SHORING UP OURSELVES: An Inspirational Story of Never Giving Up

By Robert Gray

As a fire department captain living about a mile from the Pentagon, author Bob Gray led a team of firefighters to battle the fires caused by the passenger aircraft when it struck the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. He was then reassigned as a collapse team leader until the structure was safe enough to be handed over to the FBI investigation teams. Never in his wildest dreams did he think he would be faced with anything quite as perilous and challenging. But he was wrong.
Ten years later, shortly after retiring from the Arlington County Fire Department as a battalion chief, a routine home-cleaning project nearly took Bob’s life.
Shoring Up Ourselves: An Inspiring Story of Never Giving Up tells the story of how Bob’s perseverance through his challenging recovery forged a driving passion to help inspire others fight for their own recovery, conquer challenges, and never give up.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Feb 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9781662941092

Book preview

1

On the morning of September 11, 2001, the sky was clear and a beautiful blue. My crew had just completed a 24-hour shift. Instead of heading home, I met with three other Technical Rescue Captains. We rode together to the Police Training Academy in D.C. for a special planning meeting that involved the World Bank, whose headquarters sat in Washington, D.C. Protests about the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had been growing over the past few years. This meeting with FBI was planned to provide tactics to employ should domestic terror threats or activities develop during an upcoming IMF conference.

About thirty minutes into the meeting, I heard FBI Agent Chris Combs’s pager beeping as he sat beside me. He unclipped his pager from his belt and studied the message with a serious and puzzled look. Excuse me for a second, he said as he rose and left the room.

I looked at the concerned faces around me. It was clear that we all wondered the same thing: What the heck is going on? Combs returned a few minutes later, obviously disturbed. A few of us at the same time asked, What’s up?

An airplane went into one of the World Trade Center buildings in Manhattan, he said.

Stunned, I asked, What kind of airplane?

It could be a Cessna, he said, but we just don’t know. We don’t have complete information at this point, so let’s continue.

The news distracted me. I started to wonder what might be happening in New York City. Within minutes, Combs got another page. His face went from puzzled to concerned as he left the room again. While we couldn’t hear what he was saying, we knew by his tone that he was having a serious conversation. When he returned, he said, We’re not exactly sure what’s going on, but it does not look like it was a Cessna; it might have been something larger, but we’re not sure yet. He turned and left the room again as we waited for several tense moments.

When Combs returned, he told us, This is real. It’s time for everyone to go back to their departments, especially considering this could be a multi-terrorist type of hit—we don’t know yet—but if it is, then we are in a district that would probably be another target. We urgently collected our belongings and started heading out. I tried to imagine a terrorist attack in NYC and in my own area. Heavy Rescue members live for challenges, but a terrorist attack? It jarred my thoughts. What are they facing in Manhattan? What might we encounter?

On our way out of the conference room, one of the Police Academy folks caught us at the door and said, You guys really need to see this, please follow me.

We followed him to the cafeteria area with a large television tuned to the national news. On the screen, we saw smoke billowing from one of the World Trade Center buildings—the North Tower. Then suddenly, the cameras shifted and began following another aircraft, which appeared to be a passenger aircraft. Within moments it hit the South Tower. Staring, we gasped. We could see what looked like one of the jet engines penetrate through the entire building, fly out the other side, and start its descent. I had to play this back in my head to believe that heavy smoke was coming from the North Tower before the second aircraft impacted the South Tower.

Within minutes, we were advised that one of our engine companies, on a call close to the Pentagon, transmitted to our dispatchers that a plane had just passed over them at a low altitude. A few seconds later, they relayed that it sounded like it hit something.

Let’s go, someone said. We grabbed our jackets.

On the road, we saw clouds of black smoke rising to the north on the Virginia side of the Potomac River in Arlington. We didn’t know what caused it, but we knew it was a significant fire. While returning to our Arlington fire station, we looked at each other in disbelief. As we crossed the Wilson Bridge, looking north towards Arlington, dense smoke billowed toward us. I felt my adrenaline rise.

Immediately our pagers beeped, and we received notifications on our portable radios advising the department that a plane had just gone down in Crystal City. It is partially residential but primarily a commercial part of Arlington with high-rise buildings. Hearing this, Danny Fitch, the youngest Captain in our vehicle, turned to me and said, Is this shit real? Pinch me. I feel like I’m dreaming.

I pinched him, and he blurted, This is real!

