'World Trade Center' omits Black soldier

‘World Trade Center’ omits Black soldier
newpittsburghcourieronline.com ^
Posted on 08/12/2006
‘World Trade Center’ omits Black soldier

Following disasters of historically epic proportions like the attack on the World Trade Center, there are bound to be countless tales of self-sacrifice, heroism and triumph. Some stories, like those told in the movies “Flight 93” and Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center,” premiering Aug. 9, are made into blockbusters for the world to see. Others are either whispered quietly among family and friends or confined to the memories and souls of those who refuse to speak of them.
Such is the tale of United States Marine Corps Sgt. Jason L. Thomas--in spite of the fact that his story and the one told in “World Trade Center” are one in the same.

THE STORY
The morning of Sept. 11, 2001 began like any other for Jason L. Thomas. A student at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of City University of New York, he heard about the attack after taking his daughter to his mother’s house in Queens so he could attend classes.

“At the time I was saying to myself, ‘That’s an attack’. My mother looked at it as if it was an accident, but one of the first things that came to my mind was, ‘They got us,’” he said.

“Immediately after that, I just got in high gear. I had my uniform in my car, my C-Bag. We just moved into a house, so I had a lot of my personal equipment in my vehicle. I ran out to my car, got my uniform, got dressed and shot to the city.”

After a delay in Queens, which Thomas credits for keeping him away from the collapse of the South Tower, he attached himself to a police convoy and made it to the site within moments of the fall of the North Tower.

“Approaching one of the towers, all I see is one at the time, I see the building come crashing down. It just comes straight down. I park my vehicle and I remember this cloud of smoke and ash just enveloped where I was. I stuck my head down in my shirt and scooted behind my car and got on my knees, but it engulfed the area. So I got up and I just ran in the direction towards Ground Zero.”
At Ground Zero, Thomas immediately began to help by fighting fires, establishing triage sites to help the injured and assisting with the overall evacuation. While his primary focus was devoted to the emergency, he couldn’t help being affected by what had become of his city.

“I know this beautiful city, and now here it is, it’s just rubble,” he said. “There are fire engines on fire, and you don’t see that everyday--you don’t see cars and ambulances on fire. I was just trying to take it in.”

After hours of firefighting, assisting survivors and in some cases, praying over the dead, Thomas ran into another marine, Staff Sgt. Dave Karnes. Thomas presented a plan for a search and rescue mission of the area and he and Karnes tried to enlist other soldiers on site to help. When they were told the mission was too dangerous, they decided to go by themselves.

“I found a couple guys, but it wasn’t enough, to them, to start a search and rescue,” he said. “I remember myself and staff Sgt. Karnes saying, ‘We’re going to start the search and rescue with or without you, because someone needs us.’”

THE MOVIE
The World Trade Center movie tells the story of the rescues of New York Port Authority police officers John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno from Ground Zero, as well as that of the men who rescued them. In real life, the officers were rescued by sergeants Karnes and Thomas. In the film, however, they were rescued by Karnes and PFC Dave Thomas; a composite character, played by William Mapother, a white actor, who is meant to represent Thomas.

World Trade Center producer Michael Shamberg said that they knew about Sgt. Thomas’s role in the rescue, but were unable to find him when creating the film. He said producers didn’t discover Thomas was a Black man until after they had started the movie. He also said that in spite of the fact that the film was co-written by McLoughlin and Jimeno was consulted for authenticity, no one ever asked them for a physical description of the man who helped save their lives.

“Frankly, we goofed--we learned when we were filming that he was an African-American,” said Shamberg. “We would change it if we could. I actually called him and apologized, and he said he didn’t mind. He was very gracious about it.”

Shamberg also apologized for another African-American officer, Bruce Reynolds, who was also portrayed as white in the movie.

Thomas, meanwhile, didn’t learn the film was about his story until he saw the unmistakable image of two marines peering into a whole at Ground Zero during a commercial for the movie. He said that while he wasn’t angry about how the film turned out, he does wish it could have been more realistic.

