'The Pile' Holds Out Little Hope

Rescuers frustrated in search for survivors among the ruins

By Jessica Kowal | STAFF WRITER

September 13, 2001

Ground zero at the World Trade Center is a nightmarish jumble of steel and pulverized concrete and human remains.

The skeletons of buildings are laid out over several blocks, thousands of tons of steel compressed into what rescuers have begun calling "The Pile."

Those who saw the wreckage were unanimous in the view that, despite a few rescues, the Twin Towers have become a horrific cemetery.

It seemed impossible that victims survived monster blasts and tumbling steel and concrete, firefighters, doctors and volunteers said yesterday.

Jennifer Svahn, an attending vascular surgeon at Beth Israel Hospital, walked through the core of fallen buildings ready to help victims. Amid the gloomy, sooty, ashy heap, there were none.

"There's a morgue down there, and body parts," Svahn said. "It's a crematorium."

Early in the day, reporters were brought to the corner of West Street and Vesey Street, directly across from the charred stub that is One World Trade Center.

Six floors remained of the 110-story tower, with girders sticking up like forks and white window shades fluttering out of broken panes. From high up a half-mile away, both towers resembled scorched souffles, a grim blackness caving in on itself.

Office documents had flown out of file cabinets and off desktops and littered the ground, their edges burnt. Handwritten memos, lunch and limo expenses and paper covered with Chinese characters were found.

Closer in, firefighters found dozens of family photographs, desk fans, lamps and other bits of normalcy. Later, in the evening, the same scene would be bathed in the harsh light of huge spotlights that had been trucked in on large flatbeds.

Firefighter Robert Meaney emerged from The Pile with ash and sweat caking his red mustache and a small stuffed Tigger he found and hung from his uniform.

It was a reminder of the mission at hand.

"I figured it was on a lady's desk, and then I found a woman" who was dead, said Meaney, a member of Ladder 19 from the South Bronx. "She won't use it anymore."

In the World Financial Center, across West Street from the World Trade Center, hundreds of windows were blown out and falling debris left one corner of the building in tatters.

An American flag flew from a pole planted in the heaving remains of the pedestrian bridge that, in a past life, connected the north tower to the World Financial Center and now rested on West Street.

And dozens of feet of debris were heaped around every structure, burying cars and fire trucks. A few inches of ash and dust coated the street, turning to mud where water was added. Soot coated nearby skyscrapers.

Hundreds of firefighters with blank faces and red exhausted eyes stood nearby, waiting to be sent on their next mission. They looked up at the wreckage, and then down at the ground. Their black coats, pants and heavy boots were coated with ash and dust.

Paul Morgan, 65, a retired Army major, and Hal Wilson, 53, a former Army corporal, served together in Vietnam and brought their dogs, Cody Bear, a golden retriever, and Tsunami, a German shepherd, to search for victims.

They found firefighters' bodies next to firehoses laid out after the first plane crashed into One World Trade Center, Morgan said.

Cody Bear found three bodies near a fire truck that had been buried in debris, Morgan said. The dog searched for the living and found blood and flesh, he said.