
(Beth Clifton collage)
Remembering national trauma
September 11, 2022 marks the twenty-first anniversary of the national trauma the U.S. experienced as result of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The aftermath of those attacks brought global traumas including ongoing warfare in much of the Middle East, Central Asia, and parts of North Africa.
U.S. troops were evacuated from Afghanistan in August 2021, after a 20-year occupation that began with the effort to capture 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, who was finally killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011.
(See What does the Taliban mean for animals in Afghanistan?)

Search-and-rescue dog on duty at the World Trade Center.
(Joel Meyerowitz photo)
Animal heroes
Countless Facebook memes, web postings, and retrospective blogs commemorate the animal heroes of 9/11.
Among them were Salty, the Labrador retriever guide dog who led Omar E. Riviera, 43, down from the 71st floor of the World Trade Center, after the first jet hit 25 floors above; Roselle, the yellow Labrador guide dog who led Michael Hingson down from the 78th floor; and the estimated 300 search dogs, 200 of them Federal Emergency Management Agency-certified, who worked both at the World Trade Center site and at the Fresh Kills landfill, where they sought human remains among the rubble brought from Manhattan by truck.
Only one dog was killed at the World Trade Center site, a bomb-sniffing dog named Sirius who was brought to the scene by New York/New Jersey Port Authority police officer David Lim. Cyrus was crushed in his basement kennel when the first tower fell. The officer survived.
Humane response
The dogs’ eyes were “pounded by the intense smoke, and their paws are getting burned and cut by glass debris,” said the Suffolk County SPCA, which helped the North Shore Animal League America to staff an on-site veterinary support van.
Among the last commuters to cross the Whitestone bridge on the morning of 9/11 before it was closed, North Shore Animal League America operations director Perry Fina saw smoke pouring out of the World Trade Center disaster on his way to work and mobilized the animal relief team by cell phone while stuck in traffic.

Perry Fina (1949-2008) led the North Shore Animal League 9/11 rescue effort.
Fina, who died in January 2008, bunked for the duration of the relief operation at the North Shore adoption shelter, with other staff. They followed a disaster plan previously practiced during severe snow storms.
Rumors flew long after 9/11 that many of the working dogs died from after-effects of their exposure to dust and smoke. Research by the American Kennel Club and Canine Health Foundation established in 2006 that the mortality rate among dogs who worked at the World Trade Center site was about 30% over the next five years, compared to 22% in a control sample.
None of the 9/11 hero dogs were pit bulls or of other bully breeds, a point worth mentioning only because of widely distributed cut-and-paste efforts to insert pit bulls into photos of the 9/11 rescue effort.
Human losses
Many human animal advocates and rescuers were killed on 9/11. Among them:

David G. Arce. (www.firehero.com photo)
Jean A. Andrucki, associated with WildNetAfrica.org, who worked for the New York/New Jersey Port Authority treasury office at the World Trade Center;
David Arce, 36, a New York City firefighter who was remembered by his mother Margaret for “always bringing home stray cats and dogs”;
Colin Bonnett, 39, of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a Barbados-born equestrian, cat rescuer, and former veterinary assistant, who was a Marsh & McLennan telecommunications expert in the World Trade Center;
Sondra Conaty Brace, 60, who with her husband David Brace kept 25 rescued cats at their home in Staten Island, was killed at her job in the World Trade Center;

David Charlebois. (www.yorktownalums.org photo)
David Charlebois, a sustaining guardian of the Washington D.C. Humane Society, who was first officer on American Airlines flight 77, the jet that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon in Washington D.C.;
Nancy Farley, 45, a Jersey City cat rescuer, who worked for Reinsurance Solutions Inc. on the 94th floor of 1 World Trade Center;
David L.W. Fodor, 38, a former breeder and exhibitor of Rottweilers, including a national champion, who had turned to rescuing shelter animals, was killed on duty as a volunteer floor fire warden at #2 World Trade Center;
Angel Juarbe, 35, rescuer of eight stray dogs, who was a firefighter with Ladder Company 12 in Chelsea, New York;

