SM: Initially, I was on the fireboat that responded. We supplied water along with Marine One to some pumpers and some buildings that are surrounding the area because the water mains on that west side were kind of in bad shape. We supplied water for many, many days until they kind of got the water situation squared away. And after we stretched the initial line to supply one of the pumpers, I went with my officer and another firefighter and we went and we started searching to find victims.

SM: We were sure hoping to find as many survivors as we could. With something on that magnitude, you have to find them right away, you know. That's you best shot. The longer time goes on, the less and less opportunity you have, providing there are no unusual circumstances where you can find them days and weeks later. But that's usually in something less devastating than when a hundred and ten story building comes down. That's actually two of them and several other buildings. That's a very traumatic thing and we know the hopes of finding people alive. Of course, you always want to hope that you'll find everyone alive but you know in the back of your mind that there are going to be people that not going to be alive. You just have to systematically do what you can and check what you can as fast as you can and as safely as you can to see if you can get them out.

SM: We were directing machinery as it arrived to see where we could use it best. Obviously the bigger machinery that eventually came in takes a long time to mobilize, it might be on a different job site. They'd have to break it down. They'd have to get trucks and crews and all kinds of stuff so it takes time to get all the big stuff in. What came in the first few days was some of the smaller equipment that was locally available. And then as something bigger came in, we'd replace that and it kind of evolved.

SM: For nine years before I was a fireman, I worked construction. I worked for a dock builder. We built docks and put up buildings. Through that I became a crane operator and got my license. I became a fireman, like I said, about nine years later. We've gone through very much training, many hours of training about collapses, searching all different specialized things. When I got into Rescue Three, I went for many, many more hours of training and seminars. Whatever information you can get, you always try to gain as much information as you can. I have extensive library on collapses and construction and I think my background has helped me where I am today. It's all helpful. It's all a tool.

SM: Well it would be helpful because I know about building and construction. I know a little bit about engineering and I know about the fire department operations. But the ironwork and the crane use, I'm very familiar with that so I know their limitations and their strong points and I know what can reasonably be done. I'm able to advise some of my bosses and then they'll make a decision on what has to be done.

SM: The firemen's everyday mission has been to protect and serve the City of New York. From day one, our position hasn't changed. It was to try to search and remove. We were hoping to find many live victims and as it turned out, we didn't find a whole lot but we found some. That was a big boost to us, but as time went on, we realized that there weren't going to be that many live victims so we were searching for remains. We tried as best as we could to remove the remains in a matter of great dignity and as best as we could to give them back to their families. That's basically the fire department's mission.

SM: I knew quite a few people that were killed there -- some very good friends, all from the fire department. Special operations, which I was a part of, lost almost a hundred people just in that one division. After sixteen and a half years, I knew quite a few of them. What a tragedy.

SM: It became quite evident early on what the magnitude of this job and the magnitude of the debris were. Once you got into the buildings themselves, some of the core columns weighed almost seventy tons. So it became apparent very early on that typical bucket brigade, shovels and tools that you would use were going to be very ineffective, although they did have their place at certain times and in certain areas. For the most part, on that sixteen-acre site, the only way to remove some of this debris in areas where we might find some of these victims was to use some of these big machines, such as grapplers and cranes and stuff like that. The manner in which they dig sometimes isn't the best you would think but that's why we had spotters around the machinery so we could see. And we had a very, very dedicated staff. For the guys that worked there, my hat is off to them. They did a tremendous, tremendous job. It's been over seven months now and they didn't lose their intensity.

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