Some episodes entertain. This one will change you. Dr. Gregory Fried’s story is not just about surviving 9/11—it’s about everything that came after. As the Executive Chief Surgeon for the NYPD, he wasn’t just a witness; he was a first responder standing at the very edge of collapse. What he saw, what he carried, and what he still remembers is etched into every word of this conversation. Let me introduce you to my father-in-law.
The System for Surviving
Before September 11th, Dr. Fried had already built a career rooted in trauma. He trained at Bellevue Hospital during the drug wars of the 1970s, becoming both a trauma surgeon and a police surgeon. He saw his share of gunshot wounds, line-of-duty injuries, and late-night calls from precincts in distress. He was no stranger to tragedy, but nothing prepared him for the scale of what came on that Tuesday morning.
As the first plane hit, he was already en route to the hospital. When the second tower was struck, he didn’t hesitate. He responded, heading directly toward danger.
The Collapse in First Person
What Dr. Fried shares in this conversation is not a secondhand report. It is a visceral, firsthand experience. He was standing over a firefighter, trying to stop the bleeding, when the South Tower began to fall. With nowhere to run and no cover, he dropped to his knees, pulled his helmet down, and waited to die.
But he didn’t.
What followed was blackness, burning jet fuel, crushed bones, and a desperate crawl toward the Hudson. He was covered in dust and debris, suffering internal bleeding, and still trying to stay calm enough to save himself.
That moment—of knowing you might not make it, and still fighting to survive—is the heart of this story.
What the Government Got Wrong
In the weeks that followed, Dr. Fried didn’t just rest. He raised hell.
He was one of the first to sound the alarm about the toxicity in the air at Ground Zero. While government officials told responders the air was safe, he knew otherwise. He saw the particles. He felt them burn his nose, his lungs, his throat. He called for hazmat suits, respirators, exposure logs. Most of that was ignored at the time.
But he was right.
More first responders have now died of 9/11-related cancers than perished on that day. And the numbers continue to rise.
Dr. Fried pushed for documentation, tracked exposure, and insisted on truth in the face of bureaucratic silence. It wasn’t popular, but it was necessary. The fight wasn’t over when the buildings fell. The fight had just changed.
A Legacy of Service
This is not just a story about what happened. It’s a story about what endures.
Despite his injuries, Dr. Fried showed up. He confronted impostor physicians who were exploiting the tragedy. He visited the landfill where remains were sorted by hand. He stood in front of widows and told them their husbands weren’t coming home. He documented what the public couldn’t see, and he spoke out when others stayed silent.
Eventually, his injuries caught up to him. The pain made standing difficult. Surgery became impossible. But he never stopped showing up for the people he served.
And even now—through his memoir, through conversations like this—he’s still showing up.
What We Need to Remember
There’s a new generation now. People who weren’t even born in 2001. And for them, 9/11 might be a day in a textbook, a moment in history.
Dr. Fried hopes we remember more than the buildings. He hopes we remember the bravery. The chaos. The silence. The sacrifice. The real faces of the responders who didn’t just risk their lives that day—they gave their lungs, their health, their futures.
He wants us to remember that terrorism is not just a moment. It is a system of fear and violence. And the only real system strong enough to counter it? Service. Community. Courage.
Find It Quickly
- 01:15 – Early Career and Becoming a Police Surgeon
- 02:45 – Rising Through the Ranks
- 07:13 – September 11th: The Day That Changed Everything
- 11:48 – Surviving the Collapse
- 20:33 – Escape and Rescue
- 27:00 – Arrival in Jersey City
- 27:15 – Hospital Recovery and Miscommunication
- 29:21 – Transfer to NYU and Initial Challenges
- 30:37 – Return Home and Medical Diagnosis
- 31:26 – Involvement in Recovery Efforts
- 33:46 – Health Concerns and Documentation
- 35:26 – Exposure to Toxic Dust
- 38:10 – Long-term Health Impacts
- 48:26 – Decision to Retire
- 52:02 – Reflections on 9/11 and Its Legacy
Connect with Dr. Greg
Review the Transcript
Julie: Welcome back to the System For Everything podcast. There are episodes that are light and funny, and then there are episodes like this one where you pause, sit up a little straighter, and remember why we tell stories in the first place. Dr. Gregory Fried was trained as a surgeon at NYU Bellevue Hospital in the 1970s where he had a multifaceted career as both a general surgeon and a police surgeon.
In 1996, he was promoted to executive chief surgeon and continued to perform general surgery. On September 11th, 2001, he was on site standing over an injured firefighter when the South Tower collapsed, he was doing what he had trained to do, serve, lead, and protect. This conversation isn’t just about that day, it’s about everything that came after the cost of service, the stories we carry.
And what it means to keep going. I am so honored to share this conversation with my father-in-law, and I hope you’ll listen with the reverence it deserves. Here’s my conversation with Dr. Fried on the system for living through September 11th. All right. Thank you so much for being here. Before we talk about what happened on September 11th, I wanna start with who you were before that day.
You didn’t just end up at ground zero by accident. I mean you were there in an official capacity as the chief surgeon for the NYPD. So let’s go back to the beginning of that chapter. How did you end up with that job?
Greg: When I trained, it was the late 1970s, and it was a very tough time for police officers.
