Actor and Marine Rob Riggle on Working at Ground Zero After 9/11 Attacks

so I had just left active duty I had joined a Marine reserve unit in Manhattan mtu7 Marine training Unit 17 I remember walking to work and thinking what a perfect day you know got to my office and my assistant uh at one point came in and said hey I just heard a plane hit the World Trade Center that I'm a pilot you know I have my pilot's license and I I thought well that's interesting and then I heard big screaming from her office and I said what happened happened what happened and she said another plane just flew into the to the other World Trade Center and I remember thinking what that doesn't add up at all and immediately I was like I think we're under attack which sounded crazy to say I got a call from my commanding officer and said Hey listen our unit has been activated so I thought wow that was fast but you know it made sense because we were the only reserve unit in Manhattan and so I said what was that what does that mean he says well put on your boots and Utes did what he said I put it on next morning reported to ground Zer and we're going to start moving Rubble by hand because at the time it was searching rescue cuz we still thought there could be hundreds maybe thousands of people trapped in this Rubble there was six stories of rubble you are about to Embark upon the great crusade to meet this mounting aggression and make no mistake about it good will prevail so I had just left active duty uh not more than I 9 or 10 months prior to 911 happening uh I had joined a Marine reserve unit in Manhattan mtu7 Marine training Unit 17 uh you know I had a day job uh uh and and at night I was pursuing comedy and I was staying in the reserves uh because I I love the Marine Corps and I I wanted to stay connected and I wanted to still be a part of it so um uh but I also wanted to be a comedian and actor and I I needed to stay in New York to make that happen so when I they got me new orders on active duty they wanted me to go to Fort me and teach journalism or something and I was like so I I I said you know what I'm going to go ahead and get out of active duty and join the reserves and stay in Manhattan and keep pursuing comedy and acting and then within nine months of that happening 911 happened and um we were attacked and everybody remembers that day if you were an adult and an American you'll never forget that day just like the generation before us we'll never forget Pearl Harbor you know the shock and the surprise and and we had so much you know obviously times have changed so we have such graphic video and and such uh recording of it that um uh it affected everybody deeply and and I was obviously in Manhattan on 9911 it was gorgeous and I remember walking to work and thinking what a perfect day you know it's wonderful and got to my office and my assistant at one point came in and said hey I just heard a plane hit the World Trade Center that I'm a pilot you know I have my pilot's license and I I thought well that's interesting you know and I kind of was behind on work so I went back to work then I started thinking about it I was like well how did that happen CU you know this is perfect day you know so I I jumped up and I said hey tell me what happened and she was like I don't know it's it's it's all happening right now and um so we turned on the television and we found the coverage and and you could see smoke coming out of the World Trade Center and I remember thinking well that looks too big to be like a little Cessna or a little private plane to make that much you know smoke and and we were debating it and and talking about what it could be and and you know and that just doesn't seem possible on a day like today uh for a commercial pilot so you know all this is happening um and and nobody knows anything yet like remember that the phone uh the phone lines weren't bursting out nothing had really unfolded we were still waiting for the other shoe to drop I guess and I called my my wife at the time and I she was working closer to downtown um I worked on 42nd and Park Avenue and she worked uh down probably around 30th and 7th Avenue so she was down in the Garment District a little closer and she had big windows on her facing south and she said she was watching it live and I said are you seeing this and we were were talking and then I heard big screaming from her office and I said what happened what happened what happened and she said another plane just flew into the to the other World Trade Center and I remember thinking what that doesn't add up at all and immediately I was like I think we're under attack which sounded crazy to say but I you know you can't you can't dispute it something's going on so I said I think we're under attack I ran back out to my office they were all watching in shock because it it happened live uh so I I had my ex on the phone and I said stay there I'm coming to get you so I left my office and ran down to where she was and I remember when I got out on the streets it was a very surreal moment because uh I think the trains had stopped at that point and I just remember everybody was on the surface so all you had the sidewalks were packed but the traffic wasn't moving I mean the the hustle and bustle of New York City you know it's it's legendary it's phenomenal um but for whatever reason you had all these people on the surface nobody was underground everybody was on the surface the traffic had stopped but there were no horns there was no talking um and it was just this very eerie quiet and I remember I was going down Fifth Avenue I had cut over from Park to Fifth and I was headed down fifth to get over to 7th you know and 30th or whatever and I I remember going down parking and you can you could see smoke all the way downtown you could see it and there was a State of Shock it was this you know this is happening but no one knows what it is yet nobody knows what it means nobody knows what's next nobody it's a very confusing and shocking time obviously um that's what happens in a surprise attack so um I remember getting down to my my again my wife at the time I remember getting down to her office getting her uh and then we walked back to our apartment which was up like 44th in Lexington so we got back up there and then we just did what everybody else did hunkered down in front of our television and tried to figure out what was happening and we watched like everybody else in horror as the towers fell and and people were running for their lives and this was happening just you know less than a mile or a mile away from us um in a in a place that we were very familiar with my my wife at the time you know I the night I proposed to her I took her to uh windows on the world which is the restaurant on Top of the World Trade Center and and uh we had gone there a couple times uh for one or