Ordinary Heroes

by Joseph Pfeifer

  As thousands of observers stood in silence, many with tears streaming down their faces, I placed one hand on the front right side of the stretcher. To my left was the FDNY’s EMS Division Chief Charlie Wells. Behind us were two officers from the Port Authority Police and two NYPD officers. Several of us carrying the stretcher had lost brothers. We lifted the stretcher and then, in unison, slowly walked up the long ramp, just as I had carried my brother out earlier in February. I felt a sense of calmness as we supported each other on the journey out of the Pit. We had endured so much, yet there was still a lot of work to do to prepare for the next disaster.

  Lining the path out of the Pit was an honor guard of first responders in dress uniform and others who had been part of the rescue and recovery operations for the last nine months. We were holding a stretcher that represented all those who died at the World Trade Center. Fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, partners, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, friends. We placed the stretcher into a waiting ambulance as if recovering the body of a loved one.

  Two buglers, one from the FDNY and one from the NYPD, played taps, followed by an NYPD helicopter flyover. Our symbolic walk was a way to honor the victims and heroes who we lost.

  The last piece of steel, a fifty-ton column with first responders’ messages painted on it, was lifted onto a flatbed truck, covered in black cloth, and driven up the extended ramp. It was a symbol that the recovery and dismantling of twisted steel were concluded. This piece of steel now stands upright in the 9/11 Memorial Museum, where my white battalion chief’s helmet and Jules’s camera are displayed in a glass case.

  The closing of the site was the end of a nine-month operation of digging and searching. We were relieved that it came to an end, yet disappointed that we had not recovered more people. Carrying the stretcher up from six stories below grade was taking the first step away from the ashes and horror.

  During the first week of June, the FDNY usually holds its annual Medal Day ceremony on the steps of City Hall, honoring the heroic acts of bravery and initiative by firefighters and EMS. This year was different. At a meeting at headquarters, I asked the fire commissioner and senior chiefs, “How can we award medals of courage to anyone but the 343 who gave their lives on that September morning?” We agreed that, while there were many brave acts that day, the medals belonged to our firefighters, fire marshal, and paramedics who had made the supreme sacrifice. FDNY’s Medal Day ceremony was suspended for 2002.

  But medals and their accompanying ribbon for the dress uniform are part of the Fire Department’s tradition. They recognize courage during dangerous times. I proposed that everyone in the Fire Department who responded to the World Trade Center attacks be given a medal with the image of firefighters raising the American flag at Ground Zero on the front and the FDNY logo on the back. The corresponding one-inch ribbon, half purple and half black—the colors of our mourning bunting—would have the number “343” embossed in gold on the purple background.

  The medal recognized three different types of valor. The survivor medal and ribbon with two stars were given to those at the WTC before the buildings collapsed. The rescuer medal and ribbon with one star were for those who responded after 10:28 but before the collapse of WTC-7 at 5:20 p.m. And the campaign award was for members who worked at Ground Zero after the collapse of WTC-7 until the closing of the site on May 30, 2002.

  At first, firefighters and senior chiefs objected to this idea. “We don’t need any medals! We know what we did that day. And medals are for those who died trying to save others.”

  “The medals and ribbons are for your families, your kids, and grandchildren,” I said. “They are to be handed down generation to generation.” After some convincing, we distributed the set of medals and ribbons to our members. Today, the ribbon is worn proudly on the dress uniform and is considered by firefighters to be their highest award. New firefighters, seeing their peers with the survivor ribbon, wonder what it must have been like that day.

  * * *

  • • •

  Two days after the last piece of steel was removed from Ground Zero, the Duane Street firehouse celebrated a different kind of ritual. On June 1, 2002, Jules Naudet married his fiancée, Jacqueline Longa, a human resources counselor from Brooklyn. The wedding ceremony was held at our almost century-old firehouse on Duane Street.

  The firehouse wedding took place on the apparatus floor, where we held meetings for the WTC recovery operation. Jacqueline wore a beautiful white wedding dress and veil; Jules wore a tuxedo. Fifty-five firefighters, with their wives and girlfriends, were in attendance. