Local residents Michael Goldberg, Robert Hopkins and Daniel Hamre were among the thousands to pitch in at Ground Zero after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
File photo / Associated PressIn one of the iconic images to emerge from 9/11, three firefighters raise a flag late in the afternoon on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, amid the wreckage of the World Trade Center towers in New York.
SPRINGFIELD – Robert J. Hopkins had planned to go fishing but canceled because he felt lousy with a cold.
Michael Goldberg had just woken up and turned on his television to catch the morning news.
And Dan Hamre was about an hour into a disaster-training seminar for firefighters when someone shouted the news that one of the World Trade Center towers was on fire.
Like millions of Americans, the three watched the horror unfold on television that morning 10 years ago, but they were also among the thousands who made their way to Manhattan to assist with the relief and recovery efforts.
Like most everyone else, Hopkins, 58, of Chicopee, Hamre, 55, of Springfield, and Goldberg, 43, of Hampden, can remember where they were at the moment when the first hijacked plane crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, as part of the worst terrorist attack on American soil.
By mid-afternoon, Goldberg, a K-9 officer with the Hampden Sheriff’s Department, and his dog partner, Jack, arrived at Ground Zero to join the search of the fallen buildings.
Hopkins, an assistant professor of emergency medical service management at Springfield College and deputy commander of the federal Disaster Medical Assistance Team, Ma-2, an on-call unit of 50-some doctors, nurses, EMTs and technicians, rolled into New York City later that night. They would spend the next two weeks staffing five medical tents that worked round-the-clock at Ground Zero.
And Hamre, a lieutenant who is now retired from the Springfield Fire Department, took vacation time to join the search for the dead a week after the attacks. He spent five days in Manhattan, first with a recovery detail at Ground Zero, and then helping to staff a fire station that lost 10 firefighters.
Goldberg finds it difficult to believe 10 years has passed. “It was such a traumatic thing, and I’m just one of thousands of people who have stories about it,” he said recently when asked to share his perspective.
For Hamre, 9/11 will always remain very personal – Gen. Timothy Maude, his company commander in the Army, was killed in the attack on the Pentagon.
This 10-part series in The Republican and on MassLive.com shares perspectives from Western Massachusetts residents on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on America:
Sept. 4: A Father’s Journey: James F. Shea, of Westfield, father of Tara Shea Creamer, who was aboard American Airlines Flight 11
Sept. 5: A Pilot’s View: Lt. Col. Dan Nash, of the Air National Guard’s 104th Fighter Wing, flew on alert from Otis Air Base to New York City
Sept. 6: Survivors’ Stories: Susan A. Frederick, a native of Holyoke who descended from the 80th floor or the World Trade Center’s North Tower to safety, and John V. Murphy, formerly of Longmeadow, who was about a block away from his office at the trade center, share their recollections of when disaster struck
Sept. 7: Two Women’s Experiences: Longmeadow native Jennifer Gardner Trulson remembers her husband, Douglas Gardner; Lourdes LeBron, of Northampton, pays tribute to her sister, Waleska Martinez
Sept. 8: The Volunteers: Robert J. Hopkins, of Chicopee, Michael Goldberg, of Hampden, and Dan Hamre, of Springfield, were among the thousands who volunteered at Ground Zero.
Sept. 9: Crisis in Aviation: Jane Garvey, of Amherst, was head of the Federal Aviation Administration on the day of the attacks
Sept. 10: The Muslim Experience: Dr. M. Saleen Bajwa, of Holyoke, offers his impressions of our post-Sept. 11 world
Sept. 11: Remembering the Day: A look at how Sept. 11, 2001 will be remembered; Ann Murphy, sister of World Trade Center victim Brian J. Murphy, of Westfield, shares her personal perspective on what the day means for her family
Sept. 12: Tyler’s Courts: Basketball courts are created to honor the memory of Tyler Ugolyn, whose family’s roots are in Springfield; also, a regional look at 10th anniversary commemoration events
Sept. 13: Rick’s Place: The family and friends of Eric “Rick” Thorpe, of Wilbraham, established Rick’s Place to help children cope with grief when they lose a family member; also, how everyday life has changed because of Sept. 11, 2001
“I knew I couldn’t get to the Pentagon, so I went to New York,” Hamre said. “It was a case of where I had to go.”
