The smell in the air was one that Roger Zabinski will never forget.
“It was a real pungent, toxic smell,” he said. “It was definitely something that was not a normal smell like a house fire. It permeated the air in New York. The smoke lasted for many days.”
The former Air Force reservist doesn’t talk about 9/11 often. He remembers driving by the crumbled buildings, shocked and saddened by the destruction that overtook the city. The scent of burnt flesh and metal was a memory he wouldn’t soon forget.
“There was a lot of panic and chaos,” he said of the attack on the World Trade Center.
He was starting out his day getting ready for his work as a scientist at a pharmaceutical company. The day before, he had just finished his military ordered work. He was ready to go back to his regular civilian job when tragedy struck, and he knew it wasn’t going to be a normal work day. Zabinski learned of the news in his Bronx-based house where he stood alone watching a live feed where he watched the plane smash into the second tower.
“The fact that the second one, it was flying at it…it looked intentional,” he said.
Because of his status as a reservist, Zabinski was required to check in to one of the fire stations in the Bronx since he was unable to contact his home base in New Jersey.
All the “phone lines were down” which left him with no way to contact his base or unit. In the Air Force, Zabinski had trained for disasters as an Aerovac medic and instructor, which resulted in the ability to remain calm while the world whirled about him. He admitted he was anxious being away from his family during a crisis, but it subsided when he was able to retrieve his wife and daughter who were at a check-up at a doctor’s office.
Since the Bronx is right next to the Manhattan, Zabinski didn’t have to go far to see smoke streaming from the towers. But seeing it and being able to access it were two different things, even for those with approved badges.
“It just wasn’t going to possible for people to get into or out of Manhattan,” he said of the destruction aftermath that clogged downtown.
Even after checking in, Zabinski found that he wasn’t able to help in a way that his training had enforced. He was told, “Just go home” and remembers many people who came from afar decided to stay in the area. Day after day, he never heard anything, which he partially believes was part of the disorganization in communication between the police department and other first responders and the higher up authorities who may have wanted to secure the area to ensure safety. He remembers any time he went in to the fire station that he had to state his business and show proper ID.
“Most of the military and fire department and civilian providers were excluded out of the process,” he said. “NYPD was assigned to secure the area whether they wanted to or not. There just wasn’t any inclusiveness of those other groups.”
Despite being unable to help in a rescuing capacity, Zabinski found himself at a blood bank donating blood.
“You’re not able to help out. It was obviously very frustrating,” he said of the entire situation. Previously, Zabinski had taught EMT skills at LaGuardia Community College, which further exasperated him and others who knew their fellow rescuers were in need of their services. He thinks that the decisions to keep responders from the sites may have come from the mayor and others as a security precaution, which is something he understood much later, he said.
“You didn’t want to add more chaos to the situation. Most people’s intent was to help out, whether they were a citizen, volunteer. You try and you move on and you be helpful. It’s a little different than a natural disaster. It was really an act of war.”
The images on television were accurate in relaying the horrifying devastation that took over the city of more than 8 million people, he said. Zabinski and his family lived in a “lively” Italian neighborhood, an area where people were normally friendly. In the days after the attack, the gloom settled in over neighborhood just like the dust settling upon the area.
“I think that no matter where you went, people were in shock,” he said. “There was a certain liveliness usually. Days afterward, people were just moping about. They weren’t lively. They had lost some of their spirit.”
After a few months, signs of normalcy started resurfacing in the neighborhood.
Although the signs of leadership weren’t always evident, Zabinski credits Rudy Giuliani for helping restore the community’s faith that New York City would stand strong again.
“Eventually, people started to pick themselves out of that gloom,” he said.
As a tourist in New York City for the first time in 1986, Zabinski remembers holding a film camera in his hands and going up to the towers to snap photos. He even went inside, he recalls, but he never went up to the top of the towers in the elevators because “the lines were always long.” He took the ferry from Battery Park to the Statute of Liberty a few times, always looking back to see the two massive buildings towering over the city.
“They were always a part of New York,” he recalled.
The former Air Force reservist hasn’t been back to New York since 2002. He and his wife, both from Washington State, decided to move back to the west coast with their family. But, one day, Zaninski hopes to return to New York City.
As for telling his children — who are now 10 and 13 — about 9/11, he hasn’t really felt the need to explain about his participation on the day America was under attack. He doesn’t think he had a huge role in helping, but that he was there doing what every other civilian and government working wanted to do at the time: help in any way, shape or form possible.
“I don’t know if I had a role in it,” he said. “I just saw it as my duty to help.”