good afternoon everyone welcome to this presentation of we were there I am a member of the tribute Center my name is Judith Pucci I am one of quite a few tribute guides now and this afternoon you're going to hear stories told here by two of my fellow guides in these stories go beyond the historic events of September 11th instead they explore the personal costs of that day so let me introduce you to your two storytellers today next to me are Tom Grassi and Peter Rinaldi both Tom and Peter worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey the Port Authority is the organization that manages the World Trade Center and Tom is an architect right there and Peter at the end is an engineer as an architect tom has been involved in all of the rebuilding going on outside since the attacks where is Peter who was the assistant director of engineering for the Port Authority he contributed to both the cleanup and the rebuilding efforts both Tom and Peter worked in the North Tower that was the first building to be attacked that morning we're going to begin with Tom so I'm going to just very briefly set the scene for you the time is 8:46 a.m. and this is when the first plane hijacked flight 11 is crashed into the North Tower about 1,300 people a little over are above the point of impact all of these people died access to the elevators and stairways was destroyed by the plane Tom's office was about 1011 floors below impact so he at least had a chance of surviving and I'll let him take it from there Thanks there were a lot of great things about working in the World Trade Center which I did for about 15 years before 9/11 I think my favorite was the views I never got tired or used to the views especially to the south from the North Tower you had a great view of the South Tower and lower Manhattan and the harbor and especially at sunset at certain days the the whole scene was sort of glow a pinkish red and the South Tower would glow and the goings-on in the harbor and in the middle of all was always the Statue of Liberty kind of standing tall and no matter what the conditions it was always there and sort of never gave up and was always a symbol right in the middle of that great view on the morning of September 11th 2001 at 8:46 in the morning I was on the 82nd floor of tower one I had just said good morning to a co-worker named Allen and he was a Vietnam veteran we had just said our good mornings out of nowhere came a thunderous BAM and impactful noise that shook the building and shook all of us Allen yelled hit the dirt hit the dirt there was no question or thought though we all immediately started to run out of the building there was it was obviously a plane that hit as we said a hundred two hundred and fifty feet above our heads maybe the distance from home plate to second base on a baseball field was how far we were we immediately ran for the stairs which were filled with a lot of panic and excitement and shouting at first but at things I must say calmed down pretty quickly it was clear that something enormous had just happened but the lights were on the air conditioning was on we were okay what we had to do now was take our time and get out so things calm down pretty quickly people were generally encouraging as we the the the descent out was pretty slow at times it was almost one step at a time sometimes we weren't moving at all we came to a certain point where somebody had a door held open they were handing out soft drinks they were giving out soda and I took a pinkish colored Snapple and figured I'd have it later once we got outside had lunch or something I'd saved my Snapple we continued our slow walk downward and at some point maybe I was in the floors like the 40s or 50s when the firefighter started to appear so we stayed to our right to let them pass by we you know we're sort of encouraging them and saying hey thanks for your help every guy's we really appreciate it and they were telling us hang in there you'll get out what a nice one of them and I sort of made eye contact and he said don't worry the line moves a lot quicker once you get closer to the bottom and I said all right thanks a lot thanks for your help and they were exhausted and out of breath and breathing heavily so I said I think you need this more than I do and I gave him my Snapple and he said thanks and he continued walking upward our slow walkout continued but there was no sense of panic I took a quick break called my wife told her what was going on and I got down to around this I think it was on the seventh floor a flow of water had started to come down the stairs the residual the residue of either the firefighters broken water pipes sprinkler lines maybe but we were all sort of ankle-deep in a murky water and maybe starting to get a little bit impatient it had been about an hour and fifteen minutes trying to get out and then there came another big noise similar but different than the first one sort of a rumbling type noise and I looked up I felt and sounded like the stairs were collapsing I looked up to see and a big gush of smoke came in from below a black thick black smoke that the lights went out and everything went into total darkness you couldn't breathe so I sort of pulled up my undershirt to try and breathe through my shirt and the swarm of people from below with the big cloud of thick smoke started shouting run up run up there's bombs down here run back up and I can't say we ran upstairs but I sort of got just sort of surged upstairs with this crowd of people we went up maybe a flight or two in the water and the darkness and the smoke and people up above start yelling you can't come up here the fires are spreading you got to get down get down so the people up above are yelling run down and the people below were yelling up I heard somebody saying easy easy take it easy take it easy and I had a quick thought that that's a familiar voice and I realized it was me I was shouting without even really being conscious of it I had a quick thought that my son's had been there over the summer to spend the day and have lunch and I thought boy