When I am called to duty, God,
Whenever flames may rage;
Give me strength to save some life,
Whatever be its age.
Help me embrace a little child
Before it is too late
Or save an older person
From the horror of that fate.
Enable me to be alert
And hear the weakest shout,
And quickly and efficiently
To put the fire out.
I want to fill my calling
And to give the best in me
To guard my every neighbor
And protect his property.
And if, according to my fate,
I am to lose my life,
Please bless with your protecting
My children and my wife.
- Author Unknown
Provider: United Press International
WRITTEN BY : WILLIAM M. REILLY, DATE POSTED: 9/22/01
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NEW YORK (UPI)-- Debris removal and rescue efforts came to momentary halt Saturday as the body of yet another firefighter was recovered.
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was at the scene. "I watched a group of firefighters take out one of the brothers," said Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. "It was a very beautiful scene to see how they treated him and how they all stood at attention when he was brought in and the priest blessed him.
"It gives you the sense of the dignity and the honor that is being paid to those that have been lost," he said. "They are doing everything they can to try and recover as many people as possible and they will to continue to do that and the effort is really is very, very sad and very tragic and also very magnificent in the way the people who are doing this are carrying it out."
Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said 261 bodies have been recovered from the wreckage, 194 of them positively identified. There are still 6,331 people still listed as missing and reports of another 1,241 foreign nationals not accounted for by their consulates but who have to be checked out.
"We will never forget," read a newly-hung banner across the breadth of heavily-damaged 1 World Financial Center across broad West Street from the trade center debris, the two mounds of towers one and two gradually merging.
Donald Hull, a Los Angeles County battalion chief working on the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Urban Search and Rescue team, Task Force 1 was asked about the frustrations of not finding survivors. None have been found since the day after the attack.
"I try to stay divorced from that," Hull said. "I do my job. I cut steel and I pull it off."
He added, "I try not to get involved in the personal stories."
The pool reporter said several rescue workers told him they "have been avoiding all TV, radio, everything," even Friday night's celebrity gala, "because it is too emotional."
However, Hull said, "There's still a slight hope," explaining in past post-collapse wreckage, "Weirder things have happened. There's a mall down there. You could maybe live on donuts and water for weeks."
However, that did not account for the intense heat reported in some of the voids from still-burning fires further below.
Capt. Stu Willig, of FEMA's Florida Task Force, said, "Today has been a significant day. We have gotten very deep, where they felt there was the possibility to find some trapped victims and now we're in an area where we think we might find some trapped firefighters. We're finding a lot of open spaces today," but despite hopes of finding bodies they didn't.
Gary Gleason, a FEMA spokesman, said, "You need to find void spaces to be able to find survivors, obviously this late in the game. So in order to find spaces, the Fire Department, as well as the task forces, might bring out a canine team to look for where scents might have pooled.
"It's been very challenging for the dog's because there are literally thousands of workers that have been out there," said Gleason.
A pool reporter at the site, Matt Stannard of the San Francisco Chronicle, said he was told by rescue workers they were reaching under-rubble open spaces and finding more bodies.
The reporter said he was told by officials on scene, "They have not in general been finding complete bodies."
He said the cycle of removing a beam takes between 30 and 60 minutes.
After the beam is cut and before it is lifted off sniffer dogs go over the
site looking for possible survivors.
"As far as I was told most of those bodies were not intact," he said. "We saw several body bags being loaded and removed while we were there, either by people working in the (seven-story tall) pile, which is pretty impressive because it's like ants on a hill, or moving them to crane and having the crane lift them down by basket."
He said 90,937 tons of wreckage was taken out in 6,255 truckloads.
In order to get that debris out it has to be moved, carefully, and frequently cut to fit the tractor-trailer dump tracks. It takes 15 minutes to cut through a steel beam superheated in the jet-fuel-fired blaze instead of the usual one minute, said steelworkers, who also said the steel was still so hot it was difficult to stand on and that also made it difficult for the "sniffer" dogs to work.
Giuliani invited former President Clinton to the Saturday briefing, saying Clinton has dropped by a few times to visit with families of the victims and the people helping them at the Family Information Center, on Pier 94 on Manhattan's West Side.
The mayor praised the former president for his efforts.
"They need our support now because a lot of the hard work in dealing with the difficulties and hard work in dealing with the pain of the families is just now setting in on them," Clinton said.
The most moving site he has come across was the wall of posters outside the center with pictures and descriptions of the missing.
As one who has handled disasters, Clinton said, "This one, which was beyond any imagination, has been, in my opinion, brilliantly handled by the mayor here and his team and all the state and federal people who have supported them."
As for his own actions, Clinton, dressed casually in a blue shirt, blazer and red and white tie, said he has followed Giuliani's advice by going shopping Friday and planned to attend Sunday's 3 p.m. EDT prayer service at Yankee Stadium, which was to be broadcast nationally.
Clinton, who held a paper coffee cup throughout his visit to the briefing area, said he has been doing interviews on travel shows extolling New York City and has plans to travel on, "I think four commercial flights next week" to encourage commercial air traffic.
"I feel quite confident that the airlines are safe for travel again and that New York is safe for visitors," he added. "We don't want the economic problems to get any worse and we need to keep the confidence of the people up. Now the ultimate victory here is the maintenance of America's confidence in itself, its values and its future."
Copyright: Copyright 2001 by United Press International.
Heroes of the World
Trade Center 
From the rubble of the World Trade Center, tales of heroism have emerged. The bravery continues as search-and-rescue teams dig through the remains to find an unlikely survivor or to reclaim a casualty. Meanwhile, people across the United States are pouring resources to help everyone connected to the rescue and recovery efforts.
Exhausted search dogs are nearing collapse, after being on the go for 16 hours straight, according to news accounts. Several dogs have been injured in the wreckage, falling through floors of damaged buildings adjacent to the World Trade Center. In the first hours of the attacks, search dogs found six people alive. Since then, sadly, fewer people have been found. Some search teams have been sent home as the effort shifts from rescue to recovery.
The courage and self-sacrifice that has become routine began moments after the first Boeing airliner struck the World Trade Center as dogs led the blind through the smoky confusion to safety. In one case, a blind man had let his dog off leash to give the canine a chance to escape. The plane had struck the building 20 floors above, and glass rained down. The dog ran at first, but came back to his side and guided him to the emergency exit.
Upon reaching the emergency exit with a crowd of others, the man was led down the 70 flights of stairs by the dog and by his boss. Slowly, with the crowd pressing in on them, the trio made their way to safety.
On the 78th floor, a similar story unfolded. Roselle, also a Labrador retriever, was sleeping under the desk of Michael Hingson, a sales manager who worked in the World Trade Center. The collision and explosion woke Roselle. She guided Hingson through the smoke and the smell of burning jet fuel to the emergency exit and down the stairs.
If the dogs involved in these and so many other rescues could speak, they would only say that they were simply following their nature. The same can be said of the people who continue to find ways to help out during the crisis. Simply put, you’ll never find a hero who admits to being one. They simply don’t know how else to respond.
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