The Third Wave: A Volunteer Story

166 Pages·2011·2.49 MB·English

by  Alison Thompson

The Third Wave is a work of nonfiction. Some names and identifying details have been changed.
Copyright © 2011 by Alison Thompson
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a
division of Random House, Inc., New York.
S G and Design is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
PIEGEL & RAU
Photos on the title page and on this page courtesy of Juliet Coombe.
All other photos courtesy of the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thompson, Alison
The third wave : a volunteer story / Alison Thompson with MeiMei Fox.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-679-60492-1
1. Disaster relief. 2. Volunteers. I. Fox, MeiMei. II. Title.
HV553.T46 2011
974.7′1044092—dc22 2010040767
www.spiegelandgrau.com
Jacket design: Greg Mollica
Front-jacket photograph: Jonas Karlsson
v3.1
Dedicated to Maria Bello, Sean Penn, and Mother Teresa
My secret heroes:
Lisa Fox is my rock and tirelessly helps raise money or goods and offers up her contacts and friends
to support me on the ground. I love you, “sista.”
Jeffrey Tarrant, a quiet hero who helps endless organizations and me with donations to support our
causes. He and his wife, Connie, have huge, kind hearts.
Mark Axelowitz, a great volunteer, friend, and supporter of my missions. He has a deep thirst for
helping others and my life is enhanced with him in it.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Act I - Ground Zero
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Act II - The Third Wave
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Act III - Haiti
Chapter 14
Epilogue
What to Know Before You Go
About the Author
ACT I
GROUND ZERO
CHAPTER 1
My Rollerblades squeaked as I sprinted through yet another set of red lights. I
had come five miles but still had two more to go. Over my back hung a bag
containing a hefty first aid kit, my old 8mm camera, and a small bottle of Chanel
No. 5.
I quickly glanced at the sidewalks filled with people gathered around radios
and television sets dragged outside from corner stores, and I picked up speed. As
I got closer to my destination, I had to battle my way through crowds of people
streaming in the opposite direction. Although they walked in an orderly, quiet
fashion, their hair and clothes were covered in white soot, and they held on to
one another like invalids. They looked like the victims of the nuclear explosion
in Hiroshima, whose black-and-white photos I’d seen in books. There was no
color anywhere. People all seemed to be holding cellphones to their ears but
none of them were speaking. They were in shock. I turned onto the cobblestone
streets, which were less crowded though more difficult to navigate on skates, and
continued to make my way to the World Trade Center. Soon, I found myself
alone in a blizzard of ash and smoke that burned my eyes and throat.
Inside the cloud, I found a Latino man in his late forties dressed in an
expensive blue business suit, lying unconscious on the ground. I loosened his
Gucci tie and tilted his chin back to start giving him CPR, all the while calling
out into the fog for help. What felt like hours later but was probably only
minutes, two EMS workers ran over and carried him away.
Deeper into the smoke, I saw an arm elegantly pointing out of the rubble
toward me. I began ripping at the chunks of cement, reaching in to yank the
person free. When I pulled on it, only the arm came with me—there wasn’t a
body attached. I screamed in horror and threw it on the ground. When I looked
down at it, I saw a ring with small sapphires and diamonds on the delicate
wedding finger.
Still wobbling on my skates, I looked at my worst nightmare. A million pieces
of paper danced around in the air currents like oversized confetti. I caught one
and read someone’s private bank statement, then tucked it in my backpack. The
air smelled of burned plastic. There was almost no sound except for tiny beeping
noises coming from underneath the rubble at regular intervals and an occasional
thud on the ground. I later found out that the thuds were the sounds of people
who had jumped from the skyscraper crashing to earth, and the beeps were the
sounds of the alarms embedded in the uniforms of the recently buried firemen.
My heart was beating louder than rain, yet I felt compelled to push farther into
the darkness.
It was 10:27 a.m. on September 11, 2001, and something even bigger was
about to happen.
I felt the ground moving beneath me and looked up to see the World Trade
Center’s nearby north tower tumbling toward me like a stack of cards. I sprinted
away, frantically attempting to outskate the avalanche that was trying to eat me
alive, but then gave up and dove under a parked UPS truck.
Twenty bucket-loads of prayers later, I crawled out into the now even denser
fog of sooty darkness. I saw pieces of bodies scattered about like roadkill and
collected them into a pile. I counted five legs, three arms, two torsos, and half a
head. All the other stuff was unrecognizable. Inside a computer monitor I saw
someone’s charred skull.
I found some trash bags in a destroyed shop nearby. Even though I had
worked for eight years as a nurse’s aide in my mother’s hospital when I was a
teenager and in my early twenties, I had always been squeamish at the sight of
blood. I felt queasy as I stuffed the torn flesh into the bags. My thoughts froze
and my nose wrinkled up as I readied myself to perform the task at hand.
Then I remembered what I’d placed in my bag at the last minute, and took out
my precious bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume. I dabbed a little bit under my nose
to mask the smell of burned bodies, and it worked. I continued shuffling around
like an astronaut on my first moon landing, looking for more signs of life.
Staring into the raging fires in the surrounding buildings, I thought about my
friend Jonathon Connors, who worked on the 104th floor of the World Trade
Center at Cantor Fitzgerald. I prayed he had gotten out. He was a good friend
who worked hard to provide for his children and his wife, who had been living