Angel Juarbe (www.fallenheroes.org photo)
Catherine L. Loguidice, 30, a Brooklyn cat rescuer, who was a Cantor Fitzgerald bond trader on the 105th floor of 1 World Trade Center;
Timothy O’Sullivan, an employee of the Wildlife Conservation Society;
Laura Rockefeller, 41, of White Plains, New York, who was directing a seminar for Risk Waters at Windows on the World in the World Trade Center, and was memorialized with a bench at the dog run in Riverside Park, New York City; and
Kirsten R. Santiago, 26, handler of two dogs for Bright & Beautiful Therapy Dogs Inc. of New Jersey, who worked for Insurance Overload Systems in the World Trade Center.

(Faye McBride photo)
Many others involved
The events of 9/11 involved countless other members of the animal advocacy community.
Then-American SPCA president Larry Hawk, for instance, lost his sister, who was a flight attendant aboard the first plane that hit the World Trade Center.
Friends of Animals president Priscilla Feral’s daughter spent the day trapped in the rubble, covered with human remains.
Longtime New York City activist Elizabeth Forel was two blocks from the World Trade Center when the first jet hit it, and was among the first blood donors on the scene.

Garo Alexanian.
Companion Animal Welfare Network founder Garo Alexanian and dog behaviorist Bobby DeFranco were working in mainstream TV news at the time, from an office in the World Trade Center, but were out of the office when all hell broke loose. They spent the next three days covering the situation nonstop.
AHA conference
The American Humane Association annual conference was underway three blocks from the Pentagon when Flight 77 slammed into it, witnessed by several attendees.
The conference concentrated experienced animal rescuers and disaster relief vehicles near the scene, but since relatively few animals were involved there, most of the conference attendees found little to do beyond trying to get back to their own animal shelters, scattered all over the U.S., with all civilian flights grounded.
Longterm effects of 9/11 included an economic slump that severely afflicted every phase of animal advocacy and humane work. Loss of funding for spay/neuter programs brought the only statistically significant cumulative increase in shelter killing, nationwide, of the past 40 years. U.S. donor aid to overseas humane programs slumped until after the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

(Beth Clifton photo)
“Meat is murder”
The most portentious and yet perhaps most overlooked aspect of 9/11 involving animals, however, may have been how attack planner Osama bin Laden persuaded his 19 suicidal hijackers to equate their massacre of more 2,996 people with meat slaughter.
Copies of bin Laden’s four-page final instructions to the hijackers were found in the misdirected luggage of ringleader Mohamed Atta; the wreckage of United Airlines flight 93, crashed as passengers resisted hijacking near Somerset, Pennsylvania; and a car left at Dulles International Airport in Washington D.C. by the hijackers who hit the Pentagon.
“You must make your knife sharp, and you must not discomfort your animal during the slaughter,” bin Laden ordered, describing slashing the throats of flight attendants, passengers, and pilots as hallal ritual killing, like dispatching sheep and goats at Ramadan or the Eid.

(Beth Clifton photo)
Instructions
This was the 13th of bin Laden’s 15 instructions, translated for The New York Times by Imad Musa of the Capitol Communications Group.
“If you slaughter,” bin Laden emphasized later in his instructions, again echoing the requirements of hallal slaughter, “do not cause the discomfort of those you are killing, because this is one of the practices of the prophet, peace be upon him.”
Many and perhaps most of the nine billion animals sent to slaughter in the U.S. each year, and the billions more killed in other nations, have at least as long to sense doom as did the 9/11 victims.
Indeed, the animals’ last cries may have much more in common with the cell phone calls made by some of the 9/11 victims than the typical meat-eater would like to believe.

