Interview with Sam Melisi.

This transcript is based on videotaped interviews conducted by Great Projects Film Company for the documentary "America Rebuilds: A Year at Ground Zero," and has been edited lightly for readability. The interviewer's questions have not been included; the interviewee's initials indicate where answers to questions begin.

Sam Melisi (SM): I've been a fireman for sixteen and a half years. I guess ever since I was a little kid, I have always wanted to be a fireman. It seemed like a real exciting job. You get to run into burning buildings and ride on a back of a fire truck. Who could want more? So that's what I've wanted ever since I was a little kid.

SM: I've really enjoyed myself being a fireman. There were a lot of great, great times. There were a lot of bad times but we all get through that. That's part of being a fireman. But I would definitely say the good has outweighed the bad.

SM: I got involved with USAR and the FEMA team because that's stuff I really enjoy doing. You always try to help people. That's always part of why you want to become a fireman. You always try to help people and do what you can. And that just kind of evolved. I have some skills that come in pretty handy for the USAR work, the FEMA type work. I'm a licensed crane operator in the City of New York. I have a big construction background and it kind of went hand in hand with what we do in the fire department. I kind of gravitated towards rescue 3. They're the collapse unit. We go through all the boroughs and sometimes out of the city and sometimes out of the country. So I kind of found a home there. That's what I like to do.

SM: We went to the Dominican Republic. We've been in Puerto Rico. And we've gone through Oklahoma City. Those are the places I've been deployed to.

SM: When we went to Oklahoma City, I guess we actually got there the day after the bombing took place. We spent seven days there and we did basically what we were trained to do. We were hoping to find live victims but it didn't turn out that way. We tried to systematically go through the rubble and look for any signs of life. What we did there is basically pretty much what we're doing in New York City now. We're searching and we're trying to keep people safe while they search. You know, we don't want anything to happen to them. We look for certain signs and we use the engineers, the operating engineers, the iron workers and any other resources that we have to in order to make this all happen.

SM: At the time, that type of terrorist attack was probably the biggest thing that has happened on our mainland. It was kind of funny, my wife was nine months pregnant at the time and I got the call about 2:30 in the morning to get deployed. I said, "Hold on a second." And I asked my wife, "Do you want me to go on this or to stay home?" She says, "Oh no, I'm fine." She says, "I have my sisters here and I'm fine. They need you more than I do." I felt really confident that she was behind me and then I had no problem going.

SM: At the time [of the Oklahoma City bombing], that was the biggest thing that ever happened as far as I've been involved in the rescue field. I thought that was the biggest thing we'd ever see in the United States. But I turned out to be very wrong.

SM: I basically look after the fire department's interests. My role ranges from safety, making sure no one gets hurt, to looking at the construction aspect. I work with the engineers, with the operators, the iron-workers and with everyone else to make sure that we search the debris and get the best look we can to try to get as many remains back to their families. That's basically what we do. But as far as my role, there's all kinds of people down there that are looking out for the same things: safety, the victim's best interest and how we can affect the best removal if we happen to come upon someone. Using all our resources we go through that and we make a decision and that's how we determine what our actions are.

SM: My first impression of the site when I arrived there was after the second tower came down. There was still a lot of smoke and dust and it was surreal. It's the best way to describe what we seen. It was kind of devastating actually. It was hard to describe. You know, you try to prepare as best you can all these years. You go through all kinds of training and you go through all kinds of scenarios and exercises but you never quite prepare for something like this especially on this magnitude. With Oklahoma City it was the same feeling. I couldn't believe the devastation and that was a much smaller site and it was a tremendous devastation there. If you can kind of visualize fifty-fold or a hundred-fold no matter where you turned, there was devastation. It was a mess. We just did the best we could. It was very unorganized in the beginning as you can imagine but we did what we had to do.

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