an hour to uncover that we got to the knee and we got a little higher and then we find a second foot so we kind of you know and they're not right next to each other the person didn't you know die like this it's all displayed all over the place so we'd hear an 18 kind of split into two groups and we worked on this leg a little more than that teams working in this leg we got up to about here on the first leg and it went on to a very large beam so we were kind of limited what we can do there so now we all move to digging the second leg get to about here in the second leg a big metal big piece of metal you can't move it now you need a torch well there's not a torch five feet away it's 23 acres and maybe we're sharing eight torches so the ironworkers which by the way the construction workers who were there were just you know fire department police tend to do that automatically anyway but construction workers iron workers tin knockers electricians carpenters they all came down and they were doing the construction side of the job for at least a week or two before they even started considering getting paid for it and that was just it was all they were just there so you need an iron worker to come with the torch and he would cut this piece of metal out cut the metal out we folded it away and there was a 72 on the other side of it um so we were thinking all right this person was in the stairwell the 72nd floor in the North Tower when the building collapse and just kind of rode the staircase down and that's that's how this guy wound up here dig a little more we uncover our third foot so now we have it at least two people maybe three and now it's been six hours eight hours and you bent over like this you're digging the sun's beating on the back of your head and you just to get exhausted you know it just it can only go so far so I mean I walked away after working for ten hours and we only got to the you know a thigh in the first leg maybe here in the second leg and the third leg was less than that you know maybe four or five feet apart and now you have to just you get back as a king there were guys waiting to take your place there was always manpower and he'd step and you'd walk away and he'd like so the frustrating part was I don't know how that story ended you know is it was it three people or two you can't tell if it's a man or a woman did they know each other was it a civilian was it a firefighter or a medic you know a police officer a security guard trying to maybe evacuate the building so that's how it messed with you psychologically you would dig every day and you would net no results after about 12 14 16 hours the following morning not one person was taken out of that site alive so if you hear somebody telling you their grand story about how they were buried for two days and they finally dug themselves out and they're lying and the people who say that he rescued somebody they are lying by September 12th in the early morning maybe noonish anybody who was alive was gonna be found was already accounted for that was it and it became a body recovery for the next eight months and you'd walk away and you'd step to a checkpoint that they had at you no offense you step to a checkpoint on to the West Side Highway and there were folks in Mobile United States standing there waiting for you flags they had water they give you sandwiches they pat you on the back take your picture all they wanted to do is enter interact with you and you know 20 feet away was a graveyard and now you're standing on the Westside Highway and they're treating you like you the New York Yankees I would use the Jets but we know that are going anywhere the New York Yankees that he'd won the World Series Julie's a jet fan and it was just a psychological impact of you stepped out and they would just but they were stay waiting five deep and I never ate so well in my entire life you come out and you'd be you know people had just fantastic sandwiches and hot meals cold meals a wet cloth it was just and you walked out and it was just you know I'm not the lead singer for you to you know I'm dumb digging I'm digging in and you know in a graveyard so we were looking for Jonathan and I'll sum it up like this Jonathan you saw Jonathan's picture that picture Jonathan is actually taking from our volunteer fire if I we were all volunteer firefighters together Long Island John was my assistant chief when I was chief and I was lieutenant when Lee ILP John's dad was the chief of Department very close I've known leave for 35 years he's my best friend we're looking for John only 178 hole but 174 178 178 whole bodies were found out of almost 3,000 people only 178 whole bodies so there's and there were over 21,000 body parts that were recovered and summer summer accounted for something that's a whole separate story but we found Jonathan's whole body on December 11th at the base of the South Tower so add about only 178 you know he was he was one of them okay I gotta go I'll be back thank you volunteer firefighters played really an important role after September 11th they not only did the majority of work with the rescue and recovery effort also remember that after September 11th not only had so many 343 new city firefighters been killed but so many firefighters were down here on what was called the pile doing what you just heard being described volunteer firefighters were the ones who stepped in and made sure that when this city needed firefighting services during that period we were