On the morning of Sept. 11, Alexios Monopolis '03, president of the DOC during summer term 2001, turned on his car radio to hear some music. Instead of music, he heard news of the first attack on the World Trade Center. At first he thought it had been an accident; a terrorist attack was so unlikely.
"I reached a television in time to see the second attack at the World Trade Center happening live. At that point, I knew exactly what was going on and simply sat glued to the TV paralyzed with disbelief."
Monopolis was one of the many volunteers in New York after the tragedy on Sept. 11. After two days of recovery work at the site of the fallen World Trade Center towers, Monopolis finally left for Greece, after not being able to leave on his original flight from Dulles airport on the morning of Sept. 11.
Monopolis came into Penn Station by train and was immediately picked up by a taxi driver, who drove him straight to the heart of the disaster. Once he reached "ground zero," the scene was shocking.
"The city had died. It was a complete ghost town ... everything was covered in ash. Cars were smashed and overturned. A fireman climbed up a 40-foot ladder to attach an American flag to a light pole in front of the wreckage as other rescue workers cheered on and cried. It was overwhelming."
At first, the volunteer work was difficult to organize because many leaders of EMS and firefighting teams, being first on the scene after the attacks, had been buried in the rubble. Volunteers formed random groups and worked together to begin the task that obviously needed to be done.
Monopolis joined a group and began to sift through the rubble. Dogs were used at times to search for cadavers, but the smell was often easily detected by the humans as well.
The manner in which the buildings fell created many pockets and open spaces where survivors could have been, according to Monopolis. To investigate these pockets, volunteers first removed buckets of debris, and when they could remove no more, someone would be lowered into the caves caused by the wreckage.
His lean physique meant that Monopolis was often the one sent on one of these dangerous searches.
"Since I always happened to be the skinniest individual on the scene, I was the one that they would tie a lifeline to and lower into the rubble ... when we found a body part, we would put it in the body bag and bring it back up. We wrote our name and Social Security number on our arms in case we ourselves were killed during the search and rescue operation."
Apart from the immediate danger of being crushed by shifting debris, Monopolis was constantly breathing in fumes and toxic dust. EMS teams set up stations at which rescue workers could flush their eyes and get food, water and oxygen.
Monopolis was also amazed by aspects of the scene not immediately apparent from television pictures. He described passing through once-occupied offices, now deserted, photos left forever on the desks.
"One of the strangest aspects of the search involved volunteers bringing food and water around in baskets and yelling out if we wanted drink or food. At night they set up large stadium lights around the wreckage to illuminate the area. It felt like a baseball game."
As would be expected, the experience was traumatizing for Monopolis, "I've never been affected like this before ... I have nightmares and I can't sleep ... flashbacks of body parts ... they haunt me."
After his work at ground zero, Monopolis was able to continue with his original plans, arriving in Greece safely, although his bags were hand-searched three times, something which had not been done before.
Now in Greece, Monopolis is the international political advisor for a nature reserve including land in Greece, Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. He works to develop positive relations between the countries and does ecological management in the region.
When asked to summarize his experience, Monopolis did so succinctly -- "absolute surreal insanity."
