Public Employee Press

2001-2011
Day of death and heroism for EMS
"I thought I was going to die"

"We're at war!" is how Emergency Medical Technician Alexander Loutsky responded to a woman on the street who insisted on going back into one of the Twin Towers to get her belongings.

That morning the Local 2507 member and his partner Hank Ramos - who both worked for Battalion 4 in the firehouse closest to the World Trade Center - noticed a commercial aircraft flying extremely low along the Manhattan skyline. Minutes later, they witnessed that plane crashing into the first tower.

They tuned into the radio and heard reports of a similar attack on the Pentagon. "That's what we thought," explained Loutsky. "We thought we were at war."

Setting up near Fulton Street and Broadway, Loutsky and Ramos provided assistance from their ambulance to dozens of injured people who came running down the street. As more ambulances arrived, Loutsky was responsible for providing first aid and getting the people who had serious injuries transported to a hospital for treatment. People with third-degree burns were kept together and then transferred to Cornell Medical Center, while others were sent to a trauma center.

When the second tower came crashing down, everyone - the first responders and the injured - scrambled for cover. Total blackness is how Loutsky described the scene on the ground after the second tower collapsed. "You couldn't hear anything, you couldn't see anything and you couldn't breathe," he explained. "I thought I was going to die."

Covered in soot from head to toe, Loutsky made his way to the nearby New York Downtown Hospital, where hospital workers scrubbed his face and gave him oxygen.

They asked him to stay put in the hospital, but Loutsky refused. "I couldn't abandon my post," he said. "And I had to go find my partner."

As the dusk settled he left the hospital and walked toward Broadway and found his ambulance on fire. And he found Lt. Rene Davila. "We were so happy to see each other we started to cry," he recalled.

After spending 16 hours in the war zone Sept. 11, EMT Alexander Loutsky finally went home to rest. Three hours later he returned to Ground Zero. He spent two weeks at the site doing rescue and recovery while he was officially off duty.

—Alfredo Alvarado