Bellevue Hospital had a police base. Where cops would actually be in the hospital because of all the traumas we had from the Lower East side. In those days, those were the days of the big drug drug wars, where anywhere from once to twice a week, a police officer would get shot. I got to know the police officers at Bellevue became friendly with them, and the 17th precinct was just essentially several blocks away, and while I was in practice, I got to know the fact that there was a job called police surgeon, so I appeared.
I went over to the police academy, which was there and asked about the job because the cops had told me, when you finish your residency, look into the job. At that time, it was a tough time for the city. They were laying off cops. Cops were actually being per patrolled or paroled or what have you. But in 1980, I was called because Ed Tch had become the mayor, and the chief surgeon at that time called me up and said, would you like to start Monday morning?
This was on a Friday, so off I went to the academy. I said, what do you need me to do? They said, we’re gonna hire 3000 cops. We need physicals on all of them. Can you do a hundred physicals a day? I said, I can do whatever’s necessary. Anyway, make a long story short, I was put on, I would do a hundred physicals a day.
At that time, there were a lot of Vietnam vets who were being easily hired because they were in good physical shape and they needed jobs. One thing led to another, but I still retained my, that was a part-time job. I retained my position as a general surgeon and a trauma surgeon. Things evolved. Ben Ward became the police commissioner, and Ed Koch was the mayor, and the cops were getting shot.
I was called by Ben to go out and follow up on the cops who were shot, and over time I would respond to all the hospitals in the city, especially in the slum neighborhoods where a lot of the traumas were taken to see what was going on with the cops. I never operated on cops because it was very important to leave the police officer under the care of the doctors at the hospital.
Over time, it evolved to the point where I had trained a large number of the. Operating surgeons at the trauma hospitals became very familiar with them. Ben Ward felt it necessary to give me a promotion and I went from police surgeon to deputy chief surgeon, and as deputy chief surgeon, I had the freedom, uh, part of my job.
I actually got a car, so I had an unmarked police car with a siren and flashing lights, et cetera, and I would respond to the shootings and that was at least once a week. I was out middle of the night. I was responding to hospitals. Oh gosh. I would go into the operating rooms because I knew the surgeons and I knew the administrators at the hospital.
They would let me into the OR and I would come out and I would brief first the mayor and the police commissioner about what was gonna happen or what was going on because I was quite familiar with the situations and I would tell ’em about it. Over time, that became my essential role, so that. Actually, the police surgeon job was created years ago.
We’re talking about probably right after Civil War to take care of police officers who were injured over time. The PBA contract, the police union contract, gave police officers unlimited sick. So if you went sick, you could stay out until you saw your police surgeon who’d put you back to work. So essentially they worked as a truant officer or what have you.
But it evolved to the point where we would refer them to appropriate physicians to get appropriate care and to to see whomever, and then put them back to work. As deputy chief surgeon, I would oversee a number of police surgeons, so I became the administrator as opposed to just seeing the cops. But I also took major interest in cops in line of duty injuries and things like that, and responding to the hospitals.
And I would also get involved with police officers who were killed. I got to know their families. I got to know the widows. I would go to the funerals and have to sometimes actually advise the the wife that their husband was dead, and it
Julie: was one of the
Greg: tougher jobs. Over time the, I would get to know all the police commissioners.
I knew all the police commissioners from the 1980 on through the time of nine 11 when I retired, after which I retired. But Howard Safer became police commissioner in the nineties and felt it necessary to promote me. So we negotiated the title and he came up with exec. So I became the executive chief surgeon.
I, I kept the same role. I had the police car and I would go to shootings or I would provide some advice to the major players and some of the chiefs, et cetera. So on, um, September 11th as executive chief Surgeon, actually the day before on that Monday, I had taken out to gallbladders at Beth Israel Hospital, which in those days was around 16th Street, uh, and was heading in to make rounds on the patients.
So I’m in the police car through the traffic about to head into the city, and over the radio comes the notice that a plane. Had crashed into the World Trade Center. So rather than go on the police radio, because then there was a lot of chatter, and in those days the police radio could only handle one communication at a time.
So there was no reason for me to do it. I was listening and then I turned on the commercial radio. I was listening to the news because I knew what was gonna happen and I heard that a plane had indeed crashed into the World Trade Center. Very coincidental because coincidental that at the time the word came over, I was riding on the Long Island Expressway in an on an overpass, and you could actually see the smoke coming out of the trade center from a distance.
You can actually observe what was going on. And it was clear that I was gonna respond. I was a first responder in 1992 when they first bombed the World Trade Center. I had gone down there because I knew there’d be police injuries, and indeed there were multiple injuries and five people killed. Being familiar with arriving at major scenes and police injuries.
I turned on a siren, and in those days, long Island Expressway had a bus lane and you would go into the bus lane to get through the tunnel. However, it was stopped. So what I had to do is I went over two lanes into oncoming traffic because oh my gosh, you could access it. And I turned on the air horn, which is essentially like a fire horn on the car.
So those people approaching could see me coming because, uh, at that point in the Long Island Expressway. There was clear visibility heading into the tunnel. I went into the Midtown Tunnel, went through the tunnel, turned, had the siren blasting, immediately went to the FDR Drive, which takes you south to the long, to the World Trade Center and approached the long, the World Trade Center.