with a life-threatening disease. He had always secretly wanted to be an actor, so
he had invested in my first film, and to thank him I’d chosen him as an extra in
one of the scenes. He had been very supportive of my career and always visited
me on set.
With Jonathon in mind, I pulled my old 8mm camera out of my backpack and
started shooting quick, shaky images. The clicking noise of the worn film
canister disturbed me. I suddenly felt guilty taking images, so I threw the camera
back into my pack. I felt that if someone saw me capturing pictures of this
horrific event, they would think it was a shameful thing to do. I suppressed my
filmmaker instincts and didn’t shoot anymore the entire time I was on-site at
Ground Zero.
When I ran across survivors, they walked past me with blank stares on their
faces like zombies in a silent horror movie. Occasionally I stumbled upon other
ordinary folks doing what I was doing—trying desperately to find people still
alive among the wreckage and ripping down the wood pylons that were mounted
on surrounding buildings to create makeshift stretchers for the injured.
An hour later, policemen started screaming for everyone to move away from
the World Trade Center area. Reluctantly, I obeyed their commands, but I knew
I wasn’t done yet.
It became too difficult to navigate on skates, but in my mad rush to get to the
disaster area as quickly as possible, I had forgotten to pack shoes. So I left my
Rollerblades beside the Stuyvesant School wall just off the West Side Highway
and quickly walked in my socks to a nearby pet store. In a Schwarzenegger-
movie moment of grandiosity, I announced in my most assertive voice, “I am a
nurse and I have no shoes. I need to go in and help people, so I need your shoes
now!” The stunned Asian man at the checkout counter balked at first, throwing
me a suspicious look. He then revealed his feet, probably hoping I’d pass on the
thin, open-toed flaps of plastic he wore. But they were good enough for me. I
took his business card, confiscated his flip-flops, and told him I’d be back.
The officials had us gather at the City Hall Park, located a few blocks
northeast of Ground Zero. Shocked civilians continued to wander the streets with
vacant expressions on their faces, but a gang of eager volunteers like me fought
for information about how we could help. A tough guy on a bullhorn took
control, asking if anyone had any medical or Army experience. I raised my hand.
I didn’t know what we’d be doing, but I knew I could help somehow. He and a
few other construction worker–type men sorted us into groups. I joined the
medical group.
A few hours later, we loaded into a New York City public bus now manned by
a policeman and headed back over to the West Side Highway. Those five long
blocks resembled a ghost town. It was surreal to think how busy the streets
would have been just hours before. The scenery passed by in slow motion, as
though time itself were snoozing. I watched five Hasidic men running toward
Ground Zero with boxes of bottled water on their heads. I looked up and saw a
shirtless man sitting on his window ledge, smoking a cigarette and surveying his
demolished neighborhood.
The West Side Highway was full of firefighters and ambulances. As we drove
closer to the World Trade Center area, I saw that the fallen towers had
completely buried the highway. Everything was covered in white dust, like
winter’s first snowfall.
We exited the buses and regrouped in a nearby building. The local hospitals
had already donated large boxes of medical supplies, so we packed our
backpacks and grabbed as many bags of saline as we could carry.
I saw a large man standing near a swarm of firefighters about one block north
of Ground Zero. He introduced himself to me as Michael Voudoras. He was a
volunteer EMT who had ropes and a huge medical kit slung over his sturdy back
and a wild, confident look in his eyes. I knew at once that we were going to get
along.
At 5:30 p.m., World Trade Center Tower Seven collapsed. I had been watching
it burn since the morning and was just one block away when I found myself
running for cover for the second time that day. By then, the fires were burning
freely and the crazy air was filled with wind and ash.
After that, the officials cleared us out once more and announced that nobody
would be allowed back into the Ground Zero area, since they thought many more
buildings would collapse. They moved us back out and blocked off road access.
All the rescue workers were frustrated, and Michael and I started getting antsy
just standing around feeling helpless. A cranky nurse in scrubs declared that she
was going into Ground Zero anyway, and marched off down the street, only to
be stopped by storm troopers.
It was starting to get dark when a slick black car with four men inside pulled
up to our area. It looked like a scene out of the movie Men in Black. A
mysterious suit-clad arm emerged from behind the tinted windows and placed a
loudspeaker on the car’s roof. Earlier, someone had placed a spotlight on the
ground to light up the area after nightfall, and it shone through the car, making
the shadowy figures inside look even more impressive. A radio broadcast began.
It was President George W. Bush telling us that we were now at war. The crowd
was spellbound. Hundreds of rescue workers surrounded the car, hanging on
every word. Then, just as quickly as it had appeared, the car quietly vanished. A
buzz of excitement hissed through the crowd. I felt a surge of pride: We were
now soldiers, fighting on American soil.
At this stage, only a small group of exhausted firemen were being allowed
back into Ground Zero. But who was going to take care of the firefighters, I
wondered? Michael and I gave each other a cheeky look and then hid behind a
group of firemen, using them as cover to sneak back into the danger zone. We
knew that many firemen were still getting hurt, and we were determined to help
them. We were also eager to look around for anyone who had been buried alive.
As we stepped into the ash and flames, I silently recited the same prayer that I