TOO SOON—Marine Sgt. Jason Thomas said that once he spoke to producers, they offered to fly him to the premiere of the film but he declined. He said it was a little “too soon” for him to see the film. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"If you're going to tell a story, you should try to get it as accurate as possible," he said. "Some of the things did bother me to a certain degree--I'm an African-American male, and there's a white character being depicted as myself. But I'm not upset. It's bigger than myself-It's bigger than Staff Sgt. Kearns. A lot of people lost their lives. That's what needs to be remembered."

Although a great deal has changed for Thomas since 9-11-he ended up withdrawing from classes at CUNY after volunteering at Ground Zero for more than two weeks--and the film did not include his input, he says he still hopes people see it. He said he believes there is much to be learned from both the movie and his story.

“I think it’s important to know what occurred that day and to remember the fallen heroes that died for our country by doing their jobs. Come see what a small portion of good people, heroes, do and why they deserve the name and title of hero.”

Md. office makes big impression on film

Md. office makes big impression on film
Workers in Frederick help when Hollywood re-creates New YorkBy ALEXANDER C. BALDINGER, The Frederick (Md.) News-Post
Posted Thursday, August 24, 2006

This image from EarthData shows the World Trade Center before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Mapping like this was used in Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center." Courtesy of EarthData 08/24/2006

When Paramount Pictures needed help re-creating the skyline of lower Manhattan for Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center," it called EarthData International's Frederick, Md., office.
EarthData, a mapping company that has created detailed models of some of the country's largest cities, supplied the film's visual effects team with 3-D renderings of the towers, which were created by combining architectural blueprints with aerial laser terrain models taken during the days following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Special effects helped re-create the towers' collapse for the movie.

"Whenever there are shots that seem to be taken from the helicopter flying over the buildings, when you have moving shots like that when you can see the tops of the buildings, that's when the models were used," said Louis Demargne, director of marketing for EarthData.

EarthData was instrumental to the film's planning as well. While writing the script, Paramount used the company's detailed 3-D model of New York to plan shooting angles and logistics for certain scenes.

"We actually have a database where each building in Manhattan and New York City is modeled. ... It's like an architect's or an engineer's drawing, but it's in 3-D," Demargne said.

Capturing the scope of the disaster was crucial to the makers of the film. Directed by Stone, it tells the story of Port Authority officers who risked their lives to save others on the day of the attacks.

"The level of detail and the completeness of the laser, image, and 3-D data made it possible for us to accurately portray the scene confronting the police and rescue workers," said John Scheele, visual effects supervisor for Paramount.

In the days following 9/11, EarthData was involved in capturing the scope of the devastation using lasers and thermal sensors. The profiles the company rendered showed the rubble of the fallen towers and any shifts in the surrounding buildings.

"We used aircraft to fly over the area, capture the photography ... and actually process that data so it [was] in a form that the first responders could use," Demargne said. "They needed to know where some of the fires were still smoldering."

The company's familiarity with the disaster made it particularly well-suited to assist with a Hollywood production.

"The data used in this movie was originally created for rescue and recovery operations ... all of which required very precise and detailed information," said Bryan Logan, CEO of EarthData.
Hollywood has called on EarthData for geographic imaging before. The company's 3-D models have also been used in Sony Picture Imageworks' "Spider-Man," and 20th Century Fox's "The Day After Tomorrow."

EarthData Contributes to the Making of Oliver Stone's New Movie, World Trade Center

EarthData Contributes to the Making of Oliver Stone's New Movie, World Trade CenterFREDERICK, Md., Aug. 16, 2006 --