Uh, being at multiple major events, it was very clear to me that you don’t go into the middle of where the situation is coming. So I was not planning to park near the World Trade Center, although I’d been there, Mel multiple times. I knew the word of the access, uh, through West Street. But I decided I would take lower Broadway, leave the car there, and I did.
I left it in front of the bull. Now, one of the things I learned over a 25 year career is you keep track of where you park, you. You’ll find the landmark when, when we’d go to a police funeral or a police demonstration or a police celebration, if you didn’t keep track of where your car was, you’d never find, it took you 25 minutes to figure out where you’d parked.
So I decided I’d park in front of a landmark and I ended up on lower Broadway in front of the broad Broadway bull. I had a police plate that would go into the car that showed you were allowed to park in no parking areas. I would never park on a bus stop or on a fire hydrant, ’cause those were dangerous places.
But I found a spot and I started heading over to where the World Trade Center was, which was about maybe a quarter of a mile away. I got out of the car and right near it on lower Broadway was a jet engine that had come off the first plane that had gone down.
Julie: Oh my God.
Greg: About several months later, I had visited the Staten Island landfill and lo and behold, there was the same jet engine that I had seen when I parked on Lower Broadway.
And as I got out, I spoke to the commanding officer who was at that time, a friend of mine, and I said to him, jet Engine from Lower Broadway. And he looked at me and he said, how’d you know? I said, I saw it on September 11th.
Julie: So what happened then, when you arrived at the scene?
Greg: So I, I got to the scene, uh, actually I was, as I was walking, I had my jacket on, it said, uh, executive Chief Surgeon on the back.
Someone had made it for me. And because I never wore a police uniform ’cause I wasn’t a cop. Yeah. And I just didn’t think it was necessary for me to wear it. But, uh, I had my identification. A police van was heading over and stopped, picked me up, and they were heading over to the same site. And they looked at me and they said, uh, Hey Doc.
And I knew the guys in the van and I knew the females in the van. And they said, Hey, doc, you need a helmet? I said, I’ve never needed a helmet before, but I I, I wasn’t about to quarrel with them. Put the, I held a helmet and we headed down south on West Street and turned left on Liberty Street. Never forget it.
And as we were turning, a woman came flying out of the building, still moving and hit the ground. And I was actually at Bellevue in the 1970s when the construction was being done. And every so often, fortunately unusually, but, and rarely someone would fall off the construction site. And, uh, the, the site is.
An incredibly horrible bloodied mess. And as was fast, uh, the woman was right to our right and hit the ground with a, basically a thud and was almost recogniz unrecognizable as a person. Anyway, we turned on Liberty Street and I got out of the van and there was flying glass and shrapnel and paper galore.
It was unreal how much it was a, a snowstorm of just paper and papers and smoke and debris and flying glass, and you would hear this whoosh crash. I started a walk to the site where we would assemble, which is a triage. A triage is where you. Check those who were injured. And it’s called a triage ’cause it’s three things.
It’s people who are gonna die, people who are gonna make it, and people who need to be dispatched to a facility. Uh, that’s the three that came outta World War I. Anyway, I ran into Theresa Tobin who was at that time a lieutenant who was a friend of mine. I said, you know, where are we? Embl? And said, where we assembled the last time on West and Liberty Street.
So she was off to get her sneakers ’cause we knew it’d be a long day. As I was walking, I saw, saw a gentleman in a brown jumpsuit, which I found out subsequently was a firefighter type uniform. And he was lying on the ground in a pool of blood. He had apparently been hit by either shrapnel or trash or something, or window coming off the World Trade Center.
And although I had no equipment, I didn’t have any bag. I don’t carry these things. I didn’t have a clamp, but it was clear to me he was hitting somewhere near his shoulder and he was bleeding to death and he was hardly moving. He didn’t respond. And I thought what I would do is stop the bleeding with my hand and throw him in the, in the bus, in the, um, in the van, in the police van and send him up.
At that time, uh, St. Vincent’s Hospital was still open and it was just about a 20 minute ride. And as I was bending over him from a distance, I heard the buildings going down, which was first, first of all, it couldn’t register. Maybe you know, it here was here we were about maybe a hundred yards from Tower two on Western Liberty Street, and I looked up and about.
Maybe 150 yards. All I could see was debris falling. I heard a rumble, a crash, a loud sound. I felt a whoosh. And the building, I, I could think, or I thought was coming down, I knew was coming down on top of me. There was nowhere to run. Uh, Western Liberty Street is open. It’s an open space. There’s no nothing to duck under.
Plus the fact that it was really too late in the few seconds, all I did was drop to my knees, gr put my hands behind my head. I had my helmet on and wait, figuring I’m dead.
Julie: Oh my God.
Greg: Here it was a sunny day, a, a routine Tuesday, and here I’m about to be killed. And it came down. It all come crashing down and.
Next thing I know, my back was hurting, my back was in pain. It was al almost impossible to breathe. It was dead. The first thing I remember was it was very warm and I could feel my nose and my sinuses of my throat getting burned and then it got very cold. Subsequent to that, I asked the people about that, you know, what I experienced?
And they told me the first thing was the jet fuel, the residual jet fuel burning off. And then the second thing was the air conditioners rupturing from the tower two. Uh, whether that’s true or not, I’ll never really know, but, uh, it sounds reasonable. Anyway, yeah. Then it got black. Total black pitch black.
