From Gainesville to Ground Zero: One UF Health Nurse’s Response to 9/11

On Sept. 11, 2001, Rhonda Osteen, MSN, RN, RN-BC, was asleep at home in Gainesville after working the night shift in the UF Health Shands Burn Center when her sister called.

Turn on the television.

Osteen did — just in time to watch the second plane strike the World Trade Center.

Like millions of Americans, she watched as the events of that brilliant, crystal-blue morning unfolded almost beyond comprehension. In 102 minutes, four hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people were killed.

Osteen, then the night-shift charge nurse in the eight-bed burn unit, went to work at UF Health as scheduled. There was a possibility the unit might receive patients injured in the attack on the Pentagon. None came.

But the feeling that she needed to do something stayed with her.

A few weeks later, Osteen had an opportunity to volunteer at the 40-bed William Randolph Hearst Burn Center in New York.

So, she went.

It meant leaving her family, including her 9-year-old son, at a time when the country was still reeling from the attacks, and no one knew what might happen next. Her mother later told her the trip took 20 years off her life.

Osteen understood the worry. She was scared, too. But she knew she could help.

“Not everyone can step away from their daily lives,” she said. “That’s why I went to help.”

A city in mourning

Approximately three weeks after the attacks, Osteen arrived in a city still consumed by what had happened.

She remembers seeing Ground Zero for the first time. Weeks after the towers collapsed, fires were still smoldering deep within the massive pile of debris.

At NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, reminders of the human toll and the outpouring of support were everywhere. Photographs of people who were still missing were posted throughout parts of the hospital. In the burn center, the hallways were lined with cards, drawings and notes from children offering encouragement to patients and staff.

That support surrounded a burn center team dealing with losses of its own. The center had longstanding ties to the New York City Fire Department and the New York Firefighters Burn Center Foundation. Firefighters supported the burn center, helped raise money for it and formed close relationships with the people who worked there — many of whom were lost on Sept. 11.

In the weeks that followed, burn center staff cared for patients during their shifts and attended firefighters’ funerals on their days off. It was a tight-knit group struggling with tremendous loss while continuing to care for their patients.

Osteen came to help however she could.

The contrast with home was striking. In Gainesville, she felt protected. Being in New York was different. The devastation was in front of her, and the uncertainty of what might happen next was very real.

Being there was gratifying, she said. It was also scary.

But everywhere she went, she saw the gratitude people had for those who had come to help. People thanked nurses. They thanked those working at Ground Zero. For Osteen, those encounters became part of what she remembers most about those weeks — people recognizing and caring for one another in the aftermath of unimaginable loss.

Caring for Lauren

Osteen’s patient at the Hearst Burn Center was Lauren Manning, a partner at Cantor Fitzgerald who worked in 1 World Trade Center, the North Tower.

Lauren was late to work on Sept. 11 and had just entered the lobby at 8:46 a.m. when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the tower. Jet fuel exploded down an elevator shaft and into the lobby, engulfing her in flames. She escaped the building and made it across West Street, where two strangers helped her extinguish the flames.

Lauren suffered burns of over 82% of her body and was given only a 5% to 10% chance of survival. Her husband, Greg, also worked at the World Trade Center, in the South Tower, but had not gone to work that morning.

By the time Osteen arrived in New York, Lauren was in a medically induced coma. Greg remained by her side as she fought to survive, while their 10-month-old son was being cared for at home.

As Osteen cared for Lauren, she talked with Greg at her bedside. He began sending daily email updates to friends and family, chronicling Lauren’s condition and the long road ahead. Those messages eventually became the book “Love, Greg & Lauren — A Powerful True Story of Courage, Hope and Survival.”

For Osteen, caring for Lauren provided something she had wanted since watching the attacks unfold from Gainesville: the chance to help.

Her time in New York was brief compared with the years of treatment and recovery Lauren faced, but the connection did not simply disappear when Osteen returned home. Lauren’s parents contacted her to thank her for the care she provided for their daughter, and Osteen has remained in touch with people she met during those two weeks.

It was one patient. One family. One nurse who saw a need and knew she had something to offer.

Twenty-five years later

After two weeks, Osteen returned home to Gainesville and to the family who had worried about her while she was gone. But the experience stayed with her.

She remembers Ground Zero still smoldering. The photographs of the missing posted throughout the hospital. The children’s drawings and notes lining the burn center hallways. And a close-knit team caring for patients while mourning friends and colleagues lost on Sept. 11.

And she remembers how people responded to one another.

In the weeks that followed the attacks, amid tremendous grief and uncertainty, people found ways to help. Hundreds of emergency workers, volunteers and specialized teams searched for the missing and worked at Ground Zero. Healthcare workers cared for the injured. People traveled from around the country to lend their skills wherever they were needed. And strangers stopped to thank those who had come to their city.

For Osteen, going to New York meant contributing in the way she knew best: as a nurse.

Today, she is the nurse manager for UF Health Neuromedicine Hospital Unit 56. Twenty-five years later, the experience remains one she knows she will never forget.

And when she thinks about the decision she made to go to New York, her answer is simple.

“I would do it again.”

In memory of the lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. We will never forget.