Merritt & Beth Clifton
Doomed animals, too, often put up frantic resistance, like the passengers who failed to retake United Airlines flight 93, but saved many lives by causing the hijackers to crash the plane far from any target.
The horror of 9/11 exemplified the meaning of the animal advocacy phrase “Meat is Murder!”
No one needs to take the words of vegan activists for it. Osama bin Laden himself said so.
Why would he order a slashing of the throats if he knew that all passengers and hijackers were going to die anyway?
The hijackers’ modus operandi was apparently to grab a flight attendant first and slash her throat to intimidate the rest of the passengers and crew.
Specifics of photograph used: (SAR dog on duty at the World Trade Center. (Joel Meyerowitz photo)
That is NYPD ESU Officer Peter Davis and K9 Apollo. They were part of the NYPD ESU K9.
NYPD ESU has K9s trained in USAR, SAR and Cadaver in addition to the more well-known Patrol/SWAT/NARC/BOMB venues.
Some NYPD ESU USAR K9s can be/are deployed by both NYPD and FEMA as part of FEMA USAR, NYTF-1.
In this instance one can determine from the photograph that Officer Davis was deployed to the WTC as part of the NYPD ESU K9 because, among other things, the photo shows:
1) He is ARMED.
2) The word “POLICE” on the ID tape above the left pocket
3) The K-9 lapel pins
4) The K9 badge attached to Apollo’s collar
5) ESU shoulder patch
6) The FEMA USAR Uniform is configured differently re patches, tapes and other identifying insignia placement
7) SAR K9 deployment would seldom if ever result in the type of detritus visible on the uniform or require the use of shin guards.
Specifics of the terminology used:
USAR AND SAR are NOT the same in their training or deployment venues, nor are those two terms interchangeable.
The two disciplines have unique training and deployment requirements. Such as: the desired behavior for the trained indication, the type of footing encountered, distance away from handler while working and to a great extent, even the K9’s physical body type. None of these requirements lend themselves to being easily “hot swapped.”
USAR = URBAN SEARCH AND RESCUE
Specific to searches for live victims trapped/buried during a natural or manmade disaster. Initial stages.
SAR = SEARCH AND RESCUE
Specific to searches for lost persons such as an overdue hiker or Alzheimer walk away.
RECOVERY/CADAVER/HRD
Includes later stages of USAR as part of the recovery operation, wilderness SAR, clandestine burial, disarticulated remains, forensic and water searches. Many cadaver K9s ARE cross trained to do both USAR and SAR venues, including cross trained to live finds.
We never go back, and we never leave, and all we do is in memory of those we left behind, and always take with us, and those who serve,
‘So others may live!’
Outtake from Animal Planet:
https://youtu.be/_rgBuZdNgNM
Six years ago I created the Hero Dog Awards to celebrate the extraordinary relationship between people and dogs. (I was the show’s executive producer for the first three years and I sold the show to Hallmark Channel.) The first year of the show – 10 years after 9/11 – we honored two extraordinary dogs who served in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. MWD / FEMA Certified Dog Sage (a Border Collie) won our Search & Rescue category. She was one of the first search and rescue dog teams on the scene at the Pentagon. She alerted to and recovered the terrorist who flew the plane into the Pentagon. Roselle (a Yellow Labrador) won the Guide Dog category and the Hero Dog of the Year award for leading her master Michael Hingson down 71 flights of stairs from the inferno at World Trade Center I. Roselle delivered Michael to safety at the opening to the subway station. Remarkable dogs risking their lives unconditionally to save ours.
Here are the story segments that I produced:
Sage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIgE3NEC-AQ&index=3&list=PL9z3A7Ux7rM6wCiz1ijZHdrygRCf7t-xJ
Roselle::
The world was forever changed on that morning. RIP all whose lives were lost.
Thanks to Gwendolyn Hanan for that information.
Thank you for remembering my Father Perry Fina.
For the sake of the humans and animals who died on this day and in the days and years to follow due to cancer and other medical problems caused by this horrific ordeal, my heart goes out to you all and I hope that we may never forget.
You are all heros of the USA.
I was there at the AHA Conference. I also bought the book you showed. My daughter and her husband were living in Virginia at the time and we were staying with them. As soon as my kids heard, my son-in-law came and got me out of the hotel before the subway system was closed down. My daughter worked across the street from where one of the planes hit. She wasn’t hurt.