Unused emergency gurneys, a defining image from 9/11, have much to tell us today, when there isn’t a bed to spare. A veteran E.R. nurse explains.

By Jim Dwyer

From careful planning and much drilling, medical workers knew without being told that they should roll a fleet of gurneys and wheelchairs onto the sidewalk outside St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, New York’s last mortal catastrophe.

But there they remained, empty.

Nothing spoke louder than those mute, unused stretchers. People got out of the World Trade Center mostly intact or not at all. For days, thousands of fliers were taped around hospitals with pictures of those who had not made it home, or even as far as any gurneys.

Two decades later, the coronavirus pandemic has turned that moment inside out: We have more sick people than beds to put them in. Hospital morgues are oversubscribed.

Suzanne Pugh, the manager of emergency services at St. Vincent’s on 9/11, now does the same job at NewYork-Presbyterian Queens in Flushing, one of many hospitals where people sick with coronavirus seek help.

“Some of my staff were very young 19 years ago,” Ms. Pugh, 60, said. “I speak on disaster preparedness, and sometimes I have to shake my head — ‘Oh, yeah, you were 5 years old when this happened.’”

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