New York — On Tuesday, Sept. 11, the day terrorists assaulted America, Dan Alpren, a former ad agency worker, was awakened by a phone call from his girlfriend, who worked in one of the smaller buildings in the World Trade Center complex.
“She was hysterical. I couldn’t understand a thing she said,” Alpren, 27, a graduate of Shorewood High School and a New York City resident for the last three years, said in a recent telephone interview. “I had one call from her like that before, when there was a mouse inside her apartment.
“I thought I’d be going to get a mouse, but this time she was talking about bodies and planes hitting [the WTC towers].”
After rushing to his rooftop and staring at the burning buildings for a few minutes, Alpren, who lives about two-and-a-half miles away from the WTC, ran to the scene to retrieve his girlfriend. As the two made their way back toward her home, Alpren saw one of the towers “collapse.”
“After making sure she was safe, I went back toward the site where the towers once stood,” Alpren said. “I got within about four blocks of it. I don’t know why I went there; I kind of felt compelled to go.”
By the time he arrived, people were still being evacuated from the scene. “All over the ground were neckties…. Dust covered everything, and you smelled electrical fire,” he recalled.
Alpren returned early the next morning. Although many of those who wished to volunteer were being turned away, he said, “somebody grabbed me and asked me to do data entry, missing persons information.”
He said he did just that for about four hours at an emergency management site, and was then asked to help in its counseling department, where “firefighters and victims’ family members came to eat and get counseling. I would talk to [them], let them debrief a little; and I was supposed to get them upstairs if I sensed that they needed more counseling.”
By 11 p.m., Alpren said he was asked to work at Ground Zero, the name given to the site of the disaster.
“I thought there was a possibility that some of the rescue workers might have survived, but anybody that was in the building didn’t really have a chance,” he said. He said television only provides a “rough idea” of the magnitude of the carnage.
Alpren remained there for about two days, he said, digging the entire time, six hours on, six hours off. He said he also slept at the site and at one point was also assigned to distribute clothing and food.
On Friday, Sept. 14, Alpren went back to his apartment for two hours. “Then I went back. I would sleep there, eat there. I had a pass to get in.”
Alpren said he thinks the reason he was able to volunteer as a rescue worker, apart from sneaking into the right place at the right time, was because the Office of Emergency Management, which he said was located in the WTC, “was in a shambles.”
With Ground Zero now considered an FBI crime scene and the unlikelihood of anyone being rescued alive from the rubble, Alpren doubts his assistance will be needed further.
He is not yet sure how the experience will affect him. While it has given him a boost in “civic pride,” he acknowledges having “had a few bad dreams, stress dreams.”
Couldn’t sit by
Meanwhile, another Milwaukeean, one with experience in treating law enforcement officers and military personnel in times of crisis, felt he “couldn’t just sit by and watch the rescue effort in New York.”
From a relief site near Ground Zero, Milwaukee psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Taxman told The Chronicle in a telephone interview Sunday that he wanted to help the rescue workers deal with the traumatic events. “I thought I had something to offer,” he said.
Offering help was one thing, having it accepted was another. “I had trained at New York Hospital, which is where I began to network to get an assignment,” he said. “Eventually, I contacted the Disaster Psychiatry Outreach program, a national network of psychiatrists offering free treatment to victims of the terrorist attacks, and after a check of my credentials, I received clearance.” He headed to New York on Sept. 19.
Having spoken to more than 150 rescue workers during his 12- to 16-hour shifts, he said, “Generally, the workers are just looking for someone to talk to. I find that often these quasi-hero types are uncomfortable expressing their emotions to someone they know and find it easier to talk to a stranger. They seem hesitant to go within their departments for help. I just try to engage them in conversation and see where it goes.”
He has been counseling mostly police officers and members of the National Guard who experienced the horrors of witnessing people dying or being trapped in rubble.
“At the site we’re really doing crisis intervention rather than therapy,” he said. “We are the first contact and assess the needs. There are doctors rotating through the work site who can call for any kind of medical help. Once we access a person’s level of need, we make referrals for follow-up treatment.”
He said many officers can’t talk about what they saw. “Their wounds are still too fresh. Also, many are dealing with survivor guilt — feeling almost embarrassed that they survived and frustrated that they could have done more to save more people.”
Others have talked about the fragility of life, what to say to their kids and spouses, and, of course, how and why something like this could happen. “Not even rescue workers could have imagined the mass destruction,” Taxman said.
He added, “What we see on television doesn’t come close to giving the size and scale of the disaster. The atmosphere is something I never thought I’d experience. But I feel I did fill a need and that I did something. If I was able to help anyone feel better, that makes me feel good.”
Taxman returned home Tuesday to observe Yom Kippur with his family.
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