Excerpt from Report From Ground Zero by Dennis Smith, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

It angers me; I want to know whom to blame. I am certain, deep in my heart, that this attack is connected to the first attempt on the World Trade Center back in 1993. Ramzi Yousef, who planned that bombing, and his cohort, the blind sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, are today in federal prison. The sheikh has been in Springfield, Missouri, since 1995, serving several life sentences. Yousef was sentenced to 240 years in a maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado. I remember how defiant and remorseless they were, and that memory only serves to anger me even more.

I can shake that feeling only by picturing the firefighters climbing up those stairs in the highest buildings in New York. It is a tough climb in any circumstance, but they will have mask tanks on their backs and hose and tools in their hands, equipment that will make them about sixty pounds heavier. It takes a person with exceptional commitment to do this, and I know it will not be easy for them. I am thinking about this as I go down the elevator in my building. How easy it is for some of us, and how difficult for others. On Lexington Avenue the streets are packed with people. The trains have stopped, the buses are not stopping at the bus stops. I must find some way to get down to the World Trade Center.

A killing storm of terrorism has transformed our lives. We have been swept from a peaceful Tuesday into a calendar of war. New York, Washington, D.C., and a quiet green meadow in Pennsylvania have been attacked, and our fields are now strewn with the remains of heroes. All of us in the Western world are shocked, awestruck, puzzled, and furious.

There is no center to this day, no middle or end. All its remaining minutes and hours will be collapsed into that single instant at 8:48 a.m. when September 11, 2001, became the saddest day of our history.

Officer Will Jimeno
Port Authority Police Department

I am working at the north terminal entrance of the Port Authority Bus Terminal on 42nd Street at 8:48, and my good friend Dominick Pezzulo is working right across from me at the south entrance. Both of us graduated from police school just nine months ago, and we were assigned here together. We are tight, me and Dominick. I can see him just across from me as Sergeant John McLoughlin comes to ask for volunteers to go to the World Trade Center. Sergeant McLoughlin had spent ten years in the emergency service unit, and he knows every inch of the WTC, and so Dominick and I are glad to be able to go with him. Don't forget we are still young on the job, though Dominick is 35 and I am 34.

Our inspector commandeered a bus, and we sped down—the sector cars opened the way for us. We go to the north tower, and then we go under the buildings to go to the south tower, to get to the lobby there. We are one floor under the main concourse area, where all the stores are, and pushing a cart filled with equipment, air masks, helmets, axes, tools, and so on. On the back of the cart, pushing, is Antonio Rodrigues, and just to his left is Christopher Amoroso. [Suddenly I hear a loud noise and] look over to the sarge and say, "Hey, Sarge, is there a second plane coming?" And, just then, it is like an earthquake when the plane hits the south building. We are just about in the middle of the concourse, between the two buildings, just below and a little south of the big golden globe, when huge parts of the tower and shock waves come down into the plaza area, cracking all the cement. The whole concourse above us collapses. There are a lot of civilians all around, and I don't know what happens to them, but I think it has to be bad. I can see Liberty Street before me as I feel a ball of debris hit us. Now, I see a huge fireball coming at us, and I yell, "Run! Run towards the freight elevator!" [The fire has come from the fuel that has poured down the elevator shafts.]

Copyright 2002 Dennis Smith. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Viking.