Never Forget the attack on our Nation September 11 2001

today marks 23 years since the attack on our country on September 11th Ed Wallace and myself responded to the call that day and we vowed to never forget they see no color they chaplain and people of Faith they see no color they see no race they see no Creed they see all good in everyone in all human beings so I'm going to play quickly for you a small video to show you some of the great work that CH Bob has done I'm a chapl out of Cape PE fire department with a simple greeting and a navy blue coat marked chaplain it's a very hallowed place right now he asked this question to thousands of mourners may I pray with you yes can I put my arm on you is it okay yes yes I'm sure father God I I thank you for the privilege of praying with this young lady as she shares some of the traumas in her life silently stationed on the sidewalk he's been the one constant in front of the memorial at Shady and Wilkins would you like to pray or would you rather just pray on your own come on yeah I'll be brief as the funerals began and the piles of flowers grew oser stayed put give her strength and took courage to come here father so be with her give her a wonderful day Lord and may I touch more Hearts today as we share grieve smile and laugh together thank you dear God Amen that was wonderful thank you and these people will just pour their heart out and I'll just listen and let them a lot of times they just put their head right in my chest and just cry Bob Osler is no stranger to this pain he started his mission after the September 11th terror attack I was at Ground Zero I did over 300 funerals on Tower 2 at Ground Zero from there to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina I've been to the Parkland shooting in South Florida thank you so much I was honored to meet you take care okay God bless take care God bless you that's what the chap Bob uer is all about 40 years in the Brotherhood of praying for the good of of human Humanity I tip my cap to you as I do to all of my brothers and sisters I was a chap Ground Zero as you mentioned and I was uh finished with my praying on the perimeter with different people and I went over to the area and saw your family quite a crowd there at the time and I was pretty weary but I came up to you and I asked if I may pray with with your family may I pray with you folks and you guys very joyfully accepted my offer and uh we took a time uh I believe I read some scripture and and we took a time of prayer and dedication to the people you love and the people that you honored and we wanted to make it a very special sobering occasion and we did and you know we ended with God bless you and love you and hugs and uh I I never knew that I would connect with with you some 20 years later the um this is a combination of uh volunteers and emergency responders you had a lot of U the trade people here the iron workers in the beginning it wasn't organized uh it just people came down they they weren't credential we didn't know who all was there and who they were representing and uh you know we have self- dispatched law enforcement and firefighters in EMS from around the country and overseas as well we in the early stages before we got control of the workers here yeah yeah they're iron workers yeah guy not one guy's wearing a mask all the rest not well those masks those masks that they wearing for um they're wearing n95 or P95 or and they're not appropriate for that environment because those are just for particulates you can see those cloud of smoke in the background well they contain banic compounds and toxic materials and the paper mask the n95 were not made to protect you from that Ed the first day and the second day I had no mask period what I was doing was taking my shirt and putting it over my mouth and and using the bathrooms and showers and we were showering ourselves off with our guns attached and but this is the chaos that ensued on day two fumes coming out of this uh made by the fires which burned for months and embedded in all of that were your heavy metals your carcinogenic materials this is the bucket yeah this is the Bucket Brigade what ended up happening is the volunteer would form lines up the pile with uh and two lines uh one to bring the bucket up one to fill it and one to bring it back down and then at the bottom of the Bucket Brigade would be um myself and other machine unit under a tent with a sifter and we would sift through the buckets looking for evidence body parts and remains I operated on this bucket line uh for probably a good 5 days I was here in different locations and what I remember most about this is that there was voids there and you didn't know or Endor pieces of building you can see I think this is where um the hotel was there the Vista or later was the Marriott Marriott um so I was down by the Marriott and there was the I think a Deutsche Bank building there was these big buildings these are um these are the ones across uh World Financial um but we were always worried that pieces were going to fall off the building and the FD uh the fire department Chiefs and the bosses had those air horns and they would blow those air horns when they would want us to come off the pile right and especially when that one building um by um ziga Park uh kept swaying and we felt it was going to fall down so if it was s too much the air horn would go up and we' Evacuate the uh site today our fellow citizens our way of life our very