Reliving 9/11

NEW YORK (AP) -- In thousands of pages of oral histories released Friday, firefighters describe in vivid, intimate detail how they rushed to save fleeing civilians from churning smoke and fire before the World Trade Center collapsed in a monstrous cloud of debris and choking dust.

The histories, recorded in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attack, offer some of the most detailed descriptions of the day's horror as seen through the eyes of firefighters who lost 343 of their brethren.

Firefighter Maureen McArdle-Schulman recalled hearing someone yell before the collapses that something was falling from the towers.

"It turned out it was people coming out, and they started coming out one after the other," she said. "We didn't know what it was at first, but then the first body hit and then we knew what it was. ... I was getting sick. I felt like I was intruding on a sacrament. They were choosing to die and I was watching them and shouldn't have been. So me and another guy turned away and looked at a wall and we could still hear them hit."

Emergency medical technician John Felidi recalled that when the south tower fell, "We heard a rumble. I heard the rumble and looked — in the back of me all I seen was a monstrous — I can't even describe it. A cloud. Looked like debris, dust."

The 12,000 pages of oral histories were made public along with hours of Fire Department radio transmissions, their release brought on by a lawsuit filed three years ago by The New York Times and long contested by the city.

...Fire Lt. Jerry Reilly, who escaped the trade center, said the transmissions were almost too painful to hear. "I never heard any of this before — the chaos," he said, his eyes tearing up.

Excerpts: Firefighters Recall 9/11

9/11 EMS Logbook

Do you find it difficult to remember that day?

I don't mean the details or even the images. Can you remember how you felt?

With time, memories soften a bit. They lose their sharp edges.

For me, it doesn't take much to bring it all back---the sheer terror of that day, the shock, the panic, the grief, the anger.

Hearing the radio transmissions and reading the accounts released on Friday cause all of that to resurface.

Although I'm out here in the heartland, I can tell you that I didn't feel safe. Flight 93 went down in a Pennsylvania field. Potentially, a hijacked plane could have crashed in my backyard.

I didn't lose any loved ones that day. No one from my community died in the attacks, though there were ties. The son of a member of my church was working at the Pentagon. He missed being killed because he happened to be out of his office at the moment of the crash. That still is hard for me to comprehend, that he came so close to being among the dead.

Although I didn't personally know anyone who was killed, I know firefighters, police officers, EMTs, and people like those employed at the World Trade Center and Pentagon. We all do. I grieved for those who were lost and the families who mourned them as if they were my own family members. Our American family shared the pain and the loss. Hearts all over the country, all over the world, were broken.

And nothing would ever be the same, remember?

The attacks on 9/11 brought us together. We put aside our many differences; and for a brief moment, we were one America. We were united in our sorrow, in our love of country, and in our resolve to protect our freedom.

News reports from 9/11 and the weeks and even months immediately following the attacks read like fiction now. There's no unity. The fact that there ever was seems unreal.

What happened to that unity and our common sense of purpose?

Have we forgotten what it was like to see people jumping from the burning towers?

What about the damage at the Pentagon? It's been repaired, but the people who perished there can't be replaced. Have people forgotten them?

Have we gone so long without being attacked that we no longer are concerned about it anymore?

Is that day too painful to recall so we choose not to stir up the memories?

Or are we just so selfish that we don't really care?

I thought the horror of the 9/11 attacks would have had a lasting impact on our national soul. I thought things would be different from that day forward---politically, socially, and emotionally.

I was wrong. As a nation, we are just as divided as before 9/11, maybe more.

Personally, however, I was changed. I came to terms with something.

On September 10, 2001, I would never have believed that there were people filled with such hate that they would be capable of hijacking commercial airliners and slamming them into buildings filled with innocents. I would never have thought that there were people with such blackened hearts that they would celebrate those acts.

I no longer assume that people are good.