Hopkins sees 9/11 as a moment of great tragedy and of national unity, just as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was to his parent’s generation. “Out of these tragedies come stories of strength, stories of character,” he said.
As the events of that morning unfolded a decade ago, each of the men followed a different path to New York City:
Goldberg says he was horrified as he watched the trade center towers burn, but didn’t think he’d become personaly involved. He wasn’t a firefighter, he said, and he and his dog hadn’t had any search-and-rescue experience.
“It wasn’t long after that I got a call,” Goldberg recalled recently.
A friend with the New York Police Department was inquiring if Jack, Goldberg’s police dog at the time, could find people at a disaster scene. “I said, ‘Yeah, he’s not a cadaver dog and he’s not trained to go through a crazy debris field, but he could use his nose and find people.’”
With permission from Sheriff Michael Ashe, Goldberg and Jack were racing south, reporting to a command center at Stuyvesant High School in lower Manhattan at 1 p.m. They set foot on Ground Zero about 30 minutes later.
They were on scene for more than a day, going through the rubble for 12 straight hours, coming up for air and to rest at about 1 a.m. and then going back to duty by 3 a.m. Sometime after that, Jack was injured when he fell 40 feet from a collapsed stairwell.
Unable to continue, Goldberg returned Jack to Springfield for veterinary care. The pair received a police escort the entire way, Goldberg remembers.
Jack would drop dead about 18 months later, after developing a strange cough. An
autopsy showed his lungs were caked with Ground Zero dust, Goldberg said.
“I had a painter’s mask on – I wish I had something stronger – but the dog didn’t have anything,” he said. “They need their noses to do work.”
Goldberg says he’s thought over the years about what could be caked on his lungs, and whether he will develop symptoms of a 9/11-related illness sometime down the road. Thousands of first responders at Ground Zero have developed respiratory ailments and cancer in the last 10 years. Ultimately, Goldberg says, those are among the risks of the job, and, if he becomes ill as a result of his brief time at Ground Zero, he will have no regrets.
For hours after the towers collapsed, Ground Zero was one of the most dangerous places on Earth, Goldberg said. The debris field was as far as he could see, and every building lining it sustained some damage, he said.
The pile of rubble that used to be the towers was itself 30-stories high, or roughly the size of Monarch Place in downtown Springfield. It also extended seemingly an equal distance below ground with basements, underground shopping malls and subway platforms that all needed checking for survivors.
“It was huge, and you couldn’t see the end of it,” Goldberg said. “And, it was smoking and hot.”
Dust hung in the air, fires were breaking out everywhere, and every step was potentially treacherous, he said. The pile was continually crackling, wheezing and even moving, as if it were alive, he said.
Staff photo by Patrick JohnsonHampden County Sheriff's Department K-9 officer Michael Goldberg poses with his partner, Tyson. Ten years ago, Goldberg and his dog, Jack, were among the first K-9 teams to arrive at Ground Zero to help serve for victims at the World Trade Center site.
Paired with three firemen and three police officers, Goldberg and Jack began a grid search of the pile. Before they set out, Goldberg was required to write his Social Security
number and the phone number for a next-of-kin on his arm with a Sharpie.
“In case you got crushed, they’d still be able to ID you,” he said. “The military calls it a meat tag.”
They were under the pile searching the mall and subway platform under the towers when the 47-story Building 7 at the World Trade Center site collapsed at about 5:30 p.m. They could hear the rumbling and see a wall of dust and debris heading their way, and everyone was certain they would be killed.
“We figured it was ‘curtains,’” Goldberg said.
In the dark and standing around a pillar that they hoped would not collapse, the crew kept calm by telling jokes, he said. “One guy would tell a joke, and it would be silent, and then some other guy would tell a joke,” he said.
The search for survivors very quickly became a search for victims, according to Goldberg, describing the carnage he encountered. “All we found were parts,” he said.
Arms, legs, torsos. Bodies ripped and crushed beyond recognition. The level of gore was such, he said, that to this day he does not like to talk about it in great detail. “It was just overwhelming,” he said.
It was also chaotic. Searchers were scrambling around looking for where they thought they’d find bodies.
