Islander among first responders called to the Twin Towers
September 11, 2001, was an off day at the fire department for Urban Search and Rescue Medic Joe Hernandez, who is now retired. He had three kids in high school and recalls that morning he was getting ready to go to the Post Office with his wife.
“As I was backing out of the driveway, my pager went off,” said Hernandez. “At the same time a neighbor came out and asked if we’d heard what happened in New York.”
After heading back into the house to turn on the news, it was no surprise to Hernandez when his pager went off a second time. He said he knew instantly this was going to be a very long ordeal, and knew if he chose to go to the Post Office it would be the last moment he had with his wife for a while. His bags were always ready to go, he explained last, as his search and rescue team had a 4-hour “wheels-up” protocol.
“They want everybody there within two hours of receiving the call, and then you have two hours to get everything ready — pack, gear, buses, the convoy,” Hernandez explained last week.
By early afternoon on that day, three tons of equipment and 84 members from the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Team departed Miami, he said. Because of the confusion regarding flights, the country was on a no-fly lockdown, including response assets, Hernandez recalled.
“Only those given special permission were in the air,” said Hernandez. “Everything in the country was shut down, including all of the teams that needed to get there.”
Of the 28 federal teams, Hernandez said, only one of them was already in New York City. His team was asked to stay in Florida while President George Bush was speaking at a nearby elementary school. The team arrived by road transport at the World Trade Center the following morning.
“We were frustrated because we wanted to get there earlier,” said Hernandez. “We know time is of the essence. We were frustrated in hearing the pass alarms.”
These alarms, he explained, are a protection device that every firefighter is required to keep on their person while they are working. The alarm sounds when the person wearing it remains still for an extended period of time. All the satellites had switched to Ground Zero, making it possible for every team to communicate with the area, so they could all hear the alarms going off and there was nothing they could do but listen.
“It sounded like a field of birds,” said Hernandez, choking up. “Those batteries lasted about 11 hours.”
Hernandez explained that most people do not realize the Twin Towers stood 110 stories high, and were 12 million square feet. There were 239 elevators, and 71 escalators combined. Firefighters and rescue workers were exposed to untold amounts of toxins, including heavy metals, paint and paint thinner, algaecides, cleaning supplies, asbestos and Freon. These multiple toxins made wearing masks with specialized filters an absolute necessity, said Hernandez.
“People wondered why the fires burned for such a long time. Yes, there was jet fuel, but it was so much more,” said Hernandez. “In those buildings were generators, in case of a power failure. Together there was 65,000 gallons of diesel fuel to run those generators. That burned for a long time. That’s what we were up against constantly.”
Hernandez describes the scene as Orson Wells’ “War of the Worlds,” which brought a full range of emotions to everyone on site. As the teams came through, he said, because they came from fire, EMS-based agencies, they realized the only thing to say was, “we are here to assist.”
“We did everything we could to help them get their own out,” said Hernandez of FDNY and NYPD, “and, of course, the victims that they were trying to save in the buildings.”
By the second day on the scene, Hernandez said there was a security wall placed around them to keep people away, although, he said, most of them had good intent. The days were taken up with daily searches trying to get to the sub-basement floors in an effort to save anyone down there.
“You could smell the saltwater down in the sub-basement floors,” Hernandez said. “It looked very strange as we walked through. I remember a donut shop that was there. It had one shoe beside a chair. It looked like the person got up to run and possibly ran out of their shoe. There was a half-eaten donut and a knocked over cup of coffee. You saw the presence of people that were there and then the action of them trying to leave.”
In his 15-day deployment, Hernandez spent 11 days searching the rubble pile of the World Trade Center. Although no one was recovered, he said it did bring a lot of closure to the families, as they were able to recover many precious personal items.
“As you started to work your way towards the center of the pile, it changed your perspective of what had happened completely,” Hernandez said. “Coming into the area, looking at it from the edge, as opposed to being in the middle of it, looking from the inside out, was indescribable.”
As responders, Hernandez said they began writing their names on their pant-legs and arms as they traveled to the sub-basement looking for victims. They also wrote notes to loved ones and put them in their helmets, just in case, he said, because 343 first responders had already been called home. Hernandez kept a journal of the incident for his kids and his own recollection of the tragedy.
He wrote this on Sept. 21, 2001:
“As we arrived at the rubble pile of the World Trade Center, and viewing it from all vantage points, our task appeared to be overwhelming, but the enormity of the search and rescue mission was amplified a thousand fold when we viewed it from the middle and from below the debris pile. None-the-less, we had to persevere for the sake of those that were missing and their families, and to satisfy our own unfaltering hope and belief that someone somewhere had managed to survive this horror and were waiting anxiously and desperately to be rescued. In the end, we didn’t find any survivors from this disaster. The impact was quietly expressed on our faces and in our emotions. Our only comfort was in knowing that we gave it our best. To some degree our search and discovery of many unfortunate souls who perished in this assault, though sad and tragic, was able to deliver a small measure of closure to a few grieving brothers and their pals.”