Treading Lightly at Ground Zero

On the morning of Sept. 11, Tom Carr '96, a volunteer with the Urban Search and Rescue Team of Massachusetts Task Force 1 (MATF-1), was summoned to the unit's Beverly, Mass., post to await orders from FEMA. By afternoon, he was on his way to New York City for a weeklong deployment at Ground Zero. From the eerie quiet of the bus ride into the city, under police escort, to his first glimpse of the now unrecognizable remains of the World Trade Center, the experience changed him to the core of his being--in ways he is still discovering.

MATF-1 trainee Chad Council '94, who was recruited by Carr, stayed behind to maintain 24-hour telephone and e-mail contact between families and task force members. Dave Andrade '92, a paramedic with American Medical Response, treated injured civilians and rescue workers from a makeshift field hospital at the Staten Island Ferry's Manhattan terminal. (Read his story) Others waited on standby to treat casualties at their local hospitals. "As the day unfolded," says Dr. Bruce Minsky '77, "we realized that we would not be receiving any patients and we understood what that meant. Nothing is more difficult for a physician than to not be able to offer assistance."

Rather then digging through the rubble, Carr, who is trained as a technical information specialist, was assigned to observe and document operations at Ground Zero in a detailed record. "My job can breed a sense of helplessness at times," he admits. "There isn't a person on the crew who didn't want to get in there and make a find." As he stood by taking notes, Carr struggled to remember the importance of his role. "I exist to make sure that we learn as much as possible from this operation," he explains. "By doing my job, I'm going to enable us to do things better later on."

Carr quickly realized that it takes great sensitivity to be pointing a camera around so much death and destruction. "Those on the scene needed to know that we were doing this as documentation for the permanent record--not as a bunch of tourists snapping pictures," he says. Only during breaks and downtime did the emotional impact of the tragedy creep in. "You reach a certain point when you stop consciously thinking about it, because it's so overwhelming," says Carr. "Training and autopilot kick in, and you just go and do what you have to do. After a few hours of downtime, things would flash back, like the stench and char and chaos. None of us really slept well the first part of the week."

Back home in Massachusetts, Carr first took a long shower--after a week of washing in a forest service trailer. Next, he spent some quiet time alone. His weekend plans--to attend Homecoming with his WPI friends--seemed as if they'd been made years ago. Instead, he attended a Critical Incident Stress Debriefing on the weekend after his return. The less-glamorous task of filling out paperwork and putting together an incident report followed.

For more information on MATF-1, go to www.matf.org. The site includes an online application, but cautions that there is already a waiting list for many positions. FEMA's Web site is www.fema.gov.

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Last modified: Sep 02, 2004, 16:13 EDT