Arriving in the area of the World Trade Center two days after Sept. 11, New York City fire fighter Kevin Sheehan saw a scene of mass destruction. In Sheehan’s mind, it was Planet of the Apes all over again, referring to the 1968 film.
“I can’t even describe what I saw (that day) and saw days after,” said Sheehan, a Fort Collins resident, who was a 43-year-old in his 17th year with the New York City Fire Department in 2001. “The first day I was there, it was daylight and the dust kicked up and paper was coming down. I picked up a piece of paper, turned it over and it was a picture of a guy’s family, and I was done.”
Sheehan, now 63 and retired since 2003, wasn’t done that day. A member of Engine 236 in east New York, he pressed on — spending the next six months with shifts at ground zero, including 24 hours on and a day off for about two weeks after Sept. 11.
“With the recovery stage, all you’re doing is picking up pieces of victims’ remains, and I’ll never forgot the smell,” he said.
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were the worst ever against the U.S. Al-Qaeda, an international Islamist extremist group founded by Osama bin Laden and based in Afghanistan, plotted and carried out the operation. They hijacked the airplanes and hit the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Another plane meant for Washington, D.C. crashed in a field in western Pennsylvania after passengers thwarted the hijackers’ plans.
Nearly 3,000 people from 93 nations died in the attacks. About 2,800 were in New York, and 343 of those were from the fire department. Another 184 died at the Pentagon and 40 were killed on hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Twenty years later, Sept. 11 remains a solemn and difficult day for many including Sheehan and Eaton Mayor Scott Moser, a mortuary and funeral services professional. Moser was in New York by late September 2001 to assist with post-mortem processes.
What’s different 20 years is the attitude of a nation that endured an immense level of fear, shock, pain and uncertainty — not only on Sept. 11 but in the weeks and months that followed the attacks. The U.S. was united and stronger during that time, Sheehan and Moser said. While the memories of Sept. 11 remain fresh to the men, the day also feels long in the past given the division in the U.S.
“It feels to me like we’ve forgotten how unified we were at that time,” said Moser, who spent 32 days in New York after Sept. 11. “I wish we could remember how everyone came together.”
University of Northern Colorado sociology professor Kyle Anne Nelson said the day marked the start of “a big shift” in the U.S., and while many may yearn for a return to a national sense of unity and camaraderie, it’s difficult to expect our country to be the same as it was 20 years ago. Increased security measures took effect quickly after, and the rise of social media has drastically altered attitudes and views, and how we receive and consume information.
While there was national unity following the attacks, there was another “almost immediate” effect.
“It also sparked massive Islamophobia and racism and vilification of Muslims and people who did not seem like Americans,” Nelson added. “It was almost immediate, the hate.”
DMORT: ‘Trying to do your part’
The owner of Moser Funeral and Cremation Service in Evans, Moser, 56, was in New York working as a contractor with the federal Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (DMORT).
The 10 DMORTs nationwide are organized by region under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Disaster Medical System and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
A spokesperson with the HHS wrote via email the DMORT teams were dispatched to New York and Washington, D.C. areas following the attack. Another team was sent to Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
The DMORT teams were comprised of several hundred personnel including coroners, funeral directors, mortuary officers, medical examiners, different forensic specialists, dental assistants, autopsy assistants, fingerprint specialists and administrative workers.
“At each location, the team worked with the local medical examiner’s office to recover bodies from the debris; track and document human remains and personal effects…and prepare, process and return human remains and/or personal effects to the appropriate recipients,” HHS said.
The DMORT members work disaster sites with mass fatalities: following Sept. 11, after a natural disaster such as a hurricane or tornado, or an airline crash. The members respond to help the local authorities manage the scene.
Moser has also been deployed to respond after Hurricane Katrina, a tornado in Joplin, Missouri and a commercial airline crash in Guam. He returned to New York last year to participate in the city’s COVID-19 pandemic response.
The work can be difficult to handle, even for the trained professionals with DMORT who respond to the mass-fatality incidents.
“I think anyone who went there, one of two things happened,” Moser said of post-Sept. 11. “They’d say, ‘I’m never going to do this again.’ Or they say, ‘If I don’t go there and be strong for these people, the hundreds of others there, doing what we’re doing, this won’t get resolved. It won’t get fixed.’ You’re trying to do your part.”
The roots of the organization date to the late 1980s. One of the founders was Morgan County Coroner Don Heer. The organizers wanted to eliminate politics or any perception of wrongdoing from getting into the post-event management, according to Heer. Airline insurance companies also wanted to know the recovery work was being done correctly and properly, and they wanted consistency with the response.
Heer, 73, recently retired from DMORT.
“It’s hard work and long hours,” he said. “It’s people who are accustomed to working with dead bodies and bodies mutilated because of a traumatic event.
He was involved with response teams on a Korean Airlines crash in Guam, the Oklahoma City bombing, an Egyptian Airline crash off the coast of Rhode Island, Hurricanes Rita and Katrina in the southeast U.S. and on the tornado in Joplin, Missouri.
Heer was in New York for two weeks after Sept. 11 working as a night-shift manager at a medical examiner’s office.
“There were military personnel guarding everything, because of what was going on at the time and the attitude of — especially New York City and the entire nation — of being violated,” he said. “There was pride in being an American and a patriotism being involved.”
Moser, arrived in New York about two weeks after Sept. 11 to begin his DMORT work. He and his colleagues were transported to ground zero soon after getting into the city to see the area and “get it out of our systems.”
Moser, now with 25 years as a DMORT member, recalled being nervous about the scene in New York as they neared the area where the towers once stood.
