At a certain point we realized there was no one to help

“As hope begins to fade.”

This is the phrase that grabs me in a Washington Post headline Monday morning.

It is the phrase that hasn’t quite been verbalized until now. If you’re like me, you’ve spent the days since the Surfside disaster with prayers on your lips, faces of missing people on your mind, and a constant compulsion to check the news. Also with a knot in the stomach that tugs at your gut and makes you queasy but stays in the background as long as you let it.

And you want to keep it there in the background. You want to hope. You want to keep reminding yourself of those Chilean miners who survived underground and those miracle stories in Haiti, where earthquake victims were found alive more than a week after their homes collapsed upon them.

A few years ago I visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York. I don’t remember all the details anymore. I do remember a few things: the concrete-color walls, the sensation of sinking lower and lower with each progressive exhibit.

I remember the exhibit composed entirely of charts of flight paths. The first charts showed hundreds of arrows winging merrily through the skies. Then subsequent charts showed some of those arrows diverted, others quickly grounded. The charts grew emptier and emptier, a few lone arrows seeking refuge. Then the last few found their way down. And then I saw a map of the entire US airspace entirely, irrevocably bare.

I remember the fire truck parked in the middle of an exhibit. The walls around it were plastered with replicas of the craggy skeletal beams that became the skyline for weeks after 9/11. I can still envision that fire truck — solid, faithful, and battered — against the twisted beams.

There were faces, so many faces — financial analysts and waiters and struggling immigrants and single mothers and frum fathers. It was staggering to approach each one and listen to relatives, friends, colleagues sketch the contours of their personalities with the most mundane and telling of details.

Here is what I remember most of all — and what sprang into my mind when I saw that Washington Post headline “as hope begins to fade.” One exhibit quoted the rescue workers, and though they were probably a lot more terse and concise, here is the gist of what they said:

When we first came there, we brought ambulances, paramedics, medical equipment. We were pumping with adrenaline, ready to save as many people as we could — whatever it took. We readied the local emergency rooms for multiple casualties, suited up operating room staff for massive numbers of surgeries. And then we waited for the victims.

There were a few people we treated on the spot, but we knew there were thousands more waiting for help. So we waited. And waited.

We’re trained to help, this is what we do. You bring us the victims, we spring into action.

But the hours went by. Then the days went by. And the silence…

At a certain point we realized there was no one to help.

When we planned our coverage of the Surfside disaster, we did so with hope and prayers for good news, even as we knew that by the time you read this magazine, the picture may have changed.

On a normal week we do our best to “spin our stories forward” and bring you material that holds its own come Shabbos. But this week we’re not doing that. We want to hope, we need to hope. As Rabbi Sholom Lipskar of The Shul in Bal Harbour told his congregants, as long as there are still rescue operations ongoing, one must not give up hope. No shivah. No yahrtzeit. The window may be closing, but we can’t and won’t let go of that swiftly narrowing sliver of light.

So if you’re wondering why this week’s coverage is not entirely up-to-date, why it focuses on the agonizing watching and waiting instead of predicting the day after, remember yourselves on Monday morning. Remember that clutching feeling in your stomach as you read through the list of beloved family members yet again. You’ll surely understand.

Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 867.