9/11 Looking Back: Robert Dinan

As soon as it happened, I was on my way with three other cops.

Driving into Manhattan, you always saw the skyline. It was surreal. We were driving when we saw the second plane hit.

We got right to our precinct in mid-town Manhattan, and they started taking everyone by van to the scene. It was complete mayhem, with everybody running.

I didn’t think that the towers would collapse. The fire department set up a command post in Tower 2. It was such mayhem. At that point, it was just trying to get people out of the building. Alarms were going off; there were announcements telling people to go back to the office. It was very chaotic. Usually, as a police officer or a firefighter, you’re told, “This is what you’re doing.” There was no way you could train for something like this. There was one lieutenant telling us to send five officers to the parking garage at the bottom of the World Trade Center to make sure no one was stealing cars. I jumped in and told him that wasn’t a good idea. There’s no telling what would have happened to those guys if they had gone down there.

After the World Trade Center fell, it was like being on the moon, up to our knees in what looked like lunar ash. We were all white and gray with what was.

Building 7 didn’t come down until later. My partner and I got caught up in the collapse of that building on an underground tube with six other people. We lost all communication, but the stuff we could hear going off on the radio was horrifying. Moira Smith, a cop from the 13th Precinct — I just remember her screaming, “Please get us out of here.” New York Police Department lost 23 cops that day. I knew most of the police officers.

I got there at 10 a.m. that morning and didn’t leave until 2 p.m. the next day. The bottom of my boots literally melted. You try to do recovery. You dig. You do buckets. The days that followed, it was the same situation: burning, smoking for weeks, maybe even months.

We stayed at the precinct at nights. New York became a really nice place. People were cheering for the police department, the fire department. Hotels were bringing in sheets. Schools and churches opened up.
I have a master’s degree in forensic identification, so for eight months, they used me to identify remains at a makeshift morgue they set up near the site. It was gruesome. I went into intelligence on the Antiterrorism Task Force two years after that.

I still feel like it was yesterday. Police and firemen — they’re people, too. We’re supposed to be the ones running in when everyone else is running out. That’s what you signed up for. But I know we’re all scarred.

As a police officer, you’re supposed to detach yourself from a situation. But here it is, still, in everyone’s head.

Read more Longboat  9/11 coverage here.