{"id":177049,"date":"2021-09-09T16:22:25","date_gmt":"2021-09-09T20:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=177049"},"modified":"2025-07-17T09:39:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T13:39:14","slug":"accounts-from-ground-zero-20-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2021\/09\/accounts-from-ground-zero-20-years-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Accounts from Ground Zero, 20 Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"
While many can say where they were and what they were doing when America came under attack Sept. 11, 2001, a relative few can say there were physically at the World Trade Center site in the hours that followed.<\/p>\n
Two UConn Health physicians were among those who found themselves amid the rubble that day in Lower Manhattan, responding to offer assistance at the site that would become known as Ground Zero.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the time I felt like I was there doing something as best I could, at least being available. And now I look back and I\u2019m like, ultimately we weren\u2019t able to do that much,\u201d recalls Dr. Robert Fuller, chair of the UConn John Dempsey Hospital Emergency Department.<\/p>\n
At the time Fuller was 37, the hospital\u2019s EMS medical director. In that role he regularly trained with first responders as part of the UConn Health Fire Department\u2019s special operations unit, skilled in response to potential mass casualty events or other situations requiring specialized training and equipment. He reported to work that morning and found people gathered around the television in the ED waiting room.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody was shocked about what was going on,\u201d Fuller says. \u201cAnd I wasn\u2019t there for a minute or three till someone from the fire department called up and said, \u2018Is Fuller there? We\u2019re putting together a team to go.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\nThen-medical student Dirk Stanley stands on Liberty Island with the Twin Towers in the distance in June 2001. Three months later he would find himself running a Ground Zero triage site. (Photo provided by Dirk Stanley)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
That same morning, a 31-year-old medical student named Dirk Stanley was attending the morning report at Brooklyn Hospital, where he had just started his pediatric rotation. He was in his third year at the St. George\u2019s University School of Medicine. He recalls someone interrupting to announce some kind of explosion at the World Trade Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ended up in the nursery looking out the window and there was one tower standing there with smoke pouring out of it,\u201d Stanley says.<\/p>\n
Today UConn Health\u2019s chief medical information officer, Stanley recalls thinking the angle he was watching from obscured his view of the second tower. He also remembers trying, unsuccessfully, to call one of his best friends, who worked at the World Trade Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of the sudden that tower that\u2019s standing there, it starts crumbling down,\u201d Stanley says. \u201cWhere\u2019s the other tower? I didn\u2019t even know what was happening. And now, all of us are in sort of a sense of panic.\u201d<\/p>\n
As trainees with undefined responsibilities, Stanley and his peers rushed to the ED, where patients already had started arriving and where providers were too busy to precept students.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I walked outside and I\u2019m looking at all these people flooding Flatbush Avenue,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t know where to go, I don\u2019t know what to do, and I think my best friend just died.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018New York City Is Closed\u2019<\/h3>\n
Back in Farmington, hospital leadership was meeting about what could be done to prepare for what clearly had become a mass casualty catastrophe. Fuller told the group he\u2019d like to mobilize the special operations unit to go to New York City and assist with the response.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told them briefly who we were,\u201d Fuller says. \u201cI remember [Executive Vice President for Health Affairs] Peter Deckers saying something like, \u2018Rob Fuller can have whatever he wants. Go.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Fuller and a team of UConn Health firefighter paramedics and Farmington volunteer firefighters started to assemble their gear and a convoy to drive down.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know it\u2019s not right when you\u2019re driving there and there are no cars on the road \u2014 Zero cars on the road, anywhere, on the highways,\u201d Fuller says. \u201cBefore the New York border it was clear. The changeable electronic announcement signs on the side of the road, they said, \u2018New York City closed.\u2019 Instead of saying \u2018travel advisory,\u2019 it said, \u2018New York City closed.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Everything Smelled Like Burning Oil\u2019<\/h3>\n
In Brooklyn, Stanley found himself walking toward the Manhattan Bridge with two physician assistants.<\/p>\n
Though not fully trained as a physician yet, Stanley was a certified emergency medical technician. His path to medical school went through Valhalla, New York, where he served for nearly five years with the volunteer ambulance corps and was the Thursday night crew chief. The experience provided many interactions with police and firefighters, as well as training for disaster responses.<\/p>\n
Mostly by foot, and with some help from a police cruiser where traffic allowed, they made their way to the intersection of Broadway and Fulton Street.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all dust. It\u2019s loaded with emergency vehicles, burning cars, and every once in a while you see some poor business person with a suit covered in dust and their briefcase running off in the corner. There\u2019s nothing but dust and girders and burned cars on their sides,\u201d Stanley says. \u201cWe\u2019re walking forward and now it\u2019s getting really dark and we can\u2019t see much of anything, but we gotta keep going. When I replay it in my head, it\u2019s midnight, which is so bizarre because in reality this is like 11 o\u2019clock on the most beautiful, bright, sunny day. That\u2019s how much badness there was.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything smelled like burning oil, and I remember closing my teeth and, you know when you get sand in your mouth and your teeth are crunching?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018The Wrong Ratio\u2019<\/h3>\n
