Ordinary Heroes

by Joseph Pfeifer

  “Wait for me,” Walsh told him. “Don’t go any further.”

  The company plus one entered one of the offices on the west side of the building to take a break. They took off their turnout coats and helmets and SCBAs and sat down. Everyone was sweating heavily. Someone broke into a vending machine for water bottles, juice, and cookies.

  Walsh heard a mayday from Engine 5, taking a break on the east side of the 19th floor. A firefighter was having a heart attack. An EMT, Walsh went to check on the man, who was having chest pains. They called for oxygen, but the firefighter recovered after resting.

  Meanwhile, Casaliggi, of Engine 7, was stuck outside. He had initially followed Captain Tardio into the building while Spinard remained outside with the rig alone amid escalating chaos as rigs, ambulances, and cop cars raced to the scene. After Casaliggi returned to the rig for a replacement for a malfunctioning air cylinder, he stayed to help Spinard, watching for falling hazards as the chauffeur handled the fire pumps. Debris rained down: chunks of glass, chairs, even a file cabinet.

  Within minutes of arrival, bodies of several people landed near the rig, only recognizable as bone, tissue, and blood after the fall of over a hundred stories. At first, Spinard and Casaliggi jumped into the truck for shelter, then retreated to a guard booth in the middle of the street, which had reinforced glass.

  Inside the lobby, everything was happening very quickly. People were coming down the stairs to exit the building. Fire units were rushing into the lobby to report to Chief Hayden and me for their assignments.

  Then we heard another loud, low-flying commercial airliner bearing down on lower Manhattan, this time approaching the World Trade Center from the direction of the Statue of Liberty.

  4

  DÉJÀ VU

  The deafening whine of jet engines suddenly filled the lobby of the North Tower, ten times louder than the noise I had heard on the street. It sounded like a jet fighter on a low-flying attack. We all froze, then heard an explosion like the detonation of a massive bomb. The North Tower shuddered. Through the tall lobby windows above the mezzanine, I saw flaming debris rain down outside.

  It was 9:03 a.m.

  I heard Joe Casaliggi of Engine 7 as he reentered the building.

  “There were two planes,” he said. “I just saw the second one hit the other tower.”

  A second plane had hit the South Tower. Our problems had just doubled. In seventeen minutes, we had two 110-story buildings struck by commercial airliners, leaving multistory gaping holes and triggering infernos. Though I had ordered the South Tower evacuated, I had no idea how many people had gotten out. Fires raged above, though we weren’t sure at the time on which floors.

  At this point, we had no doubt that this was terrorism. I wondered if there would be other attacks. How bad was it going to get? While this was in the back of my mind, I had to focus on the firefighters we were sending up into the North Tower. The chief of department and other high-ranking chiefs would consider these other possibilities.

  As I was trying to process this second attack, Assistant Chiefs Donald Burns and Joseph Callan entered the North Tower lobby. Chief Burns was the most experienced chief on the job. I’d known Chief Callan for years; he’d been an instructor for a prep course I’d taken for the promotion test. The FDNY’s most knowledgeable team of chiefs, with decades of experience, had arrived in the North Tower lobby to manage an intensifying and unprecedented crisis. We had to reorganize.

  Callan had been walking around the exterior of the North Tower, trying to see how many floors were on fire, when the second plane hit. That was when he knew for sure it wasn’t an accident. He immediately rushed to the lobby to take command.

  Now he collected all of us chiefs in a football huddle.

  “We got to split our group,” Chief Burns said. He’d take the South Tower command. Callan would command in the North Tower with Hayden, who immediately said, “I need Joe to stay with me.”

  “Okay, I’ll take Orio with me,” Burns said.

