On September 11, 2001 almost 3,000 people died due to a horrific act of terrorism, but that’s not what this article is about. This is about the thousands of first responders who were brave enough to put their lives on the line to save people in need. This is about the hundreds who couldn’t or didn’t go to work that day. This is about the survivors who lived to tell their story.
Being a student myself in school, Helaina Hovitz’s story really made a big impact on me. At the time she was a 12 year old student at an elementary school just 3 blocks away from the World Trade Center. She struggled to know and understand the situation back then, as she said, “But it’s very different to live through it in real-time as a child, with no idea if we would be killed in an instant, what was going to happen next, and if the world was going to end before I could see my family again and say goodbye.” Now that Helaina is older and has had time to process and gain a better understanding of traumatic events from that day, she has used her information as a resource to help others. She wrote a book called After 9/11, as well as informing young children about the events of 9/11 and openly answering their questions.
Kayla Bergeron, was a high-ranking official working on the sixty-eighth floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center during the attack. Her life since has been an emotionally unique experience, losing her mother and house shortly after the attack was just the beginning. Ms. Bergeron was in denial of having PTSD, “PTSD never occurred to me,” said Ms. Bergeron, “We weren’t first responders. We weren’t cops or firefighters whose job was to go into the building. People told us, ‘Be happy to be alive.’ We minimized ourselves afterward, and it all built up over the years.” It seamed as though she felt like she couldn’t have PTSD, like there was no reason to. Ms. Bergeron was pulled over twice for drunk driving, she went to court and was told she could either be put in jail or go to an alcohol treatment program. The court thought Ms. Bergeron had been drinking too much because of her PTSD from 9/11, After the attack Ms. Bergeron took almost no time off from work, “There was no time to grieve,” she said. Her choice was the program and after she finished it she moved in with her father. Kayla Bergeron now works at a fast food restaurant living a wonderful life.
Holly Winter was suppose to be at the Twin Towers on September 11 to meet some collage friends who lived in Chicago and New York. Holly and the Chicago friend decided to go to New York to surprise their friend for a birthday picnic. Holly had told her mom that she was coming to visit, but her mother persisted on coming up to visit Holly in Denver where she lived instead. Holly finally gave in and stayed home, but her Chicago friend still went. Holly later said, “My Chicago friend decided to make the trip without me. The surprise worked as planned and they called me at 8:00 a.m., and we laughed and talked for a while. I hung up so that they could enjoy the visit without keeping me on the phone. I lost them both.”
Elise O’Kane, a flight attendant for United Airlines, usually worked a flight from Boston to Los Angeles but when she was scheduling her flights for September, she accidentally typed in wrong code and ended up with a different schedule, not including her normal flight. The night before the flight, she logged in once more to the system in an attempt to try and change the flight last minute so she could do her normal Boston to LA. Unfortunately, she was one minute past the airlines deadline for changes. She was scheduled to fly to Denver instead. On the shuttle to work the next morning, she sat near a 33-year old man, Robert Fangman, who was excited about having picked up a shift from Boston to LA, which Elise had tried to get, but couldn’t. “I’m just so excited,” he said, “This is a great trip”. Robert Fangman was on Elise’s regular flight, Flight 175 with her other
colleagues, and they all died when the plane hit the South Tower. “Why me — out of all those wonderful people?” she asked. “What have I done? I’m not a saint or angel.” Immediately after the attack, she took a leave of absence because she felt like the world had changed and so had she. Elise went on to be a nurse because she wanted to help people. She also continued to fly for United Airlines and said, “I felt if I did not go back because of this incident, I would’ve been beaten by the terrorists – that they took me away from something I loved,” she said. After years of searching for Robert Fangman’s family, CNN heard of her story and helped her get in touch with them. They told her not to feel guilty – it wasn’t her fault. Nursing and healing others has helped her with the trauma.
