The following appears courtesy of Knight Ridder News--
New Yorkers say they're repaying a debt from 9-11
BY MICHAEL NEWSOM AND JOSHUA NORMAN
Sun Herald
(KRT) - Unfinished business.
Chris Edwards and John Seiler, a pair of stocky, bald and tattooed retired New York City firefighters drove from Manhattan to Biloxi in a Red Cross truck Monday because they felt like they had unfinished business.
Edwards and Seiler had worked in the pit, or "ground zero," after Sept. 11, 2001, desperately combing through the wreckage of the World Trade Centers to find friends, firemen, survivors, anything.
After Sept. 11, Americans poured into New York to help. Now, New Yorkers are coming to South Mississippi with relief workers, law enforcement and artists helping after the most catastrophic event in America since that horrible, bright September morning in 2001.
"The trip that we're taking ... we're not holy rollers or anything," said Edwards, 46, who retired from Engine 81 in the Bronx recently because of medical issues. "I'm not on a mission. I just feel like we have unfinished business to help out the people down here who helped us, whether they was there helping or just here praying for us."
For Edwards and Seiler, it's also a little more than that.
The two are apart of the Disaster Action Response Team, a group of retired firefighters who assist the Red Cross in nearly every disaster. Their job here has been to bring supplies to the neighborhoods most affected.
When the two show up in a place to distribute food and water, it's like a whirlwind of energy. They run door to door asking, "how ya doin', hon?" hand out hugs and shed tears.
For them, this is also a bit of therapy for a wound that still has not closed, Edwards said.
"People still come up to us and give us hugs and say, `sorry,' four years later," said Edwards, sporting an FDNY shirt. "When you come down here and see the devastation, it brings back bad memories."
The devastation even overwhelms them sometimes, despite the horrors they said they experienced in the days after Sept. 11.
Driving through neighborhoods, where the unique smell of rotting flesh is overwhelming, often gives them pause, Edwards said. In addition, they find the scope of what happened nothing short of amazing.
"We had it bad in 9-11, but this is worse," said Seiler, 48, who sports a large "9-11-01" tattoo on his left forearm.
"What we had in 16 acres, they have in three counties," agreed Edwards.
But that seems to only have motivated them to work harder.
"They are a couple of tornados," said Richard Gonzalez, who is in charge of the Red Cross' food distribution program. "If I had three or four of them in trucks, we could feed the whole county. I can't say enough about those two. They're going where the need is the most."
Support from New York has come in myriad other forms, too.
Scott LoBaido, a professional artist from Staten Island, N.Y., stood in the heat on a roof in Orange Grove last week painting a 15-foot by 50-foot American flag, holding the roller and cursing the temperatures. He has been painting American flag murals on walls for about 15 years, but his workload grew after Sept. 11.
The 40-year-old LoBaido, who operates Scott LoBaido Studios, said he was inspired to paint murals in Manhattan in 2001 and again last week in South Mississippi after he saw Katrina's destruction.
"I watched all of it (on TV). I saw this thing coming. I watched the weather. You could tell the newscasters were afraid," he said.
LoBaido found a ride to South Mississippi and told his driver to drop him off the day after the storm somewhere he could volunteer. He found the Eagles Wings Foundation in Gulfport and began passing out food. He met Adam Plitt, a Gulfport teacher who found him the roof.
"We are needed here. The whole country was needed during 9-11. We got hit very badly. The whole country came. That's why I stayed there. That's why I came here. It's called returning the favor," LoBaido said.
The flag roof was the talk of the neighborhood as LoBaido was finishing up Thursday on East Burch Street off Dedeaux Road. A Red Cross helicopter flew over. LoBaido said he picked a rooftop partly because he thought it would be a morale booster for the large military contingent flying over Gulfport.
LoBaido said he passes the former World Trade Center site about three times per week, but Katrina's destructive swath was terrifying because it covers a large area.
Lt. Brendan Murphy was one of 14 Harrison, N.Y., police officers who also came to Gulfport. He said that here, memories of Sept. 11 came flooding back. He worked in New York City coordinating the efforts from a control center after the attacks.
"We watched what was going on (during Katrina). I think it is worse than what was reported," Murphy said. "I think it is a disgrace the way FEMA and the Red Cross have worked. That's because I'd say they're everywhere CNN tells them to be."
He also said Gulfport police were as good as any he had seen. As a surprise, the Harrison officers had 45 pizzas delivered from New York to the Gulfport operating center.
In addition to New York police and artists, one man connected to the crash of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa., came to Biloxi to work in Katrina's aftermath. Forensic Dentist Warren Tewes of the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (DMORT) is helping find and identify the dead, just like he did in Pennsylvania.
Tewes said the scenes on the ground in Pennsylvania affected him deeply. People there were never referred to as victims, he said. They were called heroes, which he said was different from the dead in South Mississippi, who were overwhelmed by a natural disaster.
He also said that another difference from his work with Flight 93 is the amount of time it will take to complete the identification process because the dead in Mississippi are scattered across several counties.
Tewes remained on the Flight 93 Federal Task Force, which was in charge of picking the design for the memorial to those 44 passengers and crew who fought their four captors. Plans for the Flight 93 Memorial in Somerset County, Pa., unveiled earlier this week, will include chimes for each of the dead located in a chapel.
"Freedom isn't free," Tewes said. "Flight 93 is about celebrating the sacrifice of others."