  Before they moved to the other tower, we needed to coordinate our communications on a command channel. Orio and I stood several yards apart and tried to talk to each other over the repeater channel, but the system wasn’t working properly. We decided it was safer to use the repeater in my chief’s car. I asked Ed Fahey to turn it on and bring me the handie-talkie radio for that repeater. Chiefs would use channel 2 with my radio boosted by my car’s repeater for command. Chiefs’ aides, as well as all firefighters, would operate on channel 1 as the tactical, point-to-point communication channel. This was an established FDNY procedure at large fire scenes.

  From the ICP on the far side of West Street, Chiefs Ganci and Cassano could oversee the two operations posts in each of the burning towers. Ganci also created a sector in the Marriott Hotel, which was between the two towers, and placed Deputy Chief Thomas Galvin in charge of evacuating the guests and employees. Ganci asked Assistant Chief Gerard Barbara to assemble units to be deployed to the South Tower for rescue operations. The ICP was intended to keep eyes on all three buildings from a safe distance.

  A New York City executive order states that for a fire, sister agencies must report to the Incident Command Post established by the FDNY. This was the biggest NYC fire in a century. But the NYPD had set up a separate command post at Church and Vesey, more than a block and a half away, nowhere near the Fire Department’s ICP.

  Responding to the attack, NYPD Chief of Department Joseph Esposito ordered a level-four mobilization, the highest possible, which brought 1,000 police officers to the scene. After the second plane hit, he ordered a second level-four mobilization, bringing the total number of police officers to nearly 2,000. He also reiterated the order not to attempt any roof rescue by helicopters.

  Some NYPD police officers from the Emergency Service Unit (ESU) came into the towers; most other officers stayed outside the buildings, setting up a perimeter to keep people safe from falling debris. They had a more robust radio system than ours, composed of hundreds of repeaters throughout the city. Their system allowed better communications in high-rise buildings and ensured no single point of failure. Police officers in helicopters could also communicate what they observed from above to those below.

  By this time, FDNY chiefs had transmitted three fifth alarms and an additional second alarm, bringing almost one thousand firefighters and EMS personnel to the scene—over 250 units, about half of our on-duty force. The FDNY had staged more than a hundred ambulances a few blocks away, just northwest of West and Vesey Streets in Battery Park City.

  * * *

  • • •

  Inside the North Tower lobby, I heard a thunderous crash on the Plexiglas canopy over the entrance where my car was parked. Then came another sharp blow.

  The distinctive thud sounds were human bodies hitting the canopy. As the fire raged out of control, people had begun leaping from the upper floors. Each unnerving crash was a life extinguished—and also a grave threat to first responders. At 9:30 a.m., a falling body crushed a firefighter as he reported to the South Tower, our first FDNY casualty.

  The sickening sounds filled me with horror. I could only imagine how intensely the fire raged above if people had to make a gruesome choice between being burned to death or taking that leap. As the time between the falling bodies grew shorter and shorter, in a moment of frustration I grabbed the building’s public-address microphone.

  “Firefighters are coming to rescue you,” I said. “Please hold on.” I was hoping against hope that desperate people might hear my plea. Whether they heard it or not, my message did nothing to stop the terrible sound of bodies hitting the Plexiglas, about one jumper every couple of minutes just on the west side of the building. With great effort, we had to accept there was nothing we could do for these people in the moment and refocus on rescuing those we still could save. We positioned a firefighter outside to watch for falling bodies and warn new arrivals
to look up before entering the building.

  Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen and First Deputy Commissioner William Feehan, the civilian leadership of the FDNY, appeared at the command post in the North Lobby. The fire commissioner had been appointed by Mayor Rudy Giuliani to run the Fire Department, but had no role in commanding at fires. However, Feehan had been one of the most experienced and well-respected fire chiefs in the FDNY. (He was a former chief of department and fire commissioner.) Under Fire Commissioner Von Essen, he returned as the first deputy commissioner.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” Chief Hayden told Von Essen. “It’s too dangerous.”

  And it wasn’t Von Essen’s job. Yes, the commissioner wanted to show his deep concern for those who were in danger. But his job was to be with the mayor to manage the city’s response. We told him that our priority was to evacuate those below the impact zone, then attempt to reach those who were trapped.

