We Were There - September 29, 2015 - Delores Hurley & Peter Rinaldi

and welcome to all of you really it's lovely having you with us my name is Judith Pucci I am a tribute center walking tour guide and this afternoon you are going to hear stories told you by two of my fellow guides you will hear that these stories go beyond the historic events of September 11th events that touched and changed the way all of us live and instead they explore the personal costs of that day so let me introduce you to next to me is Peter Rinaldi and next to Peter is Dolores Hurley Dolores who is really known far and wide as cookie works for Morgan Stanley she has been with financial services firm for over 20 years Morgan Stanley was the biggest tenant in the World Trade Center it occupied over 20 floors in the South Tower and it had about 3,000 employees now the South Tower was the building that was hit second Peter was the assistant director of engineering for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey the Port Authority among other things is the organization that manages the World Trade Center they are also the people who are overseeing all of the new construction that is going on outside Peter worked in the North Tower the first building to be attacked we're going to begin with the Dolores so let me just set the scene for you when the first plane hit the North Tower Dolores was at her desk on the 64th floor of the second building so her building is not yet attacked she now like thousands of other people though are in a position to make a crucial decision and the decision is basically do I stay in my building which has not been attacked or do I leave and all that Dolores take it from there on September 11th 2001 I sat on the stairs of the 25th floor of tower 2 and I knew I was going to die I just just didn't think it I knew it I knew I was gone and I had gone to that point because as Judith said I worked for Morgan Stanley and I was on the 64th floor that particular day I had gotten in early to work which was really unusual for me and just as I was going up in the elevators you know racing through to get to my desk at that time and tower - you had a you have two badges to show you had to go into the elevator from the first to the 44th floor then you had a run and switch to the next elevator which was going to take you up to the higher floors I got to my desk at the 64th floor and we were in the southwest corner I threw my bag down on my desk was all ready to start the day because you have to know I loved working there I just loved my job with that I was talking to my boss and one of my co-workers started yelling whoa whoa what's going on what is that what is that and he said look look look and we we turned around to look towards where he was standing in front of the windows and we first I didn't know what to make of it I saw coming from Tower one I saw fire balls of papers just flying all over and then there was a desk on fire coming towards our building seemed like was going to hit us but yeah you don't realize how far away these things really are a chairs flying out the windows and this is in a matter of this is seconds and my boss at the time who had been in the 93 bombing she just screamed out everybody out we didn't even think twice we didn't grab my bag we ran right to the stairwell and to this day I thank the head of our security because whereas up until that time we used to curse him because we had so many fire drills it wasn't funny and he like it seemed like every single week we were having a fire drill but he kept kept pushing home don't hit the elevator go right to the stairwell this is your stairwell get down it and get out and it was an automatic thing by then grabbed our stuff went hit the stairwell we really didn't know what was going on because you couldn't hear too much in the stairwells I started going down the steps really slow because before that a few months before I had had foot surgery and I just couldn't put too much pressure on it I couldn't like run too fast plus the fact I really wasn't a lightweight at the time either so I'm going down slow as we're getting down a few flights I'm thinking myself oh my god this is I got 64 to go am I going to do this so here I am one step at a time going down the stairs and there is a stairwell here that you can see outside and then in the museum there's only room for two people side by side and I'm holding on to the banister one step at a time and then as the flight started to go people started to get a little more anxious I guess maybe the the only I can think of as people further up in retrospect I think that maybe they heard what the news was and they started running down so his people start yell move fast and move fast to go go go go go and people on the left side were kind of racing pushing shoving to get out and when that started happening one of my co-workers John who I worked with for many many years he started yelling cookie cookie you know I'll stand behind you so nobody you know pushes your knocks you down and at the same time one of the guys I had just met a young fella his name was Greg and he said well I stand in front of you the two of us will protect they're going down so she did we get out and you know it was it was I I thought was odd because I really no Greg that well I had only recently met him because he his wife just had a baby and I brought in a gift for him and that's how we actually met probably just a few months before that so here we starting down the stairs again Greg's in front of me Johnson back I mean John's got this big loud voice and he starts yelling behind him up the stairs slow people to the right fast to the left so that started to work you know in our area or the right side was going down a little bit slower as we kept going I kept at the top of the East stairwell when you look down the stairwell you looked at the wall you could see the number four you were at and I'm looking at I saw a boy is 50 and I keep going I finally says oh thank god this is 44 because this is where the split is you know that well maybe I can hawk the elevator and I don't have to walk all the way down and we hear when the somebody opened the door from the stairwell to go in on this 44th floor lobby and you could hear over the loudspeakers go back to your desk you're safer in the desk the lobby is I mean the plaza is is just too bad too much debris whatever we still pay this time we still didn't know what happened the news started to trickle down the stairs that a plane you