“From responses to earthquakes, you learn that people survive these things for days,” said Fairborn fire Lt. Joey Lykins, a former technical search specialist with the task force. “We were thinking we would be plucking people right and left out of this pile.”
But unlike many natural disasters, the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 caused destruction so sudden and violent that rescue searches primarily became corpse-recovery operations.
Looking back a decade later, local task force members said they are glad they went to Ground Zero, but the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil remains imprinted on their thoughts and continues to shape the way they feel about the work, lives and country’s security.
'I had to go'
After the second airliner crashed into the south World Trade tower on Sept. 11, Joyce Bachmann said she knew she would be deployed to New York with Kettering-based Ohio Task Force One.
Her team was one of 28 specialized urban search and rescue teams nationwide used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Rescue missions during disasters were their specialty.
As Bachmann, a technical information specialist and Englewood firefighter, prepared to leave, her 15-year-old daughter, Beth, called fire Chief Bud Bergman and begged him not to let her mother go.
Bachmann told her daughter she was needed in New York. Though the assignment could be dangerous, she said her training could help save lives. “I remember telling her that everything would be OK, but I had to go,” she said.
Traveling in a caravan, about 72 members of the task force pulled into lower Manhattan during the morning hours of Sept. 12. The city was dark, and black smoke filled the sky. The streets and sidewalks were coated in concrete dust. Despite the grim scene, task force members were eager to get to work.
Sugarcreek Twp. fire Lt. Terry Trepanier and his canine, Woody, maneuvered through the unlit, underground wreckage of the Twin Towers, hoping to hit on human scents. Trepanier said he looked for pockets of space, where victims could be trapped but alive.
But after a long time searching, he and Woody could not find survivors anywhere. In fact, although the buildings were more than 100 floors tall, and contained lots of offices, rescuers said they found very few office supplies intact. They came across shards of staplers, torn papers and splintered legs of furniture, but mostly, everything was reduced to dust.
“It became apparent quickly that there were not going to be any survivors,” he said. “When those buildings fell, everything was torn apart, whether it was chairs, computers or people.”
Lykins came to a similar conclusion, as he crawled through small crevices, with black smoke pouring out, aware that a secondary collapse could be deadly. He realized there was no one to find. Unless they were able to escape during the evacuation, they did not survive.
Still, for 10 days, task force members worked tirelessly around the clock, searching and digging for survivors amid messy destruction and assisting FEMA with recovery efforts. Instead of survivors, task force members discovered wallets, jewelry, body parts and other gruesome evidence of mass death.
A scene of unity
The site was akin to a war zone, said David Tritch, communications specialist with the task force. “It was so surreal,” he said. “It just put everyone outside of the realm of everything we had ever trained for.”
After 10 days in New York, the dim hope of finding survivors completely faded. Ohio Task Force One was told it could return home.
Despite the frustration they felt from witnessing so much senseless carnage, task force members said they left Manhattan feeling inspired by the generosity and displays of unity they saw.
Trepanier said it was heartwarming to see the crowds gathered in the streets applaud and cheer their vehicles as they passed by. Others members were deeply moved by the way safety forces from across the country converged on New York to see if they could help.
Team members were also stunned to find that on the ride back to Dayton, fire trucks were parked on every overpass in Ohio along the road home, welcoming them back with an American flag raised high.
The outpouring of support from the community was incredible, Lt. Lykins said. He said he wished the warm wishes and positivity continued today.
“The perception after 9/11 was that firefighters are heroes,” he said. “Now, 10 years later, we are seen as the ones who broke the state of Ohio, and we are overpaid and we get all these benefits.”
Ten years later, some task force members have retired, while others continue to be deployed with the unit, usually for hurricane relief.
Despite the passage of time, the people who were deployed to Manhattan said the experiences they had during those 10 days in September stays with them.
President George W. Bush visited Ground Zero, and Bachmann said she will never forget telling the president that she wanted retribution for horrible attacks on New York.
“I said, ‘Mr. President, we need to get these people responsible, and he got right in my face and said, ‘We will, we will get them,’” she said. The killing of the long-hunted al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces in May was the fulfillment of that promise, she said.
Lykins, Bachmann, Trepanier and Tritch all said they absolutely needed to be in New York, because they were trained for just such an emergency and wanted to pitch in with disaster relief. “Most every American wanted to help in some way, shape or form, and I got that opportunity,” Lykins said.
But Tritch said it is disappointing that the events from Sept. 11 so rarely come up in conversation anymore. Except for the anniversaries, Tritch said most people do not spend much time thinking about the tragedy that befell the country.
“There are so many people in the United States who are complacent to the fact that it occurred,” he said. “I don’t want to forget it. I don’t want it to become something of the past.”
Team members commemorate the anniversary in their own ways, but they will never forget the event.
Trepanier said he returned to New York to attend the one-year anniversary of the attacks at Ground Zero. He said a young girl, whose father was killed in the attacks, walked up to him and thanked him for searching for victims.
“She said, ‘Thank you for helping to try to find my daddy,’” he said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-0749 or cfrolik@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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