Daisy Bonilla
School Safety Agent, New York Police Department
Age: 47
Involvement in 9/11 response efforts: Patrolling and securing the disaster area
Current employment status: In the process of retiring
“On the second day, everyone at NYPD school safety started doing their long shifts. That day, we went down to Ground Zero and I was patrolling. I was with 12 other guys around William Street and Fulton Street. All the debris fell on our arms down there and it was so itchy; we scratched so bad we ripped the skin. I could feel the glass on my skin; all the white stuff was just coming down. Everything that was in the buildings was on us. We didn’t have any masks.
We went to the Red Cross that was located at Pace University, and there was a doctor who took care of us. She cleaned us up, gave us tetanus shots and other medications, and she told our lieutenant that we had to rest for eight hours before we could go outside again, so we did. Then they put us back out.
We were patrolling the area because there were people trying to get back into their buildings to retrieve things, but no one could come back at that point. We were helping out the police officers with traffic and we were looking around to see if anyone needed help.
When I got home, I told my mother to bring out a black garbage bag and I took everything off—boots and everything—and then threw it away. School safety told us when we went home to take off our clothes and put them in a black bag and to call them so they could dispose of it. They told us to not bring anything in the house; they told us nobody should touch us. I had a lot of itching. When I was walking in the area, I tried to cover my eyes. We were breathing it in.
We did a lot of overtime. This went on for months. We would walk around the area to Red Cross locations and different schools that were open as shelters wherever anybody needed help. I saw a lot of things, and I never discussed it. When it happened, I was still in shock. I didn’t think about all the stuff that we were breathing in. What I was thinking about was helping the people down there, helping the people [who] were in trouble. I didn’t think about the fact that we looked like ghosts with all the debris.
I used to put my conditions on the back burner. When people would talk about the incident, I would walk away; I didn’t want to deal with it.
I have a lot of muscle pain, and that’s what prevents me from working. I can walk a block and a half, but I have to stop because I get pins and needles, a burning sensation, and it feels like my skin is ripping off. I take a lot of pain medication, but it doesn’t help. I can’t do a lot of the things that I used to do.”
Paul Gerasimczyk
Police Officer
New York Police Department
Age: 56
Involvement in the 9/11 response efforts: NYPD Rescue/Recovery
Current employment status: Retired
“The day of 9/11, I was working with my partner. We were both assigned to the NYPD bus unit. We were by St. Paul’s chapel when the first building came down. I thought a small nuclear device had gone off because at this point I still didn’t know it was an airliner that went into the building. It sounded like freight trains when the building collapsed. It became like a nuclear dawn.
There was a lot of confusion. The radios went out because the master antenna was up on the World Trade Center towers. The cell phones were out, as well. We were wandering around the area, trying to get a fix on stuff.
That first day someone had gotten some paper masks from somewhere. I had lost my ability to see depth perception from the dust. We worked until midnight that night and then our inspector dismissed us and gave us our orders for the next day.
We worked 4 am to 4 pm shifts six days a week for weeks and months on end. I wasn’t concerned about getting sick at the time.
Everybody was coughing up the stuff they inhaled, kind of like black phlegm, or they were blowing mucus out of their nose, which wasn’t normal. Our clothes were saturated with the dust. Our skin, or my skin, got incredibly itchy from the asbestos and from the fiberglass in the air. I had a pair of shoes, I am sorry I didn’t keep them, but their soles just fell apart, they just deteriorated.
In 2004, I came to Mount Sinai and it has been very helpful to me. The doctor here, she was the first one [who] told me my coughing spells were asthma. At night, I would start coughing and coughing, and I would break out into little beads of sweat. She told me that I was having asthma attacks. Then I started getting all of the different tests, and they discovered I had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and reactive airways dysfunction syndrome (RADS).
In 2007, they found a tumor in my kidney, which is recognized as one of the 9/11 illnesses. I had one-third of my right kidney removed.
