Like millions of Americans, Peter Sitro watched the 9/11 attacks on television as they unfolded.
Within hours, he was at Ground Zero.
Sitro was an officer in the New York Police Department, working at the time in Brooklyn and living on Staten Island. Like all off-duty officers that morning, he got a call to report to the scene. It didn’t take him long to respond.
“I kept a spare uniform at home,” he said. “I just headed straight there.”
A clear path was maintained in and out of lower Manhattan for emergency personnel, and he arrived at the scene sometime before the second tower collapsed.
“It was total chaos,” he said. “There was so much smoke you couldn’t see two feet in front of you.”
After initially trying to keep people inside the second tower for their safety, officials realized that it would soon suffer the same fate as the first one and they started evacuating, Sitro said. He personally knew three NYPD officers who died at the scene that day. One of his best friends on the force was Moira Smith, recognized as the only female NYPD officer who died there and who helped hundreds of people get to safety before her death.
Sitro spent two weeks working 12-hour shifts at Ground Zero in what became a recovery operation. “We were basically digging for body parts,” he said. “We found fingers and toes but not much else. Most of it was incinerated.”
Everything they found was transferred to the Staten Island dump. The officers had just enough time to go home, wash off the incredible amounts of soot and get some sleep before doing it all again the next day.
“They gave us surgical masks to use the first two days but those were useless,” said Sitro. “Then they gave us better masks but they didn’t always fit. Mine was too tight, and I had to take it off much of the time anyway.”
Sitro developed a lung condition known as plural thickening. It wasn’t diagnosed until years later, when a CAT scan was performed to identify the source of pain in his back. While being one of thousands with health issues related to the cleanup at Ground Zero, he acknowledged that his condition is not as bad as many others he knew, some of whom have since died.
He worked with the NYPD from 1990 to 2010 at posts that included Brooklyn, Coney Island and the Staten Island Ferry before retiring as a sergeant. He now lives in Peachtree City with his wife, two daughters and in-laws.
“We looked at a few places south to retire, and we liked it here,” he said.
He keeps in touch with many people back in New York, where he returns twice a year to visit his father and some former coworkers. “In a job like ours you make very good friends,” he said.
Sitro was interviewed by city officials and will appear on a video at the beginning of the 9/11 event Sunday night at the Frederick Brown Amphitheater.
