'The World As We Knew It Was Over': A Fairfield Native & NY Firefighter's Memories Of 9/11

FAIRFIELD, CT — It’s been 20 years on Saturday since David Russell III commandeered a New York City bus and rushed toward what Russell described as “a volcano at the end of Manhattan.”

Russell, a Fairfield native and a lieutenant in the New York City Fire Department at the time, called his wife and told her he was on his way to the site that would soon be widely known as Ground Zero.

Earlier that day, she had called him from her office, where the news was on. Russell wouldn’t be spending the day renovating their home in Westchester County as he’d planned. It was Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, and a plane had just hit the World Trade Center.

“The world as we knew it was over Tuesday morning,” Russell said.

As the bus rolled down FDR Drive, Russell didn’t see a single car on the road. Then, a crowd emerged.

“You just started seeing people, and more people, and you realized it was from hundreds to thousands,” he said.

Russell got off the bus and headed to Broadway. What he found resembled a nuclear winter, he said.

“We kept the airpacks on our back to save the air for the rescues that never came,” he said.

Medical stations were set up with doctors and nurses ready to go to work, but in the end, they mainly ended up using IVs to rinse the noses and mouths of rescue crews.

“Unfortunately, there was nobody to rescue,” Russell said.

In total, 18 survivors were saved from the rubble of the buildings that fell in New York City. Plane crashes that day, orchestrated by al-Qaeda terrorists, killed 2,977 people, including 441 first responders, in New York, at the Pentagon and in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

“It was sensory overload,” Russell said. “There was debris everywhere. Firetrucks actually looked like broken kids toys. They were crushed, flipped upside down.”

Emergency workers tried to protect themselves from the dust blowing all around, but condensation from their breath mixed with the cement in the air, sealing their N95 masks so they couldn’t breathe.

“It was just like, every time you turned a corner it got worse,” Russell said.

The collapse of the 47-story 7 World Trade Center building eventually came after it had been burning for hours. Normally, the fall of such a large structure would be a standout moment in a firefighter’s career.

“That day it was just like a nuisance,” said Russell, a fourth-generation firefighter who previously worked in crash fire rescue for the U.S. Air Force.

Russell learned in real time that friends, people he’d worked with, had died.

“Whole companies were missing,” he said. “This continued on for days.”

But amid the horror, human kindness persisted. The bus driver who transported Russell and another lieutenant went out of his way to return the clothes they left on the bus after changing into gear to their fire station in the Bronx. A civilian brought ice cubes and clean water to the scene. A rabbi showed up with a basket of salami and mustard on pita bread.

“That was like filet,” Russell said. “It was the best thing I’ve ever eaten.”

It was after 3 a.m. Wednesday when Russell made it back the firehouse. It was Saturday before he returned to his home in Pound Ridge. It was March 2002 when he worked his last recovery shift at Ground Zero.

“Some days it’s like 20 years, some days it’s like 40 years and some days it’s like a week ago,” said Russell, 63, who now lives in Black Rock.

Today, many of the first responders he worked with during 9/11 are doing well. Others are struggling with cancer, Parkinson’s disease or their mental health.

“It’s crazy that we have people in the fire and police and EMS service that weren’t even born 9/11,” he said. “We have had guys dead for an entire career.”