EarthData International, Inc. (EarthData) announced its role in last week's release of the critically acclaimed World Trade Center, Oliver Stone's portrayal of five Port Authority police officers who battle the devastation of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Central to the movie are three-dimensional renderings of the collapsing towers, which Stone uses to recreate the police officers' perspectives and help audiences comprehend the horror of being trapped in the underground inferno. The renderings were created by integrating architectural blueprints of the Twin Towers with aerial-based laser (lidar) terrain models and imagery acquired by EarthData in the days immediately following 9/11. The film's studio, Paramount Pictures, also used EarthData's three-dimensional model of Manhattan for scene planning in advance of filming and to visualize the final effects shots for the film. Paramount Pictures' Visual Effects Supervisor, John Scheele, was especially impressed with the realism of the various data sets: "The level of detail and completeness of the laser, image, and 3D data made it possible for us to accurately portray the scene confronting the police and rescue workers." EarthData CEO Bryan Logan, who led his company's response team at Ground Zero, credits the movie's realism with the origin of geographic data itself - aerial-based mapping designed to precisely depict geographic locations on the Earth's surface: "Unlike most geographic data designed solely for animation and visual effect purposes, the data used in this movie was originally created for rescue and recovery operations (as well as engineering and design applications, in the case of the 3D city models), all of which required very precise and detailed information." Hours after the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, EarthData was tasked with gathering mapping data over Ground Zero. For the next two months, EarthData conducted twice daily aerial over-flights to create maps that gave detailed information to the recovery workers on the ground. The laser (lidar) profiler provided highly accurate three-dimensional maps of the site and allowed measurement of the rubble and shifts in the surrounding buildings. High-resolution digital imagery and thermal data complemented the laser data and enabled rescue and recovery workers to monitor the movement and temperatures of the fires burning below the surface. Maps were produced and delivered in record time, less than eight hours after the over-flights occurred. EarthData's urban 3D models have also been used in other films, including Sony Pictures Imageworks' Spider-Man and Twentieth Century Fox's The Day After Tomorrow. About EarthData International EarthData is an airborne mapping and remote sensing company providing a full range of mapping and GIS services to support customers' needs in a wide variety of natural resource management, urban planning, economic development, national defense, and engineering activities. EarthData's Solutions Division is known as a leading provider of web-based, spatial information management (SIM) solutions. It develops highly accurate two- and three-dimensional city models and is unique in its ability to link databases of information from any source (for example, real estate- or insurance-related) to its 2D and 3D maps. EarthData has completed ten major US cities, including New York, Chicago and Washington, DC, with other US cities in production.

Contact: Louis Demargne
301-948-8550, ext. 116
ldemargne@earthdata.comhttp://www.earthdata.com/

Cops' brat fry featured in 9/11 film

Cops' brat fry featured in 9/11 film
By Belia Ortega Sheboygan Press staff
They call them the "Brat Cops" on the East Coast and in Oliver Stone's new film "World Trade Center," which opened nationwide Wednesday.

We know them as members of the Sheboygan Police Department.

Five years ago, Sgt. Bob Gottowski, Detective Dwain Jordan, Officer Jeff Kloet and the now- retired Sgt. Tim Tarkow-ski, Officer Rick Hlavka, and Officer Fred Zittel went to Ground Zero six months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center to lend moral support to those working at the clean-up site.

And the officers brought with them all the ingredients for a Sheboygan-style brat fry, which Stone re-enacts in the movie.

"I was tickled pink that somebody with Oliver Stone's reputation actually thought highly of what we did," said Tarkowski, who helped organize the 938-mile drive to New York City.

It all began the day after the attacks during their morning roll call, Tarkowski said, when members of the police department decided that because so many emergency personnel were attacked, they wanted to do something for them and their families. In the movie they are portrayed planning the brat fry in a Sheboygan diner as customers watched news coverage of the attacks.

They held several brat frys across the city and placed donation cans in businesses. The response was overwhelming, Tarkowski said. They collected a total of $147,000, which was well beyond their goal of $50,000, he said.

Hlavka flew to New York City with his wife, Sandra, to deliver checks to some of the families who lost loved ones in the terrorist attacks. Hlavka said an officer from the Port Authority New York and New Jersey told him that those checks were the first donations folks had received.

But the officers didn't think their generosity should end there.

With the help of local businesses, the six men packed two Weber grills, 100 pounds of Miesfeld's Triangle Market brats, about 400 City Bakery hard rolls and plenty of condiments into a van six months after the September 11 attacks. Three men drove and three flew to New York City to grill brats for a weekend for all the workers at Ground Zero, Tarkowski said.

And now they are being recognized for it.

"I think it's an honor and if Mr. Stone is as historically accurate as he can be … I think it shows a lot of thought in the movie," Hlavka said.

