Ground zero’s horror, kinship recalled

WAITE – When Norm Nicholson went to New York to remove the wreckage of what had been the World Trade Center, he was a stranger. When he left, he and his fellow rescuers were brothers.

A retired police officer and former New York firefighter, Nicholson, 60, left Maine within days of the twin towers’ destruction.

Nicholson, like every other American, watched in horror as the towers exploded in flames. He and his wife, Bonnie, worried about their friends. “We started calling our friends in New York. It was horrific. They were crying on the phone. Some we couldn’t get a hold of.” So Nicholson found himself telling his wife, “I gotta go, I gotta go right now. I got to head for New York.”

It was his friendship with Jack Wisniewski, a New York welder who runs a construction company, that got him into the restricted zone known as ground zero. Wisniewski and Nicholson met in Waite after Wisniewski built a home there.

When in New York, Nicholson always visited his friend. Once they even visited the World Trade Center. “It was like standing on top of the world,” he said.

Wisniewski and his crew have been at the site, using welding torches to cut the huge steel beams that supported the building.

When he arrived, Nicholson said, his friend introduced him to some New York fire officials who assigned him to work with a group of rescue workers.

What had started as a rescue line became a recovery operation.

The site was so unstable, he said, that rescue workers could not use traditional tools to aid in the recovery. So firefighters resorted to a very old technique. They formed a long line like a bucket brigade. But instead of passing water to douse the flames, they were handing off buckets of rubble.

“They had a line of 200 men. They were construction workers, police officers, firefighters. What you did is, you started at the front and in three separate holes you’d be working,” he said. That person would fill the bucket with debris and hand it to the next person who passed it down the line.

“You’d work an hour in the hole, then you couldn’t take anymore, and you’d have to get out of there,” he said. “The dust and the heat. Every time, a guy would get overcome with emotion, which happened a lot of times,” he paused. “It’s so hard to talk about. You’d go back after you’d finished your hour, and everybody the whole way of the line would hug you and pat you on the back, kiss you. It was just unreal. It was like nothing else in the world,” he said through sobs.

At the rest tent, he said, donated items were piled high, including clothing, water and food. “They had people who would help you take off your shirt. You were pouring sweat because of the heat. You were just soaked. You’d take off your T-shirt and change it, but most of them wouldn’t. You just felt you didn’t want to accept the shirts or anything. You just dropped in your chair to drink bottles of water,” he said.

Whenever a body was found, the rescue workers would stop and the dogs would be brought in. “It was unreal to see the dogs working. They’d cross beams and stuff. They walked on the steel. You’d see the dogs slipping and falling and still get up and go on,” he said. “The dogs would come to a beam where there was a big opening, and they’d stop and cry and they wouldn’t want to go across. Then the dog handlers would call them and they’d go anyway,” he said.

After their shift, he said the dogs, like the men, would collapse. “They worked until they couldn’t work anymore,” he said quietly.

Then the black body bags were brought in. “You’d see people’s head drop. People would start praying,” he said.

He said his rescue crew found no one alive. “But you kept hoping. … [There were] hundreds of them they brought out,” he said. “It just drags what little strength you got into you. Your guts and everything else just come right out of you. So horrifying. Emotionally you just get drained when you see these big burly guys break down.”

On the fourth day, he told Wisniewski that he couldn’t do any more. He said his friend hugged him and called him a hero. “Now I wished I was back,” the 60-year-old retiree said. “You wished you were healthy enough that you could do so much more. You feel so bad that you can’t.”

Nicholson said he would like to see a memorial built, not just for those people who lost their lives in the disaster but also for all the men, women and dogs who participated in the rescue effort.

He said the crew members he worked with all hoped to be in Maine for the deer-hunting season. “They all promised,” he said.