two of our anniversaries and so we were very familiar with the whole downtown area and and we knew people up there um uh in the World Trade Center so you know we were very concerned for those who serve for those whose sacrifice will never end the G Gary s Foundation shows its gratitude through entertainment Outreach and life-changing support to learn more visit Gary s foundation.org that night uh of September 11 pretty much that afternoon uh evening I got a call from my commanding officer um Lieutenant Colonel Steve brozac uh called and said Hey listen our unit has been activated so I thought wow that was fast but you know made sense because we were the only Marine unit we were the only reserve unit in Manhattan and all the bridges and tunnels were closed and you know they were they didn't know what they were dealing with everybody was still trying to figure a lot of things out there's a lot of questions a ton more questions than there were answers at that time and so I said what was that what does that mean he says well put on your boots and Utes utilities and Boots um uh and and that means for a lot Cami your Cami uniform uh camouflage and so I I did what he said I put it on next morning reported to Ground Zero uh One Police Plaza which is very close to ground zero and we formed up uh and they said okay well nobody knew what was going on but it was like it's search and rescue so let's go uh find a place and we're going to start moving Rubble by hand because of the time it was search and rescue because we still thought there could be hundreds Maybe thousands of people trapped in this Rubble there was six stories of rubble so you know these these the towers collaps and when they collapsed they gutted other buildings they smashed out foundations of other building they smashed out windows of all the surrounding buildings so those had collapsed into six stories of rubble and Twisted Metal and Iron and pulverized concrete which that pulverized concrete was kind of a moon dust you know I'll never forget you know you step on it it was these clouds and and it was everywhere I mean it was a huge radius and papers papers like conf just everywhere paper everywhere for blocks in every direction because you know when it came down I just compressed it all out and pushed it out so you got six stories of rubble you got this powder uh which a couple days later it rained and then that turned into a paste and um you had burnout cars and all these fire trucks that were burned out but there were skeletons of the trucks and skeletons of cars and it was very surreal when you walked downtown it was um uh it was it was surreal that's the only way I could describe it because it looked like a movie it felt like it smell you know that smell of burning whatever it was metal concrete pulverized concrete that wet pasty concrete you know you can it's a very distinct smell and um so our unit uh we went down to uh one of the corners um of the towers I don't know which Tower was Tower one maybe it was the one further south um and uh there was a a Burger King across the street kind of and the windows had been blown out and you know all those businesses were just you know devastated but the the Burger King I just remember that's where we staged our gear that's where we put our backpacks and our and cantens and whatever and we would stage our gear there and then we literally just formed a Bucket Brigade all the way up this hill like ants going up a hill of this rubble and then we were handing buckets up and buckets down and just moving the Rubble off the pile and down out to the outskirts of the you know the blocks away um because you couldn't bring any heavy equipment into the area cuz we were afraid of cave-ins and we thought it was you know search and rescue so we're trying to we're thinking there's bodies under here so so you just like Pick Up Sticks almost you're you're picking up chunks of rocks and putting in buckets and you're sending them up and down up and down and from the 12th until the 18th I think we worked um you know 12 hours on 12 hours off 12 hours on 12 hours off 12 hours on 12 hours off and you know they gave us a little eventually like day two or three they gave us a little surgical mask cuz that moond dust was all over the place right and um so we had the little surgical mask on it wasn't much it was literally just a little paper I think I had more protection at Co um uh but we had those eventually nobody liked them because they just it was harder it was so hard to work you know trying to breathe through that thing and then our unit stayed there until the 18th and then after the 18th the word came down that you know it was no longer search and rescue that it was more search and recovery and so they started bringing in heavier equipment and started moving things with bucket loaders and and they started making better progress um and then we were pulled off the rebel piles at that point and they left it to the firefighters and and more to the First Responders and uh our orders were from the September 12th to the September 30th so um and then on from the 18th or whatever I went over to One Police Plaza and then just tried to help coordinate civilian military efforts whatever that means you know equipment Cav dogs you know whatever was coming in from the military I would liais on with the NYPD and try to work with them I was a captain at the time um I just remember like everybody wanting to do something you know feeling the as every day that ticked off you got more and more upset more and more Angry you couldn't believe this happened you know that first couple days I remember f-16s flying around Manhattan very low and you know it was that shocking moment of oh my gosh I never thought I'd ever see a day when I'd have to have f-16s flying cover in in New York City you know it just seemed impossible and if you remember back everybody was hurting everybody was angry it was a sucker punch and everybody was couldn't get their head wrapped around that they couldn't understand the evil they were searching for answers they they didn't know what the answers were they you know they just a lot of people when they're in shock they can't process it's natural that's fine and people wanted to help I remember so many times in New York the people of New York were so great they wanted to help in any way they could they were bringing clothes and food and Waters and you know down to the as close as they could get to ground zero and just staging it right there so that the First Responders and anybody down there could actually just walk out to where the the boundaries were and grab water and grab you know at night if they needed a jacket or whatever you know they could grab those things and and they and people were donating blood and you know they just they needed to do something um and I was 31-year-old