Guest Editorial: Twenty Years Later

Editor's note: This is an excerpt from a longer profile. Find the full article here.

Carlos Lopez is a retired lieutenant paramedic from FDNY EMS. On Wednesday, September 12, 2001, after working all day and all night at the site, he, some firefighters, and some other FDNY EMS staff formed an impromptu team with an NYPD canine officer and his dog in the area now known to America as Ground Zero. In this area debris from the collapsed South Tower perched in precarious piles of rebar, girders, furniture, building materials, and dust—tons of dust.

Around 9 a.m. Lopez heard someone yell, “We found one!” An NYPD canine had alerted to a scent. Digging with their hands, Lopez and dozens of EMS, police, and fire personnel converged on the area where the dog alerted. There they found the body of Yamel Merino, 24. 

Merino, an EMT with MetroCare EMS in New York City, was among the first EMS responders killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers as she helped evacuate civilians. Lopez and his team placed Merino’s body in a Stokes basket. Someone found an American flag and covered her body. They handed her off to a team from the medical examiner’s office.

“That really knocked the wind out of my sails,” Lopez remembers. “I realized at that moment that we were not going to find anyone else alive, and this was going to be my job for the foreseeable future: body recovery.”

Ground Zero became known to first responders in the early recovery effort as “the pile.” Lopez and his colleagues in the medical equipment unit (MEU) were part of the bucket brigades searching for victims on September 12. “If they thought some debris was going to collapse, they would sound a horn, and we’d have to run off the pile,” Lopez says. “That happened many times every hour.”

Lopez recalls many people coming out to help. “There was a guy in a chef’s hat making sandwiches for us,” he says. “Chicken heroes and meatball heroes. The chef apologized because the sandwiches weren’t labeled. Can you imagine? We were just happy to have some chow.”

He remembers not thinking about the dust much at that time. “I was wearing one of those paper dust masks,” he says. “Some young lady came up to me handing out Gatorade, and she was wearing one of those P100 respirators. I asked where she got it, and she said the feds were giving them out a few blocks over. She took her mask off and gave it to me, saying she could get another one.”

At 4 p.m. on September 12, after working over 36 hours, Lopez and his MEU team were relieved. They returned back to Queens to rest and shower. The next two weeks were a blur. “We worked 12 hours on, 12 hours off,” he recalls.

Twenty years later, as the nation remembers those we lost in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pa., many wounds are still raw. Lopez has recovered from serious abdominal surgery but continues to be treated for cancer acquired as a result of his work at Ground Zero. With the approach of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, however, the memories come into focus more vividly.

“I think about how many things were arbitrary that day. I look at photos and remember friends and partners,” he says. “The work we did was special, and I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Barry Bachenheimer, EdD, NREMT/FF, is a frequent contributor to EMS World and has been involved in EMS and fire for over 35 years. He responded to New York City after the attacks of September 11, 2001 as part of an EMS task force from New Jersey.