Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Twenty-one days.
That’s how long Salvation Army Major Robert A. Webster spent at Ground Zero in New York City after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
As the featured speaker at the 16th 9/11 Remembrance Ceremony Monday at Central Park in Warsaw, Webster shared a few of his stories from those three weeks. He is now the divisional commander with the Indiana Division of The Salvation Army.
“It was my privilege to serve for the Salvation Army at Ground Zero as a chaplain to the fire department of New York. The reason why they needed someone like me to go and do that job was because they had 343 firefighters that died that day. The remaining other thousands of people who also perished ... For the fire department of New York, their concern at that moment was their firefighters.”
He said they had six chaplains, but one was terminally ill. Another one, Father Mychal Judge, had someone land on him that was coming out of the building and died at the scene. That left four chaplains to do 343 funerals, Webster said.
“That made them realize they needed some help from the outside,” he said.
The Salvation Army asked Webster because he was a chaplain at a fire department as well as a Salvation Army officer in Michigan, certified in critical incidents, stress management and other areas.
“I went there and I served there in New York for 21 days on the pile,” he said. “A very difficult place to try and explain to you what it was like. If there was anyone here in this room who was actually there, you’ll understand it was very eerie. Steam rising up from this pile of rubble was seven stories tall. It was still burning, and it was in excess of 2,400 degrees fahrenheit. It was a rather interesting place to be called to go and work.”
The job the fire department was given, along with many other volunteers and workers, was to do body recovery of those who perished in the collapse and fire of the World Trade Center.
People who died were pretty unrecognizable. However, he said, firefighters were wearing tactical gear, making them more recognizable.
“So we dug. We dug in rubble and we looked for the remains,” he said.
While the recovery was moving forward, Webster said there were many other stories taking place.
At Ground Zero, he said there was a lot of anger. There were a lot of people upset, who wanted revenge and something to happen immediately.
“There were stories of what happened when the planes hit the towers, of what did the fire department do. A call came out at Engine 10, Ladder 10, which is the fire department right across the street from the World Trade Center, and they sent their team in immediately to go into the World Trade Center,” he said.
One firefighter stayed behind to man the communications. When the Tower collapsed, the force of that – considered to be like an atomic bomb – went through the front door of Engine 10, Ladder 10 and blew the remaining firefighter completely to the back of the firehouse, smashing him against a wall, Webster said. The firefighter laid there unconscious. When he came to, and staggard out of the firehouse, he saw “what no one should ever have to see,” Webster said.
He was sent home, but returned several days later to duty, which was the first day Webster was on scene at Engine 10, Ladder 10.
One of Webster’s jobs was to listen to the firefighters and their challenges they faced. The firefighters, regardless of their difficulties, always went back to their job.
“But we had some times where we spoke together, and we cried together,” he said. “This one firefighter, I had the privilege of going up to him and asking him was there anything that I could do for him. You could only imagine the scene that took place shortly after I asked that question. It’s something that’s just in my mind, as fresh as if it just happened a moment ago. He got right up in my face, nose to nose, and he proceeded to cuss me out in every word you could ever possibly imagine from a nice, New York firefighter. I even think he cussed me out with an accent.
“Many people came and got around him and they went to grab him to get him away from me, and I said, ‘No, leave him alone.’ And he continued to just shout out all these vulgarities. And then he stopped ... and he just kept staring in my eyes. He reached his arms around me, and I reached my arms around him and he broke down and cried. And he cried. And he cried, and so did I. We had an opportunity then to talk about what had happened. ... For that particular moment, it was enough to help him to get through that day.”
Webster spoke with firefighters who were driving their rigs. One had came upon the scene when a tower was still on fire, shortly before it collapsed. The fire chief told the driver to let everyone out there and to stretch the fire house out “that way,” Webster recalled. The driver took off with the truck in that direction, and as he did so, the building collapsed on all the people he just dropped off to stretch the hose.
“I had a chance to talk to him. What do you say? He was hoping he would be one of them, standing there to die. Now he had to deal with the guilt, the survivor’s guilt, of not being one of them,” Webster said.
He said it was very difficult for the police officers there, too, and many of them were killed at the World Trade Center.
He spoke about the celebrities who came to the scene to work and be encouragers, including actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, televangelist Charles Stanley and country musician Toby Keith.
“There’s so many stories. You can’t possibly tell them all when you’ve been there for 21 days,” he said. He recalled the people who washed his boots, served food and water and those who stood outside of Ground Zero to put their hands on the workers as they left as a way to say thanks.
“To this day I still don’t understand why it had to happen. Why almost 3,000 people died on that day. But I do know that out of that came many, many things and people have been changed forever. The United States was changed forever at that time,” he said.
To view Webster’s full speech, with an introduction by Ken Locke, Warsaw Salvation Army Community Ministries Director, visit the Times-Union website at www.timesuniononline.com.