I saw absolutely nothing. But I didn’t die. My leg was tingling, my back was hurting, my chest was hurting. Uh, I could hear, hear only muffled sounds, and then from a distance I would hear an occasional help me. But it was totally, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my eyes. It was just that bad. Oh my God. So I figured, uh, as a clinician, I went blind.
Yeah. Well, why do you go blind? You go blind because you see a flash of light and it burns out your retinas. And I didn’t see a flash, a light. All I heard was rumbling and stuff like, so that, that didn’t make sense. Then if you get hit in the back of the head, that’s where your optic nerves are, and theoretically that could blind you.
However, I, I felt for the helmet and all I had was the, the rim. What was left of it. The helmet was smashed and and ripped off, and I could feel some blood trickling down, but that really wasn’t enough ’cause my head was intact. So I’m sitting there trying to think, what do you do as a blind surgeon? And life goes on.
If you blind, there are things you can do in life. Because I was still young and I was still in practice and I’m looking up in the air and I’m trying to figure out, my glasses are, maybe they’re just blacked out, but I couldn’t see ’em. And then all of a sudden, from the west side, from my left side, a ray of light came across the sky.
And then I realized what was really happening was there was so much debris and dust in the sky. It had blacked out the sun. So then I knew I wasn’t blind.
Julie: Yeah.
Greg: Which was a good thing. But I was buried up to my chest. Uh, not completely but enough. So I had to sort of squirm out and there was nobody around to help me, including the firefighter that I was bending over had disappeared.
I didn’t see him though. I’ve said to myself, being a trauma surgeon and being involved in major problems over the years, I remain calm. One thing in the face of adversity, I’ve always been able to remain calm. So I said to myself, it’s time to leave. And I squirm out from under all the debris and I head since the, what was left of the tower was to my right to the east.
I went west. I’m climbing over rubble and rubble from the tower on the street on Liberty Street, and I’m heading for, at that time it was Battery Park City and I get to the sea wall. I’m heading towards the Hudson to escape because I figured if this one went down, the next one’s just about to go down as well, and it’s time to get outta there.
Yeah. When I got up, I was very dizzy and thirsty. One of the early signs of shock in a young person is a rapid heartbeat and thirst because, oh, what happens is your blood vessels constrict and that affects you the need. Your response is to, to want to drink, to fill up your blood.
Julie: Oh my gosh. Okay.
Greg: I could feel my lower back swelling, so I knew I had.
Internal bleeding. And it turns out my gluteal artery was ruptured. I didn’t know that at the time. So what I first did was I took my belt and I lowered it around my butt, which was swelling in order to provide some sort of tamponade and stopped the bleeding. It didn’t make any difference, but that was all I could do.
And I headed west over to the seawall. There’s a street that goes right up to the dock, or there was at that time, um, in, on, on Liberty Street. When I got to the seawall, I ran, took Sean Crowley, who was at that time, the police commission was Bernard Kerik, and I ran into Crowley and he was covered from head to toe with white dust, as was I, I didn’t realize it until I started to look at my hands and my clothes, and they were just completely white.
I am standing at the sea wall and I’m dizzy and I’m thirsty, and it’s clear I’m bleeding. And Sean goes, we gotta get you outta here. I thought that was a good idea. I said, well, how do we do that? And he said, the harbor boats are responding. And sure enough, coming off the Hudson were police boats and they were full siren, full speed, heading for the dock.
So sure enough, one of the harbor boats pulls up and to the sea wall. However, it’s not an access, it’s not a, a port, it’s not a dock. Yeah.
Julie: It’s not really easy to climb onto it.
Greg: And there’s a fence to p Yeah. Prevent you from falling into the Hudson. Yeah. And the, the fence was about, I guess waist high or whatever, as well as I can remember it.
And sure enough, they take a ladder and they have a ladder with hooks on it. And they threw it up against the sea wall. And the next thing I know Sean Crowley is pushing me over the sea wall, helping me get it down. And I’m climbing on a ladder and I plop down on the, the harbor boat. And the harbor boat had, was narrow and it had a dock.
Uh, it had a, a, a deck that surrounded it that was about three feet wide. And by the time I get on the boat, I couldn’t stand anymore. I was really dizzy. And I lie out on the, on the deck. And the next thing I know they’re talking about heading for New Jersey, where they were starting to prepare for survivors who were gonna be evacuated by boat as they’re taking off A firefighter runs to the sea wall and yells weight jumps over the sea wall and jumps onto the deck and breaks his leg oof.
So that his bone is sticking out. And all the way to New Jersey. He screams and keeps me awake because of the pain. His pain. Yeah. Uh, meanwhile my glasses fell off because I was lying there and I wanted to clean them and whatever reason. So I have a pair of glasses that are in the bottom of the Hudson somewhere.
And anyway, we take off and we get to New Jersey to the Liberty Pier, where they had set up a bunch of ambulances and a bunch of responders and first responders. And next thing I know they go, doc, you gotta get off the boat. And I couldn’t really see well, and I was gonna roll. However, next thing I know, they stop me and they go, if you go that way, you’re gonna be in the water.
