MUSCMedical LinksCharleston LinksArchivesMedical EducatorSpeakers BureauSeminars and EventsResearch StudiesResearch GrantsGrantlandCommunity HappeningsCampus News

Return to Main Menu

CVC researcher visits ‘Ground Zero’

by Ron Acierno, Ph.D.
Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center
These are my thoughts following my visit to New York City from Oct. 1 through 6 to train case managers and counselors to spot and assess PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and complicated bereavement three weeks after the attack. I was there at the request of Safe Horizon—New York City Victims Services, and the Community Agency for Senior Citizens. 
 Preface: I cannot describe the scene. It would require a description of hellishness that I think only Dante could achieve, and I would not be surprised if his efforts were wanting. This is not just because it is our home and it is new to us.  
 Rather, the mantra “the pictures can’t describe it” that everyone speaks is true, because the devastation is on such a gargantuan scale. It is truly surreal. Your mind does not accept it when you look at a broken pile of building that is taller than any buildings in Charleston and continues for as far as you can see. 
 
Anyway, here are my thoughts:

As the plane to NYC flew up the East River, Manhattan was immediately to my left. The statue of liberty appeared quite clearly first, followed by the tall buildings on the edge of the island.  
 
Immediately behind these should have been the Twin Towers. Instead, there was a steaming, smoking, jagged, and twisted remnant of buildings. The smoke surprised everyone on the plane. We thought the fires would be out by now. The airport was empty but flags were everywhere. In the taxi, on the street, in all the buildings and cars we passed on the way from Queens to Manhattan.  
 
Immediately upon arriving at the hotel in Greenwich Village, I changed into jogging clothes and ran toward the south end of Manhattan, about 20 blocks away.  The air was dusty even on 6th street, about a mile and a half from the crash site.  
 
As I got closer it became increasingly difficult to breathe. The air was filled with the smell of burnt, pulverized concrete and plastic. Everyone who has been near there talks about the smell. It doesn’t resemble burning wood or even burning rubber. It is distinct and acrid and feels like it is filling your lungs. Very weird. A very heavy dust. Many businessmen and women were wearing face masks, and several called to me as I jogged by that it would become harder to keep running as I got closer. 
 
I jogged by a fire station with flowers and letters from kids all across the country taped to the outer walls.  Thousands of flowers.  I nodded to them and they nodded back. They looked very tired.  
 
About four blocks away (a little under a fifth of a mile), the devastation became clear. Police and military men guarded each street that led to “ground zero” from two blocks away. That is, they created a two-block buffer around the devastation. I could see a 50-story building—a tremendous building—with every single window blown out.  Every one.  
 
As I continued on, I climbed a fence to look over the gathered crowd. Several people were crying. 
 
It was quiet for New York City at 4:30 on a workday. Some took pictures. Many covered their mouths with shirts or cloth. I couldn’t see the end of the destroyed landscape. “Holy s—t” is all I said, several times out loud, when I looked up at the remaining buildings.
 
From the rear, the closest building had looked fine. However, as I approached the corner, I could see that the front looked as if it had been strafed by machine gun and tank motor shells and bazooka blasts. Craters and smashed facades and missing walls and offices where people were sitting.  
 
To go farther, I had to walk either east or west of the site. I walked east and south. As I walked along, the existing buildings would obstruct my view, but as I came to each street corner, I could look down the valley of buildings to the right, past the armed military and police, to a different scene of horrible twisted metal and debris 10 to 20 stories high. 
 
Going farther south and looking down each block, I got a slightly different perspective and physical angle.  The dust became very thick, and the police were washing cars leaving the scene.  
 
An 18-wheeler pulling a flatbed
went by with three large, steel girders.  They were about two or three feet thick. Gigantic, and looked perfectly intact except for the ends, which were mangled like children’s pipe cleaners.  The metal should not have been able to be twisted like it was.  
 
The dust was thicker and piled up in the corners of the curb. Several offices and business were closed. Some were open. I looked in and the floor, walls, everything was covered with grey dust. One man was letting people come in to see his destroyed inventory. It was unreal. Everywhere, in every corner, ashes and dust. And this was two full blocks from the edge of the scene, six blocks from the towers.  
 
