Search for Corrobating Witnesses

Timeline and Locations

WHEN:  10am (approx) 

WHERE: from 14 East 80th St, NY, NY to Times Square

WHAT: Foot movement downtown, thru Central Park, to Times Square.

HOW: Running shoes

WHO: No contemporaneous witnesses

WHEN: 1030 (approx) 

WHERE: from Times Square to St. Vincent’s hospital

HOW:  ConEdison vehicle I flagged down in Times Square

WHO: The driver was an adult white male, medium build, approx 40-50 years old. No other crew in his vehicle. Obviously a high-capability and highly-trusted ConEdison employee capable of independent “operator” level work on a citywide critical task. He was given the mission to “get downtown and shut off the gas.” Leaving him alone while I went to work at St. Vincents was my first mistake of the day. I should’ve stayed by his side and done whatever needed doing. 

WHEN:  1045 (approx) - until Sunset

WHERE: St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Centers (170 W 12th St, NY, NY 10011) and more specifically the ambulance bay shown in this photo where we decontaminated wounded uniformed first responders including FDNY, NYPD, and PAPD officers.

WHO:  I worked with 1 Vietnam-era medic as my battle buddy. White male, approx. 45-55 years old, volunteer (likely) not associated with the hospital directly.  6-8 Nurses or Nurses Aides who worked the decontamination bay with us. These nurses appeared to be part of St. Vincents’ staff.

HOW:  As a memory cue for the rest of my team, I want to mention that we were having difficulty getting the collapse dust out of the eyes of first responders. Our job was to clean the patients up so they could proceed into the E.R. for medical treatment. We treated every evacuee brought to St. Vincents in our decon site except for 1 liter patient who was actively bleeding out and he was rolled directly into the E.R. “dirty.” 

Note:  The ambulance bay that we used for decon is shown in the red box above the woman’s head.

HOW (continued):  For the eye cleaning difficulty, I applied Army Ranger fieldcraft and rigged bags of lactate ringers from the ceiling trusses in the ambulance bay with coat hangers. These became our eyewash jigs. This is not a standard medical procedure. This procedure would have been in no manual at St. Vincents. I created the solution on the fly when I saw the problem. I put in my gear request which was filled within minutes: the ladder, wire coat hangers, IV bags and the IV starter kits all arrived to our ambulance bay. I installed them to the ceiling of the and they went into immediate use and were used to help every subsequent patient. The coat hanger went around the truss and held the IV bag. The starter kit then hung down to be at the right height as the stretchers rolled into the ambulance bay. Enough slack was left for service movement of the irrigation system by the nurses.

WHY:  The result was a change from poorly cleaned eyes to fully irrigated eyes. Almost every bit of dust safely removed from the eyes of the wounded officers. The dust was also removed at low pressure (gravity feed) to prevent accidental cornea scarring.

Note:  Improvised 9/11 Dust Eye Irrigation Jigs

WHEN:  Sunset

WHERE:  St. Vincent’s Hospital to Chambers Street (at the ambulance turnaround) at West Side Highway.

WHO:  Myself, the Vietnam medic and most/all of the nurses travelled down to Ground Zero in a return ambulance. We meet a scene leader white(?) male upon arrival who briefed us rapidly and calmly on where medical supplies were located, where civilian casualties went and where uniformed casualties went (right back to St. Vincents) and not much else before he quickly disappeared into the fog.  

Note:  Locations are fairly precise. The ambulance drop off might’ve been 100 yards closer to West Side Highway.

WHEN:  Sunset + 30 minutes

WHERE:  199 Chambers St Building:   Pedestrian overpass bridge on West Side Hwy (just north of Chambers St.). East side of the West Side Hwy.

WHO:  Medical team from ambulance.

HOW:  I selected the pedestrian overpass to provide some degree of overhead cover for my team and had them place our patient treatment chairs (stretchers set at half-height as benches) there. We were are of “falling buildings” beyond just the towers without understanding the cause. Later we learned it was Tower 7. It was common sense to be under some type of overhead cover.  I then rigged bags of lactate ringers from street signs with starter kits to recreate the eye wash jigs I had setup at St. Vincents. 

WHY:  We wanted to help at the forward-edge of the disaster.

WHEN: Sunset + maybe 2 hours (times become more approximate from here forward)

WHERE:  199 Chambers Street, NY, NY 10007.  50 meters north of the pedestrian overpass bridge on the east side of the West Side Highway.

WHO:  Myself, 6-8 National Guard (possibly Reserve) soldiers. 1 white, male, 6’3” tall+ Lieutenant Colonel in woodland pattern Battle Dress Uniform. Maybe a couple Humvees were present.

WHAT: Coordination with military first responders. Colonel mentioned he was “the first one sent down here” and that there “wasn’t much guidance provided.” My impression was he had come down from upstate but further research of the past year indicates that it was probably actually his leadership team that was upstate. The Colonel was also looking around for a covered area for his team and he mentioned he wanted to get his men inside and pointed at the BMCC dark wall directly behind us as a possible temporary TOC. I gave the Colonel my flashlight (which I had picked up during our gear load out at St. Vincents) as he would need it more than I did if he was going inside a building with no power. After an initial coordination with this “adjacent unit” I went back to my team at my Field Aid Station. 