know and we think and you know some idiot with a little plane hit the towers and so here we are with the hearing the loud speakers coming over go back to your desk don't you know take the elevator up if you want because by this time this was the time now only one had been hit and they felt it was safer for us to be inside rather than be out in the plaza where there might be debris or fires going on and of course we know as you know being in New York there was going to be 50 million cop cars fire department trucks ambulances they were they're gonna be so loaded out there we'd never even be able to walk through the crowd so we thought about it and then that same after that loudspeaker notice we hear over a megaphone the head of our security his name was Rick Rescorla and he's got a megaphone he stands out on the 44th floor he's yelling Morgan Stanley get out get out don't stay don't listen get out Morgan Stanley get out and he just kept saying that over and over and over and you know I looked at John I looked at Greg and I said oh well you know John said well what do you want to do you want to go back or I said you know I said John what's the worst thing that can happen which I downstairs I get coffee I said have a cigarette we'll go have lunch go to our hours and he said well that sounds pretty good to me so we kept walking still not knowing what had actually gone on the outside finally keep walking get too dirty and I see the numbers going down a bit this time I like starting to feel a little numb you know but then I kept going slow and John and Greg said don't keep going we'll be fine we'll get out we'll hang out with you we'll find your seat and I top of the stairs and I'm looking down I see 25 and I says oh hot she's I still got another 25 to go and with that after looking at the number 25 we feel this laughs this shaking this was just a boom and minoo what the heck happened but it and it only took about 10 or 15 seconds I was told fortunately for me I was holding on to the banister because the building swayed you heard this loud boom and then everything went silence violent like you were in an echo or something and you couldn't hear anything you you were a death for the moment for those few seconds you couldn't hear nothing and I'm holding on and that building sways so much I swear it swayed at least five feet because my head touched the wall on the other side of the stairwell I know it's weighed that much I never forget it so it's swayed back and forth I'm still holding on back back and forth again and then finally it just kind of wobbled and it Stood Still and I saw cheese and by this time it's I sat down and I said I don't know what happened what I'm thinking to myself Oh what happened but it was really bad because at that point when I we were swaying back and forth that people were flying over my head could see them hitting the wall of the next stairwell flying down the stairs jump and tripping over me and it was just like this big collision of people down the stairwell and I just sat there and I said is it for me and Greg is down at the bottom of the stairwell John's behind me and he's you don't cook we got to go we got to go I said in China I just can't my legs my legs just gave out I can't even feel my foot anymore and John's jaw let me cook we gotta go and he's trying to push me and get me up my John I can't look and Greg is down at the bottom and he's saying Dolores we got to go we got to go and I said great look guys I don't want you to lose your life to save me I've lived long enough I've had it pretty good and down at the bottom Greg looked up to me up to up at me and he said you know and I don't even know why he's screaming this but he said you know my mother's name is Dolores and if she ever finds out that I left you she'd kill me so you better go now and it was in those seconds that I started to think about my own family and I know it sounds awful but I was thinking about what my kids were gonna say about me at my funeral because in those few seconds so many things just run through your head and I started thinking that you know I have three sons and a daughter and they were gonna be telling everybody all we know mommy faltered last minute she's a she's a trooper and she's a tough old bird and if anybody tried their best she was gonna be her and it was kind of like after I thought that thought to myself you know what I can't make a liar out of my kids so I pulled my butt up off the stairs and John's gonna call thank God and great is y'all come on come on we'll go we'll go and I just thought to myself I got pain but I'm gonna do it anyway I don't care I'm just gonna not think about it and you know as I was going down that first stairwell it was really hard to bend in my legs and I started thinking you know what cookie you came to worse than this before you know your husband lost a job yet for kids you had no nothing you didn't have nothing you were homeless you had a fire in the house you didn't have nothing in you it bounced back from everything you can do this you can do it so I talked myself into it and finally we get down to the bottom floor and security is ushering us out into the plaza the main plaza now remember we still didn't know anything of what was happening as we go into the plaza we hear these loud thuds coming down they were booms loud booms and I turns John I said Jesus maybe maybe one fell over on us and all the pieces are just fallen in there so he is security now they said you got to go back you got to go back and we looked each other we were ready to kill this guy and we had a walk back onto the building where the well the stores were and we had a walkout on the other side which was Church and Vesey we're Borders bookstore was that was how they were getting us out so as we're going through the lobby passageway nan you start to see smoke it was getting hot a lot of smoke fortunately for us the firemen had come in and they crashed through all the revolving doors because can you imagine you know thousands of people trying to get through 15 revolving doors wasn't going to happen so the fireman had went be they went before us and they they just lined up start crashing through all the revolving doors so you could just step through it was at this point my leg buckled and you know I wasn't even crying I wasn't even upset because I thought to myself I'm gonna crawl if I have to and John and Greg they lifted me up onto my arms and they just lifted me because from I guess it would be about equivalent of maybe