Jordan said accolades should go to Tarkowski for planning the brat frys and the trip to Ground Zero.

"I'm really surprised that this (movie) is coming about now," Jordan said. "It's just a wonderful experience. Something I'll never forget."

Gottowski said he was surprised they were featured in the movie because he didn't realize that it meant so much to them.

"They never heard of us. I guess, apparently, we did make an impression," Gottowski said.

Some of the officers have formed close friendships with members of the Port Authority and continue to visit the World Trade Center site.

Several members of the Sheboygan Police Department watched the movie at Marc Cinema in Sheboygan on Wednesday night. The six men plan to watch movie together sometime in the near future.

"I think it's more of a testimonial to the generosity of our community," said Tarkowski, who retired last September. "For the officers that had to deal with this day-to-day, they know where Sheboygan is now."
Reach Belia Ortega at bortega@sheboygan-press.com and 453-5169.

An Unlikely Hero

An Unlikely Hero
The Marine who found two WTC survivors.By Rebecca LissUpdated Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2002, at 6:13 PM ET

Only 12 survivors were pulled from the rubble of the World Trade Center after the towers fell on Sept. 11, despite intense rescue efforts. Two of the last three to be located and saved were Port Authority police officers. They were not discovered by a heroic firefighter, or a rescue worker, or a cop. They were discovered by Dave Karnes.

Karnes hadn't been near the World Trade Center. He wasn't even in New York when the planes hit the towers. He was in Wilton, Conn., working in his job as a senior accountant with Deloitte Touche. When the second plane hit, Karnes told his colleagues, "We're at war." He had spent 23 years in the Marine Corps infantry and felt it was his duty to help. Karnes told his boss he might not see him for a while.

Then he went to get a haircut.

The small barbershop in Stamford, Conn., near his home, was deserted. "Give me a good Marine Corps squared-off haircut," he told the barber. When it was done, he drove home to put on his uniform. Karnes always kept two sets of Marine fatigues hanging in his closet, pressed and starched. "It's kind of weird to do, but it comes in handy," he says. Next Karnes stopped by the storage facility where he kept his equipment—he'd need rappelling gear, ropes, canteens of water, his Marine Corps K-Bar knife, and a flashlight, at least. Then he drove to church. He asked the pastor and parishioners to say a prayer that God would lead him to survivors. A devout Christian, Karnes often turned to God when faced with decisions.

Finally, Karnes lowered the convertible top on his Porsche. This would make it easier for the authorities to look in and see a Marine, he reasoned. If they could see who he was, he'd be able to zip past checkpoints and more easily gain access to the site. For Karnes, it was a "God thing" that he was in the Porsche—a Porsche 911—that day. He'd only purchased it a month earlier—it had been a stretch, financially. But he decided to buy it after his pastor suggested that he "pray on it." He had no choice but to take it that day because his Mercury was in the shop. Driving the Porsche at speeds of up to 120 miles per hour, he reached Manhattan—after stopping at McDonald's for a hamburger—in the late afternoon.

His plan worked. With the top off, the cops could see his pressed fatigues, his neatly cropped hair, and his gear up front. They waved him past the barricades. He arrived at the site—"the pile"—at about 5:30. Building 7 of the World Trade Center, a 47-story office structure adjacent to the fallen twin towers, had just dramatically collapsed. Rescue workers had been ordered off the pile—it was too unsafe to let them continue. Flames were bursting from a number of buildings, and the whole site was considered unstable. Standing on the edge of the burning pile, Karnes spotted … another Marine dressed in camouflage. His name was Sgt. Thomas. Karnes never learned his first name, and he's never come forward in the time since.

Together Karnes and Thomas walked around the pile looking for a point of entry farther from the burning buildings. They also wanted to move away from officials trying to keep rescue workers off the pile. Thick, black smoke blanketed the site. The two Marines couldn't see where to enter. But then "the smoke just opened up." The sun was setting and through the opening Karnes, for the first time, saw clearly the massive destruction. "I just said 'Oh, my God, it's totally gone.' " With the sudden parting of the smoke, Karnes and Thomas entered the pile. "We just disappeared into the smoke—and we ran."

