Remembering 9/11

    HOULTON, Maine — It has been 10 years since Tony Bowers traveled to New York City to assist with the cleanup after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, but the horrific images remain fresh in his memory.
    A 23-year member of the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, Bowers was one of just two Maine morticians on the team at the time. Jim Mockler of Caribou was the other. The two men received phone calls on Tuesday asking for help. They left the next morning and by Friday, Sept. 14, 2001 they were in New York.
Bowers has trained in Florida, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts and Maryland for various scenarios, but nothing could prepare him for what he encountered at Ground Zero.
“It was such a sad situation,” he said. “We went right to Ground Zero. The ground, the smoke, asbestos in the air. It was everywhere.”
He recalls that the only aircraft in the skies was a military fighter jet, which further amplified the ominous feelings he felt. In the harbor, Coast Guard boats with 50-caliber machine guns mounted on the sides patrolled the water.
The DMORT group responds to events where mass fatalities are reported. Among the other incidents Bowers has responded to include Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Station nightclub fire in West Warwick, R.I. in 2003. The group now numbers more than a dozen for the state of Maine.
At Ground Zero, Bowers said he witnessed makeshift memorials for the firemen who lost their lives during the rescue attempts. Those memorials featured steel-toed boots that had been completely worn out from walking through the rubble. The shoes were cutoff and turned into markers. There was also a fire truck whose interior had completely melted.
“I remember an excavator coming down the road and the ground was shaking terribly,” he said. “We probably shouldn’t have been standing there. I looked up and saw all these windows and wondered how safe it was.”
During his time in New York, Bowers worked in an old armory where the New York Knicks once played basketball, before moving to the medical examiner’s office. His role was more for security, but he also did DNA sampling, which involved everything from fingerprinting to logging tiny pieces of hair and skin.
“They would bring us five-gallon buckets that were filled with everything,” he said. “Those buckets were gone through 18 times before being thrown away. We were looking for hair, skin, anything.”
He worked 12-hour shifts while in New York for a 14-day stint. He came home for a week but then returned to New York for seven more days.
“People were coming in from everywhere to help,” he recalled. “The outpouring of support was just awesome. People were there just to help. I remember one guy was a cop from Montana who drove to New York and showed up with nothing more than a duffle bag and a hat, but he wanted to help.”
Seeing the devastation first-hand is something he will never forget.
“The dust and ash was just everywhere,” he said. “I would have to keep cleaning off the inside of my glasses and the soot was all through my mouth.”
Bowers said the support from those in New York was overwhelming.
“People would come up to me and say thank you,’” he said. “They knew we were not from there and wanted us to know we were appreciated. It’s the most incredible thing I have ever experienced in my lifetime.”
The volunteers who came out to help worked in two-hour stints, he recalled.
“I remember there was this one lady who would do her two-hour stint of volunteering, leave the armory and go get back in line, wait three or four hours and then do it again,” he said. “She was an interior decorator for storefronts and just wanted to help.”
Patriotism was running at an all-time high for those volunteering, Bowers said. He remembers his wife sent him a gallon bag of safety pin flags made by local Cub Scouts for people to wear on their clothing. He sat the bag on a desk and within minutes the entire lot was gone.
“People were grabbing them right and left,” he said. “I grabbed one so I would have it and I still wear that flag on my funeral suit to this day.”
There are three photos hanging on the wall of his Water Street office. The photos were found in a folder on the street of New York by one of his commanding officers of the DMORT. The photos are a constant reminder for him about just how short life can be.
He still recalls precisely where he was at the moment he learned of the terrorist attacks.
“I was in a cemetery,” he remembers. “I was listening to the radio and heard a report that a plane had flown into one of the twin towers. At first, they said a small plane, but then it turned into more of a disaster. I called my wife to make sure she knew. It was heart-wrenching.”
His first reaction once he realized it was a terrorist attack was similar to most people.
“I wondered ‘What’s next?’” he said.
Bowers said he was also worried about his then-teenage daughter — Jackie Morse — who was in Connecticut, but was supposed to be going to New York to visit friends.
“We finally got a hold of her and asked her to come home,” he said. “She didn’t want to, being a teenager, but I was forceful. We just didn’t know what was going to happen next.”