I'm glad they're not here today so there was really nowhere to go as people were saying run down and run up so I sort of took a break and went into an open doorway for a minute breathing through my my t-shirt I saw then a flashlight sort of down the corridor and somebody said this way this stair is open you can get out over here so in total darkness we couldn't see anything but the this sort of beam of a flashlight I followed that and it was some firefighters almost like the daisy-chain so to speak kind of leading the way for us to get out they stayed behind with their lights and said down there just follow those lights and we'd either follow somebody who was walking or just run for the next light I got out on what was the second floor still thinking that once I got out everything would be fine and perfectly normal so I was shocked when the door opened and I was in the lobby of the World Trade Center to see that it was it was it felt like I was in a time machine it sort of transported 5,000 years in the future it was dark and still we were in this smoky cloud the building was sort of falling pieces were falling there was debris all around because obviously that thunderous second noise we heard was the tower 2 collapsing right next door so we were inside that smoke cloud and the oil you could still hear or so you could see was the the flashlight saying get out that way get out as fast as you can run for cover and get out it was difficult to run because of all the debris all around so you could sort of trompe your way out but there wasn't exactly running they said hit run under the overhangs don't look up and don't look back so I did I came down what is now called the survivor stair which is displayed here at the Museum and on the street I met with a couple of co-workers as we look back at the towers and could see only Tower one was there and we were debating if we couldn't see Tower two only because of this big cloud of smoke some people were saying Tower two had collapsed which we couldn't believe and as we looked up at our Tower or as I was looking up at it it sort of twisted a little bit and then began to slowly crumble to the ground I met up with those co-workers and we sort of we walked through Manhattan about a three-mile walk people were taking our photographs that's who were covered with dust and smoke and we made our way to a ferry because we lived in New Jersey to get there and we got on the ferry and this was seven or eight hours later we're making our way across the Hudson River and I had to work my way on the ferry to look back at the skyline I just had to get in another look or a look at what was going on and most of Manhattan to the north was completely normal and then there was the one spot where the World Trade Center had been that morning which now was just this gigantic plume of black smoke and a little further to the right there was the Statue of Liberty still there through it all it still hadn't given up and that statue was still there and I knew we wouldn't give up either and within a couple of days it was a great pleasure to be back to work working on what we were going to do with the site and it's still my pleasure to be here working on the rebuilding effort ever since thank you people are often surprised to hear and I understand it how many survived who were at the Trade Center that morning and the number from between towers alone is about 14,000 people so tom was among them 84 of his colleagues however did die in that building after the attacks came the massive recovery and cleanup effort which is where Peters story begins he was assigned to the engineering team responsible for supervising the clearing away of 1.8 million tons of debris good afternoon thanks for braving the cold all of you today here and Mike Tom and I were colleagues at the Port Authority you can see he's dressed in a suit I'm not he's still working I'm retired so that's an idea yeah we were just talking about that I worked in the North Tower just below Tom on the 72nd floor a few floors down I was not in the tower on that day because on that Friday afternoon I'd finished up signing drawings for a major engineering project and left foot my wife on vacation for the Outer Banks of North Carolina and that's where I was on Tuesday when my son called me and said a plane hit the World Trade Center and I watched the events unfold and then came back very shortly thereafter to temporary offices we were trying to get staff together in New Jersey and then the chief engineer asked me to come down to the site and September to be part of the emergency response team and provide aid and technical assistance to the city which was dealing with this catastrophe so what I'd like to do is is describe to you a little bit today what it was like to be here during that period of time and also maybe give you a little background into one of the artifacts that's down in the in the museum which is called the last column so I arrived here in September on the site having left the building on that Friday and was introduced to walking around what was the World Trade Center site 16 acre site maybe 700 feet by a thousand feet for those of you from overseas 200 meters by 300 plus meters that's a huge huge site and I just left the buildings a few days before that when they were intact and my colleagues 84 of our colleagues some close friends that we lost that day matter of fact the last person I spoke to as I left on vacation was a friend of mine called Steve Fiorelli who we work close together he called me up to wish me a goodbye have a good vacation I'll see you and get back conversation you may have many times with your colleagues were loved ones are you leaving I never spoke to him again so that was one of the downsides of 9/11 we lost some friends and colleagues and you know I always always say that you spend a lot of time with your family but if you think about it probably when you're at work you spend more time with people you work with didn't you do with your family when it comes down to it you think about it you know he's just sleeping