Firefighter recalls searching World Trade Center rubble after 9/11

The memories of searching through the rubble of the fallen World Trade Center towers in New York are forever seared into Mark Gardner's mind and soul.

Some days, the images of his nine days at the wreckage recede and he scarcely thinks about that horrific time for America.

Then he'll get slammed with a memory that leaves him an emotional wreck.

How do you erase memories of hoping each day to find survivors, only to locate bodies and body parts? How do you forget that the rescue dogs got so depressed when they didn't find anyone alive that you and others hid in the wreckage so they would get rewarded for locating the living?

You don't erase memories, Gardner said. You embrace them and you move on.

"What happened on 9/11 will always be part of us, part of me," said Gardner, 55, of Parkton, a Baltimore County firefighter assigned to Station 17 in Texas, Md. "It seems that every week something will trigger a memory. I'll think of the loss of 60 police and 343 firefighters and just break down. It's raw emotion."

Gardner, also a member of Hereford Volunteer Fire Company, knows he has a few tough weeks ahead of him as the 10th anniversary of the terrorists attacks approaches.

He recently pulled out a scrapbook his daughter made 10 years ago. It's filled with copies of newspaper articles, photos Gardner took in New York, printed out emails he received during his time there and thank-you notes written by North County residents, church members and Girl Scouts.

Gardner was home on Sept. 11 and started packing his bags for New York as soon as he saw a plane hit the second tower. He is a member of a FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Team that specializes in structural collapse searches.

A 78-person team — 10 from Baltimore County — rode buses to New York on Sept. 11, followed by tractor-trailers filled with their equipment.

"It was about 9:30 that night and we could see smoke and the dust cloud when we got off the New Jersey Turnpike. There was total silence on the bus," he said.

After checking in at the Convention Center, Gardner started on the 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. shift.

"Sept. 12 was a bright, clear, sunny day and the first thing I saw was a huge airplane wheel sitting in the middle of the street," he said. "The rubble was seven or eight stories high. There wasn't anything recognizable. No office furniture, no computers, no walls, no doors. It was surreal. It looked like a Hollywood movie set. You couldn't take it all in. You were just numb."

He and his team spent each day crawling into spaces created when the towers fell, hoping someone was trapped in the holes. When rescuers thought they heard tapping or a sound from the debris, all work stopped. After a minute or two of complete silence, they started digging again.

When a body was found, work stopped again. Workers took off their hats and watched as a flag-draped basket carried the remains out.

Gardner continued to work 12-hour days and by the time his team left New York on Sept. 19, the mission had changed from search and rescue to recovery.

Gardner and his wife, Janet, an emergency room nurse at Greater Baltimore Medical Center, both went through counseling offered by the fire company after his return home.

"He was a mess emotionally," she said. "He had no patience and he was very angry, but he didn't even realize it."

There have since been medical concerns about the effects of dust breathed in by searchers at the fallen towers. Gardner said he wore a dust mask at first, and then a filtration mask, but believes he doesn't have the same lung capacity he once had.

If there is any sliver of good to come out of the attacks of Sept. 11, Gardner said it was the return of patriotism.

"When we took buses back from the rubble, people were lined up in the streets waving flags and cheering us," he recalled. "On our way home, we saw huge flags draped on overpasses. I wish we could bring back that spirit of patriotism. We should be thankful every day of our lives that we have so many liberties here in America. I know I am."