Well, not, not a good, not a good idea. So they, they sort of carry, Sean told me this subsequently after I’ve seen him, you know, after I recovered. But, uh, he. Tells me, okay, we had to sort of push you onto the dock because you were really unable to stand. So I check my pulse and I can’t feel it. So I know it’s time to get to somewhere.
I’m lying there with my arms open and, uh, they cut the jacket off me, my, uh, responder jacket. And, uh, they start poking to get an IV in. Now the paramedics and first responders are only capable of accessing peripheral lines, IVs, and when you’re in shock, you have no accessible veins. So I look up at the guys and I go, guys, I’m a surgeon.
I’m bleeding. If you don’t get me to a hospital soon, I’m gonna bleed to death. And sure enough, they threw me in an ambulance. Next thing I know, I’m on my way to Jersey City Medical Center. Now I don’t know how many people have ever ridden in an ambulance. Especially as a patient, but you have no idea where you’re going.
I didn’t have glasses. I didn’t see where I was going. I had no idea how we were going, but I could feel it. And, and an ambulance ride with a siren and as an emergency with the lights and siren is a rollercoaster ride. But sure enough, we get to Jersey City, bring up a gurney, they throw me on a gurney. Now again, I don’t know how many people have ever experienced a gurney or being rushed into an emergency room, but all you do is look up and you see lights and ceiling.
Julie: I just would imagine it would be so disorienting.
Greg: It’s totally on with no, no vision. ’cause all I could see was blurry. The glasses were still in the Hudson. Yeah. I, I get into the ER and they roll me onto a bed. A bed, and next thing I know, there’s two people attending me. They shove in an IV in my shoulder subclavian line.
They start transfusing me and they’re talking to me. And Doc, you’re gonna make it. So I made it to Jersey City
Julie: in the days and the weeks after that. How was your recovery? And I mean, what did your job become well, did you work? Did you immediately have to retire? What did that look like?
Greg: Well, first of all, let’s talk about in the hospital.
Uh, I wanted to contact my wife. To tell her. I, of course killed because then actually, uh, a message went out from police operations to the mayor to Giuliani, who, uh, who I knew well, from all the experience of all the times that I had worked with him. Uh, originally he was told that he, they thought I was killed.
And then the harbor guys contacted Central, the police department to tell ’em no, I not only wasn’t killed, but I’m on my way to New Jersey. I took a yacht ride across to Hudson, and there I was in Jersey getting transfused. So, uh, the, uh, rumor of my death was greatly exaggerated as Mark Twain’s head. In any event, after a day at Jersey City, uh, I lived in Great Neck, which was the other side of the Hudson and needed, and I really wanted to come, become, get closer, and I called City Hall on the next morning, but that night they had picked up my wife.
And brought her or tried to bring her over to Jersey City to see me. ’cause that’s routine. A, a sergeant had responded and, uh, she, she, she went to the George Washington Bridge, which is a reasonable access. However, it was closed and they wouldn’t let her through, so she had to go south through the Lincoln Tunnel.
Uh, and she eventually got there, took them about four hours. But the good news was she brought me glasses so I could see something. Anyway, uh, the next morning I called, uh, and my wife came and she, she looked at me and the first thing she said was, you turned gray because of what happened. And it was just the ash and the dust and the, all the residual of nine 11 that was in my hair.
So I hadn’t turned gray then. Now I’m gray. But, uh. I wanted to get back a little closer, and I called City Hall and spoke to one of the people in charge of, uh, the Office of Emergency Management. And I was the only person who moved from one hospital to another on September 12th. And they took me to NYU where I spent three days with essentially just x-rays and not a whole lot happening because all the physicians and all the at attendants at NYU and at all the major hospitals in the city had gone over to the pier, uh, on, uh, the west side waiting for survivors.
But there were not. Nobody came the first night. They pulled around 25 people out of the rubble. Uh, there were only, uh, they estimate, uh, although it’s a rough estimation, they haven’t got accurate information about it, but they estimate only 400 survivors of September 11th. We’re actually hospitalized that first day, uh, for more than 48 hours.
So I spent three days in NYU then it was apparent that nothing was gonna get done. They told me the CAT scan wasn’t working because it was tied into the World Trade Centers antennas, and they couldn’t get a signal. So therefore, you know, they could do only so much, and we felt the best place for me was to get home.
So I packed up. I ended up going home and waited over time. Over the next couple of days, I saw physicians locally, all of whom knew me very well, and I got my CAT scan. They told me that, uh, I would had internal bleeding from the gluteal lottery. I had multiple rib fractures. I had three transverse processed spine fractures.
I had herniated discs, and nobody was ready to operate or do anything about it, which was fine with me. I had been through enough. Yeah, so I started recovering and felt it at some point, I could either resume a career or help out in different ways. However, standing and walking and getting around was tough.
The, the following Monday, the, the World Trade Center went down on Tuesday, the following Monday I got called by the chief of Operations at the recovery site. And now it had rained over the weekend. It was a nasty weekend. The first weekend, the attitude was that they were gonna do recovery and bring out people who were buried or were injured, et cetera.
Uh, all nobody was found. The only survivors they found, and the last one was that night, and they pulled out some people. But the following week I was called to go down to the site because a charlottean physician had shown up from somewhere outta state and was setting up a facility to quote test cops for, oh, my pulmonary exposure, et cetera.
