City's Towers Of Strength

Dennis Duggan

September 20, 2001

The Towers are gone?

Don't you believe it.

I know because I talked to them Tuesday night during a walk around what cops now call the "hot zone."

What I discovered was that there are more than two towers in this town. There are millions of towers. I just hadn't taken the time to notice. Or I had, like most New Yorkers, taken them for granted.

The towers I'm talking about aren't made of steel and concrete, but of flesh and blood.

I was privileged to talk to some of them as they came off their 12-hour tour Tuesday night red-eyed, dusty and tired.

But also full of spirit and resolve and breathing fire. And still hoping, against mounting odds, that they'd find survivors under the tons of steel and broken glass.

I talked with Sgt. Dennis O'Connell, 41, of the Police Department's Emergency Service Unit, inside a heavily guarded special operations command within a restricted area, bordered by Chambers and Rector streets, and West and Broadway. Sixteen acres of hell.

"We can't give up," he said. He's a battle-hardened veteran, with 17 years of disaster duty under his belt. Name it - plane crashes, subway smashups, hurricanes, collapsed buildings, Oklahoma City - he's been there.

"This is all of them rolled into one," he said. "It's 100 times worse than anything I've ever seen." Then he was off to tell his bosses what he had seen and done, and for them to tell him what he might have to do tomorrow.

After that, O'Connell was going to get into his car and drive home to Westbury, where his wife and two young children were waiting.

"It's hard on my wife and the children," he said, "so we keep them up till I get home around 10:30. Then I talk to them for a while, and after that I tuck them into bed."

A tower for sure. The O'Connell tower.

Then I talked to Lt. Daniel Donadio, who grew up in Bensonhurst and now lives in Staten Island.

Donadio has 20 years on the job. He works with the canine unit. There are 25 dogs working with the cops. "They know something terrible happened here," Donadio said. "I was going to retire this year, but not now, not after this."

Donadio has been moved to tears by the response from across the nation.

"They have sent us everything from portable kennels to dog booties. Thank God not one of our dogs has died here, although we had one close call," he said. The Port Authority police have lost a dog.

Another tower, this Donadio.

There are telling details everywhere you look. A large, white van that looks like a misplaced ice cream truck has a handwritten sign reading, "Guns cleaned."

"That's because of all these particles floating around in the air here," Chris Cottingham, a tall, 28-year-old cop assigned to walk me around explained. "They clog up the guns."