A Decade of Hope Read online

  We have always fought fires in a certain way: You’ve seen this happen before; you’ve seen that happen before. We usually know what to expect. Small things sometimes do occur at a fire or an emergency that are unexpected, but for everyone in the Fire Department, this was completely off the page. So taking charge at that point, I tried to fall back on things that I knew, like sectoring the disaster area, for instance. There was so much going on that I realized that I had to assign my ranking people in charge of each area so we would have some semblance of being organized. The area that came to be called Ground Zero was sectioned into quarters, each led by a single chief. It was organized in our typical fashion: Captains, battalion chiefs, deputy chiefs, and other people worked together as trained companies, as teams, even if they had never met one another [before]. They hooked up with one another, and in some way, maybe common cause, followed the directions of the higher-ranking people, and it worked. Even the chief who was in that North Tower stairwell tried to continue to be a chief. Under the worst possible circumstances, we did form an organization that worked.

  We learned that morning about the Pentagon and about another plane that went down. There were many rumors that this was certainly bigger than just two planes. The first few times that warplanes flew overhead, hearing that sound of jet planes again certainly shook everybody up on the ground. For days I think people believed that we were going to be attacked again. Everyone was on edge.

  I sensed that our loss was almost incomprehensible. When we got back to the command post the information was incomplete. People weren’t really transmitting on the radio. I wasn’t hearing enough to know the full extent. Of course I knew we lost hundreds but had no idea how many. Did we lose everybody who was earlier seen? Almost everybody? Did we lose a thousand people? The numbers were just numbing, beyond what you could say, think, or anticipate.

  High-rise buildings on fire have never fallen down. How did this happen ? History shows there had been localized collapses in high-rises, and I think some of us expected that. But even the worst fires, at the end of the day there was still a building standing. This was the first time. In fact, as we found subsequently, even in controlled demolitions, no building had ever collapsed into itself as the Twin Towers did.

  Back at the command post I could actually see that some people, like Chief [Peter] Hayden and Chief [Joseph] Pfeifer, whom I knew had been in the building, were now safe, and that was a pocket of good news among the bad. People from the West Street command post had gone into the basement of the Financial Center and had come back out. Some of them had realized what was going on. But we were having a hard time and were only learning what had happened as we interacted at the command post and walked around the scene. But throughout that day I still had no idea how many people were missing, except that it was an incredibly high number. None of us knew.

  We were all familiar with the fact that people can survive in pockets after collapses for days and days and, in a few rare cases, as long as thirteen days. We did think there would be more people alive, injured, especially since there were many underground levels. As it turned out, there were very, very few.

  I thought that the people whose transmissions on the radio came through from that North Tower stairwell were confused, and that they were actually in a different building. I didn’t believe anyone could be alive in that pile of rubble—not there, in that position. If they had said we were on Promenade B or one of those levels downstairs, it would have sounded more rational but for thirteen of them to survive in that stairwell, it’s still a miracle.

  As we made our way around the building again and started to do our searches, however, it was becoming quickly apparent that there weren’t going to be survivors here. We called it a rescue operation for a few weeks, but after the first few days it was getting harder to believe that. We never lost consideration for the hope within families, however. Some of them wanted to believe that, like in earthquakes, we’d pull someone out ten days later, so we certainly acted as though we were going to pull people out, and we worked as hard and as fast as we could to find people to pull out. But it was becoming more and more apparent that it just wasn’t going to happen. And it didn’t.

  We were assured through our mutual aid agreements that various fire departments would assist us in covering many other parts of the city. They came in from all over Long Island and Westchester County and staffed some of our firehouses that day and that night. At the scene we had adequate people. At major fires, Pete Ganci used to say, “We have 210 engines, so keep sending me engines until I tell you to stop.” We had an enormous resource of fire companies here in New York that was unavailable to anyone else in the country. So despite our terrible losses, we still had a huge number of people to do this task downtown. While I never felt that we didn’t have adequate staffing there, it was difficult to stabilize the situation, because the whole perimeter was on fire, and so much damage had been done to the water mains: 90 West Street, a huge building, was on fire on the south side; on the north we had 7 World Trade Center completely in flames. Either of these would have been the fire of the year for us, but we were also trying to stabilize many, many smaller fires.

  We had no chance of committing enough people to put out the fires burning uncontrollably at 7 World Trade Center, so we decided that we would stop operating there because of the danger of the collapse of that building. We pulled everyone to a safe distance, which proved to be a good move, because all forty-seven stories of the building came down around five o’clock. The fact that everyone was out of the way, and no one else was hurt, was a small consolation at the end of the day.

  We knew that 7 World Trade Center had a large diesel-fuel tank. It had been a controversy to allow diesel fuel in that building, which was meant to be used for the city’s Office of Emergency Management and to power emergency generators for the stock-trading operations that went on in that building. So we knew that there was fuel in there to add to the problem, and once that building came down we could recommit everyone to what we were doing.

