![]() When they arrived at the store, Nijher approached the clerk and asked for his film to be developed. It wasn’t long before this possibility would turn into reality. That was the first moment that Nijher processed that people on the street might perceive him as a perpetrator of the terrorist attacks, rather than as one of its heroes. “I don’t know what things are like out on the street and how people are going to react to you,” his roommate said. As he headed out to get the film developed, his roommate, who had been watching the events unfold on the news all day, offered to join him. As they talked, Nijher remembered that he had taken dozens of pictures at Ground Zero. He slept into the evening, and when he woke described what he had witnessed to his roommate that evening. It was like I had gone from one world to another.” “On my way home, I saw military guys on every street corner with machine guns, especially where I was. “Again, it was like an apocalyptic movie,” he recalled. In the early afternoon, Nijher went back to Brooklyn, where he was on call at the hospital, and the next morning commuted back to his apartment in Manhattan, near the United Nations. But, Nijher recalled that in the dire scenario of the day, if it needed to be done, they would have figured out how to do it. Such a procedure, performed by residents with limited equipment and limited experience, would have been extremely risky, and fortunately they were able to unpin the firefighter without amputating his leg. ![]() A firefighter had been pinned during the rescue, and knowing Nijher’s group to be surgeons, thought they could help release the firefighter by amputating his leg. At one point, he was approached by one of the lead first responders. Undeterred, Nijher went back to his station to give medical attention to his survivors. You just see this dust cloud come flying, like an explosion, all the way into the Hudson River.” “We just started running too, just in time to escape another building that collapsed just nearby. At one point, Nijher looked up to see people running and screaming, “Run!” “It was surreal, because we were coming across Brooklyn Bridge, and it looked like one of those dinosaur films or zombie films, where everyone is running out of Manhattan in panic, and we’re in the one lane going into the city with police escorts.”Īs those people fled for their own safety, Nijher was one of the few who drove into the heart of danger and uncertainty, seeking to help those who needed it most.Īs the rescue team passed through the containment zone and set up their triage center near Ground Zero, Nijher looked up occasionally to see dust and debris everywhere. Then he climbed into an ambulance, along with a few other volunteers, and they drove over the bridge. They said goodbye and exchanged “I love you”s. Courtesy photoĪfter volunteering to be part of the rescue team, Nijher called his wife, who was traveling in India, to tell her where he was going and admitted he had no idea if he would return. ![]() They decided they couldn’t wait for survivors to come to them they had to go to Ground Zero to save whatever lives they could. The doctors gathered there realized the casualty count would be even worse than they had anticipated. He was there when first one, then the other tower collapsed. Nijher and some of his more experienced colleagues rushed to another hospital closer to the Brooklyn Bridge, expecting to receive evacuations from south Manhattan, where the terrorist attacks had just taken place. Being in general surgery meant that we would cover the trauma unit, which also meant that I would have a big role to play in the response efforts.” And that’s when I realized this was a mass casualty event. And then, all of a sudden, everyone’s pagers started going off. “We were just standing up there, watching the smoke and the debris and the paper all around us, when suddenly, the second plane hit the World Trade Center. Streams of paper and other office debris headed toward them over the river. They canceled their meeting and a group of them, including Nijher, went up to the roof of the hospital to get a better look. The colleague shouted, and all of the colleagues shifted their gaze to the smoke billowing from the building. Then it flew into one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. 11, 2001, Navinder Singh Nijher, then a general surgery resident at a Brooklyn hospital, was in a meeting when one of his colleagues witnessed an airplane flying dangerously close to the buildings across the East River in lower Manhattan. Please consider donating to the FāVS Fund for Social Justice ReportingĬommentary by Simran Jeet Singh | Religion News Service
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