one half of walk to walk to get out and they were carrying me and this big old fireman comes by and he said you fellas need any help and they looked yes we do and because the the firemen just lifted me and carried me through the passageway and by this time you really couldn't see too much in front of you he set me down at the bottom of the escalator which was up through borders and I looked up and I could see daylight and I said to John John said to me he says you can you do it damn right I can do it I said one more and I'm out saw daylight as we expected there was pandemonium all around everything we still didn't know what had happened and fortunately for us Morgan Stanley security had drained in us where our muster point was where we were all gonna meet so that they could take an attendance and make sure everybody was there and John and Greg they said well hey we want to get a ride downtown so let's we'll go let's go put you in the ambulance and we'll take you and I just turned and I said no we didn't weigh there's no way I want to get as far away from here as possible and we did we walked to our muster point the next day we come to find out that that ambulance was under the rubble so not only did these guys save me but in some weird way I saved them too that's again if you have any questions please feel free to ask we'll do a Q&A at the end okay we're cooking gave you a very good sense of what it was like to be in those buildings Peters story is going to focus more on what came next and what came next was a massive recovery and cleanup period it lasted just shy of nine months and Peter was assigned to the engineering team responsible for supervising the clearing away of 1.8 million tons of debris thank you hi what I'd like to do today is tell you a little bit about what it was like to be here in the aftermath of 9/11 and also maybe as I tell you that story give you a little insight to one of the artifacts and how it came about down in the museum down below the last column if you haven't been down there so my office was on the in Tower one on the 72nd floor I worked in that building since the building opened as a young engineer and became an older engineer as time went on clicked on that Friday September 7th before 9/11 I was in my office and I was finishing up a rather large engineering project and I was getting ready to leave my office and happily it was going on a two-week vacation well deserved and wanted vacation with my wife we've got to go to the Outer Banks of North Carolina nice beaches down there and so as I was just finishing up my desk on that Friday afternoon the phone rang and it was a fellow named Steve Fiorelli a friend of mine coworker you know you work with people 2025 years you've probably spent more time in an office with people than sometimes you do with your family you know what you think about it so you eat lunch you come you share stories so Steve was a co-worker in another department that I worked closely with and he said a Pete I hear you're going on vacation I just wanted to wish you well I said yeah thanks Steve I'll be back in two weeks I'll see you then he said okay I'll see you then I never saw Steve again so I'm on vacation it's a Tuesday my son calls me and says planes hit the building as a plane hit the building I look at it I said Jesus look at this then I watched the events unfold like many of you did so I came back to New York a few days later and I actually came back and because of certain aspects of the initial recovery several of my friends bodies were found right away so I spent my first few days back going to wakes and funerals including the funerals of Steve Fiorelli by the way they almost made it out of the building so after doing that I got called into the chief engineer's office at the Port Authority and I said you know we're gonna send you down to Ground Zero to the emergency team down there they need some help they need some engineering assistance because you know the building you know the underground they need someone to help lead up that effort so I left Jersey City where we had temporary offices thinking I was going to him meeting for an hour hiding it back to that office for four days before I got back to just clean out take my stuff with me when I got here and at the site put on I got a bitter with a respirator and we're talking just days maybe a week after the collapse of the building and first thing I did was I walked around what used to be the building that I worked in to so many years and where of all my friends 84 of my friends and co-workers lost their lives you've seen pictures you may have seen it on TV but nothing can replace your senses of sight hearing smell the 3d visualization as I walked around what used to be a vibrant world trade center with 2743 people lost their lives there were fires burning with people scrambling on piles buildings portions of the buildings were standing 250 300 feet in the air of the towers there was a pile of burning rubble at least a hundred feet 30 meters for those of you from outside the u.s. burning rubble the it was just incredible the smoke and the smell that acrid smell I've never forgot the air pungent stayed with us for four months as the fires burned like died develop what was called because when we call it the World Trade Center coffee you know after six weeks you just stopped inhaling that you wore a wee respirator but still you know it's the pungent smell so we set about the task of providing technical assistance to the firemen and police that were doing a search and the first week or two we were there was actually a search and rescue effort after that it became a recovery effort recovery meant we were looking for the remains of people that parish it was unbelievable in terms of the site and what went on it was 24/7 it never shut down he was I say a week on this site was like being a month anywhere else that's how it you left for a day you came back it was like a week past actually lived I never left I lived in a temporary apartment downtown I stayed here I was here full-time many of us were we gave up our lives for a period of time actually we just kind of set things aside it was a emotional time people were so driven about one to do the right thing it was incredible that the the camaraderie the feeling and such tragedy people came together to want to be able to help not only us on the pile isn't cold but also people from around the country that came to volunteer people from all over that would part of the Salvation Army the Red