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CNN Live Today

Discussion With Authors of 'Women at Ground Zero'

Aired September 09, 2002 - 11:01   ET

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

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: I had a chance to look at this book over the last couple of days. It's called "Women at Ground Zero." A lot of stories of heroism, sacrifice and bravery have emerged from the tragedy on September 11th. The nation has been inspired by the men who became heroes. Now, there's a new book that pays tribute to the women who responded to the call of duty at the World Trade Center.
"Women at Ground Zero" is a collection of interviews with 30 women, including firefighters, paramedics, police officers, and one of our own here at CNN.

Joining us from New York are the authors, Mary Carouba and Susan Hagen, also, our CNN producer Rose Arce, who is profiled in the book.

Ladies good morning. Thanks for being with us.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Good morning, Daryn.

KAGAN: Susan and Mary, I want to start with you as inspiration of this book. You are Californians as I understand it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's right.

KAGAN: Susan, you are a firefighter, and, Mary, you are a social worker that does a lot of work with a lot of law enforcement types.

MARY CAROUBA, "WOMEN AT GROUND ZERO": Right, I do investigative social work.

KAGAN: And you were watching coverage across the board of what was happening 9/11. You heard a lot about firemen, policemen, and you knew in your heart, there had to be women out there as well, and you kind of wanted correct that coverage.

CAROUBA: Right. In California, we heard an awful lot about what was going on out in New York, and we were very interested in what our female counterparts were doing and how they were responding to the tragedy, and we were extremely surprised not to see any coverage of women at all, and that's what ended up leading to us coming out to New York to try to find these stories and tell them.

KAGAN: And, Susan, by doing this, you are not trying to take away from the contribution that men made, obviously.

SUSAN HAGEN, "WOMEN AT GROUND ZERO": Absolutely, we don't mean to take away from that contribution at all. In fact, we celebrate that, but we wanted to make sure that women had a place in history with this event, and that's why we came to find the stories and tell them. It is an incredibly moving book, both the stories and the pictures, the interviews you were able to do.

Let's focus first on the fire department and a single mom that caught my attention, Captain Marianne Monahan, have her picture from the book. She had -- her personal story she bring into this, she is a single mother of three kids, and so when she had as to make a decision to go down or not, she has to think, you know what, my kids are already missing one parent; will be I be leaving them as orphans?

CAROUBA: Her former husband actually died several years ago, and so she was not going to leave her children orphaned, and she made a conscious decision, and she was able to make that decision because she wasn't on duty that day.

She said, had she been on duty, there would have been no questions. She would have gone there without hesitation. But because she had that choice, she made the choice to, you know, stay for her children, and she did, and the spot she was going to, in fact, ended up, the building collapsed right there, and everyone that she was going to meet died, you know, 10 minutes after she turned around and left.

KAGAN: Susan, what about Tracy Lewis, a young woman, a firefighter. She says people are still surprised to find out that the New York Fire Department has women firefighters?

CAROUBA: That is right. Tracy is a rookie in Brooklyn. She just barely had a year on the job when 9/11 happened, and she was down there immediately helping to dig through the rubble, looking for members of her crew who were missing, and actually spent 30 days at ground zero digging for survivors, and then ultimately remains. She is now helping to recruit women to the FDNY. There are only 25 women on the department at this time.

KAGAN: I was interested to find that out in your book, that as fire departments go, there are not -- there is not a huge proportion of women in the New York Fire Department, even before 9/11?

HAGEN: That's correct. There is, like I said, there is only 25 women in the FDNY out of 11,500. But nationwide, there are more than 50,000 women firefighters in both professional and volunteer organizations.

KAGAN: And women like Tracy Lewis and other women mentioned in the book say it's part of their mission not to just fight fires, but sending messages out to girls, saying women do dangerous jobs, and you, too, could do this and contribute like this when you grow up.

CAROUBA: Right, Amy Monroe with the New York Fire Department said that one of the reasons she want today give her story for the book is because she wanted to let little girls know that women do dangerous things and are there helping whenever and wherever they can, just as their male counterparts are. She thought it was very important to let girls know that. And in fact, all the girls in her apartment complex put a huge sign up when she came back after digging on the pile all night, that said, thank you for being our hero, and thank you for showing us that anything is possible.