And Hey, doc, we need you to take this guy and throw him out and on the phone. I said to them, just throw him out. No, he won’t listen to us. He needs somebody in charge. So I got picked up. Buy a police car and taken down to the, and actually I was awake enough when I got there. Our guys had assembled, uh, they had assemble, assembled a headquarters to start the recovery process.
And, um, uh, the, actually the first couple of days it was called rescue, but then when it was clear, everyone was dead, it became recovery. Uh, I got to the recovery area where the cadaver dogs were, and the cops were all assembling and they, they were trying to wash and stuff. I got out of the car, I couldn’t breathe.
The air was that thick, that I couldn’t catch my breath. I ended up soaking a handkerchief so I could get inside, and inside was air conditioning. And uh, I see this so-called physician and I go, why are you here? Well, I want to test their lungs and this, I says, you’re in the way if you’re not outta here within the next hour.
We’re gonna have you arrested. So sure enough, and then I went back home. I had had enough, I had seen enough. It was an unreal, totally surreal sight. Over time, I was still looking forward to recovery and going back to my general surgery practice, I, I still had plenty of years ahead of me and yeah, but I, because of my back injury and my chest injury, it was almost impossible to stand for more than a half hour without a lot of misery and pain.
So I waited and several weeks later, uh, I started going to therapy. I started using painkillers. \ But I was involved with all kinds of stuff because I knew what went on down there, what was what was necessary on nine 11 and what would happen to the people who were working there.
The amount of ash and the amount of debris and the amount of everything, in spite of the fact that it was announced that the air quality was acceptable. I knew damn well it wasn’t. Yeah, I knew what the air was like. I knew what the dust was like. I knew what the particulate matter was like, and I made it a point so that what what happened was cops were assigned 16 hour tours.
They would work. To start digging out of the rubble, finding bodies, remove the, the rubble, et cetera. First they were doing it with just buckets to try to recover any bodies, so nothing. Then it, it evolved to derricks and cranes and stuff, but I insisted that everyone who was working the tours documented, they would.
I insisted they get exposure reports, cops, when they’re exposed to any sort of obnoxious material. And firefighters too, when they’re exposed to anything, have to have to supply an exposure report where you were, what it was, what you thought it was, and what the effect on you was at that time. Nobody got sick.
But everyone was exposed, and the ash was so thick that no, uh, that when you would go down there, you would get white ash and white debris up to your knees just from walking on the streets. And three times a day, the sanitation department would send the water trucks to hose it all down. Uh, that was about it.
But all the guys, so I, I also had spoken to the mayor and said, you know, why aren’t our people, why aren’t, why isn’t everybody wearing hazmat suits? Because this stuff was unknown. We knew there was asbestos in the air because we had the blueprints from the original towers and from the original buildings.
In fact, the guys at the headquarters had the information. We knew there was asbestos to the 70th floor of tower one. And then after that, it became apparent that, uh, asbestos was a toxic material. So they stopped using it, but they didn’t remove it. But it was clearly in the air and it was part of it. But the mix, nobody knew what it was.
It was gravel. It was, uh, some of the stories, some of the information we had, there was no single computer ever found intact at that time. The computers were these large, they looked like television sets. If, if you recall, in the, uh, in the nineties, uh, television, it, it, they all had about a pound of lead in.
All of that was completely pulverized. And in the air. There was no single Fluor fluorescent lamp found. Now, picture the entire 110 stories of the World Trade Center times two with fluorescent lights. Every single light was pulverized, but they all had mercury in ’em. All of that, all of that powder, all of that dust was in the air, all the.
There was not a single chair, there was not a single desk. All of that was formaldehyde and it was all kinds of other unknown toxic mixes, all of which was pulverized, and it was all in the dust, and nobody bothered to really do the analysis at the time. But that’s what you were breathing when you went down there.
Yeah. So it would be, it became very clear to me that people were going to get sick from that over time. And that’s why I insisted that they all document the exposures. So, and, and then my opinion was that this was gonna lead to cancer. So the response I got from the rest of a lot of the medical community and the other surgeons was, there’s no science that proves that.
I said, you don’t need. You don’t need Science Mayor’s office gave me the old, uh, we don’t know what it is, but we’re not convinced that it’s dangerous. Okay. I was convinced that it was, ’cause I was there. And the other thing is you couldn’t argue with me since I was there, you know, and I experienced it. I, I experienced it firsthand, so, you know, and I had breathed it and I absorbed it.
I had gotten my nose burned from it and everything. In addition, you have to keep in mind that those things they tell us at the time, or they guess aren’t always right, there are more people who died of cancer related to nine 11 than died that day, and they’re still dying of cancer.
So that finally, and I agitated multiple times about it. I agitated to the mayor’s office and to the federal people who investigated that people who were getting cancer were getting cancer in larger numbers than would be anticipated in those populations. And originally everybody poo-pooed and there’s no way and what have you.
But when you look at the statistics, people are getting unusual cancers and more cancers than anyone would’ve anticipated based on just that population. So the, the toxins in the air and the reality of it was, is real. And those people who now at least are acknowledging it, one of my close friends who’s a police officer, was a police officer.
She’s a 50 plus year old female who worked the pile. Came out with kidney cancer and she was operating on, and I have firefighter friends who’ve had kidney cancer and prostate cancer and breast cancer. You say, well, how would that cause it? Well, first of all, the dust was as fine as they’ve ever seen based on any sort of dust that was ever acknowledged except for at Mount St.
