The E-Files: 30 Years Later, Trade Center Bombing Still Marks “End of Innocence”
It was Friday, February 26, 1993. David Dinkins, New York City’s mayor at the time, was away in Japan. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly in his first stint as the Big Apple’s top cop would be left in charge to handle press on any police-related matters. There was nothing of major importance happening either locally or internationally. That it seems, is always when it hits the fan.
At 12:17:37 PM EST, for the workers of the World Trade Center, it hit the fan in the form of a truck bomb. Put together by the intelligent, yet evil terrorist engineer Ramzi Yousef, he was acting on orders from the infamous ‘Blind Sheikh’ Omar-Abdul Rahman and Saudi Arabian based terror kingpin Osama bin Laden. The sophisticated device containing primarily urea nitrate was driven to the Towers in a Ryder truck rented by Mohamed Salameh, one of Yousef’s cohorts.
The ensuing blast would kill six, including a pregnant woman, Monica Rodriguez-Smith and her unborn child. Triggering a massive emergency response from both local and federal agencies, at the forefront of this rescue mission and investigation would be the NYPD Emergency Service Unit, the Emergency Medical Rescue Unit of the New York City Transit Police and the NYPD Bomb Squad. To this point, arguably the biggest incident in New York City history
At the unit’s Greenwich Village headquarters on the second floor of the 6th Precinct, Bomb Squad Detective Don Sadowy was looking over old cases when the job came in: “Our squad commander Walter Boser heard this come over citywide. He was up in the office with Detective Steve Dodge, he told Steve Dodge let’s go down there and see what this is. I think a lot of us initially thought it was some type of industrial accident which happens periodically in New York City.”
Upon arriving at the scene however, the then nine-year veteran of the Bomb Squad upon further investigation would soon learn this was no accident. Writing in his 2019 book Rendered Safe: Tales of An NYPD Bomb Tech, Sadowy recalls: “We fought the wind, which was whipping through the openings. Your sense of the enormity of the destruction was heightened as you made your way down the layer-cake levels. The damage had been magnified because the bomb had gone off in a somewhat contained area, allowing the pressure waves to bounce off the concrete walls, floors, and ceilings.”
While the Bomb Squad commenced their investigation, the Emergency Units from the NYPD and Transit Police were fast at work in a daunting rescue mission. Recalls Franco Berarducci, on that day a member of the Transit Police Rescue Unit who would later join ESS Truck 4 upon the 1995 merger of TPD into NYPD: “I remember we were climbing up. Me, and Darrell Summers, who was my partner at the time, were climbing up the stairway and we had a lot of equipment. As you’re up on that 10th floor you’re exhausted, and you start to drop the equipment.”
With 110 stories to climb to safely evacuate the workers who’d become both trapped and disoriented following the explosion, stamina would be crucial to maintain. With smoke from the North Tower’s garage billowing upwards, the Trade Center had essentially become the largest chimneys in New York City. With no proper ventilation system to disperse it, workers were left to climb down darkened stairwells while breathing in an acrid combination of car fuel, metal, burning tires, and whatever else caught up in the B2 level explosion.
In a drastic situation like this, outside of the box thinking was needed. For one-time Special Operations Division boss and eventual Chief of Department Louis Anemone, it had come in the form of a rooftop helicopter rescue to be done by ESU and the NYPD Aviation Unit. “We had people that needed help upstairs.” He added, “We had people trapped in elevators, we had to get people up there.” Though written down and previously discussed, it had never been executed before, this would be the first time.
Via Facebook, Joseph Zogbi of ESS Truck 7 recalled the harrowing ordeal in deep detail:
“Bob Grogan and I were working together, and we had just come back to 7 Truck quarters for a meal, when the call came over the air. The mass response was such that being in Brooklyn, Bobby and I decided to follow Sgt. Timothy Farrell’s and Bobby Schierenbeck’s lead and to go down to Floyd Bennett Field and assist Aviation where we could.
We wound up loading aboard two Bell 206 Jet Rangers, along with a group of helicopters from NYPD and surrounding police agencies and flying with Aviation to lower Manhattan. When we landed, we began staging rescue gear, rope, Scott Air packs etc. At that point Chief Anemone came over to us, and said he needed one more E-Man to join a rappel team to make the jump to the roof of the tower, where 36 people had gathered to await rescue. They needed the 15-foot aerial antennas removed and cleared for a landing zone to commence rescue operations.
I looked at Bobby, and he said ‘Go’, so I grabbed my Lirakis Rappel gear and headed off with the Chief. When I climbed aboard the Huey 412, three other E-Men were there, Ronnie Harris acting as Rappel Master, Dave Isaaksen, who had just come over from Transit EMRU, and Mike Curtin. (Mike later perished as he searched for survivors on September 11, 2001). We secured ourselves, and A/U Pilot Greg Semmendinger began the takeoff process. As we lifted off, I got a clear view of the chaos below. Smoke poured from basement doors where the parking garage was, and where the bomb had detonated.
