There is a staging area at Chelsea Piers where city staff determine if one has useful knowledge or experience to help with the rescue. If they hear some, they tape a sign reading "S&R" on you, for Search and Rescue, and send you to the Javits Center for dispersal. They send you uptown, not down. Except for ironworkers, they want no one else there, and have placed the military at all entrances to prevent anyone getting close. It is a polite runaround.

Some ironworkers who had just put in an 18-hour shift dropped by my loft at 6 a.m. Thursday and asked if I wanted to go in next time. They weren't sure, because they thought that I might have had enough after having witnessed it all go down. Of course I wanted to go.

We leave Friday in mid-afternoon. In Queens, 11 of us pile into a van and head for the Brooklyn Bridge to the uncanny sight of an altered skyline. We pull up to a commercial equipment store and help ourselves to everything we could carry: cases of gloves, masks, crowbars, pails, and respirators, without a thought of paying for it. The shop owner helps us load it and proudly waves as we drive off.

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