  Joe Casaliggi, of Engine 7, ran up to me in the lobby. He’d found the replacement air bottle he’d been searching for for his SCBA. While outside with Spinard, he had radioed Captain Tardio. “Seven chauffeur doesn’t have a radio,” he said. “Should I stay with him or should I come back up with you? Do you need me?”

  “Give Tommy your radio and come up,” Casaliggi heard. But the communications channel was garbled. What Tardio had actually said was, “Don’t give him your radio. Just come up to the 15th floor.”

  “Chief, I’m going up where Engine 7 is,” Casaliggi said. “They’re on the 15th floor. I don’t have a radio.”

  I understood Casaliggi wanted to be with his unit, but no one could go up alone without a radio. It wasn’t safe.

  “If you don’t have a radio,” I told him, “you’re not going anywhere without a partner.”

  Casaliggi waited in the lobby for a few minutes, then came up to me again. He wanted to do something useful.

  “Chief, I’m sorry—I know you’re busy,” he said. “But if you’re not sending me up, I’m gonna go back outside with Tommy and help him by the rig.” As chauffeur, Spinard was to remain with Engine 7.

  I said, “Fine, you go do that.”

  The situation immediately outside the building was growing more dangerous by the minute. Spinard’s rig was getting pelted with debris; small bits of falling glass were punching holes in the hose pumping water from the hydrant to the building’s standpipe system. That could reduce our water pressure and diminish our firefighting capability if it got worse.

  Firefighters were arriving in the lobby from all five boroughs of New York City. We continued to send up more teams under the close supervision of battalion chiefs. On the way up, firefighters encouraged people they encountered going down to “keep going, don’t stop, don’t rest.”

  Descending stairs is easier than going up. Average folks who were uninjured could get down a flight of stairs in thirty to sixty seconds. A person on the 80th floor might take an hour to get down, depending on their stamina.

  I saw office workers and visitors emerging in a steady flow from the stairwells onto the mezzanine level, where they were directed to exits. They looked concerned and worried. But nobody was running. They moved in groups at a steady pace, determined to get out. As the lines grew thinner, I knew we were making progress.

  But circumstances were getting worse on the upper floors. Fueled by oxygen and combustible material, fire typically doubles every ninety seconds. As heat and smoke increase, fire can create a raging inferno hot enough to twist steel. This monster fire sought air from broken windows, burning everything in its path. Toxic black smoke filled the upper floors. We just didn’t know which ones. Could we climb as high as the 90th floor before we encountered flames?

  And how would the fire affect the integrity of the building?

  The consensus from the senior chiefs was that an upper floor might eventually suffer a partial collapse due to the high temperature of the fire. If there was a collapse, it would probably be localized, over the space of a couple of hours. But I heard no one ever mention the possibility of a total sudden collapse of the building, nor was there any history of it.

  I exchanged endless radio messages with firefighters on conditions they confronted as they continued the long climb up the stairwells of the North Tower. However, so far, no one had even smelled smoke in the stairwells.

  At this point, I believed that we would be able to evacuate everyone below the fire. We had the bravest firefighters in the world. We had safety chiefs. We’d get as many people as possible out of the building; then we would fight the fire, floor by floor, to look for victims who might be alive but injured or trapped.

  Once we found everyone we could reach, then we’d get out of the building and let the fire burn itself out. We had no other choice.

  In a lull between sending firefighters up, I saw Father Mychal Judge standing in the lobby, hands behind his back, staring up at the floors above.

  At large fires or emergencies, an FDNY chaplain is assigned to do pastoral care of first responders and the public. We often saw Father Judge, one of our favorite chaplains, at large fires. Wearing his white helmet with the rank of a deputy chief, a turnout coat, and a priest’s white collar, he typically stood to the side within view of the command post.