He remembers going through crushed ambulances and fire trucks at the scene, looking for medical kits and equipment to help dig and pry at the rubble.
Early on, Jack located the bodies of seven New York City firefighters who were crushed together in a collapsed stairwell, Goldberg said. Each time a firefighter’s remains was found, searchers would back off to allow the New York Fire Department to recover their own. And, each time, firefighters and a chaplain would hold a brief and solemn service before removing the body.
“It was very somber, very surreal when I think of the looks on some of those guys’ faces,” Goldberg said. “And, they’re New York firefighters; they are some of the toughest guys in the world.”
Goldberg has returned to New York once since 2001, for the first anniversary. He hasn’t followed the rebuilding at Ground Zero, and while proud of his service, Goldberg said he is a little bitter at how things have gone since.
He expressed displeasure with public spats by 9/11 widows seeking a larger slice of the millions raised in donations, and with how U.S. troops remain in Iraq and Afghanistan. But mostly, he said, he is upset with how the politicians frittered away the spirit of unity and patriotism that held the country together in the months after 9/11
“It really did bring this country together,” Goldberg said, “but it’s a shame (Washington) didn’t pick up the ball and run with it and say, “Let’s stay together folks. Let’s make this country stronger.”
He wonders, too, if the commemorations will be as big 10 years from now.
“To me, the memorial is in my brain and in my heart. It’s in the people that were there, and the people that lost their lives and their families,” he said. “And, the whole country has an
obligation to preserve it.
Staff photo by Patrick JohnsonRobert J. Hopkins, an assistant professor of emergency medical services management, sits in his office at Springfield College. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, he was called to Ground Zero as deputy commander of the federal Disaster Medical Assistance Team.
Hopkins’ missed fishing trip landed him in front of his TV to watch the terror unfold that morning. Sometime after the second plane crashed but before the towers collapsed, Hopkins began packing his gear to go to New York. Once the ban on all air travel was announced, he figured it would only be a matter of time to be activated.
“The fact that no one was flying (with the grounding of all aircraft) meant the resources had to come from the Northeast,” he said. His disaster team shipped out from Worcester to Stewart Air Force Base in Newburgh, N.Y., at 10 p.m. before deploying to Manhattan the next morning.
They set up five emergency medical tents around Ground Zero. By this time, most of the injured had already been taken to area hospitals, and there were no more survivors being found in the rubble.
The decision was made, he said, “to give our support to the rescuers who were doing all the digging, the firefighters, police, ironworkers, anyone working at Ground Zero.”
Around the clock, they treated cuts, burns, bruises and broken bones, as well as respiratory ailments, heat exhaustion and fatigue. The hot and humid weather that week seemed even more extreme with all the smoke and dust that hung in the air, he said.
With the Disaster Medical Assistance Team, Hopkins has since been deployed to assist in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the earthquake in Haiti and a dozen other disasters, large and small. But, nothing, he says, was like Ground Zero.
When he talks about it, words like “surreal” and “strange” creep into Hopkins’ recollections: empty streets in Manhattan that would normally be bustling with activity; everything covered with a layer of dust; and air filled with a stench that seemed a combination of burning plastic, sour milk, and spoiled food.
“It was sort of like being in a movie,” Hopkins said. “Walking around Times Square and everything was closed. There was dust everywhere. It reminded me of that movie ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still.’”
New Yorkers showed incredible generosity, camaraderie and a boundless spirit to get back on their feet after being knocked down, he said. The disaster teams, bused to and from the fenced-off section of Ground Zero, were greeted each arrival with applause from spectators. The actress Sigorney Weaver served him a scoop of rice one day in a chow line, although he regrets not recognizing her until afterward.
He remembers stopping for a soda at a neighborhood store before boarding the bus one morning and being greeted by an elderly lady with a cane who, after spotting his uniform, asked if she could give him a hug. “I wanted to cry,” Hopkins said.
Another time he stepped out of one of the medical tents and two women called him over to their makeshift canteen where they poured him a fresh coffee. “They were the wives of the people dead in the pile and they wanted to help us. You can’t help but get emotional about it,” he said. “We’re here to help them and they’re trying to help us. What can you say to that? What can you say?”