protected in that way so that is all part of what the volunteers did now Julie is going to give you a very different perspective on September 11th she was a 29 year old schoolteacher she and her husband Brian had been married for two and a half years at that point and I'm gonna let Julie take it from there I think I'd rather go first next time okay so 29 years old seems like a lifetime ago but it still seems like yesterday I'll start with a happy story in 1998 I went to a bar in Philadelphia I lived in South Jersey at the time and I walked in with my girlfriend and we called it a suit bar we're all though Philadelphia Wall Street guys would go after work and this guy walked in and he was a presence he was about six three two hundred and some odd pounds and he didn't have a suit on he had jeans on a denim shirt a baseball cap and hiking boots and he just stood out and I looked at my girlfriend and I said that's the kind of guy I'm gonna marry and sit in front of a fireplace in the Poconos with Poconos I don't know why I said it but that's what I said and as about as worldly other was at the time and she said oh yeah okay and you know went up to the bar about an hour later in his was up there and he said I got he goes uh I I want you to meet my friend Brian and I'm like okay I'm like was that the guy you walked in with and he's like yeah and I'm like okay hello and behold when they walked in he spotted me and he said Oh Brian I've chosen one for you long story short seven months later actually three months later Brian said I'm moving back to Massachusetts I was like with you anywhere but we need to be married before I even consider this so seven months later we got married very quick very whirlwind but it was right and we lived a happy life we were very content we just started talking about children in 2001 in June Brian had the opportunity to take a job that allowed us to work out of our home so we moved to Cape Cod Massachusetts which was where we wanted to live in vacation and work and do everything raised our family and I was a teacher at the time I got a new teaching job at a high school I taught high school health and it was September and it was Labor Day weekend and it was beautiful and we were new to the area and we wanted to be there as long as we could so Monday morning this job that Brian took that allowed him to work out of our home also took him away once a week once a month for a week and he always flew the same flight he always flew the same days it was a cross-country trip it was flying up Monday coming home Friday so Monday morning I woke up and I noticed he wasn't packed and I said aren't I taking you to the airport and he said no surprise I changed my flight from Sunday to tooth from Monday to Tuesday night before and I'm like why did you do that and he said I'm so happy here it's beautiful here it's been a beautiful couple of days I wanted one more day here I said okay that's awesome you know and you what about your day and Tuesday morning came and off to the airport I bring him to the local airport he gets on his puddle jumper plane there and takes him up to Logan as I kiss him goodbye simple like we do every day just a kiss on the cheek nothing major I said I'll see you Friday he said nope I'm coming home a day early to come over day early you say yep I'll see you Thursday oh my god it's awesome off you went off I went fifth day of teaching in a brand new school really didn't know anybody at the time and I'm teaching health I'm defining it for these kids typical thirteen-year-old physical health nutrition they're shouting out answers and they said yeah that's all those things but it's spiritual health it's mental health it's emotional health we're not gonna talk about all that but all that makes you who you are the core of who you are that's your health your inner peace your inner strength talked a little bit about it I looked back on my lesson plan notes months later and wondered why I said what I did and I still don't know but I went off on a little tangent with them and I said you know who knows what spiritual health is and you know one really had anything to say at that point in time so I said you know what so this is all I'm gonna say on it I said believe in something I don't care if it's nothing I don't care if it's what everybody believes in I don't care if it's your own special belief believe in it but if something good happens or something bad happens in your life you'll at least have something to maybe give you an answer as to why I said this as a 29 year old woman who really had never had anything bad happen to her someone who was not religious and really wasn't that spiritual I still can't figure it out soon as those words came out of my mouth it was around 9:15 there was a knock on my classroom door it was the principal and I literally thought that there were video cameras in my classroom and I was in trouble for uh during the word spirituality in a high school in America I really thought that and and it was an old school and that even went through my mind like are you kidding me like honestly so he looked at me and he said he was very you know just I look back on and now he's very anxious and he said you have a telephone call you need to come with me to my office I was embarrassed new teacher pulled out of a classroom that doesn't normally happen I wasn't afraid I couldn't I couldn't have imagined this that's for sure so I went into his office I picked up the phone and it was my