This blog post is an account of what daily life in lower Manhattan was like for a TV crew covering the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Steve Sweitzer, my best friend in grade school and junior high, went on to a career in video journalism at WISH-TV in Indianapolis. Perhaps the most remarkable assignment of his TV career was running a team that televised the role of Hoosiers (i.e. Indiana residents) in the recovery process at the World Trade Center. His account of that experience is below.

In retirement, Steve continued his video and teaching activities until his untimely death earlier this year.  

I am publishing this blog post as a memorial and tribute to Steve’s life. Here is Steve’s account, written immediately on his return to Indianapolis.

Please don’t feel any obligation to read what follows, there WILL NOT BE A TEST. I’m just home from NYC where I was supervising WISH-TV’s coverage and several people asked me about the experience so I’m putting it down. I’m also doing it for therapeutic purposes – it helps me accept the reality of this unreal experience.

Our goal was to find the Hoosiers involved in the story — we left the “big picture” for the networks. I can’t begin to put the experience in perspective, but I can tell you what it was like to spend three days in the middle of the biggest story I’ve ever covered.

Read more: The aftermath of 9/11: an on-the-scene report

We left Tuesday evening about 7:00 PM – one crew departed earlier in the day with about 60 area rescue workers who were traveling in a convey with search dogs and several semis of supplies.

We’d heard that the bridges and tunnels into the city were closed so we decided to take US 80 across the top of Pennsylvania, with the idea that we’d just keep heading North until we found a way into the city. We only stopped for gas and sometime in the early morning, the driver looked up and saw that we were behind a fire vehicle from Pike Township – we soon discovered that we’d caught up with the Indiana rescue workers and because they were getting a police escort across the state, we fell in and traveled with them. That turned out to be a great decision because they were escorted right through the closed Lincoln Tunnel.

As we approached the tunnel, we could see that the whole South end of the island was still covered in smoke – I’ve seen some big fires but nothing like this.

(We’d been listening to the radio for most of the trip, it still came as a shock. Even though we’d seen the buildings come down, the enormity of this disaster hadn’t sunk in – I think it’s still sinking in.)

After arriving in the city, we broke off from the rescue workers and discovered that we were only four blocks from the satellite truck we were going to be using – it belongs to our sister station, WTNH, in Hartford.

I called my boss to let him know we’d arrived safely and find out when he wanted to see our reporter, he instructed, “As soon as possible.” I found out the truck had already bought time on a satellite and was already “on the bird” waiting for their reporter to arrive. While they waited, we set up our camera and less than 13 hours after leaving Indy, our reporter, Mary McDermott was on the air talking with anchors back in Indy.

The satellite truck was set up at 19th and the Chelsea Pier (a big entertainment complex with discos, a golf driving range and an ice rink). The street in front of the Pier was closed to regular traffic. This street runs down the West side of the island and was the main route for all traffic moving in and out of the disaster. The entire block was filled with ambulances, waiting for a call to come in to help with a rescue. It was shocking to see how few ambulances were called.

I noticed all kinds of people carrying bags of clothes into the building. When I asked someone “Why?” he told me they were requested because the workers inside needed dry clothes. I wondered why their clothes were wet and then it dawned on me, they were using the ice rink for a morgue.

The whole scene was one of contrasts. The sidewalks were filled with regular people, some bringing clothes, others were out for their daily exercise – roller blades, joggers, bikers and dog walkers. Dump trucks regularly bounced by carrying out the remnants of the World Trade Buildings. And hundreds of people passed by headed to 14th Street where they gathered to cheer on the rescue workers as they came and went.

There were also lots of people with pictures of missing loved ones. Because we are in the media, people kept coming up with these pictures and begging us to help. This really tore out our hearts. We explained that our pictures were being beamed back to Indianapolis but offered to let them tape the pictures onto our truck – many did.

