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Volume 15, Number 3 |
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Report from Ground ZeroWhen Nicola Cauchy '93 (SM) called the Red Cross to volunteer after the World Trade Center bombing on Tuesday, Sept. 11, "I was told they needed multilingual people, particularly with construction knowledge. So I spent Wednesday digging out lumps of rock, steel and glass from the WTC. It was a humble effort." During rest breaks he took photos that are horrifying and fascinating in portraying the complete extent of the damage. The street scenes immediately bring Pompeii to mind, with all the evidence of a busy city life suddenly reduced to a tangle of broken bits half submerged in thick grey ash. "The sunrise of September 12th would ordinarily have announced a gorgeous day. But the newscasts and the absence of traffic only re-emphasized the disaster. Coming across the Tappan Zee bridge, we saw a huge cloud of white smoke rising above the mountain ridges. Behind the point of the Palisades, we got our first view of Manhattan in the distance, the island dwarfed by the giant emanations of smoke. We parked in the suburbs and took a train into the City. "Grand Central had none of its usual chaos. People were sparse in the concourses, despite the trains running a regular schedule. On Lexington Ave., one would have thought this to be an early Sunday morning, with no traffic and few people on the sidewalkŠ but there were no joggers, and the stare in everyone's faces was one of bewilderment, as if recovering from a profound shock." Moved by truck with a group of rescue workers downtown, Cauchy noticed how "gradually, the daylight dimmed and any sign of life disappeared, except for a few large emergency vehicles that did not even need to use sirens. About five blocks from the former World Trade Center, the truck could not progress any further and we descended into a layer of dust several inches thick. Through the dense haze, we saw firemen dozing water from a high ladder, though the lights from their truck below were barely discernible. "The air was thick with smoke that reeked of fumes from the multitude of materials that were burning. We quickly put on dust masks and thick construction gloves that we'd brought. We found a few rescue people and asked where we might be of help. I was surprised that they showed no specific direction, just 'head on down'. Neither did they show any emotion. "Upon reaching what was the World Trade Center Plaza, I understoodŠ the damage was too great, the quantity of debris and the shear size of the site were beyond human imagination. Wars have destroyed surface areas magnitudes larger than this. But the concentration of the debris of two of the world's tallest structures into one city block creates a density that no other human disasters have neared. Add to this the emotions of hundreds of exhausted firefighters whose three chiefs, and many colleagues lie under this mountain of steel, and Dante's Inferno becomes tangible. The work was grueling, dirty, sometimes disorganized, and exhausting. With his engineering background, Cauchy couldn't help noticing how people rushed onto unstable heaps of rubble when there was there appared to be the merest chance of rescuing a trapped victim. "The courage of all who participate in this salvage is something to behold. Doctors on break distribute food to the workers. Countless vendors supply the barricades with all sorts of supplies for distribution to whomever might need them. Firemen relentlessly fight the remaining flames, and policemen keep a tight control on the entire lower Manhattan. And all carry pieces of debris, however small or big, from the big hole, to piles for hauling. After a day spent passing one piece of stone or steel at a time, I felt weak and useless before the ghastly shadow of the giant towers I remembered. "It's easy to feel useful when performing a strong physical effort. But it is much more exacting to persevere when you don't feel aching muscles and when you can't measure progress. Therein lies the most admirable strength of the rescue workers of the World Trade Center tragedy. It takes fantastic moral strength to keep working at a task so gigantic that it appears endless. Cleanup and reconstruction will demand solidarity, compassion, and the quenching of all individualistic aspirations."
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"Civil and Environmental Engineering at
MIT"
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