They climbed over the tangled steel and began looking into voids. They saw no one else searching the pile—the rescue workers having obeyed the order to leave the area. "United States Marines," Karnes began shouting. "If you can hear us, yell or tap!"

Over and over, Karnes shouted the words. Then he would pause and listen. Debris was shifting and parts of the building were collapsing further. Fires burned all around. "I just had a sense, an overwhelming sense come over me that we were walking on hallowed ground, that tens of thousands of people could be trapped and dead beneath us," he said.
After about an hour of searching and yelling, Karnes stopped.

"Be quiet," he told Thomas, "I think I can hear something."

He yelled again. "We can hear you. Yell louder." He heard a faint muffled sound in the distance.

"Keep yelling. We can hear you." Karnes and Thomas zeroed in on the sound.

"We're over here," they heard.

Two Port Authority police officers, Will Jimeno and Sgt. John McLoughlin, were buried in the center of the World Trade Center ruins, 20 feet below the surface. They could be heard but not seen. By jumping into a larger opening, Karnes could hear Jimeno better. But he still couldn't see him. Karnes sent Thomas to look for help. Then he used his cell phone to call his wife, Rosemary, in Stamford and his sister Joy in Pittsburgh. (He thought they could work the phones and get through to New York police headquarters.)

"Don't leave us," Officer Jimeno pleaded. He later said he feared Karnes' voice would trail away, as had that of another potential rescuer hours earlier. It was now about 7 p.m. and Jimeno and McLoughlin had been trapped for roughly nine hours. Karnes stayed with them, talking to them until help arrived, in the form of Chuck Sereika, a former paramedic with an expired license who put pulled his old uniform out of his closet and came to the site. Ten minutes later, Scott Strauss and Paddy McGee, officers with the elite Emergency Service Unit of the NYPD, also arrived.

The story of how Strauss and Sereika spent three hours digging Jimeno out of the debris, which constantly threatened to collapse, has been well told in the New York Times and elsewhere. At one point, all they had with which to dig out Jimeno were a pair of handcuffs. Karnes stood by, helping pass tools to Strauss, offering his Marine K-Bar knife when it looked as if they might have to amputate Jimeno's leg to free him. (After Jimeno was finally pulled out, another team of cops worked for six more hours to free McLoughlin, who was buried deeper in the pile.)
Karnes left the site that night when Jimeno was rescued and went with him to the hospital. While doctors treated the injured cop, Karnes grabbed a few hours sleep on an empty bed in the hospital psychiatric ward. While he slept, the hospital cleaned and pressed his uniform.

******
Today, on the anniversary of the attack and the rescue, officers Jimeno and Strauss will be part of the formal "Top Cop" ceremony at the New York City Center Theater. Earlier the two appeared on a nationally televised episode of America's Most Wanted. Jimeno and McLoughlin appeared this week on the Today show. They are heroes.
Today, Dave Karnes will be speaking at the Maranatha Bible Baptist Church in Wilkinsburg, Penn., near where he grew up. He sounds excited, over the phone, talking about the upcoming ceremony. Karnes is a hero, too.
But it's also clear Karnes is a hero in a smaller, less national, less public, less publicized way than the cops and firefighters are heroes. He's hardly been overlooked—the program I work for, 60 Minutes II, interviewed him as part of a piece on Jimeno's rescue—but the great televised glory machine has so far not picked him. Why? One reason seems obvious—the cops and firefighters are part of big, respected, institutional support networks. Americans are grateful for the sacrifices their entire organizations made a year ago. Plus, the police and firefighting institutions are tribal brotherhoods. The firefighters help and support and console each other; the cops do the same. They find it harder to make room for outsiders like Karnes (or Chuck Sereika). And, it must be said, at some macho level it's vaguely embarrassing that the professional rescuers weren't the ones who found the two survivors. While the pros were pulled back out of legitimate caution, the job fell to an outsider, who drove down from Connecticut and just walked onto the burning pile.

