The Record (NJ)

Workers still hold hope for life amid the smell of death at 'the pit'

Tuesday, September 25, 2001

By MIKE KELLY Record Columnist

-- NEW YORK

The rotting smell squeezes your eyes, poisons your tongue, twists your nose, worms through your hair -- then settles in that corner of your emotional memory that never lets you forget.

The smell of death.

The pit.

Ground zero.

To truly understand the mangled destruction -- and mass murder -- of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, you need to see and smell this place the rescue workers now call "the pit."

Imagine a debris pile of Godzilla-like proportions -- five stories high and seven stories below ground, stretching over a moonscape four blocks long by three blocks wide. Even two weeks after the tragedy, workers have barely begun to delve into the estimated 120 million tons of rubble.

Imagine steel girders and pipes tangled like knotted hair. Or a police car crushed so mightily that its chassis has squished out from under its body, like a bug under your shoe. Or fires boiling from deep caverns. Or a flagpole broken off one building and thrust into the skin of another -- 50 yards away.

Then, imagine the stench of thousands of victims, their bodies trapped when each of the 110-story trade center towers crumbled. Authorities say more than a million body parts may eventually be recovered here.

"Smell that?" said Port Authority police Lt. Brian Tierney, as the wind shifted and the acrid odor swept over. "There it is again."

Tierney, who lives in Teaneck and is normally assigned to the Port Authority police contingent at the George Washington Bridge, now commands teams of Port Authority police officers who comb the rubble of the trade center in search of any sign of victims, including 37 Port Authority cops.

The cops and firefighters who come here each day for 12-hour shifts still call this a "rescue operation" -- an important verbal distinction because it implies that someone might still be alive.

Indeed, Port Authority police search teams, who go into the pit with shovels, two pairs of gloves each, pickaxes, helmets, flashlights, goggles, and mountain-climbing harnesses and ropes, will eagerly tell you they still believe they might find survivors even 14 days after the Twin Towers toppled -- even 13 days after the last survivors were pulled from the pit.

"I try not to count the days," said Port Authority Officer Vincent Zappulla Jr. of Harrington Park. Added his colleague, Bill Connors, his knees covered with sand from crawling in the pit: "Our friends are in there."

But then, the wind shifts and the smell of death passes over -- and reality invades optimism.

"That awful smell," said Tierney, his voice falling off, as he rubbed his nose to ward off the smell. "You never forget it."

The work here is sweaty, filthy, often bloody, and occasionally menacing.

Imagine dozens of rescue workers in red, blue, yellow, and white hard hats climbing over rubble that has no rhyme or reason in the way it has fallen. Conjure stacks of plastic buckets to haul away photos and wallets and body parts. Envision side streets still smothered in gray dust, with special "wash stations" on sidewalks that once were home to outdoor cafes. Picture grim-faced workers walking by a poster in a corner phone booth of the smiling sex doctor, Dr. Ruth Westheimer.

At the top of a pile -- hovering over the crater-like pit -- girders as long as freight cars stick this way and that, like a gargantuan pincushion. Looming nearby is a grid-like piece of concrete and steel that's the last remnant of the skin of the south tower. It rises more than 12 stories, but looks as fragile now as a paper doll cutout.

Atop the grid, ironworkers attached an American flag, its gentle to-and-fro a marked contrast to the cacophony below of men looking for life and machines trying to remove that which ended it.

"The bizarre part is the attempts at normalcy," said Tierney. "You'll be here, looking at the rubble, and then you'll see a guy walking by eating a hot dog and drinking a soda."

When they aren't dodging loose rubble that might cover deep caverns licked by fires still smoldering below, rescue teams must look out for the tractor-grappler cranes that lift debris onto dump trucks.

"You try to find an ironworker that's operating a crane," said Port Authority Officer Tibor Toth of East Brunswick. "You try to get a relationship so we can work together. He pulls off some steel, then we go down and dig."

Many rescue workers' hands are cut -- this from sifting by hand for bodies through mounds of pulverized concrete laced with razor-like shards of steel. Officer Harvey Jarratt of Perth Amboy rolled up his sleeve to display a 5-inch gash.

Others tell of all manner of rocks or pieces of steel piping that routinely clunk off their plastic hard hats as they crawl under shifting rubble or explore tunnels. Port Authority Police Sgt. Antonio Scannella even fractured his left kneecap trying to run with other workers from a wall that suddenly caved in.

"I got caught in the stampede," he said.

A window frame lies next to a foot-thick steel girder. Wires grow from the gray dirt like dandelions. Ten floors of a building sit in a stack, separated by more pipes, wires, and pulverized concrete.

"Like a piece of lasagna," said Port Authority Officer Ed McQuade of Jackson.

What you don't find is evidence of the thousands of offices that once called the trade center home. No intact phones. No computers that aren't broken. No desks or chairs.

When it comes, success is measured in the smallest of ways.

On Monday, success for the Port Authority teams meant finding a missing officer's memo book in the trunk of a crushed car.

"It meant a lot for me to read it," said Scannella, rubbing a hand over his aching knee. "And then it made me feel very sad."

Aside from the memo book and a few other items, the car was empty, with no sign of the missing officer.

Scannella turned to look at the pit. A plume of white smoke curled from a mound of twisted steel and broken wall.

"We still have many more places to look," said Scannella.

He picked up a bottle of Gatorade, took a sip, then bit into a granola bar.

Then headed back to the pit.

-- Anonymous, September 25, 2001