I looked toward the ground zero site and saw the atrium. A giant glass arch.  It was twisted and the glass was gone and pieces of metal and other building parts were all over it.  
 
Looking down the valley of buildings, the next block revealed a black 15- or 20-story section of building, burned out, crushed and in pieces. On either side were giant piles of broken concrete and steel, with tiny firemen walking over it.  
 
The ground was smoking. Fires were still burning.  The next block was the worst.  
 
The facade of the Twin Towers is still there. Leaning, giant. It looks small on television. It is not. It rises out of rubble and ends in jagged tips, smoke oozing everywhere. The firemen said their boots were melting when they would walk over parts of the debris.  
 
This goes on for seven blocks. I cannot describe the scene any better. More buildings crushed, more giant pieces of metal sticking out of 15-story piles.  Surrounding buildings looking like a hundred Oklahoma City buildings. 
 
So much building. So tightly packed, and brought down with such violence. 
 
At every corner people gathered to look. They were very quiet. People shook police officers hands and handed them food. They clapped when the firemen drove by. This is three weeks later. I retraced my steps, and was struck by the silence of the city.  
 
I thought I would try to get into ground zero when I first started down there. I did not. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even go back.
 
The city was getting back to normal very well, except the shops and restaurants were way below normal volume. People were all out at night, eating and laughing and everywhere people were talking about what had happened and what friends and neighbors had been lost.  
 
Flags on every car and in every restaurant. In almost every single residential window. People of almost every nationality. Arabs and Indians and Asians and Caucasians speaking 10 different languages, eating together in restaurants without animosity, but with communal anger and disgust at what had happened to the “world’s” city. 
 
People are a bit jumpy, though. Walking by union square at lunch time, a hush came over several hundred people when a low flying airliner went overhead. The sound resembled that of the video of the plane hitting the first building—that tunnel sound. Very odd to see Union Square get quiet and everyone look up. New Yorkers don’t typically notice airplanes.  
 
People were visiting the fire stations, which are always open. Each station had a shrine set up for the men who were killed, with pictures of their kids and them smiling. And letters from kids across the country. 
 
Most people were crying as they looked at these. All had red eyes. But the firemen were doing well. They were getting handshakes and hugs from people.  Several food and gift baskets were in each office.  
 
An old Brooklyn Dodger pitcher and New York Giants player were signing autographs for the firefighters at the South Street Station which lost 15 of 50 guys. I asked the firefighters to sign autographs on a FDNY shirt for Allie. They all did so gladly and thanked me, each and every one of about 50 of them from five different stations thanked me for letting them sign the shirt for my daughter, who wanted to know if I were going to see the “heroes” in NYC. 
 
They thanked everyone who came by. They told me the community support was unbelievable. They also told me that no one had had any real time off. There were no replacements left, and all extra men were either at funerals or at the site, looking for brothers. That’s what they call each other.  
  
They were in good spirits until you asked them how many they lost. Then they would tear up for a second. They were upset because they couldn’t find them. They were not used to failure, and they were not going to give up.  
 
At the shrines and restaurants and police stations people gathered and cried, but there was an incredible unity and an underlying anger.  
 
At the training sessions, almost every case manager and counselor had either lost a family member, friend, or had a close family member or friend who had lost someone. Most still could not get telephone calls at their downtown offices, and computer e-mail functions were gone in many sites. 
 
They were all wanting to help, but wanted to know what real interventions there were. All were very thankful for the trainings on normal post trauma reactions, and when treatment might be indicated, and not indicated.  
 
I trained more than 110 people from 10 different agencies, mostly assuring them that not everyone would need counseling, that forcing counseling on everyone is inappropriate, and what someone who does need counseling four to six weeks later would look like. They seemed to think this stuff was useful. 
 
I met several people who would not go into tall buildings or use elevators. Seems rather common now. I was pretty exhausted. 
 
New York City seems to have already mentally recovered to the point of being functional. Stores are open. Restaurants are crowded. People are beeping horns. So many thousands of people are affected, so they are by no means back to normal. 
 
I was ready to come home.