The weather that day was a frigid mix of snow, sleet and high winds, and the roof of the towers were obscured by low hanging cloud cover. As we circled to gain altitude, with the doors of the 412 open, we felt the cold air, and the vibration of the helicopter and the pilot fought to keep the ship relatively steady. While we continued to climb, we could see the mass response on the ground, flashing lights for blocks with 100’s of rescue units, Police, Fire, and EMS responders coming to the aid of trapped and frightened civilians.
Pilot Greg Semmendinger picked a spot on the roof that looked clear enough for us to rappel to, and brought the ship to a hover. The wind on the roof was “challenging” to say the least, there was quite a cross wind with the snow, and there was a 40 mile an hour wind coming out of the open doors from the tower, which acted like a huge chimney with wind howling through the stairwells.
Sgt. Tim Farrell and P.O. Bobby Schierenbeck had already made the rappel 5 minutes earlier and were waiting for us on the roof. Semmendinger brought the vibrating Huey to a hover and gave the signal for us to go. P.O. Ronnie Harris and P.O. Dave Isaaksen, had hooked us up during the flight over, and had double and triple checked our lines, Ronnie threw the rope line out the door, and when it hit the deck, gave us the go sign.
We had done this hundreds of times in training, but this was the first time for real. I stepped out on the skid, let the line slip through my hand until I was parallel to the skid and kicked out, while letting some more line slip. As the rope made contact with the skid, I released more line and picked a spot to land, bending my knees as we were trained to do, to absorb the impact of the landing. I hit the deck a few seconds later, pulled my line clear of my “8″ and unhooked, clearing the rotor wash, and waited for P.O. Mike Curtin who came out next. As Mike landed and cleared himself from his line, Ronnie Harris pulled the line back in.”
We then joined the rescue efforts of hundreds of other First Responders who put their lives on the line every day for unknown civilians, who may or may not care that they even exist. I was fortunate, blessed even, to have been part of one of the largest civilian rescue operations to date on that day. A short 8 years later, we were attacked again on the same site, and we lost Mike Curtin, along with 13 other members of ESU.”
In total, 28 people were airlifted to safety thanks to this heroic effort.
The Investigation
After the rescue missions had concluded, a massive investigation into who caused such destruction in the first place was well underway. For the NYPD Bomb Squad in 1993, this investigation would be their biggest since it’s creation in 1903 by Lt. Giuseppe Petrosino.
Teaming up with ATF Special Agent Joseph Hanlin, Detective Don Sadowy searched along what once was the B-2 level of the Trade Center’s parking garage when something caught the eye of the Bomb Squad Intelligence coordinator and United States Marine. Further writing in his book, he remembers: “What caught my eye were two curved pieces of metal that looked like an eggshell when you put them together. I recognized this as the outer housing differential or gear train for a larger vehicle.”
Continued digging would yield another crucial discovery. “With Joe (Hanlin) holding his light on it, I examined the metal and saw that it was a mangled piece of chassis frame. When I got halfway, I felt a series of raised dots followed by a long series of letters and numbers that ended in a star shape. I looked up, smiled, and said to Joe: “This is the C-VIN (confidential VIN number) code. And I think it’s from the vehicle that held the bomb, because otherwise it wouldn’t have been blown away from under the vehicle.”
His intuition was correct. Pieced together through extensive lab work, not only was the VIN number confirmed, so was the vehicle’s origin. Reported stolen out of Ryder’s rental facility in Jersey City, New Jersey, it wouldn’t be long before the aforementioned Salameh would return to foolishly pick up his $400 deposit on the vehicle-turned-weapon, where he’d be apprehended.
By 1994, most of the conspirators involved in the attack would be convicted. Bomb maker Ramzi Yousef however, would elude capture for nearly two years before finally being apprehended in January of 1995. Escorting him to a Manhattan detention facility the night he landed back in New York City under heavy FBI guard? The same unit who responded to the pain and suffering he caused in the first place, ESU. He, along with Eyad Ismoil, would be the last of the conspirators to be convicted in November of 1997. Both were sentenced to 240 years in prison in January and April of 1998 respectively.
The Aftermath
Reflecting back on the incident, when asked in 2015 if the second World Trade Center attack of September 11, 2001 marked the end of innocence, Sadowy would reply: “For those of us in law enforcement, we lost our innocence all the way back in 1993.”
Writing in 1997’s Anytime Anywhere, author Sam Katz perhaps summarized ESU’s feelings on the tragedy best: “ESU personnel were never able to look to look at the World Trade Center the same after the bombing. It was a cauldron of destruction and death, not a marvel of architecture and a fixture of the New York skyline.”
Thirty years later, the Towers are no longer a fixture of the New York skyline. Attacked again eight years and seven months later, they were destroyed. Many of those who responded to the first attack in 1993 were there once again on the morning of September 11, 2001. For many of those individuals, that would be the last emergency they’ would respond to.
Overshadowed by the second attack of September 11, 2001, the heinous attack of February 26, 1993, may take on less significance for some, but not for ESU or any other first responders who were there. Thirty years later, it’s still a brutal reminder of the destruction and death mortal men with malicious intentions can cause. Thirty years later, it still marks the beginning of the end of New York City and America’s innocence.