Tell Them to Never Forget

As told by Gary Smiley, NYC Paramedic

Thoughts on September 11, 2001

Part One

He wasn’t on the schedule to work that day. He had signed up for overtime hoping to make some extra cash. He makes no claim that God protected him, or that his survival had an eternal purpose, but he doesn’t deny it either. He was simply a paramedic doing his duty, an average guy called upon to do a terrible job. And for Gary Smiley the cost was high. He lost 27 people that he knew very well, four or five who were very dear friends. Here is his story…

September 11, 2001

It started out like any other day. I arrived at the station at 0630 and said good morning to the off-going crew. We chatted about the shift, the two to three calls they’d run since midnight, what the truck needed and other routine stuff like that, then they handed over the keys and my shift began. My partner, Danny, and I checked the ambulance and then headed over to Engine 207 to get some gas. Danny topped off the tank and removed the nozzle. I was just replacing the fuel cap when we heard a police officer shouting over the scanner saying something about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. Danny glanced at me and frowned. “A plane?” I just shrugged. Who knew? Curious, I keyed my radio mike.

“Thirty-one V,” I said to the Brooklyn Borough dispatcher. “We’re available for coverage at the plane crash if you need us.”

After a short pause the dispatcher responded.

“Thirty-one Victor, ten-four. Start responding to the M-C-I…One World Trade Center.”

Danny and I exchanged glances and just said to each other, we’re going! “Ten-four,” I said climbing behind the wheel. “Show us [en route] ten-sixty-three.”

Danny jumped in the passenger seat and buckled up, and before I could even get the ambulance turned around the guys from the firehouse started pouring out of the station. And then everyone just started going over the bridge. Fire trucks. Rescue vehicles. And you could see the smoke coming out of the building, and I remember saying to Danny, “That just looks really bad.” And I don’t even know why I said it, because I figured it was just a small plane. Big deal, right? Stupid Cessna pilot. But it turns out it was a very big deal. That day changed my life.

Danny and I were the first paramedic unit from Brooklyn to arrive on scene. And as we pulled up the streets were littered with bodies, and I’m just like, what’s going on here? Stuff was raining down out of the building, people were screaming, it was just chaos. And there were some other ambulances and no one seemed to know what to do, so I just said to everyone, “Listen, put on your jackets, put on your helmets, and just start taking care of people.”

So we went to work. Some people were cut to ribbons, others were burned, it was just unbelievable. And there were things falling out of the building that were hitting us, like tar balls. And it wasn’t until later that we realized they were actually charred pieces of, well, people. I felt totally confused, but I knew it wasn’t a safe place to be working so I said to Danny, “There’s too much stuff raining down. We’re going to get killed.”

So we started moving people. I spotted a middle-aged woman lying in the street with burns on her face and arms. She looked dazed. In serious pain. So I remember grabbing her. I was carrying her across the street to safety, and she started tugging at my arm and saying, “Plane! Plane!”

And I said, “Yeah, I know, a plane hit the tower.”

But what I didn’t realize was that she was looking south down Church Street, and she saw the second plane coming. The vision of that is still somewhat in my head, but interestingly I can’t remember hearing anything. All I remember is looking up and seeing the building explode. And my first thought as we dropped to the ground was, why did the second building explode? I threw myself over the woman, and you could feel the heat coming out of the building. That plane hit like the 70th floor and you could feel the fireball at ground level. It was just unbelievable.

Danny and I stayed where we were for a while, treating people and doing our best, but it just got to be too dangerous. I realized we couldn’t stay there any longer, so we drove around to the other side of the building to get to West Street. And I remember driving around the North Tower and that’s when you started seeing stuff in the street that you never want to see. I wasn’t sure what to do. The road was blocked, but behind us things were falling. “Gary,” Danny said. “Just go!” We had to. We had to drive over it, and so we literally drove over, people basically.

So now we’re on West Street standing in front of the AMEX building, and that’s when the jumpers started. And I remember there was a guy—a black kid, an EMT—that was looking at the jumping people, and he said, “These people are jumping, I’ve got to go catch them!” And I remember we had to hold him down, because he was literally trying to run to the front of the building to catch people. You know everybody just started to lose it at that point. I’ve been told that we actually sat there and counted people jumping, and apparently we got into the twenties before we got distracted by the fire guys calling for help. Apparently they needed paramedics in the lobby of the tower. Of course Danny and I volunteered, but as we were getting ready to walk over there, people started running out. And I remember thinking, why the heck are they running? And that’s when the first tower started coming down.

We ran back to the AMEX building and rushed inside the lobby. And then the whole world came down. A powerful ungodly wind of dust and flying debris enveloped us, and for the next few moments the lights went out. And there were people screaming and choking and coughing, and you couldn’t breathe, and we were like, what the heck happened? Some people were saying the top of the building collapsed and you could see part of the building on the ground and the street was on fire. I mean, you couldn’t see, and you didn’t know what had happened. It was just nuts.

We did what we could, treating the victims and getting them out of there, listening to radio traffic as we worked, trying our best to figure out what was happening. Some people were missing, others were hurt. And at some point I remember hearing a familiar voice cry for help. My good friends Brian Smith and Brian Gordon were trapped. They had been working the Haz-Mat BLS ambulance stationed at the 10/10 house, the famous firehouse at the edge of the World Trade Center site. It is believed that their ambulance was crushed by one of the jet engines when the second plane hit the South Tower. They ran inside the station house for cover and soon became trapped.