Approaching Manhattan, the UConn Health convoy reached a New York City Fire Department checkpoint.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could see the smoke in the sky real easy. It seemed close. It seemed big,\u201d Fuller says. \u201cIt was daytime, bright, sunny, beautiful day, late afternoon. And we drove and then suddenly it was lights out. It was pitch black. And we\u2019re still driving. And we drove until we parked next to a jet engine, we drove right up to, the tires almost into the rubble, we\u2019re right there. We were able to drive right up into the dust. It was pretty impressive and we didn\u2019t expect to get that close.\u201d<\/p>\n
There they integrated themselves with the FDNY response.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a lot of heat. It was like cement dust, pulverized cement smell, very hot iron, hot steel. You could actually feel it in your teeth a little bit,\u201d Fuller says. \u201cWe remember things like being on top of this hot pile of rubble, and a long chain of firefighters and others passing water and fire extinguishers to spray near their feet to keep the ground cool enough to stand on, and there was somebody being rescued at the top of that pile.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he didn\u2019t have many other examples to share.<\/p>\n
Fuller says most disasters tend to follow a pattern of for every one person killed, nine or 10 may need medical attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a pretty good estimate, but there, it was almost one for one,\u201d Fuller says. \u201cThere were a few thousand people who were injured and survived, but it was kind of the wrong ratio. So there weren\u2019t a lot of people to treat. There really weren\u2019t, especially that first evening and first overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Man in the Red Hat<\/h3>\nDirk Stanley (in the red fire marshal’s hat), then a third-year medical student and certified EMT, helps run a triage site in lower Manhattan on 9\/11. (Photo by Mark Casey)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Stanley\u2019s group arrived at 388 Greenwich St., known at the time as the Travelers Building, to find ambulances staged. What they didn\u2019t find, still, was any clear direction on triage, where it was, or who was running it.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I started doing what I had been trained to do in EMS: Let\u2019s start grouping people first. All the ambulance drivers, gather over here, I need one person to be in charge. Please leave your keys in the ignition and leave your motors off,\u201d Stanley says. \u201cDoctors, I need you over here. If there are nurses, over here. We need somebody to be in charge of this, we need somebody to be in charge of that. Who\u2019s going to be in charge of materials? I\u2019m literally barking out orders, and suddenly, people are asking, \u2018What should I do?\u2019 And I\u2019m asking, \u2018Well, what\u2019s your training?\u2019 And suddenly, we\u2019ve set up a triage.<\/p>\n
Stanley says about an hour later, FDNY Lt. Tom Eppinger arrived to take charge of the communications and materials aspects of the triage.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd he said, \u2018If you don\u2019t mind, I\u2019m going to give you a red hat so you can be the person to help coordinate all the medical effort here,\u201d Stanley says. \u201cTom Eppinger and I basically ran the triage site. He would say what he thought needed to happen and I would corral the medical people.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, we ended up only treating less than 20 people. We had maybe three people with chest pain, but the majority of people were covered with dust and we needed to wash out their eyes and give them some food. We had a lot of firemen and police and other people who were collapsed from the heat or the dust, and we basically rehabilitated them too, and they went back.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fire lieutenant and the medical student ran a Ground Zero triage site for about five hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere really wasn\u2019t anyone to rescue,\u201d Stanley says. \u201cEventually Tom Eppinger came to me and said, \u2018All right, we have to close this down. They\u2019re consolidating the triage from the Chelsea Piers.\u2019 Everyone was here hoping to help, and it never really came to fruition, other than for those 19 people.\u201d<\/p>\n
9\/12<\/h3>\n
The next day saw a shift in focus.<\/p>\n
\u201cResponders started to be sick and we could take care of some of the responders: dust in their lungs and their asthma would act up, or dust in their eyes, or a cut or something. We could provide a little roadside care so they could keep working. But as far as injured from the towers coming down, not a lot of people,\u201d Fuller says. \u201cWe transitioned to doing some recovery kind of work, looking for bodies and finding some bodies, and helping with recovery for a while. It was kind of cathartic for us a little bit to be at least successful in finding something, even if it wasn\u2019t finding a live person, we were able to find someone and help get their bodies to their loved ones.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fuller says his group looked at the soot and debris they brought home in the gear and their clothing with reverence. The boots he wore at Ground Zero remain in the bag he brought them home in, 20 years later.<\/p>\n
Solidifying the Path<\/h3>\n
In 2001 Fuller already had a calling and was well on the path to responding to disasters. Since 9\/11 he\u2019s been part of the International Medical Corps response to disasters such as the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia, the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, Hurricane Thomas in St. Lucia in 2010, and the 2013 typhoon that struck the Philippines. He says his experience at 9\/11 was an early test that propelled him down that path.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt definitely broke the seal on attending a massive disaster,\u201d Fuller says. \u201cI\u2019ve taken care of under-resourced, very injured scenarios before and kind of built up a little bit of capacity to do those things. But certainly 9\/11, where you couldn\u2019t look around and see any of the world normal, it definitely kind of proved that I would be able to do it and recover and contribute to normal society and then prepare myself to do it again. So it definitely was the first time I had that proving.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shortly before the 20th anniversary of 9\/11, Fuller left on an International Medical Corps mission to build and run a mobile hospital in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.<\/p>\n
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