when you're home part of the time but at work you're there 8 to 10 hours or something so you get to know people pretty well and they become friends as well as colleagues that day I came back to the site for the first time in September and I walked around I got a respirator and fitted because we were fitting people with respirators the air down here was heavy with acrid smoke and other things and I walked around what was the World Trade Center the scene was incredible whatever you saw on TV and something neither too young to watch TV at that time but whatever you saw in terms of film and pictures cannot do justice to what your senses would see when you actually see it in 3d and feeling and walk around and hear the sounds and the smell the acrid smell that fill the air that smelled stayed with me the whole time we were down on the site the smoke burning I mean you could see the destruction and you could really feel as you walked around the loss of people and in the buildings and that's what we were confronted with when we first came down here there were thousands of us laboring on the site here my job in particular was responsible for providing supervising the removal of the material and allowing the police and fire who was searches to search it in a safe way because this was the most dangerous site a place I've ever worked on it in my 30 years when I was working at that time it was really truly dangerous pieces of equipment the buildings were hanging in the air 250 to 300 feet 25 to 30 stories told now I know where you come from but at 25 to 30 story buildings probably pretty tall I was hanging in pieces on two sides of the site smoke was coming out everywhere and we were working thousands of us on ships 24/7 we were was around the clock nothing ever shut down and we as we removed material we searched it we looked at I was in a searcher the police and fire were searches if you look at some of the recovery material and in the museum they'll talk about that in the aftermath so as we searched through all of this material the camaraderie the feeling here on the site between people on how they felt about being affronted by the attacks everyone cooperated everyone wanted to do something I made friends the camaraderie that you felt people volunteered came from all over the country the Red Cross was here The Salvation Army god bless them were here right away trying to provide comfort people were trying to come and help us couldn't because of the site providing food and water or whatever it was plenty of so much food being provided I actually lost weight because I lost 15 pounds in four weeks from walking around and distress and everything even though there was food around so we worked there for months and and the pile actually started to become what we called the pit okay it started out as this humongous pile 150 feet into the air and then it became an excavation that was 75 feet down below and I remember in January as after a particularly bad day on the pile that she was almost a pit at that point we're actually sitting over in O'Hara's in the bar a couple of us having drinks talking you know what you know thinking about what would happen at the end like what would this be like being all and one of the guys sitting he says you know when this is all over when we get down to that last piece of the World Trade Center I want to follow it on up that ramp and out of the site and just keep going and we said yeah that's what we're gonna do and that is how the idea and the camp came about for the last column and that's what the last column is so as we excavated down we got into a particular area in March right around where Tower 2 was and we had to build a ramp to get into the site because we went down what was now a pile was now a pit and we were traveling over all the debris and under that debris we knew there were remains and people so we built the bridge you'll see that if you go through the more you'll see a ramp that was done so that we could excavate and search the rest of the site and we got into what was then the lobby area of Tower 2 and we made an enormous amount of recoveries in that area the most we did on the site because all the first responders that Tom talked about seeing coming up in this day as well they were also in the lobby of the building helping people and shuttling people out and when the building collapsed it trapped a lot of them and pushed them down as well as civilians and we had an understanding on the site if we came to an understanding that when you made a recovery a recovery was when you found the body work it would be wrapped in a flag put in a body bag but it would be wrapped in a flag chaplain would be called and six people would take the gurney carry that person out of the site behind the chaplain to an ambulance and they'd be taken out off in the way it was handled if you was a uniformed person meaning the police or fire person that was found six firemen or six of his brother of cops would carry that person out if it was a civilian like you or I being civilian just a normal person and you were working on the site six of us would get on that gurney and carry that person out in April 11 to 2002 I carried out the last person they found on the site it was a woman and found her in the area where the North Tower was was the last area we were excavating and I remember carrying that gurney up on the ramp and thinking it was a weird denim for the police had found her they were doing a search and I was thinking as I was going up the ramp this person came to work that day just like you and I go to work and now I'm carrying that body up a ramp and that was someone's daughter maybe someones mother someone's aunt no it's oh yeah and that person was never coming back again so when you think about 9/11 you think about what it's all about and this beautiful memorial and museum we have when you carry a body out of all the aftermath of 9/11 you know what 9/11 is all about that's what it was about and what happened then as we continued with that excavation there in that area in with Tower two was and we