Freedom came under attack back in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts the victims were in airplanes or in their offices secretaries businessmen and women military and federal workers moms and dads friends and Neighbors in the morning of September 11th I was in my office when the first plane hit Tower 1 we um I called the mayor I told him I was coming I would meet him at Tower 7 Tower 7 stood right here on this corner our Command Center was in the 23rd floor of tower 7 so I took off downtown and we actually came down West Broadway toward vessie Street we're going to make a right on vessie and as we were there were cops there and a cop a sergeant came up to the car screaming that you know we couldn't turn on to the block that people were jumping and I didn't I didn't understand what he said and I got out of the vehicle and uh he said he salutes me and he says commissioner they're they're coming down they're jumping and I looked up and I could see debris coming off of the side of tower one um from 95 floors up what I didn't realize until that debris got closer to the ground is that it was bodies I think in that first probably 5 minutes I was there um I probably watched close to two or three dozen people people come off the building and they were hitting the ground they were hitting the awnings between Tower 2 and Tower 1 um they sounded like explosions when they hit the metal my cousin Ralph lardi he was a local three electrician working only his second day at the World Trade Center he had seven years as a journey Foreman was a successful father he was a successful businessman and he was a successful homeowner he just bought a new home and Ralph went to his job and the rest is history the our country was attacked our world was attacked by uh terrorism on September 11th and I was there to search for my cousin but his family who is near and dear to me my Aunts Uncles and my other cousins his brother and sister they asked me they said Ron would it be possible to bring us to the last known spot the last known location where our Ralph was alive and he did call his wife that day and said he was walking down after the first plane hit and he never made it obviously never made it home they never heard from him again but this was about a week and a half two weeks later and I brought my family in a police department vehicle and all they wanted to do is pray because his mom my Aunt Joanne is a Catholic school teacher she did the Sunday school and she's very very very religious she's like the closest I can say to my my other aunt who's a Catholic nun sister Camille Dar Enzo so she asked can we go down there and I I put them all in the van we drove them down and we were praying as a matter of fact they took plastic Ziploc bags and were putting soil into it and and and like pulverized um uh Concrete in the bags and then Bob came up while they were on their knees out of nowhere fire department hat the prayer prayer collar his chaplain coat and he handed me this his business card the village of Melrose Park and it says fire department Reverend Bob Osler chaplain bear one other burden bear one another burden and this is a beautiful card I put this in a card index file 20 years ago and I brought it out every September 11th like probably every five six years looked at this card maybe a half a dozen times and I said should I call this man looked at the card I said ah he won't remember me there's his home number his pager you still have a pager Bob I don't know if he still has okay so it's got cell number his voicemail his home number and his pager I wanted to call him so many times and I never did but something told me to hold on to the card and of all the Horrors that I had dealt with that day and the four months five months after working at the medical examiner's office the one good thing amongst several the one really good thing was the prayer was the Red Cross and the Salvation army tents and the regular tents that were up and you saw people serving food but on the other side it was a place to pray and that really means a lot to me cuz from for the folks who subscribe and my friends here every time I do a stream no matter what it is I say God Bless The World God bless the United States of America and God bless each and every one of us and that's how I end every one of my streams we were as a crime scene unit we were attached to an urban search and rescue team or some of the NYPD or the FDNY search and rescue team so like initially two members of the crime scene unit whoever was working that night were attached to the various um search and rescue teams and each search and rescue team was given a specific Grid in the 16 Acre Site that is the World Trade Center and we would go in with those teams they would search if they found the body part or or human remains uh we would come in photograph document GPS locate if we could and then um bag them um and bring them to the temporary morg uh that was stationed outside in batteria Park City and this looks like a full body recovery here um you know you know this multiple fire Personnel carrying us uh victim out now we were we were um with those Urban sech rescue teams you know we were crawling around in the Subterranean Parts you know because the World Trade Center had Subterranean mall that was multi-story uh in the underneath the World Trade Center below grade uh leading to the PATH train and also to the Subways down there and there were all kinds of malls and so those were