"Anybody That Went to the Right

... was killed."

Firefighter Maureen McArdle-Schulman's Sept. 11 narrative, released today, reprinted in Newsday:

We went to the command center ... There was already 75 to 100 firefighters standing in this parking garage, at the entrance, waiting for assignments.

Somebody yelled something was falling. We didn't know if it was part of an airplane coming out, if it was desks. It turned out it was people, and they started coming out, one after another.

We saw the jumpers coming. We didn't know what it was at first, but then the first body hit and then after that we knew what it was. And they were just, like, constant ...

I didn't see anyone landing on the ground in front of us. Most of them were hitting the setback. I'm still across the street in the parking lot ... I was getting sick. I felt like I was intruding on a sacrament.

They were choosing to die, and I was watching them and shouldn't have been. So me and another guy turned away and looked at the wall and we could still hear them hit ...

"We're standing at the command center, listening to everybody give their positions. You know, what stairway they were using. You know, escape stairway, rescue stairway. Things like that or what floor they're on.

Someone comes running over to the table and said, "A firefighter was hit by a jumper. He needs last rites ... "

So a couple of guys went to the right to give this guy last rites with Father (Mychal) Judge, I guess.

We're standing there, and we're looking up, and we're trying not to look at people jumping. We really felt like we were intruding on them.

And the building had red fire, a ring of fire. They started pumping and bouncing and I'm standing there staring.

Finally somebody yelled, "Run." It took everybody out of that trance we were in. We ran back into the garage.

Anybody that went to the right was killed. People that went to the left were OK.

I was just mesmerized, absolutely mesmerized by this building ... watching people jump. You just can't believe what you're seeing and you're just standing there like idiots, staring.