story6771.xml
Title
story6771.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-09-12
911DA Story: Story
On the morning of September 11th 2001 I was walking into my command in Coney Island for roll call in the NYPD. While entering the command I passed a friend who stated to me: " A plane just flew into the World Trade Center!". I said to him; " Oh man, that is terrible!" Little did I know the size or extent of the damage.
Upon completion of my roll call, I walked into the command kitchen area and saw on TV that another plane had struck the other tower and I realized it was probably an attack on our country. I ran outside and up to the train station and I could see the smoke billowing over to Brooklyn clearly. I then telephoned my fiancee Elizabeth and told her; " Those fucking bastards flew planes into our World Trade towers!!". She hadn't known this yet and she was just in shock.
Over my police radio we got a message to immediately return to our command for further instructions. I ran to the command where we all jumped into a Police Van and got the duties given. We proceeded to downtown Brooklyn and shut down the Borough Hall train station. You could barely see anything downtown and that was in Brooklyn!
All around us was paper and debris raing down from the Towers in Manhattan. I picked up some chunks of sheetrock from the ground and put the in my pocket as a souvenir of this catastropy. People were walking over the Brooklyn Bridge to downtown and they looked like ghosts, all covered in this coating of dust from the Towers. It was awful. We were told to put on paper masks due to the discovery of high levels of Asbestos in the air.
That day I did a twelve hour tour and then went to the site in Manhattan on my off time to help dig for anyone we could find. I will never. ever forget what I saw when we arrived at the site. Unimaginable mountains of burning, twisted destruction. I took a couple pictures and we jumped on the pile to help in the bucket brigade. I remember handing pieces of huge steel that would burn through your gloves as you held them to the guy next to me. It was so unreal, and the smell I will never forget.
After countless trips in my free time to the site I finally realized: We weren't going to find any survivors here. It was impossible.
Well, I did what I could and I still to this day am so angry that this act was set upon our country, my city and my brothers and sisters. We lost twenty-three cops and hundreds of firemen not to mention civilians. I hope to never see anything like that again in my life.
David D. Beatty
Transit District 34
NYPD
Upon completion of my roll call, I walked into the command kitchen area and saw on TV that another plane had struck the other tower and I realized it was probably an attack on our country. I ran outside and up to the train station and I could see the smoke billowing over to Brooklyn clearly. I then telephoned my fiancee Elizabeth and told her; " Those fucking bastards flew planes into our World Trade towers!!". She hadn't known this yet and she was just in shock.
Over my police radio we got a message to immediately return to our command for further instructions. I ran to the command where we all jumped into a Police Van and got the duties given. We proceeded to downtown Brooklyn and shut down the Borough Hall train station. You could barely see anything downtown and that was in Brooklyn!
All around us was paper and debris raing down from the Towers in Manhattan. I picked up some chunks of sheetrock from the ground and put the in my pocket as a souvenir of this catastropy. People were walking over the Brooklyn Bridge to downtown and they looked like ghosts, all covered in this coating of dust from the Towers. It was awful. We were told to put on paper masks due to the discovery of high levels of Asbestos in the air.
That day I did a twelve hour tour and then went to the site in Manhattan on my off time to help dig for anyone we could find. I will never. ever forget what I saw when we arrived at the site. Unimaginable mountains of burning, twisted destruction. I took a couple pictures and we jumped on the pile to help in the bucket brigade. I remember handing pieces of huge steel that would burn through your gloves as you held them to the guy next to me. It was so unreal, and the smell I will never forget.
After countless trips in my free time to the site I finally realized: We weren't going to find any survivors here. It was impossible.
Well, I did what I could and I still to this day am so angry that this act was set upon our country, my city and my brothers and sisters. We lost twenty-three cops and hundreds of firemen not to mention civilians. I hope to never see anything like that again in my life.
David D. Beatty
Transit District 34
NYPD
Collection
Citation
“story6771.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed January 8, 2026, https://www.911digitalarchive.org/items/show/14237.