Sept. 5 2002 - Pile

19 of 48 DOCUMENTS

The Indianapolis Star

September 5, 2002 Thursday Online Edition

Making the trip to 'the pile'

BYLINE: By Tom Spalding tom.spalding@indystar.com

SECTION: INDYSTAR.COM;

LENGTH: 859 words

Reporter Tom Spalding, who spent six days with Indiana Task Force 1, recalls a trip to the heart of the disaster.
The first time I see 'the pile,' I'm hunched in the back of a minivan.
It's around 3 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 13 -- some 53 hours after the sprawling World Trade Center complex is leveled by suicide hijackers who crash two planes into the twin towers' upper floors.
Rescue workers dub the heap of debris the pile.
I had plenty of notes from hours of interviews with members of Indiana Task Force 1, whom photographer Mpozi Mshale Tolbert and I are following. But access to Ground Zero eluded us for a variety of reasons -- until now.
Two search dogs and their handlers are summoned for an assignment not far from the intersection of Park Avenue and Broadway, where building No. 7 once stood. We ask to go, and they say yes.
I'm not prepared. I have on dress shoes and lack eye protection and a dust mask. But we hop into a six-seat red van with emergency red lights on top. I cram into the back, my heart racing, as we drive the three miles to Ground Zero.
It is as if this part of New York is a construction site on a hot summer day, and we are driving through a cloud of dirt particles. Everything is the same color, like somebody haphazardly spilled beige paint everywhere.
Along Hudson Street and Broadway, the cars parked at the curb are flattened, some upside down on top of other cars. Ash is piled up to their tires and it looks like an Indiana street after a heavy snowstorm.
We drive in a zig-zag fashion through checkpoint after checkpoint on the streets that aren't damaged, and none of the traffic cops can give us the exact directions, or unimpeded access, to the crash site.
One of the cops defends his lack of knowledge, telling our driver, "I'm from the Bronx."
Another rescue worker sees the IFD on our red van and yells to us, "You drove all the way from Indianapolis? We appreciate it."
In the van are three members of Indiana Task Force 1: a transportation aide, and the two dog handlers.
One of the handlers, Marti Vanada of Newburgh, Ind., sees two women holding a U.S. flag, which are selling like hot cakes around the city.
"The patriotism is amazing," she says.
I keep taking notes, but I'm in the back of the van, perched in kind of an awkward kneel so I can see outside. I remember noting how calm Vanada's dog Polly is. I remember Lebanon, Ind., native Tony Zintsmaster stroking his German shepherd Kaiser, who is not bothered by the chaos.
Past the checkpoints, the scene is so busy that the authorities have no time to do anything but suggest ways to combat a heavy layer of dust, asbestos parti-cles and other irritants that fall like windswept flurries.
We reach our destination. Vanada and Zintsmaster and the dogs walk toward what's left of building No. 7. It is lying like bent cardboard; the exterior of six or seven floors is intact, simply because it can't lean in on itself any further. I realize that the dust mask I wear, which attaches above my nose and under my mouth, would work better with two thick straps rather than a thin blue rubber-band.
I see lots of people without masks, so caught up with adrenaline they aren't protecting themselves from possible airborne dangers.
Our driver, Jason Silvey, is a stocky 30-year-old truck driver with a blonde goatee. He is considering smoking a cigarette amid all that floating ash, but thinks better of it. He's worked the Federal Emergency Management Agency in dis-asters before. But this event had made him very nervous. He is not wearing any kind of protection. He's in shorts, dressed as though he is ready to zip off to an Indianapolis Indians game.
I can only imagine what stories he is going to tell friends back home in In-diana.
"This is just blowing my mind ... I'm completely amazed," Silvey tells me. "Everything's just flat ... just to get here and breathe the air, it lets you know."
I scribble more furiously, and he tells me: "I would rather be here than at home, being upset and mad. At least I am here doing my part, trying to help."
We chat a bit a little more as the dog handlers fade from view. I had de-serted the safety of the transport van to see if I could see anything beyond building No. 7. I can't. It's too dusty, too large, and I plan on coming back again for another look. As we drive back to the base camp I am thankful for the chance to get a snippet of detail for our readers back in Indianapolis.
So many people ask me what it was like, and I sense envy in their voices be-cause they didn't get to see it. Take some comfort. I was in the shoes of most of our readers before that Sept. 13 trip to the pile.
I can remember asking Jim Riley, a New Jersey firefighter serving on that state's FEMA task force, what it was like.
Riley looked at me and described it as if it were ingredients in some recipe. Concrete. Steel beams. Body parts.
"You saw it on TV. You know what the deal was."
Call Tom Spalding at 1-317-327-7939.
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Library Note: This story was published on the IndyStar.com website, but was not printed in The Indianapolis Star.

LOAD-DATE: October 6, 2002

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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