Pa. man recalls working in heart of ground zero

The Salvation Army officer helped rescue workers for a week in New York City.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
SHARON, Pa. -- "It's overwhelming. Emotionally, you can't filter it all," said Major Ted Slye, back in town following a week aiding rescue and recovery workers at the site of the terrorist attack in New York City.
The extent of the damage coupled with hundreds of police, firefighters, contractors and others all working to recover the dead "was numbing to my senses," said Slye, commander of the Salvation Army's Sharon unit.
"You had to put it aside and just do your job," he said.
Slye was among about a dozen Salvation Army officers from western Pennsylvania called to active duty in and around what has become known as ground zero in New York.
He drove to the city Sept. 23 and came home Sunday after spending a week working in a Salvation Army site set up just 150 yards from where the World Trade Center had stood.
The rescue and recovery crews refused to give up hope that they would pull someone alive from the wreckage, but Slye said he could sense that the mood was shifting from a hopeful excitement to a more somber attitude as they realized that wasn't likely to happen.
"We were there to encourage them, to let them know we were praying for them," Slye said, noting that included both emotional and physical support.
The Salvation Army offered everything from hot meals and cold drinks to boot insoles, hard hats and Vicks Vaporub that workers used to mask the smell coming from the piles of rubble.
"You name it, we tried to do it," he said.
Although his assignment is over, he is still on call to go back.
"If they needed my help, I'd go back -- without hesitation," he said, noting cleaning up the World Trade Center is expected to take at least two more months and handling the peripheral damage to surrounding buildings could take 18 months more, he said.
There are at least four other buildings, including one about 50 stories tall, that are going to have to come down, Slye said.
The impact of what he was about to see didn't hit him until he was being driven into Manhattan by a Salvation Army canteen truck.
"The driver said, 'Look up. See that puff of smoke? That's where [the Twin Towers] used to be,' and my heart sank," Slye recalled.