Kansas doctor remembers deployment to Ground Zero after 9/11 attacks
By Web Staff
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JOHNSON COUNTY, Kansas (KMOV) — Doctor Stephanee Evers currently works at Olathe Health as an emergency medicine physician.
Backtrack 20 years ago and Evers was a recent UMKC School of Medicine graduate in her second year of her emergency medicine residency program.
“You learn how to train in confined space rescue and disaster management drills and situations, you learn how to repel off buildings. So, at that time, you’re like wide-eyed and like, ‘Oh, this is going to be super exciting,’ and it was,” Evers said.
On Sept. 11, 2001, her whole life would change.
“I was watching the news feeds and them talking about it and saw the second plane hit on live TV, which was completely surreal,” Evers said.
If the emotions weren’t already high nearly 1,000 plus miles away, it was taken up a whole other level hours later when she was notified of her deployment to Ground Zero.
“It was exciting. I felt like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m going to have this unique privilege and opportunity when so many people felt helpless.’ I felt privileged in that way, but of course I was nervous. I had no idea what to expect,” said Evers.
She was going as a part of a FEMA urban search and rescue team.
“After the first 24 to 48 hours, we knew that there was nobody left to save. That was hard to know, that now we are going to shift so soon from a rescue mission to a recovery mission,” Evers said.
She adds that her team made a terrifying discovery as the were digging through the rubble.
“At one point, our team came across one of the passports of the terrorists,” says Evers.
It was a nearly two-week experience and memory that, as much as she would want to unsee, will never be erased. However, that moment 20 years ago has shaped her for life.
“I would never say, ‘I regret going.’ I’m glad that I was there and a part of something so big,” Evers said.
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