9/11, Ten Years Later: Helping Firefighters Cope

Some images remain seared in Brookfield firefighter Joe Washcovick’s mind, 10 years after he went to New York to help counsel fellow rescue workers:

The section of steel pulled from Ground Zero in the perfect shape of a cross. Family members standing at the fence searching for missing loved ones. An old brick church virtually untouched amid crumbled skyscrapers.

“I don’t think that was a coincidence,” Washcovick said of the church. “There were buildings all around it that were just devastated. This place of God was untouched. That was where people found hope while they were there.”

Washcovick is a member of a Wisconsin firefighters union employee assistance program team that spent a week at Ground Zero two weeks after the 9/11 attacks. The team was created about 30 years ago in response to firefighter suicides. Members volunteer to serve as peer support, helping others deal with problems such as divorce, anxiety or drug and alcohol abuse.

Like millions of Americans after 9/11, Washcovick felt compelled to help however he could, donating money and blood. But as a firefighter it was more personal, losing 343 brothers — men and women who bravely ran up toward danger to rescue people.

The Wisconsin State Firefighters Association team decided to send eight members to New York. Washcovick’s children were 7, 5 and 3. Sydney, his oldest, remembers taking dad to the airport but little else.

“They were too young to remember dad struggling when I came home,” he said.

Working at Ground Zero

The team planned to set up in a neutral setting like a hotel to let rescue workers talk and vent. But similar teams from Toronto and other states who already deployed said firefighters were not leaving Ground Zero. So the team had to go there.

“We were at Ground Zero for eight- to 10-hour shifts, just walking around and starting conversations with police officers, firefighters, construction workers, New Yorkers in general," he said. "They just wouldn’t abandon their posts.”

Washcovick described the scene as a war zone, a city in virtual lockdown, overwhelming and amazing. He had to show identification to enter the fenced area.

“It was probably the best and the worst thing I ever did,” he said. “You saw the best of people because everyone was pulling together. But for me as a Christian guy, there was a tremendous sense of loss there, loss of human life and as Christians making yourself right with God, there was just an overwhelming sense of loss of souls.”

He was humbled by the magnitude of the tragedy.

“We weren’t wired to go do that,” he said. “We were used to sitting in a restaurant talking someone through a divorce. I remember calling home, just being a basket case, calling them to pray for me.”

The hardest images were seeing the pain on the faces of family members who lost loved ones. And watching tough-as-nails firefighters and police officers sit on side streets, their faces showing “just helpless shock.”

“It’s a bravado industry, these are macho guys but they have feelings just as much as anyone else,” Washcovick said.

The Red Cross workers were “amazing,” he said. He saw them everywhere, including the undamaged church where they and he would take breaks and get food.

“It really was an unbelievable thing to watch how the human spirit just came together,” he said.

Every day is a gift

After a week, the team returned home. It took Washcovick several months “to get back to what I would call normal.” Routine disputes at work or politics seemed petty.

His wife helped. And members of his church, Cross Point Community Church in Oconomowoc.

Washcovick sees fellow team members at an annual conference and they share a special bond. Some also traveled to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Washcovick hasn't returned to New York, but might take a motorcycle trip there next summer.

"It just never felt right, but for some reason I feel like going out there now," he said.

The experience strengthened Washcovick’s faith and inspired him to become more evangelical when the opportunity presents.

He and his wife have instilled in their children a sense of service. His eldest child, a high school senior, is in Africa for a month on a mission trip. He said he hopes America can find its way back to more civility and cooperation.

“Everyone thinks they have tomorrow to make that decision to make everything right, whether it be with God or in our relationships,” Washcovick said. “But we’re all just one little flip away from not being there.

“That’s what 9/11 taught me — that everything is a gift and to remember that, whether it’s hugging your kids or telling your wife you love her or being nice to a person walking down the street.”