I was one of the medical first responders who arrived at the site shortly after the second tower went down, but just in time to see and feel WTC 7 collapse straight down next to us, as if on an elevator, in a explosive welter of dust and fragments. Fortunately, I was wearing a breather, but beyond that only had clinical whites. We set up a mobile surgical and trauma unit near/in Brooks Brothers but all the patients we were getting in were cops and fire men who had been injured probing the wreckage, so it was a lot of smoke inhalation cases along with corneal abrasions and a few broken/sprained limbs. The morgue set up nearby was a true horror story with the few remains coming in at that point. Most memorable was the flames reaching up through that nightmare of twisted steel facing construction and the constant rain of grey ash from above. It reminded me of what Pompeii must have been like during the eruption with the ash already several inches deep on the street outside the clinic when I took a break. What we did NOT appreciate as things wound down was the political grandstanding that Giuliani and his ilk began doing.
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