[ THAT TERRIBLE DAY ]
I Was Looking Into the “
By Bernard B. Kerik W
ITHIN MINUTES I WAS there, standing right next to 7 World Trade Center that housed Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s Offi ce of Emergency Management. The front had been damaged by the explosion and there was no way for me to get in. There was debris falling from the top of the north tower, and people were screaming and running. “Back up,” a police sergeant yelled at us, “they’re jumping!” One by one, then two and three at
a
Bernard B. Kerik was police commissioner of New York City from August 2000 to December 2001. He was later an adviser to the coalition in Iraq. In 2009, he was imprisoned aſt er pleading guilty to eight felony charges.
time, people jumped and fell to the ground. I felt completely help- less. There was no way to stop them or to help them. Standing to our right was a hot dog vendor, scream- ing at the top of his lungs at the horror he was witnessing.
As I turned to give an order to one of my men,
an enormous
explosion and fi reball blew out of the north side of the south tower around the 85th fl oor. As I looked straight up, I was confused at fi rst. I never saw the second plane because it fl ew into the south side of the building. My staff and I ran for cover as debris from the plane and build- ing showered down on top of us. A 2-foot chunk of metal from the plane struck one of my detectives in the back of the leg, nearly knock- ing him to the ground. As I looked up at the two burning buildings, I heard a member of the New York Police Department aviation unit on the radio say that a second jet airliner
58 9|11: A DECADE LATER / NEWSMAX / SEPTEMBER 2011
Everything outside was white, and there was nearly an inch of dust on the ground. As we walked outside, what struck me more than anything was that there was no sound. Nothing. — Bernard Kerik | September 11, 2001
had just hit the south tower. I yelled for John Picciano, my chief of staff, to get me air support and close down the airspace. About
three minutes later, the
mayor arrived. As he looked at the damage on the north side of both buildings and watched the falling debris, he suddenly realized that he was looking at people jumping to their deaths, rather than be burned alive in the towering infernos. He was stunned at the sight.
A bit later, he grabbed my arm and said, “We’re in unchartered ter- ritory.” I assumed at the time that he was referring to the devastation to the towers and at the size of the response to come. However, in the days that followed, realizing that an enemy had succeeded in the unimag- inable — a catastrophic attack in the heart of our country’s fi nancial district — those words had a whole new meaning.
fi rst responders could not have accomplished more than they did that morning, given the circumstances. With strength, determination, and valor, they rescued and evacu- ated of thousands of people. Then they established of one of the larg- est crime scenes in U.S. history, all in the face of death that, by day’s end, had taken close to 400 of their beloved comrades.
T
here were no warning signs of the attack, but New York City’s
”
The mayor, several others, and I walked to the fi re department’s tem- porary command post just west of the towers. We met with the fi re depart- ment’s fi rst deputy commissioner, the chief of the department, and the chief of operations, three of the most experienced fi re fi ghters in the coun- try. There was also a sergeant there from the NYPD Emergency Service Unit. They briefed us on the dam-
COURTESY OF BERNARD KERIK
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