KAGAN: I want to bring in our own Rose Arc, but, Rose, before we get to you, I would like to ask the authors, Susan and Mary, why the book is mainly about firefighters and police officers. Why include a journalist?

CAROUBA: Well, her story was very important to us, because she really showed the role that a journalist can play in an event of this magnitude. Because when she was airing her story from the World Trade Center, it wasn't just for the listening public, it was for those individuals in the World Trade Center buildings who needed to find out what was happening from a larger perspective, and she was trying to get that information to them, and the courage that she showed and the bravery she exemplified that day was on par with all of the rescue workers we also worked with.

KAGAN: And we second that.

And, Rose, we'd like to bring you in here. Going back a year, 9/11, you thought you were going to be covering elections that day?

ROSE ARCE, CNN PRODUCER: Absolutely, Daryn, and I am immensely flattered to be included in this book with firefighters, and police officers and EMTs. I was doing my job that day, just as they were, but my job does not usually entail risks. It isn't something you go out every day and you think, I might get hurt, I might get killed.

KAGAN: Although we should say, Rose, you have covered a number of dangerous stories. It's not like every day is elections for you. We send you out on dangerous things as well.

ARCE: This is true, but I am very much used to being on the other side of the police lines. We go to a fire, we watch from outside. We have a little bit more access to the public, we get to talk to the firefighters, but we usually are not in the exact same situation that they're in.

September 11th was a little bit , because those boundaries were crossed. I felt like I had complete access to this site, and I had, you know, questions in my mind all day as to whether or not something dangerous could happen to me, that were not the usual failings of say police officers and firefighters that you could look to and say well, if I go this far, that far is too far to have gone, I am at risk to go into the building, et cetera, et cetera. It was up to us, the journalists to on the ground, to figure out how far to go to tell that story.

KAGAN: And it sounds like to read your story in the book your biggest restriction was a cell phone that wasn't not working. You had to make a decision, do you stay at a place where you could see what was happening, or do you go in even deeper, which is where you really wanted it go? ARCE: Yes, that's exactly what happened. At the end of the day, I would love to say I showed great judgment that day, but the reality is, that like a lot of folks that day, I was sort of the victim of fate as it were. I stopped where I stopped because I needed to make a phone call, I knew I needed to call CNN and tell people what was going on. And I went into somebody's apartment to try to use their phone thinking that a land line would work better than my cell phone, because of that, I ended up a couple of blocks short of being in the World Trade Center, and ended up staying there frankly because my phone wouldn't work. Otherwise I would have kept going like a lot of journalists would have kept going.

KAGAN: Amazing how things work out that way.

In the minute we have left, I want to make sure we bring Susan and Mary back in, because at the end of the book, you go back and you talk to the families of the women who died on 9/11, the public service workers that died. And there is one picture so chilling in the back of the book, New York Police officer Moira Smith. It can't be that long before she lost her life. This was a woman, an officer who went back in to the south tower as it was burning just trying to save lives.

CAROUBA: Right, she -- that -- the photograph that was shown in "The Daily News" of her leading a bleeding gentlemen from the building was taken only 15 minutes before she died. After she got him to safety, she went immediately back into the building to get other people to safety, and that's when the building collapsed. And she was directly responsible for her courage that day, saving hundreds of people, and many have come forward to say, had it not been for officer Moira Smith, they would not be here today.

KAGAN: I thought we got a picture of that before we went on the air. I guess we didn't. So I am going to hold up the book just so we can get that picture, because it is so chilling. She is saving one man's life here. And you're saying this picture was just 15 minutes before she lost her life.

CAROUBA: Right, and there was another gentlemen, Mr. Martin Glenn (ph), who left a note by the World Trade Center that talked about how there was such chaos in the building, there was such insanity in those final moments, and officer Smith walked up to the large group of people and said look at me, stay calm follow me, and she got so many people out of that building because of her courage and her calm that day.

KAGAN: There are so many amazing stories in this book. Susan Hagen, Mary Carouba, thank you so much. You can see my own copy here has a ton of little post-its, because there were so many stories, it was hard to pick. "The Women at Ground Zero." Thank you, and thank you to our Rose Arce for joining us today with her story. Really, really appreciate it. Ladies, thank you.

ARCE: Thank you, Daryn.

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