I had the honor and privilege of interviewing Keith Schneider, who was at ground zero on 9/11. He was a firefighter paramedic for the New York City Fire Department at the time. He was just getting home that morning after working a 24 hour shift and was talking to his girlfriend on the phone when a message came through call waiting from the fire department recalling all active employees back to work because a plane had hit one of the twin towers. When he got downtown the second plane had just hit the other tower and he was assigned to go into the first hit tower and evacuate people from the 30-50th floors. He said, “We had reports over the radio that people were jumping from the top floors of the towers, because heat rises, the plane struct below them and I can only imagine how hot it would be to be in a fire without our fire gear on.” He said they were down there for three days before they were allowed to go home and eat and shower and then report back. They had no idea what else was going on and didn’t know about the plane hitting the Pentagon or crashing into the field for three days. They didn’t have cell phones and there was no service at all where they were. Their families also didn’t know if we were dead or alive, but Schneider said he walked in front of a live TV camera and someone from his family saw him and notified others that he was alive. His brother in law was also a fire fighter in New York at the time and they passed each other in the street at one point so they knew the other was alive. He remembers getting the order from the command center to evacuate Tower 1 because they were afraid it would also collapse and they were only about a football field away when it did. He said, “had we stayed another 5 minutes, we would have died.” He remembers that they couldn’t see anything at all, but only could hear. The remainder of that day he said they were just looking for survivors. He said the next day they asked everyone to look as quietly as possible so they could hear if there were any survivors. Later the second day he was assigned to a temporary morgue across the street. His job was to look for any type of ID on dead bodies to give to the city medical examiner. He said he remembers at one point there were just tables all over the place full of American flags. They would drape a flag over the dead bodies for dignity. He said that if they found a deceased first responder, other police officers or fire fighters would carry their own out. He said, “I remember there were just thousands of dead bodies covered in American flags. I don’t even know where the flags came from.” One memory that he shared was about something he heard that day, he said, “The sound we were hearing, the air disruption, was the sound of people jumping out of the windows. We didn’t figure that out until maybe the 3rd day. Bodies hit the ground around 70 mph.” He said it was like the sound a tennis racket makes if it’s swung really fast. It haunts him to this day. Another interesting thing he mentioned was that for over a year, almost 2 years, rubble and remains from the site were taken out to Staten Island, Fresh Hills, where there was a hanger at a landfill. He said people were on both sides of a conveyor belt going through the rubble looking for anything that would be used to DNA a person. He said they found fingers and other small body parts. “They just wanted to let families know that they found their loved ones. That’s all anyone really wants.” When I asked him if he had or has an PTSD or survivor’s guilt he said, “I do, it’s no where near as bad as it used to be. In the early on stages it didn’t hit right away. I probably admitted to it in about 2004.” He said he has gotten counseling and help from the VA and doesn’t have near the number of nightmares as he did. He said one thing that he and other first responder survivors have to do is a health screening every year. This includes things like a chest x-ray, labs and other cancer screenings. He said he has been lucky and hasn’t had any health issues, but other people he knows have had some problems. “I had significant guilt about living. Probably two times really prominent that stand out that I contemplated suicide, but did not have a plan or an action, i just thought “i would probably be better off not being here.” When I asked him how his life has changed since 9/11 he said, “It didn’t change negatively, if it happened again today, I would do the same thing and not even think twice about it.” He said everyone’s lives changed that day, some just more and different than others. In 2014 Schneider retired from the FDNY and moved with his family to Kentucky to be closer to family. One of the last things that he said was, “the biggest things that stuck in my head were the people that were screaming when we had to leave the building. I wish every day that we could have done more.”
The second 9/11 survivor that I interviewed was Michael Middleton, a police officer who worked in Washington DC and had an office 400 yards away from the Pentagon. He was working a traffic accident when he heard a call on the radio from one of his shift partners that he had witnessed a plane crashing into the Pentagon. Middleton of course quickly went to the scene and entered the Pentagon to help out. He remembers, “as soon as I went in, I was immediately doused with water, for the force of the impact had ruptured the main water line. It was very dark and full of black smoke inside. While we were making our way down a hallway, the wall to the left of us caved in on us and we were trapped for a few moments but were able to get out and continue down the hallway until we reached ground zero.” He came across three people and helped them out right away. As he searched the floors for more people, the smoke was so bad that he had to crawl on his stomach. “Get the hell out”, said a fire and rescue personnel. As Middleton and his coworkers were leaving the building he remembers feeling dizzy and lightheaded from the smoke inhalation. Once he was outside, he said he doesn’t remember much, but was taken to Alexandria Hospital and was in a coma for 5 days. He suffered first and second degree burns to his lungs and throat. He suffered from ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) and sepsis and was in organ failure, “but my doctor tried an experimental drug on me which saved my life” said Middleton. When asked how the day was for him, Middleton said, “that day was pure hell to say the least! I think about it every day!” Middleton did suffer from PTSD, but after support from friends and family, he now works with other officers that suffer from PTSD and helps them through their difficult journey. He still works for the state Police and has been promoted to sergeant. On October 1, 2001, Middleton and his wife were featured on the front of People Weekly magazine and there was an article about his story in the magazine.
As of today, more survivors and first responders have died since the events, than people who died in the event. Some of the mental and physical health affects from 9/11 include things such as PTDS, depression/anxiety, alcohol and tobacco abuse, asthma and poor lung functioning along with respiratory issues. Cancers of a wide variety, GI (stomach system) issues, heart related problems, and many other physical and mental health issues continue to be a problem for 9/11 survivors.One of the most common issues that people involved with 9/11 have is PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), which affected a huge percentage of these individuals. The CDC World Trade Center Health Program conducted a study and, “when asked to estimate the most common medical issues plaguing survivors and first responders since 9/11, 31% of survey respondents guessed that PTSD was at the top of the list” (Selby and Pachecho). The longer a person worked at the site after the attacks, the more likely they were to get PTSD.
The National September 11 Memorial in New York city is a special place for survivors or anyone to go and honor the people who lost their lives, read stories from the events, see artifacts and other things recovered from ground zero, and walk around the two reflecting pools. Along the pools walls, or parapets, are “the 2,983 names of the men, women and children killed in the attacks of September 11, 2001, and February 26,1993, are inscribed into bronze parapets surrounding the twin memorial pools, located at the footprints of the twin towers” (Blais and Rasic, 180). The museum also has photos of the faces of the people who died. Some of the artifacts at the museum include a firetruck from the Ladder Company 3, a special steel beam cross that stood after the attacks, and the remains of the original “Vesey Street stair remnant, also known as the historic ‘Survivors’ Stairs’, which was the first artifact to be installed in the museum” (Blais and Rasic, 230). At night, an art piece called “Tribute in Light” can be seen as two blue light beams shining up to 4 miles in the sky. These are supposed to represent the original twin towers. The memorial will always be a place for remembering the events of 9/11 and honoring those who lost their lives on that tragic day.
