Butler Township man recalls work in Shanksville 23 years ago
Vern Smith, who is a stalwart of the first responder community in the county, has helped countless people in life-threatening emergency situations over the course of several decades.
But 23 years ago today, he and many others were the heroes of the families who lost precious loved ones on a wind-swept field in rural Shanksville, Somerset County.
Smith was in Erie on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when he received a call that his Federal Disaster Medical Response Team was being deployed to the World Trade Center in New York City after terrorists steered two jet airliners into the towers.
He immediately reported to the 911th Airlift Wing in Pittsburgh as assigned after stopping at his home in Butler Township to gather his gear.
When he arrived at the 911th Airlift Wing base, Smith was told his team was being reassigned to Shanksville for the massive recovery effort needed there after United Airlines Flight 93 was forced to the ground by heroic passengers caught in a terrorist attack.
He said the recovery effort required much more work than retrieving remains, as a perimeter was set, and a grid with each square assigned a number was set up so the scene could be processed and recorded in detail.
“At that point, we go in and started to do recovery of remains and aircraft parts,” Smith said. “Of course, that has a tremendous impact on first responders.”
He said everything recovered was first photographed; then remains, whether larger or tiny, were transported to a special morgue that had been set up in Somerset County.
“There were numerous remains to be found of various sizes,” Smith said. “A body in motion will remain in motion until it’s acted upon.”
By that, Smith means when an aircraft traveling at 400 to 500 mph abruptly hits the ground, all systems inside the human body are thrust forward at an impossible speed, including bone, organs and the vascular system.
“The impact of something like this has a tremendous effect on a human body,” he said. “It had a tremendous impact on responders for years to come.”
He said all involved in the recovery at Shanksville also were haunted by the fact that the plane came down as a result of a coordinated terrorist attack.
“You were kind of looking over your shoulder,” Smith said.
He also helped organize and catalog remains so they could be identified and turned over to the funeral homes hired by the grieving Flight 93 families.
He said small remains were placed into Ziploc bags and then into green bins that resembled residential recycle bins used at the time.
“We learned that is not the way to properly remove remains,” Smith said.
He explained that those performing the gruesome task were triggered by the sight of recycle bins for decades after the gruesome task was complete.
Smith worked as the director of police and EMS programs at Butler County Community College at the time, and said officials there were “phenomenal” in allowing him all the days he needed on the disaster recovery team and after he returned home.
But the experience, which he called far more difficult than any grisly accident or fire scene in his career, had an effect on his mental health for many years after those dark days.
He visited Shanksville when construction began on the Flight 93 Memorial and one other time, but doubts he will ever return again.
“That’s a trigger. I just can’t bring myself to do it,” Smith said. “The memories are so traumatizing to me to this day.”
He said traveling on the Pennsylvania Turnpike; military color guards; wind turbines, like those that dot the mountaintops in Somerset County; and watching airplanes fly over the mountains at Seven Springs Mountain Resort are sights and sounds that have triggered him over the years.
Smith said he took advantage of mental health care when he returned home from Shanksville, and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I’m not ashamed of it,” he said.
Smith also served on the disaster recovery team at the sight of the US Air Flight 427 crash on Sept. 8, 1994, in Beaver County, and the ValuJet Flight 592 on May 11, 1996, in the Florida Everglades.
“Me and crocodiles do not get along,” he said of the Everglades crash. “I was the one who didn’t want to get out of the boat.”
Smith said his Type A personality and focusing on the positive things in his life helped him get through the grisly task at Shanksville and in the years since then.
Today — as he has done every Sept. 11 since 2001 — he will contact peers who served beside him, discuss his memories with family, watch documentaries on the terrorist attack, and look at data and pictures from that day.
“Just kind of my own personal memorial,” he said.
Smith said he does not know why he got involved in federal disaster relief all those years ago.
“Only fools rush in,” he said. “I’m 70 years old now, and I look back and wonder why I did some of the things I did.”
Still, he does not regret the often thankless tasks he undertook during his career and cherishes the tight bond he shares with other first responders.
“It’s life,” he said. “It’s what we do.”
