Life at Ground Zero

After spending much of his childhood and all of his teen years in Franklin Square, and graduating from the H. frank Carey High School, Pete Messana traveled around the United States, working sporadically as a hockey referee. When he decided to return to the community in 2001, just weeks before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he was unemployed.

He had no idea that the next job he would do would be more important than all of the years he served as a ref.

On 9/11, the nation received a devastating blow; people’s lives were shattered, families were ripped apart and the nation was shocked and angry. Messana, who was lucky not to lose any close friends or family in the attacks, heard about the first hit on the radio and was overwhelmed with grief. In the hours following the attacks, he was beside himself. He felt compelled to go into Manhattan, where the World Trade Center’s twin towers were hit, and help in any way he could.

“I had to find an outlet for what I was feeling about the attacks, for the anger I had, and for the indignation I felt about it,” Messana said. “I had to be there … In some strange way, I felt I was there to defend my city.”

Having previously worked as a storm spotter in Oklahoma County, Messana had emergency management credentials, and was permitted to work as a volunteer at Ground Zero, beginning Sept. 14. The site was a surreal spectacle — metal was piled on top of metal, and hundreds of volunteers were stepping carefully around and on top of the area, searching for bodies. Messana was part of a “bucket brigade” — a row of hundreds of people, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, who passed buckets of rubble from one end of Ground Zero to another — for three weeks. Several bucket brigades amassed Ground Zero in the weeks after 9/11.

“The debris was so bad you couldn’t even see West Street,” Messana remembered. “Not only could you not see it, you couldn’t even map out in your mind where West Street used to be.