9/11: Working the Pile

Eamon Cummins, an operating engineer, worked the night shift as a subcontractor for Con Edison.  On September 11, 2001, he clocked out at 5 a.m. and went home to a peaceful, if brief, sleep in Carmel. For the next six months, he worked every day using heavy equipment to aid the recovery effort at the World Trade Center, but his sleep was never as restful again. 

Larry Mack, an FDNY Lieutenant whose station house was in the Bronx, was sent with his unit to the West Street operations center and arrived just after the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.  He didn’t return home to Mahopac for a week.

Pete Conlin, an NYPD detective who had long since been promoted out of the Emergency Services Unit, learned about the planes hitting the towers and immediately drove from his home at Mahopac Point to the police command center. He begged the higher ups to transfer him back to Emergency, so he could work on the Pile.

As the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, Putnam County Executive MaryEllen Odell, recognized the many Putnam County residents who put themselves in harms way to work at recovering those lost in the World Trade Center attack.

“Putnam serves, and I’m so proud to live in a county where people look out for others,” County Executive Odell said. “Hundreds of our residents who work as first responders, or in the trades, or in countless other professions, saw the devastation at the World Trade Center and rushed to help. Some spent months working under dangerous conditions to try and find those who were lost and give the families of the victims some closure. Many have since lost their own lives to 9/11-related illnesses. They all put others’ needs before their own, and we in Putnam County will always be grateful.”

Eamon Cummins, who is retired, used backhoes and cranes to carefully move the tons of wreckage. First he searched for damaged gas lines and to restore power to the area, then he looked for remains, always pausing and saying a prayer when any were uncovered.

The work took a physical toll. Cummins has asthma and lung disease, and even the slightest cold presents a danger to him. The emotional toll hasn’t been easy either, feeling guilty that he survived when so many didn’t, anniversaries bringing all he saw and felt right back again.

“I saw the best and the worst in people,” Cummins said. “There were people you crossed paths with and you never saw them before, but it was like you knew them all your life because of the connection of being in the zone together. People would help each other.”

“I got a whole new respect for the Salvation Army and people who volunteered and came from all over the country,” Cummins said. “They had a big tent on the West Side, they called it the Taj Mahal. Sometimes you’d just stop there to get your bearings. You had to pass all the lines of security and when you passed the last one and went into the zone, It was like the Twilight Zone. You did what you had to do. I remember crying all the way down, all the way home. One night there was a rumor that we expect to find a lot of bodies tonight because we were going to a stairwell, but we didn’t find one.” 

For Lt. Larry Mack of the FDNY, the week after 9/11 was non-stop recovery at the Pile. For months after, it was one tour at the firehouse in the Bronx, one tour on recovery at the Pile, sometimes  attending several funerals a day.

In April, Mack worked 30 straight days on recovery. 

“A lot of it is still foggy,” said Mack, who retired five years ago. “It was an intense non-stop round of funerals, firehouse shifts and searching for remains at the Pile.”

Mack helped raise the six children of his longtime friend and fellow firefighter Lt. Vincent Halloran, who was killed on 9/11. In 2014, Mack was celebrated on a Father’s Day special on Good Morning America that recognized outstanding fathers.

But all that attention makes Mack want to share the spotlight on this somber 20th anniversary with his fellow firefighters who, like him, worked tirelessly at the Pile.

“Every firefighter in Putnam County, every firefighter in New York City, stepped up to the plate,” Mack said. “They all did something.”

Mack now heads a group of FDNY retirees, the NYC Firefighters of the Hudson Valley East. About 200 retired firefighters from Putnam and Northern Westchester belong to the group, which meets regularly at the Mahopac Firehouse and they always have some public service project going on.

A lot of police officers from Putnam were also at the Pile.

After he talked his bosses into letting him go work on the Pile, Detective Pete Conlin didn’t leave for three days.  He sorted through debris searching for possible human remains, and bringing unknown pieces to a priest to be blessed before taking them to the morgue and returning to the Pile to sort through more. 

“It was tough,” Conlin said. “This not-recovering was demoralizing. There was so much steel twisted, you’d think ‘There’s got to be somebody in there.’ But no. That just didn’t happen. In the early days, you still had hope and you just keep digging and looking. It took a while to get all the trucks down there, the trades came with the cranes, but just looking for everything by hand at first was very tough.”

Conlin, who retired in 2004, worked on the Pile for six months before returning to detective work.

He is now President of the local Fraternal Order of Police, Stephen Driscoll Memorial Lodge #704. The lodge was named in honor NYPD Officer Driscoll, of Lake Carmel, who died in 9/11. Like Conlin, Driscoll served in the Emergency Services Unit.

While Conlin’s health is fine, he’s mourned plenty of friends who died from 9/11-related cancer.

Many who worked at the Pile plan to attend the Putnam Heroes Memorial Candlelight Vigil at Cornerstone Park in Carmel on Saturday, Sept. 11 at 7 p.m.

As difficult as their work in the recovery effort was, all three said it paled in comparison to what the 9/11 victims and their loved ones suffered. 

“After a month or something they started letting people back into the neighborhoods down there,” Cummins recalled. “When we were putting the cables back in the ground, I was stuck at one cross in the road and there was a picture of a lady and it said ‘Last seen on the 29th floor.’ And that brings a different side to it all. Loved ones, people who would stand at the perimeter, looking down at the pile and crying. You just wished you could do more.”

 

B
Submitted by Brewster, NY

Become a Local Voice in Your Community!

HamletHub invites you to contribute stories, events, and more to keep your neighbors informed and connected.

Read Next