Helen’s. So the pulverized dust was more exposure and more mixed. The combination of, of what they found in the dust was different from anything anyone’s ever experienced before. So you have this soup or this. The inhalation of stuff that no one knew what it would cause. So the attitude is, oh, there’s no way.
And it’s not science, it’s just dead wrong. So over time I insisted that they all, so they worked 16 hour tours and every so often I would respond and I would go down there to see what was going on. And I went to supervise and make sure that the guys were doing the, um, the Salvation Army set up a tent and there was this huge tent where, hi, they would feed the first responders and the workers, uh, oh.
Back to the hazmat suits. Uh, the mayor said, we only have. Less than a thousand hazmat suits available and we have 10,000 people work in the pile, so we can’t put some people in it be. The other thing is respirators were, were provided the inhale, the inhalers, but they would clog in 15 minutes. So the guy, the guys would take ’em off.
The firefighters had respirators because they used them on the job and they would wear ’em for 15, 20 minutes and they would completely clog up, so you couldn’t breathe through ’em. So you would see the firefighters taking off the respirators and smoking because oh my gosh, it, it was such a stressful situation.
Yeah. Because as you were digging, every so often you would come upon a body, you would come upon debris. That was a wallet, that was an id, that was pieces. And there were parts, body parts all over the place. There were hands and feet and then there were pictures of these things. And you know, they don’t publish ’em because it wasn’t, you know, something you would wanna see.
Yeah. But that’s how they would identify bodies. And all the body parts were sent down in medical examiner’s office. And, and then I also responded by going up to the, to the landfill because a lot of the debris was put on barges and sent up to the Staten Island landfill. And I went up there to see how the guys were doing up there.
It was so peculiar, uh, the, every so often the ground would spontaneously combust and actually catch fire. That’s where I saw the jet engine. And so over time, you know, it was a long, drawn out, horrendous process where the guys were encouraged, but they were working 16 hour tours when you would go into the, when you would work the tour, and I didn’t work the tour, but I would visit you and you would go for lunch.
As you walk through the, um, the, through the, the food tent from the Salvation Army, all it did was wash your feet. So your shoes would get wet from sprayers that would wash off the dust that you were tracking. And the guys, they would, most of the people who worked the tours would wear, you know, jeans or whatever, they would put their clothing in a plastic bag and keep it there so that they didn’t bring it home.
Because the fear was you would bring home asbestos, you would bring home all this other stuff, uh, mercury and uh, you would bring home a fluorine and, uh, the lamps and glass and fibers and stuff like that. So that, that was over the time it took them multiple months. Obviously to finish clearing the site, which is recorded history, but it, it was a totally surreal situation.
I remember at Christmas they put up notes from people. The first thing that happened was all the people who had loved ones, they were over 2300 people killed in the this attack. And I would go over in the daytime or at night and they put up a Christmas tree with all of the cards and all the requests of people who had identified their loved ones who were never found the, to this day, there are 1600 bodies that haven’t been identified.
That 1600 loved ones who would essentially disintegrated in the collapse of the World Trade Center. I saw stuff that, uh, you know, you didn’t really wanna see, and the museum that the memorial has documented a lot of this stuff. But for example, when the building collapsed. Four floors of collapse were less than four feet in width.
So picture a floor of concrete. ’cause that’s how the building was built on top of another floor. And you in between it crushed like a butterfly above my God. Yeah. And, and that’s what the guys were working with. And they would recover an occasional body part or they would, they found a cop’s shield and that’s how they would identify him.
One of the police officers, Timmy Roy was a, a cop who had worked on my roof. He did it as part-time job in my house and he was covered with tattoos. And I would make fun of him and say, I wanna write my name, but there’s no room. That’s how they recognized his body. They found his back.
Julie: Oh my God. And they found
Greg: his skin.
And by, based on one of the tattoos, they, they identified him. They, uh, Moira Smith was a cop who had worked the academy. They found her shield crushed, and that’s how they knew that she was, they found her body. So, you know, the recovery and the, the removal took months and months and months with people constantly working down there.
Volunteers came from all over the country, and it was a time of heroics. Police officers were heroes and people prepared for that, and no one could get, what would happen was the site at one point was so bad that they wouldn’t allow photographs, and then over time people would come down there and take pictures, and then you would get celebrities to show up and I would meet this one or that one.
I remember the day Bush went down there and after. I actually, the following weekend after nine 11, I was sitting in at home recovering or hurting and miserable, taking my drugs to k kill some of the pain. My wife got a call from Bo Wagner. Bo Wagner was Giuliani’s bodyguard, who I knew well, and it was, can we speak to Dr.
Fried? And I had finally fallen asleep and she goes, uh, I’m afraid not. He just went to sleep. Well, I think he’ll want to take this call. It was Mayor Giuliani calling me from, at that time, Yankee Stadium because the Yankees were playing in the World Series and it, he called and I remember him going. I heard you were killed.
I said, well, I guess not. Otherwise we really wouldn’t be talking. And he goes, uh, well I’m glad you’re okay. When you’re well or when you’re better, come see me. And he, uh, put a headquarters over at the pier on, uh, west 40 some odd Street, 46th Street, I think, over near the Intrepid. And, uh, it took me about three weeks before I could get it together, enough to go over there.
