What Was It Like? Hank Christen Shares His 9/11 Story - 8 Minutes

We flew into New York, and I remember coming over the North River that approached into LaGuardia, and there was just this big tavern where the building was. And I knew one of the battalion chiefs that had been killed that at that point was missing. And the mindset, now keep in mind we're a medical disaster team, and the mindset is we're still thinking that there's a possibility of rescue. There could be voids. Maybe there's voids. Maybe we're going to get them out. Maybe there's hope. It's still going to be a rescue. Well, no one came out. So we treated the cops and firefighters here on the scene for 17 days. But it was a strange environment. It's like we were in the center of the world to one degree. By that I mean we stayed up in Midtown, nice hotel, nice accommodations. We'd take a bus down to the World Trade Center, and then lower Manhattan, below Canal Street, was suddenly dark. The power was out, everything was dark except one area where giant searchlights are lighting up, and that's where the World Trade Center attack is. So you go from dark to this, every media agency or entity in the world was there, and you're in the middle of this. And as we were going into the final checkpoint on Canal Street, because security was tremendous, cops would literally come on the bus, and we had to have two IDs and have them in my scrapbook now that got us in there. But on the walls of the buildings were pictures of eight and a half by 11 printouts done on computers that would say something like, our daughter, Mary Beth Jones, Lisa Fernandez, our father Ralph O'Connolly or John Levin, didn't matter, was last seen working at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 85th floor. Please call us. Has anybody seen him? And people were walking around the hospital. And of course, we weren't there to see that, but we heard it. But you saw these pictures on the sides of the buildings. And it was, that was the atmosphere. The whole area was covered in dust. And I remember when we first got there, we went in this parking garage, and that was eerie. It was right next to the actual building. And we're setting up these treatment areas, and the cars in there, you know that the owners are dead. Or they, a few of them might have gotten out, but they haven't come back. And the cars are covered in dust, but each window you could see where the cops or firefighters had scraped the dust off the window and looked in the car to see if anybody was in there alive. And another memory was it rained paper when those buildings collapsed. I have a slide of a fire escape from a block away next again to one of our treatment centers. And each step of that fire escape for four stories had two feet thick of paper. And people told stories of paper from the World Trade Center landing in Brooklyn and Queens in New Jersey. And if you ever see a video of the collapse, you see these little dots up in the air. It looks like confetti. It's paper. It just rained paper. So that sticks in my mind. And, you know, the fact we didn't save anyone. But there was a positive side. We gained weight at this because the top restaurants in New York supported us. And I remember one morning, about 4:30 in the morning, I go in for a little breakfast snack. We're on the night shift. And here's this half-damaged restaurant. And Tim Robbins, who starred in the Shawshank Redemption, and he was in Top Gun serving his breakfast. Another time we're waiting at the hotel to get the bus to go to the night shift, and Bill Murray walks up and he's talking, and you're thinking, am I sitting here having a conversation? Well, hey, Bill, how's things going? You know, but that's that's the way that they treated us in New York. And, you know, you have to appreciate, too, growing up in Miami, raised by New Yorkers, that's where I get the strange accent. I'm used to the New York way of thinking and New York cab drivers having been to New York. And I remember one quick trip, this cab driver picks us up. He's going to take us to dinner. We got off the day shift. And we get to where we're going, and I reach in and I go, How much is it? And he goes, How much is it? You came here all the way from Florida, and you think I'm going to charge you? Get out of my cab. Get the hell out of here. You know. So we step, we step out of the cab, and as we're walking away, the cab driver goes, Hey, thanks. Now, this is a guy that makes a positive comment once every 10 years. And we and we got what? So it it was a it was the side story on the World Trade Center attack that, you know, the support and everything we got. And I will say that, oh, another quick New York cops story. You gotta love New York cops. They're parked in the car, sitting security guys, and we turn the corner in this legit. It's a John Deere tractor. What do they call them? Gators, I think. Well, the guy driving does the turn too white, and he peels the whole side window off this police car, scrapes it all the way down the side, and there's two cops sitting in the front seat. And the guy, I'll call him Rick, not his real name. And Rick says, Hank, I think we should just keep going. I said, No, stop. Well, this New York cop gets out of the car, hooks his thumbs in his gun belt, and slowly saunters toward us. It took him 10 minutes to walk 20 feet. And he looks at me, I get up and he says, Hey, you know, we got procedures here. And I thought, all right, there's only one answer he's gonna live with. And I said, You're right. We just hit a police car and that with two cops in it, and that makes us the stupidest frickin' guys on the planet. And he goes, That's right, that's it. That's it, and turns and saunters back away. So what's my point? Well, it's a mixture throughout these sessions. You're gonna hear me say more than once, it's such a mixture of tragedy and humor and funny things. And I'll close on the World Trade Center by saying September 11th is always a long day for me. And May 29th, the date of the Lucky Street fire, is always a long day. I remembered those. I don't want to forget them, and I think that covers it.