mother-in-law Julie we have a situation Brian's on an airplane that's been hijacked you need to come home you need to and I said I can't come home Louise I'm teaching she goes no you don't understand you have to come home and please don't turn on the television well that's all I needed to hear I hang up the phone with her after she told me a few exchanges that her and Brian had had and I looked at the principal I said please turn on television he said no I'm not gonna do that and I say you know you really need to do that right you know and this is my bus I'm like put you have to and he turned it on and what I saw at that time was what we've all seen if whether we witnessed that day or we've seen news accounts of that every year you see this and that was this jumbo jet liner just plowing into the south side of the South Tower and I'm watching this and I'm knowing that Brian's on a hijacked airplane I know this I've been told it's been confirmed she spoke with her son and I literally look and I see this and my first thought was gosh I feel so bad for the people on that plane and I'm listening to the news and there's planes all over the place and one would hit the North Tower and Pennsylvanian this and that and things are happening all over and I felt bad for the people on that plane and I felt it was justifiable in my head it wasn't like I was some crazy oh my god and absolutely not Brian's not on that plane but he was unique he was I call him a hot ticket he just was the coolest guy I think I will ever meet he could do anything his nickname was MacGyver if you ever watch that show MacGyver that was the guy that could get out of any situation he was put in it was crazy he was the kind of guy you wanted next year all the time and that was his nickname he built our home he built our cars he just could do anything with that being said he was also he wasn't the pilot but he was a pilot he was a fighter a Navy weapons fighter pilot and in the Gulf in the Gulf War he taught at Top Gun in Miramar California he was an instructor of the elite Navy weapons fighter school out there he flew f-14s he literally could could have flown the plane so I felt that for those people and I went home thinking hearing the news and listening to it as things are unraveling and I know that he's called me and his mom told me that he left me a message and I wasn't sure I didn't know what to expect I walk into my house after I got talked into leaving work and I walk into my house and I notice very odd things sitting around that would have normally made me angry and I'm I had a little more patience with Bryan at this point in time so far I didn't know what his fate was at the time but I walk in and I see his dirty coffee cup from the morning and his shoes by the back door and I'm I remember vividly noticing these things that had a very different effect to me and then they normally would have and I be lined right over to my answering machine and it was the old-fashioned kind that blinked you know red lights and there was a one blinking on it and I didn't hesitate and I walked over and I pressed a play and the first thing I hear is the little operator lady she says 8:58 a.m. so that's when it was time-stamped 8:58 just so you have an idea of that day from familiar with the facts his plane crashed at 903 so he called me at 858 he swiped his credit card on the old-fashioned phones that used to open that sounds so crazy but swiped a card on an air phone called me left me a message at 8:58 hung up swiped it again called his mother spoke with her for over a minute so into the nine o'clock hour and she hung up the phone and hesitated and turned on the TV and saw that plane crash live into the South Tower so I'm sitting there 8:58 and I hear this very calm very stoic very Brian kind of voice on the other end and it says hey Jules this is Brian I'm on an airplane that's been hijacked if things don't go well and it's not looking good I want you to know I absolutely love you I want you to do good go have good times same to my family and everybody and I just totally love you and I'll see you when you get here bye babe and he hung up the phone at that moment I knew it was gone I didn't know what plane I knew there were now multiple planes crashed all over the place but I knew him well enough to know that he would have never ever ever picked up that phone and basically gave me my final marching orders this is what's happening to me I can't change it I'm gonna try but I don't know what I'm gonna be able to do about it so if this happens this is what you need to do and with that message I consider myself very blessed in a situation where there was close to 3,000 lives taken in an instant murdered basically I at least know where he was he was in the plane I know what plane that was confirmed that day at 4 o'clock for me that he was on that flight manifest so I saw it happen but I saw that it happened quick and there was not a question that there was any suffering after the impact I know what his thoughts were minutes before he died and his thoughts were with me and his family and the love that he had for us and there are so many people that don't know there are people that don't know if their family members suffered if they dealt with heat and smoke and chose to jump out of the North Tower I at least always have that and that to me was a blessing that he gave me with his last breath the difference in my loss is no greater than any of your losses in your life a loss