By Kristie Green
Alive Editor
The events of Sept. 11 left many people in Maine feeling helpless, unable do anything to alleviate the suffering of those directly affected. One USM student was so tormented by the belief that someone in New York City could use his help that he packed up his car and drove to Manhattan.
“From the beginning it just really bothered me,” said Brendon Augustine, a sophomore sports medicine major. “Especially the crash in New York, it’s so close. I’ve never been moved so much by something. I was emotional, on the verge of tears, just thinking of what happened to those people.”
Augustine, a 25-year-old Portland resident and emergency medical technician, was driving to breakfast with his girlfriend on Tuesday morning when news of the plane crashes came on the radio. They went straight home, and for the next two days Augustine sat and watched the events in New York, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania unfold. He attended the candlelight vigil in Monument Square that Friday night, and went home determined to do something.
“I felt so helpless,” he said. “They were saying on the radio that they didn’t need any more volunteers, but I had this persistent feeling that I should go down there and offer to do anything, even sweep floors, something. I called my best friend and told him how I was having these feelings, thinking he’d tell me I was crazy. He said that if I really wanted to, I should go.”
Over the next 12 hours Augustine collected more than $730 from friends to fund his trip, though he ended up donating all but $65 of it to the Red Cross. On Saturday morning he packed his car and drove to Manhattan, navigating straight into Times Square.
He went into a coffee shop and sat listening to the conversations around him, trying to orient himself in the city. Everyone seemed to be telling mournful stories of the tragedy, of lost loved ones, anger and despair. He left the shop and headed in the direction of ground zero, down to Canal Street.
“It was like something out of a movie,” he said. “Like America was really being attacked. Everything below Canal Street was pitch black except for floodlights, and smoky. There were flyers for missing people tacked up everywhere. It was creepy.”
He made his way to the Red Cross Center at Chelsea High School, where he spent the night. The next morning he went to the Javits Center at the corner of 11th and 33rd, where anyone wanting to volunteer was given an application to fill out stating the services they had to offer.
“The military was moving in by the time I got there,” Augustine said. “So they said they didn’t need as much help. At the Armory nearby they were sorting out the remains found in the wreckage, so I applied there, figuring not many people would want that job. But even they were all set.”
Disappointed and looking to do anything to help out, Augustine went back to the relatively quiet Chelsea High Red Cross, where he sorted through mountains of food and supplies and helped with administrative tasks. On the way there he got a cab ride from a North African man. When Augustine went to pay him the $10.50 fare, the man said, in broken English, “the ride’s on me.”
“If you’ve been in New York City before, you know everyone’s got tunnel vision,” Augustine said. “They’re not thinking about anybody else. But everything had slowed down; people were all helping out as much as they could. It was great to see.”
That afternoon a man came in from one of the other relief centers closer to ground zero, and asked for help bringing food and water to rescue workers there. Augustine offered his car and his services.
“We took like 500 cans of orange juice,” he said. “Tons of water, gas masks, socks, you name it. All of the workers coming in and out of ground zero were going through this other Red Cross center, and they were out of everything there. I couldn’t believe it. These guys are busting their asses to try and save lives, and they didn’t have enough of anything they needed.”
The scene at the other Red Cross was hectic, on the main route to ground zero, packed with ambulances from all over the country, fire trucks, and reservists. Augustine got a job handing out flyers to the workers about a Navy ship that was offering its cots out to anyone needing to sleep, and passed through the police barricades and down to the wreckage of the World Trade Center.
“It’s so much bigger than it looks on TV,” he said. “Two or three blocks were trashed, everything covered with ash. When I got there they were removing three fire trucks from the rubble that had pulled up next to the Towers before they collapsed. The trucks were flattened, the tires laid out on their sides, the ladders mangled.”
The atmosphere around ground zero was quiet, the wreckage oozing heat and yellow smoke. Workers were determined and exhausted, but Augustine was amazed by the sense of community and brotherhood he felt there.
“They were dirty and tired, and just wanted the whole thing to be over. There was a real heavy feeling, knowing that over 6,000 people were buried in there. But everyone I handed a flyer to said `thank you’ to me and I was like, `no, man, thank you.’ They’re the ones in there digging their friends out of the building, and they thank me.”
Augustine also saw many angry people, some carrying signs calling out for revenge. One young man was carrying a sign with pictures of Osama bin Laden glued to it that read “this motherf***er must die.”
“There was no expression on his face,” said Augustine. “His eyes were red and kind of puffy like he’d been crying for a long time, but he wasn’t anymore. He just had this blank stare, like an animal. The next day he was there in the same place, with the same clothes, the same sign, puffy eyes, the same look on his face. I don’t think he’d moved at all.”
Augustine applied to work on a construction crew and was willing to put his life in Portland on hold, including his class schedule, to stay and help out for as long as he was needed. But by that time the demand for volunteers had been met by people seasoned in disaster relief work, and Augustine went home.
Since his return, he’s been unable to shake his experience, keenly aware of what’s going on at ground zero while life here in Portland moves on.
“It feels weird being here, where life is back to normal. It’s sad to me that our lives can do that, when so many people’s are changed forever. If the Red Cross called and said they needed me, I’d be like, `man, I’ll be there in five hours.'”