being searched and um you know you were in danger of the pile shifting and then the floors collapsing and then you collapse now if you ever saw a photograph of me uh you know I I was wearing uh at that time an ALICE rig over my uniform um with a uh butt pack and in the butt pack I had all my survival gear plus an ALICE rig um to attach uh to in in case I needed to be repelled or pulled out I also had my Kar knife I had uh uh I had water supply and I had tourniquets and medication uh medicines and um bandages and so forth in case we got hurt because there was no place safe to fall here if if you fell you were getting hurt you could be impaled on a piece of rebar now the only thing that was left that's what I remember I remember just looking when I was doing the bucket uh Brigade looking down and you you couldn't actually see how far down it was but yeah if you slipped you could fall down your whole body could go down there I had I had rope I had uh um you know to try if I had to rescue myself you know I I had means to do it I had my carabinas I had ropes uh you know you name it everybody everybody was looking at me and saying man you know you're you're hardcore you're you know that you don't need that I said okay yeah it's all fun in games until you fall down into one of these holes here about 3 minutes before the mayor got here there was this enormous explosion and we looked up and the second plane was slamming through the north side of the building on top of us another one hit the building wow that's when I realized we were under attack my staff the bodyguards we went behind Tower 7 we waited for the debris to come down and um mayor Giuliani arrived about 3 minutes later looked at the damage here the mayor wanted to go down to West Street so we actually walked down to West Street here went to the side of the buildings and to a temporary command post we met with the first Deputy Commissioner the chief of Department chief of operations from the fire department we talked to them for about 10 minutes and the mayor he said okay I want to I want to go back to the other side here um and and where I was going to set up a temporary command post here we came back up the block and my guys had secured an office in that building there there was a meril Lynch office there a small meril Lynch office we were going to go in there the mayor was going to call the White House he wanted to speak to the president about getting air support walked into that office the mayor sat down at a desk um got on the phone uh got through to the White House somebody came on the phone they said the president's not here the vice president is going to come to the phone and talk to you in about a minute and a half after they said that uh um they came back on the phone and they said we have to go um they're evacuating the White House and we think that the Pentagon just got hit I was a police officer first responder on September 11th Tuesday September 11th uh I was um a first responder uh off duty uh and got woken up by my wife as the first plane hit the building and I was woken up and immediately dressed and then ran into work I fully responded to the September 11th attack and I was down there for uh the whole Carnage that ensued thereafter just when I reached home right here at my house I went around my backyard into my patio underneath the awning and dressed took all my clothes off out back my wife met me with garbage bags and she put all my clothes in garbage bags cuz they were covered with white ash from the World Trade Center I didn't want to bring that toxic stuff into my house house so my wife bagged up all my clothes we took it to a professional lerat and she we had it clean but my wife was outside in the backyard as a first responder I have to tell you uh I responded with respect and dignity pride and no fear uh no fear at all I didn't hesitate one second um the the call came over for us to all respond in every first responder fire department paramedic and a police officer was uh ordered to come in so I went in uh my kids were little uh they were taken out of school that early early morning and I saw them right before I left uh and they were tugging at my uh pant leg and crying my wife was crying they all didn't want me to leave they wanted me to stay with you with them and that was the hardest thing that I had to do that whole day and I got to tell you there was a lot of tough things that we saw there was a lot of difficult situations from people jumping from the building from people jumping to to um uncontrollable fires and unable to get to help anybody those were very difficult things for a first responder for people uh like myself who are in the police uh the emergency medical field the first responder uh paramedics we were helpless we could not even get close to the location because of the burning fires but but even with all those precautions we still have the breathing issues and you have cancer issues and and things in 2002 uh I got rushed to the hospital in Staten Island while I was on duty um I thought I was having a heart attack and um it turns out it was the first um it was the first disease that uh I was diagnosed with from Ground Zero was acid reflux but taking a chess x-ray of me and they found all the scar tissue in my lungs and so the emergency doctor that was treating me said hey had you ever had pneumonia before and I said no I've never had pneumonia so he shows me the X-ray said your lungs are scarred from top to bottom