First-aiders call time in
New York unforgettable
Englishtown-Manalapan First Aid Squad members (l-r) Michael Alongi, Donna Hartman, Ira Shapiro and Doug Tymczak joined other New Jersey emergency crews who responded to the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City.
MANALAPAN — When duty called, members of the Englishtown-Manalapan First Aid Squad answered.
In the frantic days after the Sept. 11 attack on America, four members of the squad went to Manhattan on Sept. 15-16 to assist in the rescue efforts at the site of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
Sgt. Doug Tymczak, Ira Shapiro, Michael Alongi and Donna Hartman represented the volunteer squad after a statewide emergency services agency asked its Monmouth County branch to send 24 units to help out in the city.
The squad’s captain, John Hartman, said he chose those four members because he felt they would best represent the squad.
Shapiro, who was present at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and helped during the bombing of a park there, said the trip began on the afternoon of Sept. 15 when the local contingent left Manalapan for a staging area in Newark. After loading the ambulance with supplies such as shovels, socks, shirts, blankets, safety equipment and other items that had been donated in the days following the attack, they and more than 20 other crews left for downtown Manhattan.
Shapiro said the convoy of ambulances and emergency service vehicles made its way to the Holland Tunnel, which has been closed since Sept. 11. For the emergency vehicles, the garbage trucks blocking the entrance to the tunnel pulled away and they crossed the river to New York City.
"We got down on the other side of the tunnel, and it was like the Twilight Zone," Shapiro said, noting that at about 8 p.m. the sun had been down for a while, but the lights near the spot that has come to be called ground zero made it seem like midday.
Once in the city, the crew moved to another staging area at Chelsea Piers. On the way there thousands of people cheered them on. Once at the staging area, the ambulances lined up and waited their turn to enter the site and assist inside or to go on calls to other parts of the city, making up for the city vehicles that were already on site.
Shapiro said the string of ambulances looked like taxis lined up at a hotel, waiting for a doorman to flag them down for the hotel guests.
The Englishtown-Manalapan crew, which was the 17th ambulance in line, waited quite a while before it was their turn. While they were waiting, some people came to the ambulances and gave food and thanks to the members of the crews, Shapiro said.
"The most moving thing, I thought, was all of the people coming out to support the rescue workers," Donna Hartman said.
The crew waited several hours before getting their call to go in, at about 3:30 a.m. Sept. 16. Their orders were to go to ground zero and treat injured rescue and cleanup workers. Shapiro said most of the injuries were lacerations and bruises.
The crew parked at the site’s southeast corner and checked in with officials. They had to go through several checkpoints on their way into the site, he said, to make sure they were supposed to be there.
"As you got closer to the area, there were more police and military personnel," Shapiro said.
When the local volunteers finally got into the midst of the World Trade Center they were struck by the destruction in front of them.
"You turn the corner and you walk down, and your jaw just goes …" Shapiro said, dropping his jaw.
Alongi said he spent much of the waiting time preparing himself for what he might see, but he was still amazed at the size of the devastation.
Tymczak echoed those sentiments, saying, "Everything is just massive — from the people, to the donations, to the police to the fire department."
Shapiro said surrounding buildings looked as if they were from a movie set, with a finished facade, but nothing else. Other buildings were intact structurally, but their windows were all blown out.
He said each building at ground zero had a marking painted on it. An open box meant the building had been checked out and was OK to enter. A box with one line drawn through it meant the building was stable, but personnel were not to enter without prior approval. A box with an "X" in it meant personnel were not allowed to enter for any reason.
Shapiro said the collapsed buildings looked like the different layers of earth that might be seen at the Grand Canyon, stacked on top of each other.
Tymczak said the scene reminded him of layer cake, and there was one area where he saw what looked like eight stories of a building reduced into one.
"It was all steel and concrete," Tymczak said. "I couldn’t see a chair or a computer."
"Things were just pulverized," Shapiro added.
Hartman added, "Even the concrete is powder."
At a point in time when hopes for survivors still existed, the workers on site were in a daze, Tymczak said, adding that it appeared as if they had been working themselves to death.
Emergency vehicles raced by continuously throughout the night and every so often dozens of military personnel were brought in to start their shifts as others were taken out, brought somewhere to get rest and food.
Steel workers and iron workers made their way through the rubble trying to cut and remove pieces of buildings carefully but quickly. Shapiro said even though he and his crew arrived days after the attack, cleanup crews still had not made a dent in the piles of destruction.
He said everyone on site had a specific job to do and did so efficiently. Police and military personnel kept everything secure. Rescue workers tried to find survivors. Emergency technicians tended to the injured.
The crew members then made their way to St. Vincent’s Hospital, which had become a level one trauma center since the day of the attack. However, by the morning of Sept. 16 the doctors there had few people to treat, so things were quiet.
However, Alongi said when an ambulance came to bring an injured police officer, everyone quickly sprang to attention. One police department detective elected to stay with the injured man, saying that even though he did not know him personally he wanted to make sure the injured officer was not alone.
There was a wall at St. Vincent’s that had been plastered with fliers of missing persons, which Alongi said he and the group read through. There were so many of them, he said, that the task took them quite a while.
Each member of the crew was touched in a different way or from a different experience during their time in New York City, but each was uniformly happy that they were just able to get in there and help.
"To just be there and trying to help — once we got out there, we were doing our part," Alongi said.