Cross they were there to help they couldn't be on the site but they provided comfort stations for us food water some of the best restaurants in the cities and food down for those of you with tourists and paying for all of that we had free food you know we had all that food so much food that I lost 15 pounds put it back but it was just walking around the stress you didn't sleep well everything that we thought I wasn't alone in this you know there was many of us doing this so as the months went on the pile as we called it it seemed pictures we you Familia called it the pile start at the transition and change and it became the pit as we cool and as we went through that with the recovery and the search if they're about three months or so we started to think about how with all of this end I mean what happens at the end we were sitting around one evening actually at O'Hara's a few of us say after a long dusty long day was at night and sitting around having a beer - wash it down sometimes your best philosophy and thoughts are over a drink you know and one of the guys said you know he said I want to take that last piece of the World Trade Center on whatever that is I want to follow it up out of that tip and I want to keep going and I want to look back that'll be it so we said yeah that sounds about right what's that could it be we didn't know about around about March as we were doing the search we got into an area that was the area of tower 2 it was an area that we couldn't get into because it was debris and we were actually all the equipment and personnel over a road temporary Road if you would call it that of the debris to go over that area so in order to get into that area and search it we had to find another way into the site so I built the bridge first bridge I that was built that was a bridge engineer but I was fix bridges I never built a bridge but I got to build a bridge we built that bridge we called it a ramp you'll see it in some of the pictures if you go through there and then we were able to get into this area and excavate it out and watch and never forget that and we were it was down such a level that it turned out it was the lobby area of Tower 2 and in the lobby area of tower 2 we found the most bodies we found on the site in one place and why was that it was the area in the lobby where the police and fire were assembling and people were coming out of the building in the lobby and when the buildings came down and crushed the crushed a lot of first responders and people that were there in that area assembling so we had a unwritten kind of understanding on the site was uh we might get a little emotional I'm sorry about this it's still fresh in my mind even after fourteen years we had a kind of understanding with that you know if you found the body on this site we didn't find that many bodies people were just totally annihilated in this tragic event but if you did all work stopped on the site that person was wrapped in an American flag put on a gurney Chaplin was called Chaplin on duty may have been a chaplain a priest a rabbi whoever was on duty came down and six people picked up that gurney and carried it out of the site behind the chapel chaplain onto an ambulance and then to the morgue if it was a fireman or a police officer that was found it was six of his brothers six for him was six policemen that carried a man if it was a civilian like you were I was one of us on that gurney I carried the personnel so I remember it was in April 11th 2002 seven months to the day we found the last person the last body on the site was a woman I was down in the site he said hey Pete would you be part of the honor guard so myself and five of the workers we carried that woman out I was thinking as I carried that woman a sobering thought when you carry a body let me tell you and I was thinking I was saying boy this is someone's mother this person got up to go to work it's Owens mother someone's wife someone's sister they're never coming home you want to know what line 11 was all about you carry a body a whole you know what the whole thing is about not this museum not this memorial that's what it was about well we lay bit on you got to the end but during that time as I said in that area of tower two tell you a little Side Story as we excavate it down one of the toms that was there peek through the rubble and I was right in the corner of what used to be the lobby of Tower to like where the elevators were and one day someone put some flowers there so we put a candle there someone wrote someone's name there and as we excavated down some more people wrote on there and we looked at that and we said that's gonna be the last piece of traits that we take out and that's how last column came about so what you see downstairs downstairs in the last column with dollar writing on it was done it as it excavated down and people put writing on pictures of the firemen and loved ones lost and finally when we got down to the very end in May the end of May we were at the end of what was the recovery operation for us we had removed that 1.8 million tons of debris we searched for everyone tried to find the remains and we were done and it was on the night of May 28th and that evening that about over a thousand of us that had been working at the site came back that evening and we actually took the last column that was standing there and we cut it down and we put her on a good large gurney for Mary a bigger ceremony that the mayor's office and the politicians were gonna have two days later and leaving the site as we saw many times talked about all along that ramp that I had built were police and firemen saluting us because we had helped them in that whole time during that time marched off and we were out at the site and that was the end of the recovery so you know in the events of 9/11 and the terrorist attack you know we all saw some of the worst of what mankind can do but in the response and the people that I work with and the people on that ramp we saw the best with mankind and the best of the best were on that ramp that night thank you very much for listening

Channel: 9/11 Tribute Museum

Views: 69,290

Rating: 4.86059 out of 5

Keywords: September 11 Attacks (Event), World Trade Center (Building Complex), 9/11 Memorial and Museum, 9/11 Tribute Center, Port Authority Of New York And New Jersey (Mass Transportation System Operator), Morgan Stanley (Business Operation)

Id: RHZWI0gc9eI

Length: 30min 26sec (1826 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 01 2015