do you have any previous um x-rays that you can compare this to we can compare this to and I said yes I'm a hmat tech and our medical division at lafra takes chess x-ray as a part of the Hazmat Tech Medical that we do uh annually he says can you get it and I said yeah yeah I got it and um uh I brought he said you need to take this and take that to a pulmonologist and so I made an appointment with a pulmonologist and he compared the two X-Rays the July 200 um the July 2001 x-ray to the um August 2002 X-ray and he said well in July 2001 this wasn't there none of the scar tissue that I'm seeing in here he says we're going to have to um perform open chest surgery on you and remove several sections of your lung and send it to the Mayo Clinic for biopsy okay I'm going to stop right there that's the telephone building um that's uh just north of the World Trade Center it would have been by the North Tower and all that damage on top was created from the plane and the North Tower um collapsing and because of that damage to the telephone building there Lower Manhattan lost the 212 area code uh for the telephone and they had to um initiate 646 area code for Lower Manhattan so headquarters lost its telephones because of um the damage to that building right there yeah and so a considerable distance from from the site too it's just amazing this okay go ahead then so um I bring it to the pulmonologist and and I get a second opinion because these guys talking about operating on me and removing three sections of my lung and sending it for analysis by the Mayo Clinic and so the second doctor looked at everything he said yeah you got to do this we got to figure out what this is because it could be any number of things um none of which are good for you and so I did it I had the surgery I was hospitalized I had a chest tube I was in there for about a week um finally got sent home um and it sent off to the clinic they did the analysis and they found out that I had sarcoidosis which was the second um disease related to my exposure at Ground Zero which is an uncurable unknown origin autoimmune disease you your immune system basically overreacts to the F particulate in in that World Trade Center debris nobody knows what actually it is but it triggered this response and what happens is um like a normal immune system when it finds a fign particulate in your body will go and attack it right if it's if it's themed a threat and then by attacking it they normally put like a little scar tissue around it and and Cocoon it and then then the immune system stops well with sosis the immune system doesn't stop it cre it keeps creating the scar tissue where wherever it finds this particulate until it destroys the organ that the particulate was in uh so many people die of sosis from sosis related issues where like um the they it short circuits the electrical system in the heart or it gets into the central nervous system and then causes um damage there so the only thing they can give you because there is no cure for this is um prazone the steroid suppress your immune system and that's what I've been had been taking for many years um that but then it it led to um I was having sinus problems the World Trade Center Clinic stood up sometime afterwards and they um they sent me to an ENT and the ENT did all kinds of testing and said we need to conduct surgery and went up into my sinuses and they removed precancerous palps and straightened out my nose um cuz I was was having all kinds of sinus issues and I had two of those surgeries one one after the other because uh when they cut me loose from the first surgery I was still bleeding um and it was causing me um to vomit blood and they rushed me back to the hospital unpack my nose and then had to go in and cize all these bleeding um parts inside of my nose all right so I had that one and then a couple years later um in the interim though I'm getting all these rashes I'm getting all these uh rashes The Unexplained rashes and I have to go through dermatologists with steroid creams and so forth and and pills um then cancer get the prostate cancer and uh even though my PSA number was low the the doctor kept saying hey um you know last year it was uh you know first year we tested upsa it was one then the next year it was two now it's three can we do a bi Y and I said yeah sure so they did the biopsy and you know they take 12 samples of your prostate and how they do this is they knock you out go through your rectum and inject the needles through your lower intestine into the prostate pull out the samples and the doctor calls me back and and says hey um came back positive you have prostate cancer and good news is we CAU it early the and um IND conditional good news it's only in the prostate it's not in any of the tissues or the um the lymph nodes around the prostate and so he says you know he gave me all my options and I said um well I'm not having any kids anymore and so let's just get rid of the prostate let's take the whole thing I don't want to have to worry about it uh coming back or metastasizing and going someplace so so take it okay and so I had the World Trade Center Clinic did the surgery the world-renowned surgeon there did the surgery and removed robotically removed my prostate and that's where I learned about Keel ladies and gentlemen okay all right then um discussions on this yes yes then uh shortly thereafter uh I lost my um I lost my gallbladder okay and the same year it was uh like one year apart you