  At some point late that afternoon the fire commissioner, Tom Von Essen, came back to the scene, and he said, “You’re now the chief of department.” Officially I was promoted on Sunday morning, and following that we had a big promotion ceremony to replace all the officers we had lost. So there were promotions in every rank that day. It was held outside of headquarters on Sunday morning.

  The fires continued to burn for months in that pile, intensely. I’m not sure when and at what point they were declared under control. We would get daily aerial infrared photos from the [federal] government showing where fires were still burning under the pile, so we could see what was getting better and what was changing.

  At times I thought it was beyond our capabilities as a fire department to rebuild ourselves and accomplish our work at the Trade Center. Who does something like this? How could we? Maybe we needed the army to come in. But we have a lot of talent in the Fire Department, and a lot of people put together a system that worked. And we did it rather rapidly and on the run. Technically, it was a Fire Department–managed operation, but a lot of agencies were involved. We did use the federal resources, and logistical-support people who were used to running massive forest fires helped. FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] teams came in from all over the country. The design and construction bureau, the city department that supervises construction, had a big role also, as did the Police Department, and the Port Authority, which owned and ran the property. But the Fire Department maintained control of the situation throughout. Some people didn’t want to believe that we were in charge—some, I think, were quite offended by that—but it was a Fire Department operation until June of 2002, when it was handed over to the Port Authority.

  Certainly one of the lessons of this entire experience was my own inadequacies. You do the best you can, but if you think you’re up to the task of something like 9/11 and the aftermath, you’re fooling yourself. You think you can brush aside the pain of the death
of these people by gallows humor, or by saying, We’re firefighters, we’re gonna be tough. And that doesn’t work. I was not up to the task of everything that challenged us. There were times when I was terrible at home. We all had frustration, and whom do you take your frustration out on? Usually the people closest to you, because, in your mind, they don’t understand what you’re doing. They don’t appreciate what’s going on, so you shout at them and get angry with them. Looking back, there were certainly incidents like that that I’m not proud of.

  Maybe it took me some time to realize the proper sequence of the events of importance to prioritize what we were doing. Supporting the firefighters who survived and were still around needed to be attended to. We were all worried about the next attack, as we weren’t all convinced that this particular operation was over. Maybe something else was coming? Other buildings? The Empire State Building? Transportation hubs? We thought about these things every day, at least until the end of 2001. And the families of those who died . . . Everyone had different needs. Everyone had different expectations of what we would or could do for them. What we should do for them. Mayor [Rudy] Giuliani, I thought, was great with us, with the families. I think eventually we did a good job with them.

  Thankfully there were so many people within the department who were talented, and who made up for my own inadequacies, because I couldn’t be at the WTC site every minute of every day. I couldn’t be at every one of the 343 funerals. I couldn’t be at every interagency meeting that was held. There was a limit to what I could physically do, mentally do. Members of our department helped out, with funerals, especially. People did a great job making me look like I did a good job, I think. I owe a lot to them. The further it gets from those days, the more I realize that if I hadn’t had a lot of people to lean on in this department, I would have been completely shot day one. I would just have had to walk away from it. Crawl up, roll up into a ball, and be totally useless, because it was an overwhelming task for anyone to do without that caliber of help. But I had it.

  I never got used to the funerals; I don’t think anyone did. There were 343—it was one, and then one more, and one more. It wasn’t just a big number: These were individuals with families, relatives, friends. Invariably these firefighters were the nicest people in their neighborhoods. They were the coaches of the Little League teams. They worked at soup kitchens. They were good and solid individuals. They took care of their families. You heard this every day for months. You saw the kids who lost their fathers, mothers who lost their sons, and I always tried to feel that I was a sponge that would absorb everyone’s grief. I was never good at watching sad movies; I’d always be the one crying. So I’d go to these funerals, and I’d come out and feel weak just witnessing this profound grief. What happened to so many families was overwhelming. At times I’d speak, and the effort of writing a speech and delivering it in some presentable manner made it possible for me to get through that particular day. I’d have to put on a strong face.

  The firefighters did a good job with that too. They didn’t break down at the funerals, and they were strong for the families. People were assigned to each family to take care of them. The bagpipe band figured a way to cover every funeral, to give that special Fire Department dignity that is so meaningful to the family. We didn’t think it possible, but they did it. We have a Ceremonial Unit, which got very good at making every funeral move forward like clockwork. I was pretty sad that we had to get good at managing funerals, but as a department we did, though it took its toll on everybody.