  For me, he was a reassuring sight at fires. Father Judge understood firefighters, the dangers, their struggles, their needs. Whenever called upon, he’d speak with sincere empathy and spirituality. More than any other person, sixty-eight-year-old Father Judge was the soul of the FDNY, offering care and compassion to firefighters in hospitals, burn units, and at wakes and funerals. I knew how much his presence meant to firefighters putting their lives on the line. At a fire scene, I would glance his way, and he would give me a nod that we were doing okay. When I saw his Irish smile, I knew everything would be fine.

  But as he watched events unfold in the lobby of the North Tower, Father Judge looked at me with intense concern. He turned away, eyes downcast, pacing, lips moving in prayer. It was as if he stood in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying as Jesus did before his crucifixion, with all his strength. Physical prayer, asking God to intercede, for this terrible event to pass. I imagined he’d never prayed so hard in his life.

  Unsettled, I turned my focus back to the radio. Father Judge had attended hundreds of big fires and always wore a smile. His grim face, etched with fear and worry for his flock, was a bad omen.

  * * *

  • • •

  When Casaliggi decided to rejoin Spinard, of Engine 7, he had to wait for a safe period between jumpers. But bodies were falling so frequently, he finally just ran.

  When a body landed two feet from the pump panel, they knew they couldn’t stay there. Taking shelter under the pedestrian footbridge that connected Three World Financial Center to the North Tower, Casaliggi and Spinard watched as glass panels on upper floors spun out of their fittings and exploded on the way down, as dozens of people jumped from the upper floors to their deaths.

  At first, Casaliggi consoled himself with the belief that the bodies falling were people who had died on the plane’s impact. Then he saw a man flapping his arms on the way down. The horrific realization that the fires were so intense that the best alternative was to jump made him feel helpless, one of the worst feelings for a firefighter. But there was nothing he could do—he could no longer safely enter the building.

  5

  A LOUD RUMBLING SOUND

  While maintaining contact with firefighters in the North Tower, I kept trying to reach my counterpart Orio Palmer to learn what he was encountering in the South Tower. At times, I could hear him—the South Tower’s repeater must have been working—but he could not hear my responses.

  Palmer had found a working elevator in the South Tower. He had taken it to the 41st floor and began climbing the stairs to help people trapped on upper floors. Lieutenant Joe Leavey of Ladder 15—my South Street fireho
use, part of Battalion 1—was heading up to help get them out.

  In the North Tower, I was receiving reports from firefighters explaining situations confronting them on the long climb up the tower, but at times so many people were talking at once it was hard to understand them.

  At 9:32 a.m., someone in the lobby yelled, “We have another plane coming in!”

  A third plane? I immediately turned around and asked, “Who said that?” No one answered.

  For Assistant Chief Callan, the highest-ranking chief in the North Tower, the possibility of another aircraft hitting the World Trade Center was too much. He instinctively depressed his radio button and said, “Car 4-David to all units, come down to the lobby, everyone down to the lobby now.”

  Firefighters were somewhere between the 2nd and 20th floors. For those close to the lobby, there was a good chance that at least some of the firefighters would have heard the message, yet none returned to the lobby.

  The firefighters did not recognize “Car 4-David.” Callan had unconsciously used his call number instead of the phrase “Command to all units,” which would have alerted all the firefighters that he was talking to them. Without such context, it made no sense to abandon rescue operations.

  Furthermore, the message was not repeated because we were unable to confirm the report of a third plane. The person who’d shouted it had left the building. After the threat of a third plane dissipated, the order to come down was abandoned.

  * * *

  • • •

  As Engine 7 climbed toward the 70th floor in the North Tower, the interior of the stairwell grew warm. There were no windows or air current. Add the heat to the weight they were carrying and their stifling bunker gear.

  “The adrenaline was pumping, your heart was pumping outta your chest,” Captain Tardio said. On the 10th floor, they stopped to rest. Tardio insisted to his firefighters that they stick together. “Because if the shit hits the fan, I don’t want to have to go looking for anybody. Okay? If we have to get out, if we’re all together, we’ll get out.”