Like most Americans, I can tell you exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard about the attack on our country at the World Trade Center.  I was taking a set of radiographs on a new patient. He works for Verizon and as their switching systems were in lower Manhattan, he told me to hurry, as he was most likely to be called in.  He is still a patient today and as I have watched him get married and grow a family over these last eleven years whenever he comes in we often talk about that day as we had bonded over it.

Like many I felt helpless but wanted to do something.  I had learned forensic dental identification in dental school but had not done much with it.  I made a few calls and found out serendipitously that the Medical Examiners Office was swamped and was taking volunteers.  I was eager to help

The Office of The Chief Medical Examiner of New York City investigates all criminal deaths in the City but since there were so many victims to be identified they took the lead role and had other organizations such as DMORT, several forensic identification teams, as well as members of the New York Society of Forensic Dentistry.

We were not at ground zero.  We set up a triage center near NYU Dental School at 30^th Street and 1^stAvenue.  We worked in mobile trailers parked right on the street.  No pictures were allowed which is why I have none to post here. As a volunteer I worked 2 days a month from October 2001 thru June 2002.

There were two teams and everyone had the opportunity to serve on both.  An anti-mortem or “clean team” concentrated on data entry.  Such things as missing teeth, restorations, or other such dental hardware were charted.  A computer program called Win-ID was utilized for this purpose.  The post-mortem or “dirty team” charted and radiographed the bodies as they came in.  Sometimes we could not tell if the body was that of a man or a woman, that’s how bad they were burned.  We then stored them in refrigerated truck trailers right on 30^th street.  We then took these charts and radiographs and entered them into the Win-ID program.

It sounds simple but it took months of work.  We were slowed once Flight 587 crashed as we set up a parallel system and did too.  One of the creepiest things I personally had to deal with was when I was on the post-mortem team and one woman I was examining had a 9-11 remembrance shirt on.  That still gives me the chills thinking about it.

By June of 2002 while the work had not been completed, DNA labs were now doing much, and the need for volunteers was lessened. We were told that the dental ID team was directly responsible for over 800 individual ID’s.  I am very proud of my service there and the skills that I learned, I would be happy to never have to do it again.

This is my badge from those months.  I still have