Our next radio transmission announced: A plane has crashed into the Pentagon. Heart pounding, I called my wife, who worked in a high-rise building in Arlington. Get out of the high-rise now, and please go pick up the kids and go to the basement in our home, I said. That’s the last time I talked to her for nearly 20 hours. Right after that call, all cell phones went dead.

When we arrived at Fire Station #1, the transition from firehouse to defensive staging area for Pentagon response had begun. Police surrounded the entire fire station, armed with rifles. First Responders are often another primary or secondary attack target, so they were following protocol to protect us from additional terrorist attacks. Once inside, I reported to the battalion chief on-site and found that most of our department’s Fire and EMS units had already gone to the Pentagon. I quickly grabbed my gear and left with a team of seven others to work as a heavy rescue company.

At the Pentagon, pure chaos ensued. Ambulances and helicopters came and went. Rescue workers treated and loaded severely injured people onto stretchers. Sirens and sounds of agony from burn victims filled the air. Many suffered respiratory issues. Some were already in respiratory arrest.

My attention quickly turned to the building. Given the building’s height and size, I saw a very challenging situation. A portion of the building had already collapsed. The amount of fire, smoke, and damage to the Pentagon was extensive. The scene was surreal.

I immediately headed to Incident Command to receive orders. Battalion Chief Bob Cornwell advised me to pay close attention to my radio because other airplanes were still in flight, and several still needed to be accounted for. My team of firefighters and I were tasked with search and rescue and firefighting. That meant we each had to carry approximately 100 pounds of tools to break doors down, destroy locks, open walls and ceilings, but most importantly, get trapped people out.

As we approached corridor five, our point of entry, we could see a body still sitting up on the left side of where the plane had impacted the building, his face completely incinerated. Since that moment, I have never gone to see a horror movie. Thoughts about what this person experienced are seared in my memory.

Because the impact zone’s entire water and standpipe system had been destroyed, we helped engine crews place water supply hoses up the functional stairwells around corridor five. Once the hoses were in place, they provided water to several companies fighting the fire and a hose line for our team. While others tackled several fires, our primary goal shifted to finding survivors.

The intense heat presented a danger because our team searched areas from the first to the fifth floors, including the impact zone. There were areas of that building that were close to 2,000 degrees—you can’t get an oven that hot. Once you reached those areas, we only had a certain amount of time. This level of heat will destroy fire gear quickly.

This was not a typical or fully understood type of structural damage/fire situation because it involved a high-speed injection of jet fuel into a huge and complex building. This caused a random routing of gas vapors throughout a large portion of the Pentagon, which we didn’t realize until we started our work. We reached a stairwell on the edge of the area that had collapsed earlier – the stairwell door was open but still tricky to get through because the immense pressure caused by the explosion made the heavy steel door look like one-third of an inflated balloon.

Searching close to the collapsed area, we worked through the debris. We stepped over and through piles of HVAC components, desks, ceiling parts, insulation, wiring, and everything imaginable, piled up seven to nine feet deep. As we continued to search for survivors, we kept finding those who didn’t make it.

I tried not to focus too much on the victims for fear I’d freeze up. With so much water sprayed to extinguish the fire, we found several victims submerged in water. At one point, we opened a hallway door to a conference room and found victims still sitting in their chairs—one still wore his glasses. We checked around the conference table for survivors and then continued our search. Just keep going, I told myself.

The fire made it hard to navigate through the structure, and everyone on my team knew there was a risk of secondary collapse, which could have been worse than the first. We tread carefully. Creaking noises frayed our nerves. We encouraged each other. Keep going.

As we continued through the building, we broke down doors, moved large items, looked under rubble, and covered as much area as possible to continue our search for survivors. An unfortunate reality grew clear: finding survivors in this heat and debris would be unlikely. Still, we pushed on. By the time we reached the top floor, heavy smoke and intense heat enveloped us.

In the late afternoon, I braced myself when we reached the C Ring area, where the wall had been breached by what appeared to be the nosecone of the plane. The airplane that crashed into the building at nearly 500 miles an hour had ruptured a solid concrete structure. Pieces of the airplane’s front landing gear lay outside the C Ring breach. Along with the landing gear, several pieces of the airplane’s fuselage and some instruments from the cockpit lay scattered.

Among all this, we saw the skin of a human being stripped from its body; there were no burns on it at all. By this time, we knew that this crash had been an