made these recoveries someone put a bouquet of flowers next to the top of this column because they had lost someone there and then someone wrote something on the top of the column and then as we excavated down a little further and we were taking the rest of the pile debris down searching it someone else wrote in it something and then someone wrote the police number people killed number of civilians killed the number of firemen killed people started posting pictures on it as we excavated down and we said that's the last piece of steel material we're going to carry out of the site and so in order to said no one would cut it down we actually welded a flag to the top because we knew no wiring work or a construction worker would touch anything that had an American flag on it had a respect so that flag stayed there and that's we excavated down the site you could see pictures we got down to what was the last column and then one day at the end of the recovery and was actually May 28th in 2002 all of us workers that had been working on the site during their search and recovery came together that night and we cut down the column and put it on a flatbed truck because two days later the politicians had gotten together and said they were going to have their own ceremony official closing ceremony but the real closing ceremony at the end of the recovery was done on that evening on May 28th when thousands of us gathered there at the end of all of work that we did 24/7 and as we marched up that ramp for the last time up that piece all along the ramp all the way on both sides never forget this all police and firemen that have been searching through the debris and they standing in salute to thank all of us for all the support we had done it was a very touching moment I often say and think about it that you know in those events and that terrible aftermath it was such the worst of mankind came out and those terrorists flying those planes and killing all those innocent people but in the response to 9/11 both around the country and especially here on the site here in New York the response showed the best that people can do and that evening as we walked up that ramp the best the best were there thank you for listening very much so both Tom and Peter have mentioned to major artifacts that you can see here in the museum these survivors stairs that Tom used to get down from the elevated plaza of the World Trade Center you can see that at the end of the ramp survivor stairs and then the last column is that one piece of steel standing upright and it is full of the markings that Peter just described to you Peter was here at the Trade Center full time throughout the nine months of the recovery effort and then he worked on the rebuilding team until 2010 so both of these men are very well versed in this space both what it once was and what is now becoming we always leave time at the end because we like this to be as much as possible not just us talking to you but a conversation so please just take a moment think of any questions that you might want to ask either Peter or Tong and they will be happy to answer them I assure you I'll give you a moment to just gather your thoughts okay that's it who's first who's the brave soul you must not be shy it is not allowed we're not afraid of questions I work a lot with emergency responders a big catastrophes in nearby Fort Worth and headed one of the largest I you know that in my lifetime one thing we have a problem with is after big events like this as you said a lot of motivation a lot of people come and try to help that aren't training at first but are passionate yeah at least from my perspective in life it could be difficult in time to effectively manage those people to get them involved but not put them in harm's way or jeopardize your goals so in your time working on the recovery do you have any tips or do you have any lessons that you've learned in trying to get in harness everyone's emotions and excitement but do it in a safe effective way that's interesting question well one thing we did right away in the first few days afterward because everyone was flooding in was there was a perimeter set up by the national guard in the police and you had to have identification to get onto the site so that automatically cleared out getting some people that were just coming from all over that we're trying to help but weren't trained though it shouldn't be there the second thing is I could I can say that some of the the searches the police and fire they went through a quick training themselves when they got on site they were doing it in teams the training for the workers the construction workers we actually had safety propio organized safety programs for the workers because as I said it was the most dangerous site and we held we held meetings coordination meetings in them it was crazy in the morning at 8 o'clock and in the evening at 5 o'clock and then at midnight we had another change and there we discussed issues and to resolve them and if there was safety issues we resolved them one of the things was when you had that meeting and discussion everything was done real-time so there wasn't we'll go back and study this and write up a paper on it to come back you you you made a decision there or you took it out in the field and you answered it even on safety issues so if a safety problem came up and someone wasn't operating in a way so I would say you know coordination those put safety immediately as part of a program which was done there because of the sight on everything and it was focused on and there was a team that focused just on safety and monitor and that kind of that is a fascinating question not gotten that before basically what was being asked is because they both have had such personal connections to the aftermath of the events have either of them read any fictionalized presentations of September 11th and if they have what are their thoughts in terms of authenticity the fiction to the reality either of you have you done that actually I've never read anything that's fiction honest on the site