The experience at Mount Sinai has been A+. It’s great—everything from the doctors to the staff. I go to the group meditation therapy here and it’s very good; it helps. I have been doing a lot of reading on meditation. It helps you relax and heal; it helps you not have any negative thoughts.”
John R. Soltes
Police Officer
Port Authority Police Department
Age: 62
Involvement in the 9/11 response efforts: Port Authority Police Department
Rescue/Recovery
Current employment status: Retired
“On 9/11, I was retired from the Port Authority Police Department, but when the incident happened I went into my precinct at the George Washington Bridge. I tried to get down there [to the site of the World Trade Center] on 9/11, but everything was closed off. There were 12 of us retirees [who] came back to work for the rescue/recovery unit. They welcomed us with open arms; they needed all the help they could get.
On 9/12, we reported to the Port Authority headquarters down there and worked the midnight shift. We got in at about 3 pm and worked until about 7 am. For the first month, we worked seven days a week. You’d go home to catch up on some sleep or you’d sleep down there since we had tents set up at the time with cots. Eventually it went down to twelve-hour shifts, and then eight-hour shifts, but pretty much five, six, seven days a week. Paper masks were handed out but [there were] no respirators for about the first two weeks. A lot of the boots that were issued melted. I think I went through four sets of boots. The metal was still so hot that we were walking on.
We didn’t have to go through any training to work on the pit. When they issued respirators, probably about two weeks in, there was still no training about how to use them. I want to say it was about two months in that they issued the respirators with replacement filters. At first they never told us that the filters were only good for eight hours. So we were walking around with filters on for weeks that didn’t fit our faces.
At the time, there was only one thing on our minds and that was getting the job done. It was finding as many people as we could and nobody really thought about their personal health.
Like I said, the best way to find a body was through smell and to do that you had to take your respirator off and the goggles they issued. You couldn’t see anything through them, so I very rarely ever wore my goggles. Looking back, a lot of us were suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and breathing problems. Everyone developed what they call the WTC (World Trade Center) cough, but we didn’t think anything about it. All we wanted to do was the job at hand. We would leave that place and would cough and spit up black dust, all kinds of crap. It just felt like we had to go back and do it all over again. We put everything on the back burner, so to speak.”
Deidra Maxwell
Supervisor, Highway Repair
Age: 64
Involvement in the 9/11 response efforts: Supervised debris removal
Current employment status: Retired
“I worked for the highway department, [New York City] Department of Transportation. I was down there [at Ground Zero] from November until April for the cleanup. I supervised the men in the trucks [who] were taking the debris to the barge on the West Side Highway. I kept a record of their times and made sure that they were diligently doing their jobs as much as I could. It was one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. It was indescribably morbid. The cleanup took forever. One of the things I remember so vividly is that every time they found a body, a silence came over the whole workplace—everything stood still because of the bodies they were still finding.
In November, they were still finding bodies.
There was nothing to prepare you for what happened. As far as safety goes, there was nothing, because all you could do at the time was respond and try to make a difference. You just wanted to help somebody. Everybody I knew had the same initial reaction to just respond, as opposed to thinking of their own safety first. This was not about safety, it was about thinking, ‘Maybe I can make a difference; maybe I can help somebody.’ I think the human element kicked in more than anything else.
I was down there and I was alone going from point A to point B, but there was interaction in the tent when it was time to eat. I remember we had to wash our feet, like that was going to do something, but all it did was supposedly prevent us from tracking the debris that was out there into the tent so that the tent could be a safe environment for us.
Mount Sinai has been geared to help and the people who work here have a level of empathy with the people who come. I think they see the sadness that we all have, because there’s a lot of sadness with responders. When I first went to group therapy, there were things that I thought only I was experiencing. I found out that others were also experiencing the same things.
My breathing has gotten very bad since being down there and I protected myself as much as I could. I didn’t wear a mask or anything but I stayed in the vehicle I was in as much as I could. Still, there was no running from what was there.
I am more health conscious than I have ever been. When I started therapy, one of the things that helped me mentally was picturing the people [who] passed down there living vicariously through me. It gave me such a greater appreciation for life.”