Columnist Stewart Alsop once famously identified two rare types of soldiers, the "crazy brave" and the "phony tough." The professionals at Ground Zero—I interviewed dozens in my work as a producer for CBS—were in no way phony toughs. But Karnes does seem a bit "crazy brave." You'd have to be slightly abnormal—abnormally selfless, abnormally patriotic—to do what he did. And some of the same qualities that led Karnes to make himself a hero when it counted may make him less perfect as the image of a hero today.

Officer Strauss tells a story that gets at this. When he was out on the pile a year ago, trying to pull Officer Jimeno free, Strauss shouted orders to his volunteer helpers—"Medic, I need air," or "Marine, get me some water." At one point, in the middle of this exhausting work, Strauss, asked if he could call them by their names to facilitate the process. The medic said he was "Chuck."

Karnes said: "You can call me 'staff sergeant.' "

"That's three syllables!" said Strauss, who needed every bit of energy and every second of time. "Isn't there something shorter?"

Karnes replied: "You can call me 'staff sergeant.' "

Rebecca Liss is an associate producer at CBS's 60 Minutes.Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2070762/

Copyright 2006 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

Experts: Dramatic Lung Aging for NYC 9/11 Firefighters

Experts: Dramatic Lung Aging for NYC 9/11 Firefighters

Respiratory function has been so severely compromised in some World Trade Center rescuers that even as the fifth anniversary of the attack approaches, experts are reporting a dramatic aging effect in the lungs of firefighters and others.

While some first responders have regained near-normal lung capacity, others have been forced into retirement because of persistent pulmonary disorders typified by asthma-like symptoms and a characteristic World Trade Center cough.

An analysis of New York City firefighters and other responders exposed to World Trade Center dust found that rescuers experienced a decrease in lung function equivalent to more than a decade of age-related decline in the first year following the 9/11 attacks.

Conducted by lung specialists at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, the research indicates that for those hardest hit, breathing disorders remain chronic and may progress to the type of damage seen in people sickened by decades of smoking.

"The aging portion of the study was used as a convenient yardstick to make understandable the drop in lung function that we found," said Dr. Gisela Banauch, a Montefiore pulmonologist. She and colleagues report their study today in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

They analyzed lung function tests of 12,079 New York Fire Department members and other rescue workers, most of whom were at Ground Zero during or immediately after the World Trade Center collapse.

For those first to arrive, exposure was worst.

Still, a dramatic aging of the lungs - equivalent to a 12-year loss of lung function - is an unusual finding, said Dr. Ashok Karnik, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow.

Karnik works in collaboration with researchers at Stony Brook University Hospital and The Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, monitoring patients exposed to Ground Zero debris.
"I can't say we have found anything equivalent to 12 years of age-related decline," Karnik said. "Some patients do suffer from upper respiratory problems and asthma-like symptoms. For some patients' symptoms are persistent, but for many others, symptoms have decreased over time."

Karnik suggested Banauch may have treated patients who had longer exposures to the dust than those in his program.

Banauch used a measure called FEV-1, which stands for forced expiratory volume and is a standard test administered by pulmonologists.

"This is a basic measure of lung function. When we want to determine if a patient has moderate or severe lung disease we talk in terms of FEV-1," said Dr. Stuart Garay, a clinical professor of pulmonology at NYU Medical Center in Manhattan who also treats patients for respiratory problems caused by World Trade Center dust.

"For every year we live, the normal individual loses 30 milliliters" in lung function, Garay said. "That's really a small amount. So you can live into your 80s and 90s without losing much lung function. A smoker by comparison will lose 60 or 70 milliliters a year. So by the time these individuals are 50 years old they're short of breath."

Banauch found responders with the worst exposures lost a staggering 372 milliliters within the first year after the attack. She theorizes that for the most disabled, the loss of function ultimately could lead to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, often diagnosed in smokers.
She cites pulverized concrete, which becomes alkaline when inhaled as a powder, as the culprit that seared lungs.

Richard Picciotto, 55, a former FDNY chief who participated in Banauch's research, said his exposure to World Trade Center debris has had an adverse effect on his pulmonary function. He has World Trade Center cough.

"I was taking medication for the first year and half to two years - inhalers and stuff like that - but I've kind of weaned myself off of them," said Picciotto, who retired from FDNY in 2003 because of other injuries sustained on 9/11.