COLUMN: Carillon Flashback September 12, 2002 – Steinbach student joins in ‘Ground Zero’ relief

Like many people, Greg Penner knows exactly where he was Sept. 11, 2001. What he didn’t know at the time was that three months later he would be at “Ground Zero” in New York City, helping with relief efforts at the site of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre.

The 24-year-old Steinbach native, who was studying at a mission school in Kelowna, B.C., had just finished breakfast with a group of friends when a woman rushed in with news of planes crashing into the World Trade Centre.

After they saw the horrific events on television, a collective feeling of trepidation came over them.

For the next few weeks thinking about, and praying for New York City was all Penner and his classmates would do, because they were still planning on a mission trip to South America.

When a variety of obstacles got in the way of the South America trip, Penner said the group decided on working at Ground Zero in New York and then going on to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

So in mid-December, Penner found himself on a bus, coming into New York City from New Jersey in the middle of the night.

They were told that while there, they would be working for the Salvation Army, which was coordinating the entire Ground Zero relief effort. This included all the meals, counselling and any other necessary supplies.

However, before they began work they were given some time to familiarize themselves with the city, and Ground Zero. A 10-foot high fence surrounded the massive 16-acre Ground Zero site. And all around it, people were climbing everything they could to get a better view of “the pit” and take pictures.

Most of their work was at the huge Salvation Army tent, just on the perimeter of the site, which ran 24 hours a day, with workers taking one of three shifts. Penner’s group worked through the night during the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift, after a drive in every night from Brooklyn.

Besides helping with the warehousing and serving food, they were asked to talk to the workers. Penner thinks it was simply a matter of being a therapeutic outlet for the firefighters and policemen.

The group of Canadians developed quite a kinship with the fire and police department members, and after a while, Penner described it as sort of a mutual admiration society.

“They were saying, ‘You guys are so amazing, coming over here from Canada to help us,’ and we were like, ‘No, you’re the ones who are amazing,’ ” Penner related.

Slowly, Penner saw the workers get some peace out of the uncertainty, and he accredited that to the Christian presence there.

“There was a cross overlooking the site, put together with pieces from the World Trade Centre rubble … you couldn’t miss it and every day when we were working there, we saw that cross.”

When asked if his experiences over those seven weeks had changed him, Penner sat back for a while and assessed what he had learned.

“There was so much uncertainty … we’ve never lived through anything like this – for our generation, it was our first taste of that type of disaster, and the whole time, you’re trying to make some sense of it all.”

– with files from Michelle Labelle