Harker Heights man was part of 9/11 recovery team at Ground Zero

“They’re not going to stop until they get everyone identified,” Smit said earlier this week. “The New York medical examiner’s office has a whole team and a building designated to deal with 9/11 cases.”

Now retired, Smit was working in 2001 as deputy coroner investigator assigned as National Medicolegal Coordinator for the Kitsap County Coroner’s Office in Washington. His job was to facilitate development and deployment of the Network of Medicolegal Investigative Systems (NOMIS), a nationwide data base designed to link medical examiners, coroners, law enforcement, and federal agencies to help coordinate investigations of missing persons and unidentified crime victims.

Around the middle of August 2001, Smit sent a letter to then-Vice President Dick Cheney outlining the proposed NOMIS project. In the letter, he emphasized the importance of the program saying it was only a matter of time before “thousands of Americans would die from a terrorist attack at one or more locations, and that our medicolegal system (as it stood then) would not be able to properly handle multiple mass fatalities at one time.”

Less than a week later, he was summoned to the White House, where he found that his letter had been reviewed personally by Cheney, who wrote comments and questions throughout the five-page document. He did not meet directly with Cheney but sat with a senior staff member for hours going through the letter line by line.

Shortly thereafter, commercial airliners struck the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, with United Airlines Flight 93 crashing into a field in rural Pennsylvania.

Smit immediately sent an email to his White House contacts and members of Congress, which resulted in him and members of his team being summoned to New York City.

He arrived on scene on Sept. 13, reported to the temporary morgue and got to work.

“I had (leg) surgery a month before 9/11, so I’m in a walking Velcro cast,” Smit said. “Walking around on the (debris) pile, it was really hot. The damn cast was melting – plus I kept getting punctured by all this sharp debris. I went through three temporary casts while I was there.

“They’re bringing remains to us, mainly firefighters. I personally worked on about 200 bodies, and most of the bodies were co-mingled, meaning one body was compressed into another. I had one guy whose body was about two inches thick. He looked perfectly normal except he was just flat.

“We’re looking at this poor soul, and there was something just off. We couldn’t figure it out and then I started counting the teeth and there were twice as many teeth as there should have been. It turned out that somebody else’s face was co-mingled to his face, so we had to separate them.”

He worked at the 9/11 site until Sept. 23, when he had to return home for more surgery on his leg. Those 11 days left emotional and physical scars that remain to this day, including recurring infections in his leg that has required multiple surgeries, and what appears to be permanent lung damage.

“I haven’t been able to sleep — un-aided — ever since I got back. I wake up constantly, but it’s not classic PTSD. I don’t have nightmares … the doctor told me it’s basically frustration because we saw this coming; we worked on it for years trying to get something in place to make the response better; and it just didn’t happen in time. That stuck with me, apparently.

“I was in ICU for a month after I developed a staph infection, and after my second leg surgery, I got an infection and developed sepsis. I have had 52 surgeries on my leg and abdomen due to (recurring) infections.

“I’ve seen specialist after specialist after specialist (and) nobody can figure out how to kill whatever it is I have. They keep wanting to amputate my leg, but unless I’m going to die, I’m not going to let them do it.”

Despite all that, Smit — son of a World War II veteran and native of Denver who graduated from high school in California, then spent four years in the military — says he has no regrets about his 9/11 experiences, although recent events in the Middle East have exacerbated his sleep problems.

“While I was there, there were people five and six deep, out there 24/7 holding signs saying, ‘Thank you.’ It was the most exciting, humbling feeling to see all of them regardless of race, political affiliation or belief system, out there showing support. That really gave meaning to the whole thing.

“It was very American,” he said. “But this fiasco in Afghanistan, it’s caused me some additional sleepless nights. I’m very angry about the whole thing. It’s not the same (emotion) as the soldiers who were there and fought and saw their buddies die. I’m sure they’re at a different level.

“My anger comes from … we apparently haven’t learned anything. We underestimated these people.

“I was a guy running around — me and the guys with me — saying, ‘The sky’s gonna fall; the sky’s gonna fall.’ Nobody paid attention to us, and then the sky fell. Now, here we are. We gave these people $90 billion worth of equipment that they’re going to undoubtedly use on us, or people we care about.

“If another 9/11 event occurred, I’d go back right now. My wife wouldn’t be happy about it, but I’d go.”