Note:  I suspect this is the Lieutenant Colonel I gave my flashlight to but I can’t swear to it after this many years. A USMA classmate with law enforcement experience who now works in Federal background checks located this photo for me in late 2025. The more I look at the photo the more I think I recognize him but it could just as easily be Familiarity Effect at this point. It was dark and foggy. He hd a BDU cap on as well.

WHEN: Sunset + 2.5 hours

WHERE:  199 Chambers Street, NY, NY 10007.  50 meters north of the pedestrian overpass bridge on the east side of the West Side Highway.

WHO:  Culligan Water Delivery Truck (could have been Poland Spring but I’m almost certain it was Culligan). Two stocky white male drivers, approx 5’6” in height. From Long Island.  They parked on the east side of the west side hwy.  They were parked backwards, with the driver’s side of their truck against the curb, in the parking or breakdown lane against our sidewalk on the east side. There may have been an extra curb keeping them one more lane away from the sidewalk. The men were in a vehicle similar to a beer truck with a half dozen or so rollup doors down each side of the long truck and a slightly tapered lean in of the sidewalls as they ran up to the roof.

HOW:  I spoke to the drivers and I identified with them because, like me, they also had no official unit. They had literally just rolled out to assist with a few thousand gallons of packaged water in 5 gallon water cooler jugs. I explained to them what I wanted to do and the 2-man Culligan team immediately flipped the curbside doors up and began pulling 5 gallon bottles out of the truck’s side doors.  I then went and spoke to the LTC with a tasker. I asked if I could have his soldiers make “the first clean spot” at ground zero for my Field Aid Station under the pedestrian overpass. He said sure and a minute or two later his soldiers came over and started enthusiastically grabbing the 5 gallon water bottles from the curb. To be honest, they had a lot of built up energy over the day and they were eager to do something to directly help. Army Strong they agitated the bottles mechanically to create a momentum, almost spraying, effect out of the nozzle that washed a path in front of them.  It was like watching angry hornets–they had a plenty of fight bottled up inside them. They cleared me a 40 by 40 foot area of clean, washed sidewalk including the entire footprint of the sidewalk that was directly under the overpass.  The contrast between the cleaned off, wet concrete was stunning against the 1-2 inches of dust piled up everywhere else that looked like a snowfall. Once the National Guard was done washing, the nurses quickly rolled our patient seating back to its proper location and we were ready to go again. The thing about 9/11 was everyone was dialed in. When you asked for something to happen there wasn’t even 1 second of hesitation–people and action began moving towards the problem instantly. 

WHEN: Sunset + 2.5 hours.

WHERE:  199 Chambers Street, NY, NY 10007.  Dead center in the intersection of Chambers Street and West Side Highway.

WHO:  4-6 Fire Captains (rank approximate) who were leading teams of 8-20 firefighters out of the pile. They were emerging out of the fog from the south. I didn’t go south at all until 9/12 and I had no clue how close we were to the pile. There was no traffic so the firefighters were walking up the center lane of West Side Highway. I intercepted the first Fire Captain. He was in shellshock as any human being would by that point in a day of direct action during 9/11. He asked about the busses, where they were. He then restated there are busses and “I need to find the busses.” I told him I didn’t have that info and he wanted to keep moving north. I could tell it had been rough and while he wasn’t warm at all to the idea, I convinced him with a mix of firmness and respect that he had to go over to the Aid Station so we could clean out his team’s eyes. We kind of stood there repeating our positions to each other “I need to go to the busses,” “You need to get your eyes cleaned out. It’ll only take a couple minutes” It was a slight standoff for maybe 30 seconds, probably less, but it felt longer. It wasn’t at all my place to order him but I stepped in with good intention and basically redirected him for a mandatory brief stop. He wasn’t loving the idea but I wasn’t budging either. Once he turned to his right toward the sidewalk and our Aid Station, his unit of course followed along behind him. They queued up behind our patient seating. The FDNY guys would walk forward, turn around 180 facing back towards the south now, looking back at their colleagues still in line, and sit down 4 at a time, 2 per stretcher. They leaned their heads upward and had their eyes cleaned out by the nurses. I stood there while the first group was processed. Afterward one of the firefighters looked at me, I was more towards the curb, and he had been on the western stretcher going around it towards the curb to leave and he turned to his left. As he walked past the stretcher and said to me “That is the only thing that has helped all day.” He had been the guy directly behind the first fire captain while I was encouraging them to head over to the aid station.  I was glad we could make a difference that was acknowledged. We knew our technique helped because we had been doing it all day already. I went back to the center of West Side Highway intersection. Some kind of FDNY recall order must have gone out over the radios because now additional Battalions(?) were emerging from the fog into my view every few minutes.  Always with one guy in front center and a column of twos walking behind. I was the guy in (borrowed) green scrubs directing them to my Aid Station. It was a much easier negotiation after the first battalion. When a battalion emerged from the smoke they saw me. I had my briefing down now and I told them “You’ll go over here for eye cleaning” and I also had the “certainty boost” from the firefighter who mentioned to me it directly helping a problem he had been struggling with for hours. Despite their exhausted mental state across the board, the arriving firefighters could see their colleagues “over there in line already.” It looked like an organized process. Our disciplined firefighters naturally connect to structured activities and they got in line behind the prior battalions and we kept taking care of people.