Captain in the Marine Corps I had a pretty high security clearance I knew they were going to need people I knew that I knew what this meant this is not something that you just on that scale you just don't bat your eyes at and walk away from this is going to be we're getting involved now I called my co and I just said listen I know I've got a green badge which is a TS top secret with a skiff clearance so I'm like they're going to probably need me or they're GNA want me especially for my job at the time which was public affairs so um he uh I said put me back in if you can you know and he called Central Command down at Tampa and said hey I got a young Captain up here he's got a green badge if you know and he wants to get back in and uh November 10th Marine Corps birthday I got my orders who um to go back to active duty down in Central Command I jumped I rented a car in New York and I drove because I didn't have a car at the time and I drove down to camp leun and I had to inprocess back into active duty um and then from there I my parents met me in Camp leun they were in Kansas they drove out from Kansas met me in Lun I turned the rental car back in they gave me their car and then I drove their car down to Tampa and they flew back home and uh that way I had a car uh got to Tampa on the 17th of November checked in to to the uh the public affairs office there in in uh centcom um got briefed up on what was going on what we were doing you know just kind of got brought up to speed again I was just a young Captain so uh and then the colonel came to me and said all right uh don't unpack you're going to you know you're going to Afghanistan so I said okay and I was on a plane I think the 30th of November and headed over to usbekistan uh to K2 landed there spent a couple days there uh tried to get into Afghanistan a couple times uh tried to go over the the mountains in a shinook 47 and that was a harrowing experience we couldn't make it over the mountains we were flying at night snow's coming in through the Gunner Port you know so you got snow in the in the fuselage and and it's the roughest ride I ever had in my whole life and so we had to turn back halfway and it was I mean that was the longest night um so we didn't make it in that night but I did KISS the ground when I got back to usbekistan and then u a couple days later we I got into maseri Sharif and uh joined up with a unit there an army unit um and uh started working with them in a public affairs and civil Affairs capacity and um uh stayed with them till early February and then they had stabilized their mission a lot we had started doing more operations in the South um and so sycom called me back I went back and I got back just in time for operation Anaconda which I worked at ccom from the joint Operation Center out of the jock and um did that and then uh ended up going back to Afghanistan in the summer of 2002 um for just a couple months two two maybe three months tops and then um uh came back and uh my year was up and then I went back to New York and um stood by because they were gearing up for Iraq and I didn't know if I was going to be involved in that or not and then a year after that I got on Saturday live and then uh you know uh things started happening on the entertainment front but that's kind of the the the the story as I you know as I remember it from 911 sure there's one story um when you were working on the rubble pile where you were almost seriously injured um with your leg well the the so when the because the buildings were all unstable around us like even a day or two after the 911 you had a whole another building collapse like you know World Trade toour 6 or something you know it was there was another whole building that collapsed and there was another building that the Brooks brother's store was in I remember the Brooks brother was down low but it was an office building up top but it looked like Godzilla had just clawed out the front of those building because there was just this gash missing uh so there's buildings were unstable so with the winds you know you everybody just didn't know what we were dealing with another building could fall it could collapse and we were working against the clock because again we thought there were survivors so we had to be down there we couldn't just leave it and so they had an air raid siren one of those old world war and when that sounded our job was to get out of there get out because they were afraid of something a cave in a collapse of something so that was the only instruction we had was just get out if you hear that exit get away from get away from ground zero so um yeah I remember I was down closer I wasn't way up high I was down closer to the base of the pile and they fired up the alarm so we all start you know anytime you start moving quickly it can turn into a a route very quickly it can turn into everybody's just running because they don't know you know it's a panic thing you know you know why why why are we running why are we running and then everybody just takes off running and I came running around the corner and they had a generator uh with one of those big lights on top of it for night work and it you know it was set up around this u in this Alleyway and so naturally everybody's like ants trying to find their way out and so I came around the corner and ran into this um generator where the the trailer hitch extended out and it was right about shin level I remember I HIIT it and no problem you know I thought okay I'll just get but the the body wave behind me people just kept stacking up on me and I couldn't necessarily get my legs out and I could feel the pressure and I thought oh God I'm going over but my legs aren't so I thought I'm going to break my legs here so I remember I had to use my old low poost skills give the old Charles barklay and just drive my butt back into everybody and I did I I got enough that I could get a little room for myself and get up on top of it and then I just pointed it out to every body so people didn't stack up you know keep stacking up or tripping over it um and I don't think anything happened you know they sounded the safe to go back so we all went back but just you know those moments uh he just didn't know what was going to happen next and so there was a tremendous amount of anxiety a trem and sadness anxiety sadness hurt uh tremendous emotions um you know I was 31 at the time and you know I I heard story about all those traitors at caner Fitzgerald and you know these guys are my age you know and and the guys that led the the revolt on flight 93 you know that guy was my age I remember the the name of the lead guy you remember Todd Beamer Beamer he was my age he was my exact age and I remember thinking that could have been me it could have been me you know and so everybody was hurting everybody was sad it's a tough time for