Ten days at Ground Zero gives unique perspective

Olympic Games came, went without incident

His mind flashes back to the smoke, the dust, the mountains of twisted steel, the horrible acrid stench of electrical fires and the sickly smell of death.

While most of us watched on television from 3,000 miles away, Steve Hissong of Palmdale went directly into the abyss - working for 10 days at Ground Zero as a captain with the Los Angeles City Fire Department's Urban Search and Rescue Team.

He is a professional, trained to do the work he did for 10 grueling days last September. But you can't train your mind to wipe out what you've seen, you can't train your heart to remain untouched by the carnage of the mass murder of thousands of people whose only crime was getting up and going to work on a Tuesday morning.

"It doesn't seem like a year. It seems like it really flew by," said Hissong, a married father of two boys who turns 39 on Friday. He spent his 38th birthday at Ground Zero.

He went to New York last year with hopes of finding survivors, but there were none to find. They found bodies and parts of bodies instead. He came home with memories and a deep cough that lasted about 4 1/2 months, finally fading after the first of the year.

That's about the time he started to feel back to normal emotionally as well. It took a while. "It was like living with a different person," said Steve's wife, Beverly. "It was January before everything was back to normal."

But with the help of family and friends, as well as keeping busy with their sons and their Boy Scout troop, Steve gradually got back to his old self. He has given talks to civic groups and others on his experiences in New York.

At work, the search and rescue experts continue preparing for the worst - biological, chemical, nuclear attacks. Who knows where or when such an attack might come?

Hissong and his mates from the Urban Search and Rescue Team were on duty in February, at the Olympics in Salt Lake City. If ever there were a hot target for terror, that was it. The Games came and went without incident.

Later, he got a visit from his New York firefighter friend Steve Gillespie. The two had attended a seminar together in June of 2001, and when Hissong was in New York in September he went looking for Gillespie's unit, fearing the worst. He found his buddy, though, in uniform, exhausted, sleeping on a sidewalk.

As we spoke on Sunday afternoon, Hissong wore a blue T-shirt from Gillespie's station.

There are things he doesn't want to forget about New York, because we as a nation can't afford to become complacent. What happened in New York, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania must stay fresh in our minds.

"Riding back and forth from the Javits Center to Ground Zero, we saw the people with the photos of their loved ones, and the pictures were on the poles and on the walls everywhere," Hissong said. "So now we were seeing pictures of the people we were looking for. You're seeing pictures and putting names with faces."

When you think of those poor family members holding up those pictures of people who never came home, it keeps you focused on what's important. This war is not over. "Our nation pulled together, and I hope as time goes on we don't all start forgetting," the captain said.

Seeing the results of the attacks, and knowing how uncertain the future can be, also ensured that Steve Hissong won't forget what matters in his own life - family, making the most of every day, remembering every hour is a gift.

It's a concept with which he was already well in touch. He lost six close personal friends in fire department-related accidents in 1998.

He was well aware of how precious life is and how quickly it can all be gone. Digging through the debris of the World Trade Center only reinforced that. "Every moment in our life is important," Steve Hissong said.

William P. Warford's column appears every Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. You can write to him at P.O. Box 4050, Palmdale, CA 93590-4050, call him at (661) 267-4166 or e-mail him at Wpwcolumn@aol.com.

Uploaded September 9, 2002