I've read seen documentaries I've read some books about the events but not fictionalized accounts have I've ever seen any of the films the fictionalized Hills well those films were actually well the one I saw on the to Port Authority police officer that was killed was not actually fiction I mean it was it was based on a story so and some of its anytime you make a film to make a film no matter how true the story is you deviate from what actually happened and and embellish it sort of it's interesting to an audience and some of that happened in the film but that was pretty much a documentary almost based on it so it wasn't really a fictionalized account thank you it was actually pretty much on the conduct that they they followed I remember seeing that though and I thought there's one thing that I struck with and that I remember about that movie was being inside the tower when tower two collapsed I felt like the way they depicted it was very real it was pretty it was pretty real yeah because I remember being curious and how are they going to depict that and that's the one thing that I remember about seeing that was I was sort of anxious to see that moment and when it happened I know I felt like hey that was pretty good what happened to all our need to breathe uh 1.8 million tons what was done with it yeah the the material on the site here was left understand it was a recovery operation after we declared it to be Oh the rescue operation stopped about three and a half weeks four weeks into after 9/11 we declared it that it was no longer a rescue operation a recovery operation which mean we didn't expect to find anyone alive but we tried to find people that had died so the debris was searched here on site and it was searched as we removed it by the police and firemen they had spotters all the material was then taken and it was barged out to Staten Island which is a one of the boroughs of counties of New York which would there was an old landfill there and it was reopened on there an emergency order and a hold operation was set out out there a hold mini city to actually take that material and sift it and search it again to make sure for everything so much so that and the steel excuse me to steal then the massive amounts of steel were actually taken across to New Jersey in cross and using recycled but the material the one most of it was taken out searched and then it was stockpiled in a safe area in a park it was good to become a park area out in Staten Island so much so they sifted it that I was on the site here in October and I got a call from the Port Authority police and they said you Peter Rinaldi I said yes I said we found your ID from the World Trade Center was on my desk they found it so they were sifting through and they found my ID said okay there's what we want to return it to you I said now we're coming to return to you so they came to the site that they were the police and they came to the site gave them to the ID now they weren't returning my ID what was happening was that there was so many unsubstantiated numbers about who perished and how many people perished you know started at 6,000 5,000 4,000 so they were trying as they identified pictures or identification they were trying to identify if that person was alive or dead in the trade center so that's why they were tracking down everything they mounted a but to give you an idea of how detailed the search was here yeah I worked here for about 15 years I guess you might think of it a little bit once in a while a plane hit the Empire State Building in the 1940s I believe so it can happen and there had been the bombing in 93 what I happened to be out to lunch at that moment but a lot of people that I work with went through that so we certainly knew things could happen yeah well yes we had fire drills and so we all certainly knew where the egress stair was in case of an emergency or even a building like that if there was a fire or you know something more routine so to speak I think that summer or the summer before there had been some like a small blackout in lower Manhattan and we had to walk out so I had walked out of the building at least one other time but yeah as I said once once we got into the stairs and the initial sort of panic subsided the conditions were totally normal and you know everybody kind of calmed down and after those first three or five minutes it was a very cooperative so my good-natured kind of a New York moment you know working our way out men we mentioned something real quick in in 93 bombing which I was there I would I actually was there got trapped in an elevator for hours before getting out but after 93 we made some improvements to building you know he kind of learned besides not allowing vehicles into the underground any longer but the stairs in 93 were totally black because the power went out and you couldn't see so you were walking down and the stairs filled with smoke subsequent to that the emergency lighting battery emergency lighting was put throughout the Trade Center in the stairwells there was a luminescent strips put on all the stairs and their hand railings and a ventilation system was put in for the stairwells and then there was evacuation drills there were actually drills besides the fire drills there were actually evacuation drills with the idea of something happening I think that contributed to the saving of lives in 2001 because people got tom was coming down through a stay-away that had lighting in it and so forth you know plus people had practice where the stairwells were and had done some evaluation we actually evacuated the building once before for a bomb scare so people had gone through that and I think that was partially helpful we had fire drills of periodic drills every so many months so I think that was helpful let me invite all of you to continue this if you would like right outside me and exit so I'm just burning out thank both of the boys here and I want to thank all of you as well it was very appreciated that you chose to spend some of your time with us today so thank you all very much [Applause]