“I turned the corner to see, and it’s indescribable,” Moser said. “It was this giant monster of a pile that you never could’ve imagined, you know? I remember catching myself: my hands were shaking and being afraid for humanity, maybe, because you don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Neither Moser nor his DMORT colleagues spent time at ground zero in their post-event duties. They worked out of a temporary morgue about one block away, at a city medical examiner’s office or in other locations serving as staging areas, headquarters or command centers.
At the medical examiner’s office, Moser assisted doctors with post-mortem examinations in a first step to identifying victims. Later, he learned how to take DNA samples. Moser also filled in as the DMORT representative at the multi-agency command center.
During his last week in New York, Moser was asked to work with a New York City Police Department detective as liaisons with other agencies to assist in recovery efforts.
Trying to identify nearly 3,000 people, two of whom were only identified this week through DNA technology, can appear to be an overwhelming task. Moser said identifying victims on the planes was a controlled environment because airlines have passenger lists.
It was impossible to know with certainty on victims in the towers. Moser and the DMORT workers received victims’ names, and communication was maintained with families to find dental records, and DNA from personal items such as a toothbrush, hairbrush or comb. In other cases, the DMORT teams will use X-rays to make a positive identification.
Moser didn’t interact with families during his work after Sept. 11. He has worked with families after other disasters. DMORT uses comprehensive questionnaires from families to find victim information such as age, race, hair color, skin color, height and scars. The questionnaire also requests what kind of clothes, shoes or jewelry the victim might have been wearing. Did they have tattoos? Information is entered into databases so the DMORT professionals can keep track of their work.
Moser said in New York, they likely relied on DNA and dental records to identify victims.
“Family X brings in everything because it’s been five days and we haven’t heard from them,” Moser said. “He was probably in there. We’re taking DNA samples, and all of sudden we have a hit.”
Moser said he thinks about Sept. 11 as the date draws closer each year. Generally, he finds himself thinking about the day and that time less and less. He has a book in his office he pages through every so often, and he’ll watch a documentary.
“They’re interesting to me,” he said. “Wherever we were, wherever we’d go they’d be posting these signs (requesting help finding victims). That was one of the saddest things, I think. If you look back, people made them themselves: picture, name, height, weight. And please call this number if you find her or him.”
‘It was a very bad time in America’s life’
One of Sheehan’s toughest days after 9/11 came when crews found the body one of his fire department shiftmates, Billy Mahoney. Sheehan said he knew 50 firefighters who died in the attacks and 25 of those were close friends. Mahoney and Sheehan often carpooled together to the station from their homes on Long Island. They were friends through work, but the relationship extended beyond the fire station.
“They couldn’t get to him and had to dig a tunnel,” Sheehan said. “He was in an elevator with five others. They found him and his wife could have a service with Billy present.”
Sheehan and his wife, Debra, are both native New Yorkers. Debra and a friend visited Colorado in the 1970s and Debra loved it. Kevin was thinking about retirement in 2001 and the couple narrowed their retirement destinations to North Carolina or Colorado. They relocated to Fort Collins in 2006.
The Sheehans have four adult children, two daughters and two sons, from 37 to 27 years old. Three of the children are in Colorado. One of their sons is with the FDNY on Engine 248 in Brooklyn.
“I was there for rescue and recovery and saw things no one should hope to see, and especially my son,” Sheehan said. “He went into it on his own.”
The Sheehans drove out to Colorado for vacation in 2001 and returned home not long before Sept. 11. Debra Sheehan’s father died a week before, and her sister died early in the morning on Sept. 11 after an illness.
With the deaths in his family, Sheehan wasn’t working on Sept. 11. He said he knew it was terrorism with report of the first plane hitting the North Tower before 9 a.m. Sheehan was on duty in late February 1993 when a smaller group of terrorists attacked the World Trade Center. He said the fire department knew the city would be attacked again, but many suspected it could be a chemical bomb in a subway or another heavily populated site.
Sheehan and his wife heard of his sister-in-law’s death after the second plane hit the South Tower, and he remained home until Sept. 13.
“I have guilt to this day that I wasn’t there on the 11th,” Sheehan said. “I had to get to the firehouse.”
Rocky relationships with members of Sheehan’s family left him disconnected from relatives. No one from his family called for a while to check on him after the attacks. He eventually heard from an aunt. The stress and trauma continued to build, like a snowball, Sheehan said, until finally he went for counseling. He continues to use help when he needs it a “spirit lifting.” He now relies on fly fishing and Debra, whom Sheehan calls “my angel and foundation.”
“It was such a bad time,” he said. “It was a very bad time in America’s life.”
Sheehan said he finds the reminders of Sept. 11 difficult, though he said it helps to talk about his experiences. He can’t watch documentaries, like Moser.
“It never ends, and it’s like losing a family member, and I think this is a little worse than losing a family member,” he said.
Sheehan said it’s a challenge to deal with remembrance of the day this year because he agreed with Moser: the U.S. has changed. The “togetherness” is lost, Sheehan said.
Nelson, the UNC professor, said the changes for Americans since Sept. 11 have been significant. There was a loss of innocence with an attack on civilians — regular people, living their lives, traveling on a plane or going to work.
As a result of Sept. 11, Americans noticed changes in security measures in their lives, at sporting events and stadiums and, most obviously, at airports.
Though the country went through a large domestic terrorism event with the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 in a federal building in 1995, Sept. 11 was a higher profile event with the epicenter in New York and Washington, D.C. Nelson said the terrorism that day “opened a Pandora’s Box on random attacks.”
“Whatever delusion we had being safe and disconnected, that all eroded on 9/11,” Nelson said. “It won’t be the same. This was pre-Facebook and Twitter, and we didn’t process Sept. 11 the way we would now. I had optimism about national unity, but then came the pandemic and that hasn’t brought us together.”
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