We did several more hits for the station and then Mary and photographer Jim Hester headed off to St. Vincent’s Hospital where Mary’s brother normally works as a cancer grief counselor but came in to help work with victim’s families. He just happened to work with another counselor from Indianapolis who was the focus of Mary’s story.

Meanwhile the other crew was documenting the Indiana rescue workers as they prepared to head for the scene. We filed stories until after midnight and then headed for a nearby hotel the station had found for us on Broadway and 27th. With the exception of a few hours of sleep in the car, we hadn’t slept in 48 hours, and were running on adrenaline.

We slept like rocks until 9:00 AM. Before setting out to find the satellite truck which had moved over to the Armory on 26th and Lexington, we learned that many of the shops in our block were run by Arabs and their locks were super glued shut. Mary and Jim talked with several store owners and this played well with a local story in Indy on the Islamic Center there.

The truck was set up around the corner on 3rd Street. Families of the missing were coming to the Armory to meet with the authorities. They all brought pictures – it was heart breaking to have these people coming up and with shaking hands and tear-stained faces, begging us to help them find their missing family members and friends. Before the day was over, our satellite truck was covered with these pictures, and we used it in many of our satellite shots. We were the only truck with pictures, and it became a gathering point for people, sort of a memorial.

I was doing a pretty good job keeping it together until a five year old Asian girl asked if she could tape her picture on our truck. It was a crayon drawing and said “Good luck in heaven.” I grabbed our camera and shot it. It was tough to focus because I was tearing up. When I looked up, I saw another veteran newsman bawling like a baby. That wasn’t the only time I saw news people crying.

That was Thursday and it really took its toll on all of us emotionally. Throughout the day New Yorkers would come up and want to talk. Some of conversations were very thought-provoking. One guy pointed out that the media wasn’t asking the right question, “Why? Why do they hate us so much?” Another woman told me how each block in NYC is a neighborhood and she proceeded to tell me the nationality of each of the shop owners, many of them Middle Eastern, including the Kabul Afghan restaurant on the corner. She then told me they were her neighbors and “We won’t let anyone mess with our neighbors.”

Just as we were preparing to go on the air for our 5:00 PM newscast, the satellite truck died. We tried everything to get it going, including running extension cords out of a nearby Sushi restaurant and a manicure shop but we kept blowing their fuses. While talking with WTNH, the engineer said the generator was acting like it wasn’t getting gas but he had over a 1/4 tank left.

Someone on the other end said, “Oh yeah, I changed the fuel pump last week and we used a shorter hose.” Somehow, we found 5 gallons of gas and that got the truck running in time for our 6:00 newscast. It was after 1:00 AM by the time we’d finished doing LIVE shots and refueled the satellite truck. A storm was rolling in and the sky was black and streaked with lightning – it looked like the scene from Ghost Busters.

Friday morning the phone woke me. It was a radio station from Indy wanting to hook up with our reporters for their morning talk show. That got us off to an earlier start than we’d planned. It was raining and cold. After a quick breakfast, one crew set off to hook up with an Indiana woman who works in CBS’s nerve center coordinating news feeds from NYC to the rest of the world. The other crew headed for the satellite truck and worked on catching up with the Indiana rescue team.

Maybe it was the rain or the cold weather or just the passage of time but the mood had definitely changed.

The frantic hope that there would be survivors was giving way to the reality that there weren’t any. Friday was also the day Bush visited the city, and it was strange to look up and see military jets streaking over the skyline.

At some point during the day, the News Director in Indy and I decided it was time to come home. We could have stayed for weeks and covered the story, but we sadly agreed that without survivors from Indiana, there just wasn’t a need to stay.

It took us about 14 hours to make the drive home and by 1:00 AM Sunday, I was able to hug my family and fall asleep in my own bed.

As a journalist, this was a very tough assignment. I’ve never been around that much suffering. It’s our job to find the answers and put things in perspective and in that regard, I feel like a total failure – I still can’t answer that question asked by the passerby, “Why?”

Peace, Steve Sweitzer