  I can think of only one or two funerals of members who were not buried from a church. I can’t believe that all of these people were churchgoing folk, but I think everyone’s spirituality grew during this period. Maybe the highlight for me was when I went to Rome in November. The Italian government asked me to send a few firefighters, including a group of family members of those who had died, and they asked me to come as well. At first I said, “I can’t go. There’s too much here.” They said it was only for two days, and that the group was going to have an audience with the pope at the Vatican. To see the pope seemed to be time well spent for me and for the department and, certainly, going to St. Peter’s for a mass dedicated to the FDNY members lost on 9/11 conducted by the pope was historic. I was almost speechless when it came time to go up and say something to him. It was overwhelming, and I felt very uplifted by it for months after that.

  The terrorism of 9/11 was a worldwide event and reached that extraordinary level where we had the pope praying for us. Not only for the people who had died and for their families, but for all the people who were continuing the work down in Ground Zero, and those protecting everyone else in the city. I’d never been across the Atlantic before, and I came back with an outlook that was certainly stronger from that visit, stronger from just being near Pope John Paul II, who will soon be a saint. I did feel just being in his presence that he had an aura.

  To this day I ask myself what I could have done differently. I was the chief of operations, a big responsibility. What would have resulted in less of a loss of life? Did I do my job adequately? Or would somebody else have done a better job? Chief Ganci was in charge, but I also had a lot of high-ranking experience. I was the second in command and had as much responsibility in that incident as anyone. And I still wish there was something I could have done differently.

  There have been times when people asked me, “How could you send my husband into the building like that? How could you do that?” And that’s a good question. I understand someone’s asking that, and it hurts to hear it. But I also understand it hurts me less than it does her. It’s not an off-base question—not everyone patted us on the back to say, Don’t feel bad, I don’t blame you. People were angry with the department for what happened. Some people, not many. Most families were unbelievably gracious in dealing with their loss, and not getting on us, but it was a day-to-day struggle just trying to find some sort of balance. Even the firefighters wanted to know, What are you going to do different next time? I mean, if we get called to the Empire State Building now, what are you going to do differently? You’re in charge. How are you going to keep us safe? And the wives would ask, How are you going to keep my husband safe? Do you know?

  And I didn’t know. I could not give them a guarantee to keep our people safe. No one could, and you can’t guarantee it today. But we’ve had a decade to look back and change our policies. Maybe we can keep a higher percentage of the members safe, but we cannot say unequivocally that this will not happen again. We all know this is firefighting, and there is much stress involved with that. And danger.

  That’s why I’m a believer in the randomness of things rather than the purposefulness of them. It wasn’t that the good or the kind were spared above others, or that one life was more valuable than another. I was spared, and some other person’s life was taken. I’m sure many of those lives were more valuable than mine, and their families may have needed them more than mine needed me. I don’t know. Certainly many, many of them were better people than I, as I learned at the funerals, hearing the eulogies.

  St. Paul says that you see through a cloudy glass, and someday you’ll see it clear. Someday there will be a clearness to this, and then all of us might go, Aha, that was it. But no, this is not understandable. I’ve tried to tell myself that maybe I should be out there doing more good in the world, because there was a reason that I was saved, and the reason was that I was going to do something great with my life. I’ve had ten years, and I’ve done okay during that time, but I certainly haven’t made an impact on the world in the past decade, unless there’s something coming up that I don’t know of.

  My father is a retired firefighter and has always given me good advice—an old firefighter’s advice. Some months after 9/11 he told me to go to every firehouse that had lost people. There were about ninety such firehouses, so each night I’d go out and stop at a few on the way home. I would talk to the members, and say, “I’m sorry about your loss.” Sometimes it was a s
hort visit, and everybody was like, Okay, fine, nice to see you, Chief. In other places it was very spirited—a lot of anger, a lot of fear—and I spent hours getting roughed up in the kitchen. But I took the blows, as they say, and I think it was very good advice from my father. It showed them that I was out there listening to the guys, thinking about them, caring about what they said, caring about what they felt. I might not be able to change everything that they wanted me to, but I listened.

  My retirement was a sudden thing, really. In September of 2002 I did not get a tenured appointment from City Hall, so I put my retirement papers in. It shouldn’t have been, but I just let it be; I was now going to be without a job within thirty days, so I decided to visit every battalion, got every fire company together. So again at night I would stop at a few battalions, and companies would come over with the rigs, and I spoke to each one of them, thanking them for what they had done, which made me look good. I got a lot of honors, including the [Cavalier] of the Republic of Italy, and the [National Order of the] Legion of Honor, Chevalier of France. I might be one of the few people in this country to have been awarded both of those, and the only reason that I was was because of the firefighters in New York City.

  It was a good way to go out, and the last day on the job I went back to Ladder 123. I had always had a lot of respect for that company, and although I never worked there, I had a son-in-law there, and a nephew. I took the irons [an ax and a Halligan tool] that night, and I was on the back step [a term for being on the fire truck]. It was my last tour of duty in the FDNY.