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SuperJude wrote:

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It is here again, I can't believe it's been 4 years. I was fortunate enough to have been there for 2 week after doing recovery work. I got in with a friend who is a Sandhog in NYC, a tunnel digger

I wrote that back when I joined this site. My friend, the Sandhog, is now dead. Liver cancer.

R.I.P. Steve Orsulich

Sitting here browsing through my photos and it still amazes me just how huge and fucked up it all was and yet how so many people came together to try and help. It's really a shame the powers that be were so unprepared to cope with the levels of pollutants released by the fall of the Towers. We were wearing paper painting masks for the first couple days, ffs. On the other hand, the FDNY, Red Cross and Salvation Army were all really great, amazing even.

I was upstate when I heard over the radio what was happening. Myself and 3 friends immediately began to make our way down to the city, which took 8 hours all told between being turned around at checkpoints and finally getting below 14th street. All we did that first day was run food and water down to ground zero from the high school right there, Stuyvesant (sp). I think my friends were traumatized because they felt they really needed to return upstate. I went and came back down that night, meeting up with my friend Steve whom I mentioned before, and is now dead.

3000 people at the Javits center and they were kicking everybody out. Steve, meanwhile, is chatting up some fellow Sandhogs. A van pulls up asking if we're the "Steel workers and welders" so somebody says "yeah" and we suddenly have a ride right into ground zero.

We started with 18 guys in the van. By the time we were on foot and close, those numbers had dwindled to 6 or 7. Some cop nodded towards a broken window that went through a gym, which lead directly to the center of it all. By the time we got there, it was 5 of us. Me, Steve, this guy Jake Jacobson, this other guy we called Walking Boss and some dude we started calling Munchhausen because he lied so much. Walking Boss disappeared after a few hours. Munchhausen wasn't allowed back in once he left. Same for Jake. Me and Steve had decided to sleep on the boat, the Spirit of NY and thus were still within the perimeter and thus were able to attain the Red Cards which afforded us all access, everywhere.

That Red Card was like a golden key. We didn't pay for food, drinks, cab rides, cloths, nothing for damn near 2 weeks. Which of course was deserved since we were pretty much picking up body parts and destroyed remnants.

First few nights were so hopeful, working furiously thinking you'd be able to save somebody. Then we all knew everybody was dead, yet all the families and people outside the fences were cheering us when we came or went, with those really sad signs reading "Find my Dad/Sister/Mother/Daughter" etc.

Inside, a lot of people imagine there being, you know, like 3000 bodies. It wasn't like that in the least. Heat and Pressure pulverized most of them. The only whole bodies I saw were day 1 and 2. After that it was all partials. So everything goes out in buckets. The cranes pull of the big pieces. You get in there and dig, putting any paperwork or whatever in buckets, sending them down, debris in buckets, sending them down, finally body parts in plastic bags/then in buckets, which went to the FBI. Since Steve and I weren't affiliated with any of the construction guys or FDNY, we picked a spot by the South Tower which we worked at for the duration of our time there. This was the area where you've seen the overpass pictures, right across from the Deutsche Bank building.

I found out Steve could apparently walk anywhere at any height, no matter how dangerous but he and a few people I would come to meet had a terrible aversion to human remains. I dunno, that didn't bother me so much. I feel the soul leaves the body, whatever happens, these are just remains. It was the families that really got to me, the survivors and such, just funny how everybody copes differently. It was all kind of a blur, just blended in, watching the pile get smaller, clearing roadways out till finally most of the volunteers like myself were gone, replaced by high paid Bovis construction workers, though to their credit they also dealt with quite a lot of brutal things indescribable to the average, sheltered American.

Now I'm on the west coast, it's crazy how unaware people in LA can be about anything that did not directly invade their little bubble, but thankfully there are a lot of east coasters living out here.

Anyway, since somebody kindly asked me to share, there's some of it.

-SJ™