almost a year uh came out of nowhere he blessed us and prayed with us and he didn't he didn't it was seamless he didn't make us feel uncomfortable he asked can I pray with you and Bob what you did from my family and probably thousands of other at that 16 Acre Site is I couldn't thank you enough 100 million times over and I want to say personally here thank you thank you and God bless you for what you do you're very welcome and I and I remember that like yesterday believe it or not and all of the sudden the building started shaking like a freight train was coming through the side of it somebody kicked open the door and yelled it's coming down and um that's when Tower 2 was uplo [Music] in the morning of 9/11 I actually was in my dorm room and I was watching on TV I went to class I came back we kind of saw what was going on and my father was a a fireman at the time in rescue 4 so we knew he was working that day but I didn't know exactly you know where he was the morning of I called my mother I said you know is is that working today and she said yeah he's he's and I haven't heard from him yet but I'll call you back later and no one really knew what to do cuz there wasn't a moment of exasperation when you're like oh this is it's over like we know he's gone it was kind of he still might walk in the door every time the door opened everyone would turn and say oh you know expect them to kind of walk in um and again another day another day and then kind of over over the course of that week it just we kind of eased into he's not coming back like we we're pretty sure that he was lost in the in the collapse my own producer is sending me $10 as a tip how does that work I don't understand it but I accept it thank you Josh have to brag and boast about Bob um some of the things that he's done is just um just incredible and I showed you the synagogue um uh Massacre that happened in Pennsylvania he was there but he was also in Virginia Beach guys I've seen people come here all morning this Memorial as you said is so big they moved it from across the street to back here underneath the tent and it's part of the healing process people are experiencing through prayer and also through donation as the sun rose over the Virginia Beach Municipal Center May I put my arm on you yes sure you can thank you Father God the morning continues where the 12 victims shot last Friday father God it must be especially hard for this young couple as they come here to mourn grieve and pay respects they're they knew all these people and at the memorial just blocks away from the scene the pain is beyond any words I could ever pray to you father chaplain Bob oser is helping the community heal with prayer give them strength today Lord as they're they're in shock like the rest of us it's an active service he's repeated across country this is my six shooting in a year for decades I was at the the bridge collapse in South Florida uh I was a chapl at Ground Zero in New York but to him Virginia Beach stands out you come in here and you see this tragedy happen can happen right in your backyard and everybody always says oh not here it won't happen here but it does happen father thank you for these gentlemen just here and I can see it in their face they're just grieving and mourning he talked to one of the victim's sisters yesterday just heart-wrenching heartbreaking stuff you know but I just held her and prayed with her and listen to her I had to make a difficult decision and respect and honor was on my priority list on the top and that was something that I still to this day struggle with that decision about leaving them but I knew it was the right thing to do um I still think about it uh I think about the wh ifs I think about if I didn't come back I think about uh What uh how they were feeling emotionally my kids were little um they were young and um it was a very very difficult situation and I commend my wife for holding things together uh it was tough for us to even make communication there was not a lot of communication um uh from down at the World Trade Center um the all the cell towers everything was disrupted so it was um it was really really a difficult uh situation difficult at best when the building came down um once that building started to shake um we had it blew out all the windows there was smoke and gas and and all this stuff I remember thinking uh you know we were in there there was no way out couldn't get out um couldn't go out the way we came in it was all blocked off so you know and and we couldn't breathe which was the worst part of it uh and I was thinking like all the stuff that I have been through in my career you know I've been stabbed gun battles like all this stuff and I'm going to wind up smothering to death in this this office cuz we can't get out and all all of the sudden um a side door opened and these two maintenance guys showed up and they were probably a shock to see the mayor the police commissioner the fire commissioner see all of us in that room they were about a shock to see us as I was to see them and uh I asked him you have keys to get us out we wanted to go west I wanted to get out the other side of the building and they took us out a series of hallways All the Way East until we came out on Church Street that's how we actually got out of the building and I remember walking into that Lobby and looking outside and you could not see anything outside it was Pure White it was like somebody took a sheet and put put it in front