So we left to go look for them. Danny went one way, I went the other. And I made it as far as the north pedestrian bridge when I heard a loud crack. Startled, I looked up, and I saw the second tower begin to collapse, so I turned around and started to run. And I think I took, maybe, three steps, and the wind from the implosion blew me down the street. I mean it literally picked me up and threw me down the street and blew me underneath an ambulance. I’m under there now, and the building’s coming down, and everything’s coming down on this truck, and I feel like it’s sinking. And I’m like, “Oh, my god, I’m dead.”

Part Two

I thought about my son. I had lost my own father about a year and a half earlier, and I’m lying there trapped beneath this ambulance thinking, I’ve been doing all this crazy stuff for my job all these years and now…I got myself killed. My son’s father just himself killed. And apparently there are tapes of me screaming for help over the radio, but, thankfully, I don’t remember much of it. But I do remember that my thoughts shifted, and I remember thinking, Dad, if you're out there, you've got to get me out of here. And that was the last thought I can remember before they pulled me out. I asked my father, “Dad, if you’re out there, please get me out of here. I don’t want to die.” And I guess my dad had something to do with it, because I was in the kill zone, I was sixty feet from the base of the north tower. And you know most of the people around me were killed.

They pulled me out from beneath the ambulance and took me to a triage area for treatment, but I remember saying, “I’m not going to stay here, this is insane. I’ve gotta go back to work.” And they were like, “Don’t you realize you were just crushed underneath a truck?” And it was at that point that the second tower fell. And people were running around saying the craziest things. Like I remember the emergency services cops were saying that we were under attack, and they had bombed the white house and the empire state building, and that they were shooting rockets at us. I remember one cop saying they were shooting rockets at us from the Woolworth building which is over like twenty blocks away, and I mean you were like, what the…it was just total insanity.

I was so hyped up on adrenaline at the time that I didn’t realize the extent of my own injuries. I had inhaled large quantities of cement and gypsum, and I had suffered crush injuries, and it wasn’t until I started turning blue and was told that I looked like he was going to die that I realized the seriousness of my injures. I gave in and agreed to be transported to Long Island College Hospital. And one of the ER nurses saw me come in on the stretcher and broke down hysterical because she thought she was seeing a ghost. She had already been notified that I had been killed.

Within a day or two my kidneys began to fail. Shortly after that my overall health began to deteriorate. I developed severe sinus problems, and lesions formed on both of my kidneys and my spleen. And but for an excellent hospital staff and a wonderful man named Dr. Stephen Levin, I might not be here today. Dr. Levin, Occupational Health Specialist at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, took me on as a patient and saved my life. He really took care of me. Oddly, despite all the junk I inhaled, my lungs were never affected. Dr. Levin believes that genetics played a part. He told me, “Genetics said your lungs are not going to be bothered, Gary, but other parts of you will be.”

And he was right. I suffered with severe sinus problems. I was living on antibiotics, and I was constantly sick. Going to sleep at night was always a challenge. I couldn’t breathe, and I would freak out, and I couldn’t sleep. I used to have terrible nightmares. I would wake up screaming. But Dr. Levin made sure I got proper care. He started me on anxiety medications, and in 2009 I had a five-hour sinus surgery at Mt. Sinai. The left sinus had completely solidified. The doctors rebuilt my sinus cavity, rebuilt my septum, they took out some turbinate, basically they fixed me and I have been sick only a few times since.

I still suffer from insomnia. I just don’t sleep well anymore. It’s just something that I’ve learned to live with. And about once a year I have a very petrifying day where I go to the hospital and get my kidneys scanned. I inhaled buildings, and people, and everything else I should have never inhaled, and now I’m paying the price. I also have blood sugar issues, and problems with my pancreas and liver, and my memory is no longer sharp, but overall I’ve been maintaining okay. My life has normalized to some degree. I keep on track, I watch what I eat.

I remember my son saying to me when this all started, “Daddy, I’ll just give you one of my kidneys.” I guess I must have done something right. There were times in the first few years when I just wanted it to end, it was just too painful. The only thing that kept me going was my kids.

You know, as I look back, there’s no explanation. For whatever reason I’m still here. My partner, Danny, and I survived, but a lot of the guys who stayed in the AMEX Building with Danny were killed when the second tower fell. And you know, to this day I believe that if I had stayed there I would probably have been killed too. I used to go through a lot of problems saying, “I got these guys killed.” I mean after all, I was the one who suggested we set up there. But they kept telling me, “You didn’t kill them, Gary. They were there too.” I guess everybody made tough choices that day.

So, I eventually lost 27 people that I knew very well. About four or five that were very dear friends of mine, and that still haunts me today. But a good thing happened in 2007. I was picked in the lottery to be one of the readers at the 9/11 Memorial. I got to read the names of the firefighters, EMT’s and paramedics we lost that day. And I got to read my friend’s name—Jimmy Coyle. And that was a real honor. It was a big closer for me. I got to say goodbye to my friend. 

-Gary Smiley