‘Through trauma, through catastrophe, the world now has an opportunity to evolve in a way it may not have otherwise been able’
By: David Campbell
Princeton Township psychologist Michael Libertazzo spent almost a week counseling firefighters and rescue workers at the ruins of the former World Trade Center towers after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.
Scraps of poetry written on index cards during moments of downtime, his way of processing what he saw, provide a glimpse of the horror rescue workers have had to undergo.
Mr. Libertazzo, who runs a home practice on Rollingmead and works as a trauma counselor for police and firefighters, chokes up when he reads the words he wrote during what must seem another lifetime, but one that he says haunts him still.
The images, even in poetry, are inexpressible:
"Anatomy coming off the pile to be put on ice piece by piece, never to be reassembled for a grave all its own. A fireman’s helmet strapped to a stretcher. A melted badge. A boot. A jacket with something inside, the rest of him somewhere else."
They reveal the depths of grief as well as heights the human spirit can attain in times of great tragedy:
"Their eyes are glazed over with floating thoughts. Please God. Please. Please tell me that it’s not real."
He writes of the firefighters he counseled: "You won’t find bigger hearts anywhere in the world."
Mr. Libertazzo said he went to lower Manhattan "on impulse." He stayed with the rescue workers from the Wednesday after the Sept. 11 attack until the following Monday.
"I went right to the pile and would just watch which rescue workers seemed like they were in the worst shape, who would sit down alone, you could see it in their eyes," he said. "I would sit next to them and see if they wanted to talk."
Some would break down crying, he said. How did they process the experience?
"They would start to talk about it and be pretty broken up and incoherent when they broke down," he said. "They would kind of cry it out, say it out loud what they saw. Then they would recompose themselves and go back."
He sat with rescue workers at the morgue.
"As they dropped off bodies and walked out, I watched which ones sat, what they would do," he said.
Mr. Libertazzo said he was struck by the brotherhood and teamwork exhibited by the rescue workers.
"The heart, the shared intent of rescue, the level of humanity that was right there on site, how everyone took care of everyone else," he said.
In the early stages of work after the attack, he continued, "There was this kind of magnet stuck to the pile. People would eat sandwiches at the pile. There was this frantic energy to find survivors, you know, a kind of panic."
Mr. Libertazzo said that as the days went on, "Guys were really fatiguing, weren’t really resting, weren’t sleeping. There was more, I think, people breaking down, especially when they found the remains of a firefighter or policeman."
He said there was much care for one another among the firefighters: "A hand on the shoulder…"
At Chelsea Piers, where a base camp was set up with cots, counselors and other support services for the workers, Mr. Libertazzo said he witnessed "an incredible effort by volunteers all working together, and it was a very non-ego kind of energy."
He said his handwritten poems "happened often when I was overwhelmed and needed a break, to be kind of alone with it all, to feel what I was feeling and write it down with index cards."
He said the exercise helped give him the courage to go back in.
"The empty stares come from beneath a helmet and respirator," one poem reads. "No words necessary. A shared understanding. The sun’s up casting its light on Liberty."
Mr. Libertazzo said many of the workers will require years of recovery.
"This is going to be lifelong, the recovery," he said, but stressed that their lives can be happy ones nevertheless.
Although his work in lower Manhattan is finished, he is preparing a report with Bellevue Hospital for the mayor’s office in New York and for a federal agency called National Disaster Medical Systems.
He said the report will outline what he saw, what was done, what could have been done.
"I’m assuming we’re going to do a massive effort to help the heroes recover," he said. "When you come out of ‘Ground Zero,’ the streets are lined with New Yorkers. I walked out with a Vietnam vet and he started crying. He said to me that it wasn’t like this before, and he was very touched by that."
On the brighter side, Mr. Libertazzo said, "I’m hoping this is a real opportunity in terms of the world pulling together, getting away from ‘I’ and closer to ‘we.’ "
He said, "Through trauma, through catastrophe, the world now has an opportunity to evolve in a way it may not have otherwise been able."
And a poem, penned on a notecard at ground zero, suggests that even the counselors themselves sometimes need a helping hand:
"And when the caretaker couldn’t take care no more, a firefighter put his hands on my shoulders and mumbled beneath a mask, ‘Are you all right?’
And he shook me, he shook me back to the task at hand, and the caretaker returned to the pile to take care."