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Good Read Rower responds to World Trade Center disaster
Nancy Gibbs put it best when describing the aftermath of the World Trade Center disaster in Time magazine. "On a normal day," Gibbs wrote, "we value heroism because it is uncommon. On Sept. 11, we valued heroism because it was everywhere." So from the Olympic family, we present the story of 23-year-old Jason Read . In August, Read, the last cut from the 2000 U.S. Olympic rowing team, stroked the U.S. men's eights team to a fourth-place finish at the World Rowing Championships in Lucerne, Switzerland. Then he returned to Temple University to complete the final semester of his double degree in economics and finance. But nearly three weeks ago, Read used other skills he had learned in the service of the victims of the World Trade Center tragedy. First, some background: In April 1992, Read, then a 14-year-old resident of Ringoes, N.J. (population 6,000), convinced his parents to let him join the local rescue squad in a minor capacity. Read spent time washing trucks and fund-raising until age 16, when he was old enough to ride in an ambulance. In 1998, he was named deputy chief of his rescue unit, and the next year he became chief of the Amwell Valley Rescue Co., the youngest chief of a fire or rescue unit in the state. On the morning of Sept. 11, Read awoke to the sound of his mother's tears. After learning what had happened in New York City, he joined a task force of rescue units that began arriving from New Jersey within a half-hour of when the North Tower was struck. Read reached Liberty State Park, 15 minutes after the first tower collapsed. At the scene, rescue crews created a staging area and field hospital with other units. The group included 250 ambulances, 100 surgeons, 50 paramedics, 50 nurses and 350 emergency medical technicians. "It was an impressive staging area," Read said. "We had everything we needed. Organization just sort of happened." As rescuers struggled to determine jurisdictions in the face of such a massive disaster, Read was appointed communications commander for all units inbound from New Jersey. Read recalled talking to police, making sure one driver stayed with each rig because there were reports that terrorists were planning to put bombs into any trucks left unattended. It was a day of confusion and false alarms. "We got calls that 500 patients were on the way over," Read said. "Several times throughout the day, we were expecting the Coast Guard boats to arrive with patients, but it never happened. We were set up to become a giant catcher's mitt. The realization was that we didn't see anyone. Everyone was dead." Read's voice cracked as he described much of what he saw. It was a sort of therapy for him to talk about it, he explained, knowing that the emotional scars would likely linger for years. At 11 p.m., the units demobilized, leaving behind skeleton crews with the realization that there wouldn't likely be anything for them to do. Read then headed for Ground Zero, unprepared for what he would see. "The pictures you saw on the news don't convey the gravity," he says. Before he reached the scene up close, Read saw the structural damage around the buildings. "First, I saw one truck totally destroyed," he said. "Chiefs' vehicles were totally destroyed. A large fire truck had been totally ripped apart. My eyes have never seen anything that horrific." At this scene, as with the previous one, inexperienced commanders had been thrown into situations they hadn't expected. "All of the top fire chiefs and EMS chiefs were dead," Read said. "Remember, the police, fire and rescue teams were going up the stairs as people were frantically going down. Battalion chiefs who'd never had to manage that much were thrown into a lead role in a disaster that resulted in the worst loss of life on the U.S. mainland since the Battle of Gettysburg. The force of 110 floors of steel imploding in 14 seconds was too much to think about. Things caught fire in the pile. I totally lost my orientation. The camaraderie was high on Wednesday as we were desperately digging for survivors, knowing at any moment you might pull one of your brother firemen out." The workers found their final survivor on Wednesday, a woman whom they located under two dead fire fighters. "She was alive," Read said. "We were fighting for good news from somewhere." Read stayed at the site until 2 p.m. on Wednesday. He went back to Jersey City by ferry, took a four-hour break for dinner, returned to Trenton for debriefing and was back at Ground Zero by Thursday evening. "That's when the wreckage started to be cleared and we started finding bodies left and right," he says. "Guys in their gear and respirator equipment, body parts, skin, hair. There was just so much wreckage. The dogs recorded hits. We started digging vigorously, hoping we'd find someone alive. We were yelling, 'Can anybody hear us? Make a sound. Do something.' We didn't find anyone alive." Read and other rescue workers crawled into and out of confined spaces. Up would come full buckets of dirt and soot to a rescue worker who was midway down the hole and then they'd go up to the man at the top. "We were working under I-beams that were hanging over us at a 45-degree angle," he says. "We didn't know how stable they were. You have to hope your footing is there because there was a lot of shifting going on." The rains came at 3 a.m. Friday morning. Read was treated for exhaustion with an IV, but not wanting to leave the scene and go to a hospital when he thought he could still help, he slept for a few hours in a blown-out booth of a restaurant and regained just enough strength to return to sights no one should have to see. "Friday morning we found a lot of fire fighters' body parts, legs, fingers," Read said, hesitating. "They pulled a woman out right in front of me and we realized she had no head. There are just images that can never escape you. After four or five trips to the morgue carrying bags of body parts, I'd had enough." At 1 a.m. Saturday, Read returned to Jersey City. "I got in my car and I was a mess. I had no idea how to get home I was so disoriented," he said. In the coming days he wept through three debriefings, visited with the national team's chaplain and attended his first church service in many years. He attended a memorial service for one of his fallen firefighters, whose six-year-old son held up a sign during the service that read: "courage." Read has gone back to rowing in the last two weeks, fighting through the conflicting emotions. "It was great to be back where there was peace and serenity," he said, "but it's hard to get up for a 7 a.m. practice when you can't sleep at night." Runners to the rescueThe New York City Marathon will take place, as planned, on Nov. 4, with a new theme "United We Run." The New York Road Runners Club, organizer of the marathon, was one of the first sports groups to respond to the needs of fire and rescue teams at Ground Zero. The club donated the following items to the police, fire and rescue teams at the city's Jacob Javits Center: Sports Illustrated staff writer Brian Cazeneuve covers Olympic sports for the
magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
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