I heard about the attack on 880 AM. I was driving into work. When I got there, stayed about half hour, saw towers collapse on CNN. My reserve unit called, I went home, got my gear and met up with a van full of fellow Corpsman. We drove to the Merchant Marine Academy as there was supposed to be boats of injured coming there. That never materialized so we drove into the city. We parked northwest of the debris field and walked south. As we moved south we had to keep turning east as we got closer to the WTC. The streets were filled with crushed cars, firetrucks and collapse debris. We crossed east onto Broadway, went down to staging at B'way and Vesey. From there we moved south to Liberty St and then into the debris field. We stayed in front of Truck 10/Ladder10 the rest of the night into the next day. We ran from the base of the building a few times when we felt debris coming down on us.
There was spanish FDNY EMS EMT chick with us. The first time the debris started coming dow we all looked up. Someone says "Think it's gonna fall?" The spanish chick looks up and says "Why we standin' here? If you gotta ask...fuck that shit." And she runs. It made a lot of sense. We all ran. Nothing much came down though. We watched for a few minutes and then went back to our spot in front of T10/L10. We ended up running a few more times but we always went back. There were a few FDNY trucks somewhere to our west that were in the debris field but not crushed. They were running and provideing light. Around 3am FDNY guys came past us carrying 5 gallon spring water bottles filled with diesel for the trucks.
We sat there the whole night. There was no one to rescue. No one to help as they were injured and already removed or dead. We sat there wholy expecting to be called. To be able to race into the debris and pull people out was what I expected as the sheer number of humans in that spot led me to think that there had to be people alive somewhere. but it never happened.