- Title: The 9/11 responders who recovered wallets, IDs and body parts from trees
- Date: 7th September 2021
- Summary: SHANKSVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA, UNITED STATES (RECENT) (REUTERS) VIEW OF SIGN READING: "FLIGHT 93 NATIONAL MEMORIAL" ARBORISTS BEN HAUPT AND MARK TRAUTMAN WALKING THROUGH MEMORIAL WITH FAMILY MEMBERS NAMES OF VICTIMS ON MEMORIAL (SOUNDBITE) (English) ARBORIST, BEN HAUPT, SAYING: "Well, we're right here at the crash site and just over that wall right there, a plane went down on the ground there and crashed and kind of vaporized, I guess, and put plane parts and people parts and everything else back in the canopy of those hemlocks. And it was our job to get as many of the parts or evidence out of the trees that we could." TREES AT MEMORIAL SITE HAUPT AND TRAUTMAN WALKING THROUGH TREES (SOUNDBITE) (English) ARBORIST, MARK TRAUTMAN, SAYING: "Well, they (FBI) were doing their searches on their hands and knees, their searches around us. They avoided going under us but once we found something and we just had to notify one of them ... they called it HR. You find human remains, you let them know. (SOUNDBITE) (English) ARBORIST, BEN HAUPT, SAYING: "And we found a lot of it. It was little pieces." (SOUNDBITE) (English) ARBORIST, MARK TRAUTMAN, SAYING: "The biggest piece that I remember, there were two pieces that stand out in my head. One was the time we found somebody's whole foot, missing a big toe. The biggest part that we found was somebody's buttocks." WHITE FLASH (SOUNDBITE) (English) ARBORIST, MARK TRAUTMAN, SAYING: "There were parts as big as a kitchen table. That's the reference I remember using. It was as big as a kitchen table. But on the, explosion, it was just all burnt trees burned, charred, and there was a lot of aircraft. The shrapnel, all of it stuck in the trees, we had to be really careful when we climbed." (SOUNDBITE) (English) ARBORIST, BEN HAUPT, SAYING: "So we didn't cut our ropes and ourselves." (SOUNDBITE) (English) ARBORIST, MARK TRAUTMAN, SAYING: "Yeah, it was tough." VIEW OF PATH AT MEMORIAL FOR FLIGHT 93 HAUPT AND TRAUTMAN WALKING THROUGH TREES (SOUNDBITE) (English) ARBORIST, BEN HAUPT, SAYING: "We're just guys, we're tree guys." (SOUNDBITE) (English) ARBORIST, MARK TRAUTMAN, SAYING: "We retrieved the evidence for the FBI. I'm proud we did it. It's part of our life, it's the most important thing I've ever done and I tell my therapist that." VIEW OF VISITORS TO MEMORIAL FOR FLIGHT 93 TREES HAUPT AT CHURCH WITH HIS DAUGHTER (SOUNDBITE) (English) ARBORIST, BEN HAUPT, SAYING: "I ended up going down there with Mark at that time. And so I went down there and .... yeah, I saw all the really, the wickedness of man and what took place with all the body parts lying everywhere and the plane blowing up, I mean, obviously sins in the world and I saw the worst or I thought the worst, but I'm sure it could be way worse than that. But what helped me cope with it is the fact that Jesus Christ died for man and then he rose again the third day and that he was with me and I could talk to him." WHITE FLASH (SOUNDBITE) (English) ARBORIST, BEN HAUPT, SAYING: "I said I've done some studying of the Bible and how bad hell is and I look at this place and I know this isn't hell but if this isn't, then how bad is hell? And I just broke down."
- Embargoed: 22nd September 2021 00:23
- Keywords: Pennsylvania September 11 Shanksville crash site hijack plane terror attack
- Location: SHANKSVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA, UNITED STATES
- City: SHANKSVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA, UNITED STATES
- Country: USA
- Topics: Conflicts/War/Peace,International/National Security,United States
- Reuters ID: LVA002ETUZ7T3
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: The hemlock grove where United Airlines Flight 93 hurtled to the ground in rural Pennsylvania still haunts Mark Trautman and Ben Haupt 20 years later.
Before the al Qaeda attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the local arborists climbed trees only to take down branches. When the hijacked airliner slammed into the soil in a fiery explosion, turning the woods near Shanksville into a gruesome crime scene suspended above the ground, the two men would be called in for a task that transformed their lives.
For nearly a week, they climbed through the blackened canopy garlanded with wreckage and gore. They plucked down vital evidence for the prosecution of al Qaeda plotters and found remains for grieving families with no bodies to bury.
They were among the most extraordinary yet overlooked early responders to the attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed, including all 37 passengers, seven crew members, and four hijackers aboard Flight 93.
"It was the most important thing I ever did in my life," Trautman said in a recent interview.
The two arborists emerged from the hemlocks as changed men, one left unmoored, the other with a renewed purpose.
Worried about investigators' safety, local authorities reached out to Trautman who then enlisted Haupt.
Leaving his wife and two infant daughters at home, Trautman and Haupt loaded up their harnesses and chainsaws and drove down. The FBI issued them yellow ID cards that said "Disaster Site, September 11, 2001 - FBI/Penn State."
The arborists roped from treetop to treetop, recovering wallets, a hijacker's ID and body parts to be identified at a temporary morgue.
FBI investigators said the Shanksville scene was distinguished from the pulverized crash sites in Manhattan and at the Pentagon by the sheer quantity of intact evidence yielded.
"I look at this place, and I said, 'I know this isn't hell,'" Haupt recalled. "'But if this isn't, then how bad is hell?' And I just broke down."
Haupt became a Christian evangelist soon after and evokes the Shanksville woods in his sermons as a vision of hell.
"I saw all the wickedness of man," he said.
He now lives in a house surrounded by towering lindens, walnut trees, and white oaks with his wife, Jennifer, whom he met in Bible college, and their five children, who hunt deer and climb trees with their father. Preaching has taken him as far as the Caribbean and the Philippines, but he can see the house he grew up in from his porch, where his parents still live.
He continues to work as an arborist, and sometimes refers clients to Trautman, who he says knows more about trees than anyone else in Pennsylvania.
Trautman, 54, grew up in a house surrounded by corn and dairy farms outside Herminie, a small town about 45 miles west of where Flight 93 would crash after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.
His mother roused him from bed each morning with the same refrain: "Rise and shine, your country needs you!"
Years later, while mired in the horrors of the hemlock canopy, he could hear his mother's words looping in his head.
Mark Trautman enrolled in the federal World Trade Center Health Program and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He is finalizing his third divorce, takes a daily antidepressant, and sees a counselor twice a month.
Earlier this month, Trautman and Haupt reunited to visit the Flight 93 National Memorial. The two friends had not met in more than a decade.
(Productiom: Hannah Beier, Omar Younis) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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