And, uh, he gave me a big hug. And I’m glad you’re okay. I was still on call for the police department and I hadn’t yet put in my papers to retire from the pd. And I was still thinking about recovering enough to go back to work as a police, as a general surgeon. I hadn’t done anything, but I was still talking about going back.
I got a call one night that two police officers were shot in Staten Island from my house in Great Neck to Staten Island was about 45 minutes. At high speed to get there. And I responded because I was able to drive at this point. This was weeks later, I got to Staten Island after about a 45 minute drive with lights and siren.
I tried to get out of the car and couldn’t, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t stand. I two cops had to help me out and I saw the police Commissioner Kelly, and I look at him and I go, I’m done. And he goes, what do you mean? I said, I’ve had enough. I can’t do this anymore. And that’s what made me decide I was gonna retire from the police department.
I also was approached by several doctors and CEOs of hospitals that if I wasn’t going back to work, come work for us. I had known these people for years. Sure enough. I realized that, and even to this day, if I stand for more than a half hour or if I’m in one position, my back hurts too much. Mm-hmm. And you really, it’s not proper to have a surgeon who can’t do more than a half hour of surgery.
Yeah. So that’s it in a nutshell. But, uh, nine 11 was an earth shaking event that still remains in the collective memory of a whole lot of people. However, it’s 25 years ago.
Julie: Yeah.
Greg: 25 years is a generation and there were young people to this day who weren’t born, who were two years old. Every so often I’ll say, you know, I’m a survivor of nine 11, and someone will tell me, yeah, I was in first grade.
I sort of remember that day, et cetera. But it’s still a vivid part of the current history. It’s still part of us. It doesn’t go away that easily. That last week. They identified two bodies based on DNA, that since the technology has improved, they actually sent, one of them was actually from Long Island, but they actually contacted the family to say, we identified your loved ones remains because the medical examiner’s office on 30th Street still has all the DNA, all the records, all the bodies of, all of, not the bodies, but any of the remnants of all those unidentified areas, uh, unidentified people.
Uh, I also found out that the firefighter I was standing over, what had happened was the cuff of my pants were covered with his blood. In fact, when I got to the hospital, they asked me, are you bleeding from your legs? And I said, no, I don’t think so. And sure enough, when I went home, I cut off the bottoms of my pants and gave him to the medical examiner’s office.
Where one of the people I knew who worked there identified who that person was.
Julie: Oh my God. You have been through more than most of us can even imagine. And you didn’t just survive it, you stayed in that fight long after the dust settled. So I do wanna shift from what you lived through to what you hope lives on.
You know, we, you mentioned briefly the next generation, but what do you want the next generation to know about that day? What do you hope that people carry forward when they think of nine 11 and those who showed up?
Greg: Well, I think the most important lesson to be learned is that there’s bad things in the world.
That there are people who would kill you, who would wanna kill you, who would want to tear down those things that you’ve constructed. The, as a matter of fact, I’m still getting communication from Guantanamo and from the Armed Forces because they have prisoners in Guantanamo who are eventually, supposedly getting tried for their crime so that there are bad things that still persist.
Uh, Khali, k Khalil Sheikh Mohammed, KSMI get a letter every so often saying, uh, they have a new judge, they have a new this. Uh, and at, uh, I guess 20 years ago, they contacted me. Would I be interested in going to Guantanamo to testify against them? And I assured them I would not. But, uh, yeah, he said, you know, I don’t have to tell people what happened.
Everybody knows it, there’s plenty of evidence about it anyway, and they haven’t decided what to do with him, but he’s still alive. And I think all of us should take with us that it’s not over. It’s just different. That killing and civilian attacks. Terrorism is the attack on civilian, non-competent. That’s how it’s defined.
And terrorism is real. Terrorism persists. Whether it’s a war in Gaza or it’s a war in, um, in the Ukraine or any of these places, it’s, it’s a reality and one has to keep it in mind and be aware of it. It’s not all a better roses, and this is part of life and it’s a reality. And I think also people should take with them the heroics of not just myself, but.
All those people who were willing to risk their lives and sacrifice their lives as first responders, that people, as bad as people are, that’s how good people are. There were over 200, over 300 firefighters killed that day. There were over 24 police officers killed that day, and they were there because they wanted to help and they were looking to save people’s lives.
So it’s, it’s a double-edged type thing, but it’s a reality. It’s not long history. It’s not long ago.
Julie: Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for this conversation. Uh, to learn more about Dr. Gregory Fried and his decades of service, you can visit g fried md.com. His memoir, life on the Thin Blue Line was published in 2017 and is available now on Amazon. You can also find it linked in the show notes from today.
The book is currently being optioned for a streaming series or film. So if today’s conversation moved you, the full story is even more powerful on the page. Some episodes are not gonna ask for a clever sign off, they’re just gonna ask for quiet gratitude and for remembrance. Dr. Free’s story isn’t just about survival, it is about devotion.
To his role, his team, to the people who kept showing up even when it hurt. If this conversation moved you, I hope that you will pass it on, not just to honor him, but to remind us all of the strength it takes to stand in the ashes and the courage it takes to keep going. Thank you as always for listening.
