RG: Seeing the tower collapse with my own eyes was different from seeing it on TV. It was horrible seeing it on TV but it was not like seeing it in person. I think of TV as the sanitized version. Seeing the tower collapse and the plane hit was just over the top. When I saw the site for the first time it was just sort of confirmation that it was as bad as everything on the 11th.

RG: When I got to the site for the first time, what I had on my mind was that I had a job to do because I couldn't focus on anything else. You couldn't focus on the devastation. You couldn't focus on the people who were lost, although that was the focus. My job was about finding whomever could be found and helping the rescue workers and the construction workers. The first charge we were given was that no one else is going to be lost. We were going to go and find as many people alive as possible because it was about rescue. Our duty was to help preserve life and not lose anymore. The task involved evaluating the risks that rescuers were taking and that the contractor was taking and so on. We focused on that because you couldn't take in everything at once. You couldn't look at the whole site because you could just get lost. You would lose your focus. You had to stay focused on the task that we had at hand.

RG: Everyone was very sensitive to the stability of the structures that were remaining. You had to be sensitized to structural stability issues for the buildings that remained and for the debris that was there. So many people were lost. If we weren't comfortable going somewhere in an area, we got an engineer to see what he thought about going in that area. When you were called over, you knew that there was something that they were nervous about and they wanted you to look at. Uniformed personnel didn't want to lose anyone, but they were willing to get on that edge a little bit in order to find someone who was alive. There was a little bit more latitude taken in the very early weeks that was restricted later on. For example, tunneling through debris and finding stairwells and finding recoveries and knowing that as those guys kept digging and finding recoveries, they were getting further and further under areas that we just couldn't measure the stability of. It finally got to a point where it was an undeniable risk and they had to stop and they had to mark the spot with paint. The paint indicated that when we came back, we would know that we found some people here and that we were going to resume looking for them again.

RG: There was a great deal of communication between engineers, contractors and the uniformed personnel. For the first four weeks, roughly, it was about rescue. It was about finding someone alive and the pursuits of everyone were towards that end. As the four weeks passed, we slowly stopped looking for rescue. It sort of blurred into just recovery. We continued and we still continue to this point talking about what if they attack a pile, take off debris, find a stairwell…how they can provide recoveries. They want to chase that until the trail stops. Sometimes it takes them into areas where they need to be careful and where they need to wait until we can get at it from another angle. But everyone is really focused and has been focused on preserving life. There probably were more risks taken in the very beginning because there were lives on the balance or so we had hoped. As things went out, we were just less risky.

RG: From what I understand, the drive from our office to the Trade Center at that time might have been the scariest part of that whole adventure.

RG: The crash was loud, but I was concentrating on the phone call. After I heard the noise, it took me a few seconds to realize that I'd heard it. At first I had thought it was a truck. On the third floor, you hear that all the time. But we had moved that summer and I wasn't used to the noises yet. It took me a while to realize that I hadn't heard a noise like that up here before. That's when I switched to the theory that it was some marketing technique. My mind went through this over the course of like fifteen seconds. The strangest things go through your head sometimes.

RG: In terms of communication between engineers, contractors and uniformed personnel. I would say that the communication that exists now is evidence of the groundwork that was set up in the very beginning. The DDC set up the communication lines between the engineering, between the contractors, between the city personnel, the Port Authority personnel, uniform services, etc. It was a very good communication link and it worked so well then that it has continued until now. We still have very good communication. We are all on everybody's speed dial. The situations are typically not as dire as they were at that time but there are still situations where we say, "Hey, let's get engineering on this; or let's make sure uniformed personnel are happy with how this is going; or let's make sure a contractor knows that we have an interest as they continue to excavate in this location." A lot of that is what has worked very well.

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