"I walked across the bridge to get to Bellevue," said Local 420 member Cedric Hartley. An exhaustive and overwhelming task lay ahead for Mr. Hartley and other Morgue Technicians from public hospitals citywide.

In the days that followed Sept. 11, 2001, they worked double shifts at the Chief Medical Examiner's Office to ready Trade Center victims for autopsies.

DC 37 members, uniformed forces and volunteers searched for survivors, but found few. Morgue trucks carried out the dead, 40 at a time. Body parts—bagged, tagged and housed in refrigerated trailers double-parked for blocks—emitted death's acrid stench along the East River.

"Complete autopsies were impossible," Mr. Hartley said, because of the numbers and condition of the dead. Pathologists collected samples and with the Morgue Techs' assistance, assembled a jigsaw of remains that would have to be identified and pieced together.

"A body helps families have closure," Mr. Hartley said. "We worked shoulder-to-shoulder, cramped like sardines—doctors, cops, FBI, and military men - shocked, exhausted and stunned into silence by what we had witnessed."

— D.S.W.