'It's a Horror to Know'

Cops describe the agony of the search for the missing

By Sean Gardiner | STAFF WRITER

September 18, 2001

Covered in the white ash that was once the World Trade Center, police officers spoke for the first time yesterday about their search for those missing - including 23 of their brethren - since terrorists crashed planes into the Twin Towers last Tuesday.

"I knew them all," Officer Mark DeMarco said of the 14 emergency service squad officers who are among the missing police. "It's a big family atmosphere. It sounds repetitive, but everybody is a big family. We all stick together. You're hurting when you lose one person, but the magnitude of this goes way beyond that."

As several officers described what it's like trying to rescue their fellow officers and more than 5,000 other people reported missing in the World Trade Center catastrophe, the Police Department released pictures of the 23 officers trapped beneath the avalanche of cement and steel when the towers collapsed after being struck by hijacked commercial airliners.

Included among those missing are Moira Smith, an officer with the 13th Precinct who could be one of the first female officers to be killed while on duty since the city's three police departments merged in 1994, officials said.

Det. Julia Koniosis, president of the Policewomen's Endowment Association, which represents about 6,000 female police officers in the department, said Smith was "very, very well liked."

"I was at the [Fresh Kills] landfill [yesterday] and everyone was talking about her," Koniosis said, adding that if Smith died then "she died a hero."

But the officers working on the "pile," as police union president Patrick Lynch called the massive mounds of rubble yesterday, are not ready to concede their brethren are dead, even with a week having passed since the attack.

"This is a rescue operation," a teary-eyed Lynch said, "and we'll stay on that pile until we rescue someone."

"If we are able to find our way out of that place then someone could still be in there [alive]," DeMarco said.

Nonetheless, Cardinal Edward Egan celebrated a special Mass last night at St. Patrick's Cathedral for the dead and missing police officers, as well as the dead and missing firefighters.

"This evening, here in our beloved cathedral, there is in our midst much sadness and much pain," he said. "Friends and family have lost many whom they dearly love and who dearly loved them. The loss was sudden and unexpected. They were full of life and full of hope for the future. They guided us, they protected us, they gave their lives for us."

DeMarco was with a team of Emergency Service Squad officers in Tower One trying to evacuate people from the stairwell when "we heard a massive rumble and we were told the other tower was coming down."

DeMarco was trapped in the rubble after ducking into Six World Trade Center. He said after wandering in the dark he and five other officers were able to make their way out of the building. Others weren't so lucky.

"I don't know how we came out of that building," DeMarco said. "We were wandering around for 20 to 25 minutes. We don't belong here."

He said that on Wednesday, "I was able to get back and direct some of our officers where we were. Right now I know the location of where these [trapped] officers and firemen were."

The problem is rescue workers can't reach them.

"It's a horror to know that they're in there," said Officer Bill Breury, another Emergency Services Squad officer. "It's very frustrating to know that we just can't go to where they are and find them."

The officers' stories yesterday were not only filled with frustration but also the despair of not having recovered a single body since Wednesday. The stories are also full of heroism.

John Perry, who had worked in the Police Department's Advocate's Office for several years and recently had been transferred to the 40th Precinct, was filing his retirement papers in One Police Plaza Tuesday when the planes hit. He ran from police headquarters to the disaster site and hasn't been seen since.

Joe Vigiano, a highly decorated Emergency Services officer stationed in Harlem, was another trapped in the rubble. His brother, John Vigiano, a firefighter with Ladder Co. 132 in Bedford-Stuyvesant also responded and is missing.