MTC ART GALLERY

“We found part of a police officer’s shield one day. We found a couple of guns. One of them was actually in a hand. We found a lot of pieces of uniforms -- firefighters’ uniforms, police uniforms, firefighters’ masks. I found people’s skin, and it looked like a piece of rubber. I picked it up, I looked at it, and I thought, What’s this? There were a lot of explosions through the elevator shafts, and people were blown right out of their clothes. I found their clothes, and they were just shredded. I found their sneakers. There were shoes everywhere.”

“One guy had three kids, one guy had two kids, one guy had an older kid, one guy didn’t have any kids, and the chief had kids and grandchildren. A lot of them want to come down to the firehouse and hang out and talk and eat. That’s tough. That’s tough to deal with. But the worst thing, in the very beginning, was escorting the families to get tested for DNA. They all came down with personal stuff that belonged to the guys — toothbrushes, hairbrushes. Parents and children had to give saliva samples, so in case a body part was found, they’d have something to match it to.”

“I’ve seen a lot of death. I’ve seen people stabbed, shot, decapitated, everything. But to see it like this in such mass -- it was like war. Going through a guy’s wallet to voucher money or credit cards and seeing a picture of his little kids. Seeing someone’s half scalp or someone’s shoulder blade. I’ll never get that out of my head. I hope nobody else will ever have to see anything like that. I would never wish this on anyone.”

“Once again, I said my blessings. I said, ‘Jesus Christ, please let my parents know I love them.’ I was trying to contact my parents in my mind, because I didn’t think I was going to make it. I waited for those windows to blow, I waited for the ambulance to turn over, I waited for death. We heard explosions everywhere, and then once again, complete silence.”

“I don’t want a scar on my head, but if this is what I have, I can deal with it. It’s nothing, nothing, nothing at all compared to what it could have been. But every day, it’s like a reminder. It’s healing. It itches. It hurts. I still can’t wear a hat. I don’t mind the scars on my head, but these on my face… I don’t want to have to look at these scars every day and remember what happened for the rest of my life.”

“I was drinking a bottle of water, and everything was really crazy, really really crazy, and I looked down at my foot and saw this woman's hand with a wedding ring on it. I knew that where that one hand was, there were thousands and thousands more. I didn't know anything about this person, except the color of her skin and the fact that she was married. Obviously, she had a connection, she was loved, she was part of a family. This one hand represented many, many people who would be hurt because this one person had died.”

“Our breathing was getting worse and worse. We were suffocating. We were literally starting to die, because the air was depleting. No light, nothing. It was completely, completely black. All we could think was, Get out. Get out. Everybody was screaming, ‘Smash the window! Smash the window!’ Then it got really quiet, and I think that’s when it dawned on us that we might not get out of there. I could barely hear people inhaling and exhaling. I could hear my heart beating.”

“I spent the month of November down at Ground Zero, digging in the dirt. Sometimes I was moving big objects by hand, but otherwise I had a little shovel and was just digging and digging. I had a little shovel and was in the hole where the Towers once stood, and I was just digging and digging. We dug up crushed fire extinguishers and mangled air packs. Every time someone would find a void, it brought hope, like maybe somebody’s under there.”

“The day after the tragedy, we went out to Ground Zero because everyone from the media wanted to get pictures and tell the story. People were down there digging through the rubble, troops were coming in, and volunteers were there to help. We saw emergency vehicles totally destroyed -- flattened and blown to pieces. We wanted to let the world know: ‘Look what happened to us. Look what hatred did -- tried to ruin New York City; tried to ruin America.’”

“I still can’t really comprehend the magnitude of what happened because I don’t want to. I just leave it like that. When I think about it, it still makes me wonder what the hell really happened over there. I was there, I saw some things, but I don’t go into it too deep. I know what happened; I know how many lives were lost. A lot of them were my friends. But I have a spirit in my life. Not everybody believes in the spirit I believe in, God or whatever. That’s what keeps me above all this and a lot of other things I might feel I can’t handle.”

“We watched these people jumping one after the other after the other. There was a guy there who looked like he was helping push people, which led us to think that these people had decided they were going to jump. When people jumped, it seemed that they immediately realized what they’d done, because they were flailing against the air current. Their shoes were flying off. People would hold hands and jump together. It went on and on and on. I don’t know how many people jumped, but we saw more than a dozen at least, probably closer to two dozen.”

“We heard this plane and the echo of it. Then it hit the building. I got blown through the exit, but I was able to catch the door of the building as I came out. I just held on. People were blowing past me, particles were flying, people were flying. Stuff was coming down right on top of me, and I couldn’t see anything. I held on with one hand, and the wind force was so strong that I couldn’t get my other hand up to the doorway to pull myself through.”