My 9-11 Story. For my son, Michael.

EXCERPT FROM NYC POLICE OFFICER NICHOLAS PIERRO:

The next day, I finally went down to what they were calling Ground Zero. Cops and Firemen were calling it The Pit. I couldn’t believe what I saw. It looked like a post-apocalyptic movie set. The huge skeletal remains of the once majestic Twin Towers, ripped open and smoldering. Fire trucks, crushed and piled on top of each other, like Tonka Toys in a land fill. People were walking around, emotionless, zombie-like. It was chilling. I couldn’t believe the smell. I never smelled anything like that before. It wasn’t a gross smell at all. It did not smell like death. It didn't make you sick. It was just different. I went down a few times. I was on the ‘bucket brigade’ as well. That was when we would dig and pass along these five gallon buckets all the way to the guy in the dumpster. One day I was the dumpster guy. Cadaver dogs would sniff the buckets. If they detected human remains, they would give a sign and that bucket would be handed over and inspected. Whenever they thought they heard a noise coming from within the rubble, someone would shout. Then all machinery would halt. Everyone would stop moving and talking. The Pit went from being an environment so loud you couldn’t hear yourself think to a place in total silence. Someone would yell into the rubble, “Hello?!” We would wait. “Hello!!”Nothing. Then, without saying a word, all the noise would be cranked up again. Hundreds of people hoping, praying, someone would answer back. They were all gone.

They were afraid One Liberty was going to collapse. They had lasers trained on it.If the building so much as vibrated, an alarm would go off and anyone near it would run like hell. It went off often. One Liberty is still standing.

There was a lot of food from many restaurants down there. There were many Scientologists offering massages and back rubs. They were nice people, I thought to myself. There were many volunteers from every state in the country, offering water, cigarettes, candy bars and anything else that was donated. We just kept digging. All that digging… No one found. No bodies either. What happened? They turned to dust. You could walk through the rubble all day long and see nothing.I figured that with over 200 floors between the buildings there must have been hundreds of thousands of telephones. I dared my friend to find one. Just one. A toilet bowl? A desk? A door? Anything? There was nothing but dust. One day I was walking across what was left of the pedestrian overpass that crossed West Street. I looked down and I saw a perfect BMW automobile engine just sitting there on the rubble. About 10 feet behind it was the BMW that was once its home. Apparently the car was crushed and the engine was spit out not unlike squeezing a cherry and spitting out the pit. The things that stick in your head...