As he retells the story, Hopkins seems a little choked up. Does it bother him to talk about Ground Zero today?
He sighed and said “Not now – but it’s been 10 years.”
In the weeks and months following his return, he went through a period of “crabbiness,” which is a common enough occurrence for front-line responders following work at a disaster scene, Hopkins said.
“People would ask me to talk about it, but I really didn’t feel like talking about it,” he said. “When you go through something like that, it is emotionally overwhelming ...and then to simply hop back into your regular job is hard to do without a decompression period.”
Hopkins waited a long time to return to Manhattan. “Some people went back the next year, but I felt that was too soon,” he said. When he finally did return, he made his way to Battery Park on the southern tip of Manhattan to reflect on the past and present. “It was interesting to see the difference between the charred area we were in and to see that things had been replaced and were sparkling.”
As the anniversary approaches, Hopkins said he can’t help but to look back on it.
“It’s the experience of a lifetime. I’ll never forget it,” he said. “It was the most important work I’ve ever done as a paramedic. It is something that will never leave me, you know.”
Staff photo by Patrick JohnsonRetired Springfield Fire Department Lt. Daniel Hamre holds a plaque a friend gave him after he returned from Ground Zero. The inscription, a quote from Thucydides, reads "“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them ... and yet ... go out to meet it.”
Hamre headed to Manhattan five days after 9/11, taking with him an old set of firefighter gear on a Peter Pan bus from Springfield. When the bus line heard where he was bound and why, they refunded his ticket and let him ride for free. So, too, did every cab driver he encountered in New York.
He’d spend five days in Manhattan doing what he could, all of it as an unpaid volunteer.
He said he will always remember his first sight: “When you walked in, it looked like the set of a science-fiction movie, but, when you walked two feet, you’d say no one’s imagination is this good.”
Ground Zero was literally sealed off, partly because it was dangerous and also because it was a crime scene, Hamre recalled. There were thousands like him who wanted to be there to do what they could, and, without restricted access, they would only muddle up the effort, he said.
When he first arrived, Hamre was put to work off site packing supplies for Ground Zero. While the work was important, Hamre said, he didn’t feel it made the most of his firefighting training.
So, he asked for directions to the nearest fire house. Walking into the Midtown Manhattan High-Rise station, Hamre introduced himself as a fellow firefighter and quickly made friends. “They kind of adopted me,” he said.
In no time at all, his new friends were telling him where to go to get past security at the Ground Zero perimeter, and not much longer after that he was presenting his firefighting bone fides and offering his assistance at the command center at Church and Vessey streets.
“The guy said, ‘How many of you are there?’ and I said ‘It’s just me.’”
He was assigned to a crew of firefighters working with a crane operator. The crane would lift some rubble, and the firefighters would crawl underneath to look for victims.
After doing that for most of the day, Hamre’s Western Massachusetts accent served to be his undoing. A, New York Fire Department higher-up, passing within earshot and hearing him talk, asked, ‘Who is this guy, and is he supposed to be here?”
Hamre was asked to leave, but his service was not done.
He returned to the Midtown Manhattan High-Rise firehouse, which had lost 10 firefighters, and worked there for the next four days, responding to fire calls. Doing so freed up a firefighter from the station to go work at Ground Zero, he said.
In the days he was there, people were coming off the street to offer condolences and to make donations to a widows’ and orphans’ fund. “I saw college students giving the last $20 they had and bankers and lawyers writing checks for thousands of dollars,” Hamre said.
He watched former President Bill Clinton put his arm around the father of a missing firefighter and try to console the man.
“It’s not just on the anniversary that it hits me,” Hamre said. “I think of the guys often. I tell their stories often. I still have the pin on my suit that I wear when I go out. Three-forty-three. We lost 343 firefighters that day.”
Hamre said he hopes 9/11 will be remembered for years to come, the way his parents remembered Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the way he remembers the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. “I don’t ever want it to become common place,” he said.
Shortly after he returned from Ground Zero, a friend gave Hamre a plaque to hang on his wall. It was the last thing he saw each day on his way out the door during the last nine years of his firefighting career.
It shows firefighters sifting through the smoking rubble of the trade center towers. Underneath is a quote from the ancient Greek historian Thucydides: “The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them ... and yet ... go out to meet it.”