of the window and I thought what is that like what is what's out there what happened you know was it a nuclear blast like what was this and uh and they had the these rotating doors these circular rotating doors and I remember going through the door getting outside and when we got outside there was no [Music] sound no more Sirens no birds no car horns no City sound no sound period it was just like somebody stuck you in a soundproof booth that's how condensed this dust and soot and gas was um it took out all sound you know and keep in mind I was four or five blocks from the towers I was uh Department bus qualified so what that means is I had training in the department bus uh how to how to drive a New York City bus I was trained in it uh in the early 90s so my training jumped in on September 11th as well I utilized a New York City MTA TR uh bus a New York City bus I drove it picked up 75 police officers and made another trip in and out of lower Manhattan one of the unbelievable sites that I saw in my first 24 hours was a a military tank on the street in front of the New York Stock Exchange now I only wish that I would have taken a picture of that but it was just too much chaos too much going on the men and women of the New York City Police Department the fire department and the Port Authority police affected the greatest Rescue Mission in the history of the country they took 20 to 25,000 maybe 30,000 people out of these buildings in this surrounding area but then they also evacuated close to a million people out of Southern Manhattan out of from from 14th Street down to Battery Park close to a million people were evacuated and they were evacuated into Brooklyn Queens the Bronx New Jersey with the helping the New Jersey state police the nework police department the Jersey City police department everybody came together um there was Unity like we haven't seen in years um there was resilience um that we barely see these days um and it was uh it was a feat I think for the First Responders never been replicated prior no and hopefully it's it's never going to happen again September 11th 2001 was there were so many so many things that were hard to deal with it wasn't just police and fire it was the steel workers it was the volunteers from the Red Cross it was the people who came from across the country across our great land to come and lend a hand it was there were so many difficulties where the public was behind the bearers and I would talk to the public and pray with them by the hundreds they want to pray and we'd all bow our heads and I'd put my hands on their shoulders and we would just pray and this was the whole idea was there supposed to be a spiritual connection to bring it brought people much closer to God and uh talking about our Savior Jesus Christ and the the mercies that he shows people and that people felt spiritually connected unto the Lord that was the whole purpose of being a champ on there is to bring people together spiritually kind of like what I did with your family and the time and it was very heartfelt deep warm and tearful and sometimes laughter it's important that every year we listen to the names being read off but this is going to be a condensed version of it and I'm just going to play it and then come back on and say a quick prayer with you guys [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] h [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] h [Music] h [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] h [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Music] [Music] I ask you friends along with Ed Wallace we ask you together to please keep those and the families of those who lost their lives that day in your thoughts and prayers and those who have died since to 9/11 World Trade Center health issues I thank you for your support I thank you for your your love and we will see you very soon God bless so there you have it folks that's uh my cousin Ralph um and that is a memorial in uh Arizona my sister took that photo and uh there was candles lit there um so I want to bring bring myself back on I never give up and thank you to everyone who's given super chats that was a a great representation and obviously we paid homage to all who has have lost their lives during September 11th but there are so many more that have lost their lives after that that would be added on to that list want to especially lift up all the families affected by the 911 tragedies all the families and I pray for all those who will eventually maybe have closure but it's so hard each shares this is over and over again father we lift them up to you from the pain and torture of seeing those pictures bless these families we take care of all our law enforcement our fire Personnel our EMS Personnel Red Cross any volunteers during tragedies or times when we serve others father we lift these people all up to you and the survivors of the families are just give them strength for these times because 20 years and it still feels like a fresh raw wound and it's trying to scab over and it's just going to be a scar underneath that father so I just pray for strength courage and keep that dignity take care of Dy Ron and all the listeners be with them Father give them peace and courage through this time I just want to thank you for the privilege of being on this show and to share a little bit about how we helped and serve the folks with the love Jesus Christ that we all should surely have in Jes J wonderful name amen amen