Red Cross volunteer from Mukilteo saw hope in aftermath of 9/11

Published 12:01 am Sunday, September 11, 2011

The smell. Even after a decade, it lingers.

Stephany Watson cannot get it out of her mind, the smell at ground zero was so horrible and powerful.

Whenever she visits New York City and gets on a subway, she expects to smell it again. It’s not there, but it will never leave her.

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It was the smell of the ash, a mix of chemicals, concrete, body parts,” Watson said. “I was part of the team that went into Ground Zero. I get chills just thinking about it.”

Watson, 67, spent six weeks as a volunteer in New York City after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A nurse, she was among volunteers sent by the American Red Cross Snohomish County Chapter. She was there twice, both times for a three-week stint, joining hundreds of helpers from all over the country.

She first arrived Oct. 2, 2001, three weeks after the destruction of the World Trade Center towers and the deaths of thousands. She began making entries in a journal, which she rewrote after coming home to Mukilteo.

On Oct. 3, she wrote of her first subway ride approaching “the Zone” and of the otherworldly scene:

“The sky is thick with gray smoke. It has entered my mouth, nose and eyes. … The street is empty of all but emergency vehicles. The concrete we walk on has great gashes that I am told are markings of huge, hot pieces of steel falling from the Towers. Everything is still covered with a gray-brown dust.”

Almost 10 years after that day, Watson sat down to talk about her 9/11 experiences. The smell is unforgettable. And a scrapbook she kept is filled with pictures she took of hazy skies, construction cranes, and Red Cross co-workers.

Her most distinct memories are not of physical wreckage, but of human suffering she encountered every day. Some people she saw only once. With others, she established lasting relationships.

Watson works in Everett as a nurse at The Everett Clinic Walk-In Clinic. After 9/11, it wasn’t her medical expertise that was most needed.

With another volunteer, she went door to door in apartment buildings near where the towers had been, checking on residents. Sometimes they only needed a kind listener.

She helped people arrange funerals and fill out paperwork. “There were funerals all the time, with bagpipers on the street,” she said.

She heard stories of survivor guilt. “There were people who were meant to be in the World Trade Center but weren’t,” Watson said. “Mostly, it was people who had lost someone.”

At first she was puzzled when she saw people raking ash — until learning they were searching for remains or personal items. A place at the pier was set up to identify remains, Watson said. Grieving loved ones would bring a hairbrush or a toothbrush for DNA analysis, she said.

“Red Cross had never faced anything of this magnitude,” she said, acknowledging that after 9/11 she heard criticism about how some donations were used. “You can find fault with anything, but nobody else was there,” she said.

She is still haunted by incredible stories of people she met. Some were still dazed by what they had witnessed. Fire and emergency crews were working nonstop in what she called “the pit.”

A makeshift memorial grew at the Port Authority of New York, honoring police officers and firefighters who were killed. “It was just a canvas tent, but it was a sacred spot,” she said.

On one home visit, she met a husband and wife who had worked as elevator operators in the towers. It was 10 days before they learned their spouse had survived.

Watson met a beautiful young woman who worked in one of the towers. All of her teeth were knocked out when the Towers fell, Watson said. Her mouth was filled with debris.

Doing home visits, she met two men who lived in a 34th-floor condo that had a close view of the World Trade Center. One of them had seen both planes hit. In her diary on Oct. 19, Watson wrote: “He wanted to turn away from the horror of it all, but he was compelled to stand and stare.” He saw people falling to their deaths.

Late one night, she was returning to the hotel where Red Cross workers were housed. “Sitting outside on some steps was a huge guy, about 300 pounds, a firefighter in all his gear. He was sitting down with his head in his hands,” she said.

Watson said she sat down and asked what was happening. “He just hugged me and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed,” she said. “I never saw him again.”

There was routine within the chaos. “They housed us in gorgeous midtown Manhattan hotels. Otherwise, they were empty,” she said. Each morning, Red Cross workers took a bus to a headquarters in Brooklyn, then a subway to Battery Park. “You’d walk into the Ground Zero area, a little over half a mile,” she said.

A cruise ship at the pier was used for respite for the crews working at Ground Zero. “It had cots, massage chairs and feeding stations,” Watson said. “These guys either wouldn’t go home or couldn’t sleep. They’d go to the ship and lay on a cot. It was good being part of the helping community there,” she said.

In New York, Watson worked seven days a week, sometimes 16 hours a day. After three weeks, Red Cross volunteers had to “rotate out.” She came home for Christmas in 2001. “When I came back to real life here, everything hit me. I knew I wanted to go back,” Watson said.

The day after Christmas, she returned to New York. She stayed through New Year’s and until mid-January. During her second three-week stay, she saw the beginnings of a return to normalcy. Her Dec. 29 diary entry reads, “Am I in the right place? The headquarters building is humming at the level of a normal office building, calm people, no crowds. … Wonderful.”

She still corresponds with a woman she helped whose home was near the disaster site. That woman, named Adele, sent Watson a Christmas card in 2002. “There is great healing going on,” Adele wrote, adding, “I hope you do come back to visit.”

Watson has gone back several times, and has taken her grown daughter. “The last time I saw Adele, she said people who live there don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Watson said.

She is still in awe of how appreciative New Yorkers were. “If we got them their medicine or connected them with grief counseling, anything, they were delighted,” she said. “The people who lost the most complained the least.”

Here are excerpts from the journal Stephany Watson of Mukilteo kept while in New York City as a Red Cross volunteer after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks:

Oct. 2: I arrived in New York City about 5 p.m. EST via Delta Airlines direct flight from Seattle. This huge jetliner had maybe 30 passengers aboard. JFK Airport is eerie with few passengers filling the vast concourses.

Oct. 3: Today Battery Park is a military fortress, tents, trucks, soldiers and guns. … Later in the day, one of the old-timers took me to see the Tower site and the rescue workers memorial. Both sites take my heart and soul. It is very difficult for me to write down my feelings and observations.

Oct. 4: Gateway Plaza, what was once a lovely high-end apartment building in posh Tribeca now more closely resembles a mash unit. … Several people are wearing protective masks. The building stinks. The air is heavy with the smell of smoke and the fires still burning. Everything is dirty. Many cry. They all know someone who is missing.

Oct. 6: The (American Red Cross) Spirit ship is docked next to our building. I am told that this is the area for the yachts of the rich and famous of New York. No longer. … The news media state that it is no longer a recovery effort. The firemen and policemen do not agree. They will forever hold on to hope.

Oct. 8: I am living in a luxury hotel a block off Broadway on the Upper West Side. Cool. Glitz, lights, people everywhere. Seems like a world away from the World Trade Center disaster. Makes me feel like Alice in Wonderland.

Oct. 17: This was a bad day for our second client. This gentleman was badly burned from the hot metal beams falling on him and pinning him down in the lobby of one of the Towers. Today the skin grafts aren’t taking and the prognosis isn’t good.

Oct. 18: One constant in my caseload is a little frail widow from Malaysia. She is so profoundly sad. The tears fall silently down her face as we talk. She says that her husband can run like the wind. He surely made it out of the Tower.

Oct. 20: This morning I spoke to one of the NYPD cops who works at the landfill on Staten Island. His task is to sift through each load of debris for personal belongings and body parts for DNA to give closure to families searching for clues of their loved ones. My heart is wrenched yet again.

Oct. 21: I’m outa here, ready to go home and see my family and feel the “real world” again. Could be that my definition of the real world may be forever skewed.