Former NYPD chief surgeon shares 9/11 story

South tower collapsed on him as he helped an injured firefighter

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“There was a loud low rumble, and somebody yelled, ‘The tower is going down,’” said Dr. Gregory Fried, former executive chief surgeon for the New York City Police Department. “I rolled into a ball, my hands behind my head, and I expected to die.”

Just days after Long Beach residents joined the rest of the country in remembering the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center 15 years ago, Fried, 70, who grew up in Long Beach, joined the community on Sept. 14 at City Hall to share what he experienced in Manhattan that morning.

“September 11 is a day where regular people did extraordinary things and were citizen superheroes,” City Manager Jack Schnirman told the Herald. “Dr. Fried is a member of our community who had an extraordinary experience and made an extraordinary contribution, and 15 years after is a good time to hear his story.”

Shortly after two jets flew into the twin towers, Fried responded to the scene, and was near the base of the south tower aiding a critically injured firefighter. With little warning, the 1,362-foot structure came crashing down. Fried was lying on the ground, buried up to his shoulders in debris, shocked that he was alive and unable to see.

“Once the towers went down, it was pitch black, it was midnight in a coal mine,” Fried told the audience. “I thought honestly that I had gone blind. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my eyes.”

He soon realized the dust had blotted out the sun, and though his legs and chest throbbed in pain, Fried made his way out from under the rubble — still engulfed in the toxic air — and walked west.

“It was almost impossible to take a breath,” he said. “It was so strange.”

Fried was covered in white dust and debris from head-to-toe when he ran into Capt. Sean Crowley — who he called “the man who saved my life.” Though Fried insisted on going back to help victims, Crowley took him to the west side of Manhattan where a boat picked him up and transported him to New Jersey, where he was taken to Jersey City Medical Center for blood transfusions.

“I knew I was bleeding internally, my back was swelling, my butt was swelling and I was thirsty,” Fried said. “They had actually given a report to the mayor that I was killed.”

The surgeon, who later received the NYPD medal of valor for his service on 9/11, suffered multiple back fractures, broken ribs and a severed artery that Tuesday morning, but was back at ground zero a week later to help supervise rescue efforts. Blood on Fried’s pants was later identified as belonging to the firefighter he had tried to help, whose body was found later on.

Fried narrated the tragic events with images, some of which were police photographs that had never been published or seen by the general public. A few showed aerial views of the towers as they collapsed and the ensuing dust cloud that engulfed lower Manhattan, as others portrayed first responders, and even directions to ground zero’s makeshift morgue — spray-painted on a concrete wall — where Fried said rescuers were asked to take anything that resembled a body part. Of the 2,753 who died that day, nearly 1,200 could not be identified.

“You can’t really know what something is like until you talk to somebody who was there,” said Alex Schiano, 27, of Massapequa, who said he remembered worrying about his father, who was working in the city that day. “They’re all horrifying, they’re all terrible pictures but I feel like you need to see those pictures to really understand exactly what happened.”

Fried highlighted the bravery of the police officers, firefighters and EMTs who he said responded “without a second thought.” In total, 343 firefighters, 23 police officers and 37 members of port authority police were killed on 9/11 in the line of duty, and thousands more rescue and recovery workers have been diagnosed with cancer in later years, Fried said, pointing to the dangers of the toxic air they were breathing that day and in the following months.

After the presentation, Fried asked the residents in attendance to hold their applause, and rather sit for a minute and think about what the country lost that day, before he fielded questions and comments from the crowd.

“Everybody has to take away what they have to take away, but really think about this, not so much as a global event, but the fact that these were innocent everyday normal [people] that were killed,” Fried told the Herald after the meeting. “It’s about them, and it’s about the rescue workers who, at their own peril, went in [to help].”