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American Morning

Documentary Reveals Stories of Selflessness and Bravery on 09- 11

Aired February 21, 2002 - 07:40   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Now on to a cinematic tribute to the heroes of September 11th. A new documentary reveals some incredible stories of selflessness and bravery on that day. And they are stories you haven't heard told by the women of ground zero.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have never felt prouder in my 19 years to be part of the NYPD as I do now. Seeing them run in while we were trying to get people out will always stay with me.

BONNIE GIEHFRIED (ph): We thought there were doors there, and there weren't. And that's where we got buried alive.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think it was a need that I had to be there to do what I could.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAHN: And joining us now, Maureen McFadden, Executive Producer of the documentary; and Lieutenant Brenda Berkman, New York City's first female firefighter and one of the heroines featured in "The Women of Ground Zero." It's an honor to have both of you with us this morning. Good morning.

LT. BRENDA BERKMAN, NEW YORK FIRE DEPARTMENT: Good morning.

MAUREEN MCFADDEN, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, "THE WOMEN OF GROUND ZERO": Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: So Lieutenant, you had a day off on September 11th and then you got the call. What happened?

BERKMAN: Actually I didn't get the call. I was at home and I saw television footage of the first plane going into the first tower. And I immediately put on whatever I could at home that identified me as a firefighter and ran and walked to the firehouse that I got promoted at out of Brooklyn and joined up with off-duty firefighters there. At that point, the second plane had already hit and we went across the bridge, off-duty responding on a general recall of all firefighters.

ZAHN: What did you find when you go there? BERKMAN: We got there right after the second tower had collapsed and it was like a scene out of a science fiction movie. It was just unbelievable -- total devastation, fires going everywhere, no people, no sounds of people, car alarms, explosions, the air thick with dust, but absolutely no one except, you know, people who had responded off- duty and the survivors.

ZAHN: How many women were you joined by for the rescue effort?

BERKMAN: It's impossible to know, Paula, because, you know, once we put on our gear and our work clothes we look just like the guys. But I would say that over the course of the next several weeks, though, there were literally hundreds of women who responded to that site. There were over half of all the women firefighters who were down there on 9-11. But also, after that we had women on search and rescue teams from all over the country. We had women construction workers who came in to volunteer their time.

Of course, women in PD and Port Authority and the EMS workers, they were all down there. There were, you know, probably hundreds of women down there working.

ZAHN: But it seems to me, Maureen, we haven't heard their stories told. Why is that?

MAUREEN MCFADDEN, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, "THE WOMEN OF GROUND ZERO": Well that's a good question, Paula. We knew from the beginning, as Lieutenant Berkman says, how many women were down there alongside men answering the call to duty in uniform and volunteering, construction workers, in every conceivable phase of work. And we were concerned that we weren't hearing their voices at NOW (ph) legal defense and education funds.

So we decided that we had to preserve those voices, first of all, for this generation. For our time to let people know exactly how many -- if not numbers -- certainly that women were asking the call of duty. It's important for -- to show women in this patriotic area. And we wanted future generations to know that there were women who were there, non-traditional jobs as well.

ZAHN: Did you discover a common thread in these stories as you began to interview not only the female fire fighters but the female EMS workers and the female rescue workers?

MCFADDEN: Absolutely. And the stories were not so different from the men who were down there. They were answering a call to duty. It's what they were trained to do. In some cases, there were volunteers, hard-hat women who walked across the bridge in the middle of the night, who felt that they had to be there, they had to give back to the city that they loved.

ZAHN: Lieutenant, we have heard so much about how many firefighters were cost by bad communications, by radios that simply didn't work. As you look back on September 11th, what went wrong? I mean, besides obviously no one understanding the two buildings were going to collapse. Why did you lose so many of your own? BERKMAN: It's impossible to prepare for an event of that magnitude, Paula. And we lost so many people in the fire service because our mission is to go in and save people's lives regardless of the personal risk to ourselves. And so that's what the members of the fire department were doing that day -- men and women. They were going in and they were doing whatever they could to save the lives of the people that were in those towers and in the surrounding buildings.

ZAHN: And yet you hear these terrifying stories that the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) radios didn't work. And in one case that a fire lieutenant was sending sort of a messenger to carry the message to some of your own to get on the building, it was going to go.

BERKMAN: It was a very difficult situation. And, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of lessons to be learned from it. But, again, there was no way of preparing for this event. The magnitude of it was unbelievable. Anyone who responded that day could not believe their eyes. You know, I've been on the fire service for 20 years, along with many of my women and male coworkers, and we had never, ever encountered anything of that magnitude. And there's no place in the country that was prepared to deal with that level of destruction.

ZAHN: Well I hope you feel the sense of awe we hold you all in today. Do you feel that when you walk down the street? Is it different now?

BERKMAN: We do. We want to express our appreciation for all the support that New Yorkers have been giving the emergency workers and the people who volunteered down there. We want to express our appreciation to the people of the United States, because we really felt that we were doing our patriotic duty that day; that we were the soldiers who were called to duty down at the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon and also in Pennsylvania. And that we really are -- we suffered tremendous losses, but we are very proud of everything that was done that day to try and help the people.

ZAHN: And, Maureen, your documentary certainly captures the eloquence of the contribution that people like Lieutenant Berkman made.

MCFADDEN: Thank you so much.

ZAHN: I hope American gets to see this documentary one day.

MCFADDEN: We look forward to that.

ZAHN: CNN's going to try to get a hold of it so we can air it one weekend. Maureen, again, thank you for dropping by.

MCFADDEN: Thank you, Paula.

ZAHN: Lieutenant Berkman, continued good luck to you.

BERKMAN: Thanks.

ZAHN: We salute you. BERKMAN: Thank you.

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