is a loss a love is a love but I have always I think taken on almost a Brian kind of attitude since it happened and what I rather have had this person in my life for the short time that I did and loved him and have him love me like I know no one probably ever will again and lose them and deal with this then to never have had him at all and then not have to deal with this pain and the choice is easy you know love often equals loss and pain but if you didn't have that love you know how different would your lives be I donated that message very quickly I allowed the people who lost people on that plane to hear it because it gave me such a sense of peace I thought they would want to hear the same thing there was no screaming there was no chaos in the background that you could hear and then I also have it here at the Museum if you haven't gone through the museum yet or if you want to run back down and listen he's part of the 9/11 timeline of the day his audio recording is there you can press play and you can hear it and I hope you do because that voice in life was the most calming effect I've ever had and it just it was my blessing and to know him and to love him and to be able to move forward and be happy and know and believe that I'm gonna see him again I all of a sudden became very spiritual by the way after all of this I thought oh my gosh this is insane but I'm married I had two small children now seven and nine my youngest my seven-year-old Landon his middle name is Spencer and that was Brian's hometown and I do what I can with our tours and with coming down here twice a month from Massachusetts still trying to move back I am a jet fan they might not be worth the move back but there are many other things that are worth it so I think yeah I can't have everything I thank you for listening and again if you are ever back here or if you ever go to tribute and there's two different guides they're all very different stories and you will certainly benefit from any one of them so thank you sixty-five that's the number of people who were on American Airlines flight 175 brian was one of them so the 65 people were made up of 56 passengers two pilots and seven flight attendants just so you know whenever you hear about the number of people who were on a flight that number does not ever include the hijackers also with Brian on that flight and I know Julie knows this very well was Christine Lee Hanson Christine has the grotesque distinction of being the youngest person to have died on September 11th she was two years old so with her parents I'd like to think that maybe she and Brian had some interaction we are running short on time but I want to let you ask one question if anyone is just dying to ask something if not then what we will do is after the program we'll be happy to continue this so if any of you do have questions we'll be right outside the exit well I thank both of you oh yes we do oh we have a good the question is how many do we know how many people have passed away since 9/11 I can tell you the number now but it's gonna be different tomorrow so what's the point it changes literally changes daily and I'm gonna tell you that I don't know the number and I seriously doubt it so it's almost impossible to keep an accurate accounting because there are people who are not that maybe got sick and didn't register with the medical facility you know there were and if you are registered with a medical facility I have to say from what I've seen it heard they really are very good about getting you help getting you care hopefully the care you need the fire department I know because that's the entity that I'm the closest with they take very good care of their members on the police department sue but you know what about the window washer you know or maybe somebody who worked here for one day and then you know didn't register didn't really even tell anybody and now that guy has got a lung issue but it's it's it's it's probably in the thousands already and unfortunately we're more concerned with the kardashians than we are with you know the firefighters and the rescue workers who were passing away every single day you might find an article about it and you know page seven or eight or the other newspaper and there were separate foundations that go on but it's really you know when you have a network of people like us we're really the only ones they really kind of hear about it there'll be fundraisers and there's memorials and scholarships as thousands of scholarships thousands but to answer your question I don't I don't know the answer and it's literally changes every day thank you both of you for doing this it was very generous and I want to thank all of you as well this is not just you know a polite thankful people thing I'm saying here you probably have no idea how important you are for our storytelling you actually are essential to that process because it is with you that together we take a piece of that brutal day and we create from it on life-affirming experience we hope that these stories will deepen and enrich your time here at the Museum today so on behalf of us on behalf of the tribute center with complete sincerity from the heart thank you all very much for choosing to spend your time with us [Applause]

Channel: 9/11 Tribute Museum

Views: 13,133

Rating: 4.9031143 out of 5

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Id: Tk_J6ZP8pyw

Length: 34min 31sec (2071 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 24 2019