86. When Service Becomes a Calling Featuring Solange Schwalbe

Let's now talk about what I titled, um, Life Inside Ground Zero.

Um, you spent four months inside the pit alongside firefighters, police officers, and construction crews.

What did a typical day there actually look like?

Well, we would...

My crew would show up at the trailer.

We'd all go down to World Trade Center 6, and it was every day was bodies and body parts.

So you never knew what you were gonna see.

You never knew the condition of the pit.

It was always changing.

Every day was different.

So we had to figure out what we were doing and where we were going on a day-to-day basis.

We had the...

If you look at photos of the pit, there's no dirt.

It's zone dust.

It's biologically based with chemicals and office furniture and kitchens and plumbing and all kinds of stuff, pulverized glass, marble, cement, pulverized into zone dust, and it smelled horrible.

And the noise was so high, it was deafening.

The noise factor was very high.

So it was a, it was a challenge to be in the pit every day.

Okay.

Thank you for, you know, sharing that.

Um, I want to ask, uh, another question, which is, um, what do you remember most about, uh, the people and the sense of service you experienced there?

The people were incredible.

That's what made being there so wonderful were the people.

We all worked as a team.

Out of 1,500 rescue workers, there was only four women, and I was one of them, and I didn't know it.

Let's now talk about what I titled, um, Life Inside Ground Zero.

Um, you spent four months inside the pit alongside firefighters, police officers, and construction crews.

What did a typical day there actually look like?

Well, we would...

My crew would show up at the trailer.

We'd all go down to World Trade Center 6, and it was every day was bodies and body parts.

So you never knew what you were gonna see.

You never knew the condition of the pit.

It was always changing.

Every day was different.

So we had to figure out what we were doing and where we were going on a day-to-day basis.

We had the...

If you look at photos of the pit, there's no dirt.

It's zone dust.

It's biologically based with chemicals and office furniture and kitchens and plumbing and all kinds of stuff, pulverized glass, marble, cement, pulverized into zone dust, and it smelled horrible.

And the noise was so high, it was deafening.

The noise factor was very high.

So it was a, it was a challenge to be in the pit every day.

Okay.

Thank you for, you know, sharing that.

Um, I want to ask, uh, another question, which is, um, what do you remember most about, uh, the people and the sense of service you experienced there?

The people were incredible.

That's what made being there so wonderful were the people.

We all worked as a team.

Out of 1,500 rescue workers, there was only four women, and I was one of them, and I didn't know it.