 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Time at ground zero brings it all home
By JENNIFER FARRELL
© St. Petersburg Times, Neither of them had ever been to New York City. So when they drove down the West Side Highway last week and Father Carlos Rodriguez suddenly went quiet, they couldn't have known what was wrong. They couldn't have known what they should've seen, what they almost certainly would have seen on any sunny afternoon before Sept. 11. And it wasn't until late that night on the way back to their hotel from ground zero that the priest would tell Spring Hill Fire Rescue Assistant Chief J.J. Morrison and Lt. John Ferriero what was missing: That the shadows were gone. The shadows that, with the approach of sunset, had stretched across lower Manhattan from the World Trade Center for nearly three decades had simply disappeared. In their place flashed a burst of sunlight through two enormous gaps in the skyline. "I don't think any camera or any television screen can capture the enormity of it," Ferriero recalled Wednesday, five days after returning from New York, where he and Morrison had gone to help with relief efforts. Morrison, whose brother is a firefighter in Virginia and has worked in New York for the past month to coordinate support crews, returned to Spring Hill late Tuesday. After a week helping transport and secure credentials for the crews on hand from across the country to counsel firefighters and relief workers, his eyes were still red-rimmed and puffy and his voice was hoarse. "On CNN, on a 25-inch tube, you just don't get that city blocks fell," he said, shaking his head. "I still feel like I'm in a fog." The pair didn't know exactly what they were signing up for when they accepted an invitation from Morrison's brother to go help. The district granted them administrative leave; the firefighters union paid their air fare; and they packed their dress uniforms, hoping to pitch in and attend a funeral or two. Neither was prepared for the scene in New York. On a street median not far from ground zero, Morrison said, recovery workers have started a pile made up of everything they find that looks like it came from a firetruck. Broken backboards lay mangled beside smashed couplings and miles of broken hose. A short distance away, he said, families have erected a makeshift memorial to fallen firefighters. Taped to a canopy pole covering the flowers, teddy bears and family pictures, was a letter from a wife to her missing husband. In it, she tells him how she will raise their three sons alone. Outside the hotel room Morrison and Ferriero shared, workers put up a poster every morning listing dozens of funerals, wakes and memorial services scheduled each day across the region. "Every day, the faces and the names on that board change," Ferriero said. Morrison said the services, which under normal circumstances would attract 3,000 to 4,000 uniformed mourners, have flagged in attendance because surviving firefighters are pulled in so many different directions. "If I had the money, I'd put a detail on a plane," he said. "Just to let them know that somebody else cares." Firefighters on Duane Street, not far from ground zero, have renamed their engine "Lucky 7." In a battalion that lost 24 people, theirs is the only station to have escaped without fatalities. Worried that the national relief funds might get snarled in bureaucracy, firefighters there have set up their own fundraising efforts and relief fund to directly benefit the families of firefighters with whom they worked. "Once I saw that, I said, "Okay, I found a place for my check,' " Ferriero recalled. As president of the Spring Hill firefighters union, Ferriero had been searching for just the right place to send $43,600 raised last month in a three-day boot drive. On Duane Street, Morrison said, the captain who accepted the check from Ferriero called the pair "Angels from Florida." "I just felt the love after that," Ferriero said. "I left there knowing it went to the right cause." -- Staff writer Jennifer Farrell covers Spring Hill and can be reached at 848-1432. Send e-mail to farrell@sptimes.com.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From today's Hernando Times |
