The physical conditions of the work were severe. The pile was not stable. The dust was constant. The temperature in the area of smoldering debris was elevated. Workers operated in conditions of limited visibility and high physical exertion. The face masks that were available clogged with the dense particulate material in the air; workers who tried to use them found that the clogging impaired their breathing, and many worked without the full protection the masks were intended to provide.
The duration of individual work periods at the site varied by individual and by assignment, but the general pattern involved extended shifts followed by rest. Workers who lived locally might return to their homes for sleep; others used rest facilities set up near the site. The FDNY’s working pattern at the time was already demanding — the department had immediately extended its operating protocol to meet the emergency — and the additional volunteers who joined the operation worked within the patterns that the existing structure established.
Buscemi’s description of “about five days” of work, in shifts that were long, is consistent with the general pattern of volunteer involvement in the early days of the operation. Many volunteers worked intensively for a period and then, as the operation transitioned from search-and-rescue to the longer-term recovery work, either continued in a sustained way or returned to their ordinary lives. The transition from rescue-mode intensity to recovery-mode duration was one of the psychologically difficult aspects of the operation for many workers: the initial drive was sustained by the possibility of finding survivors, and as that possibility diminished, the character of the work changed.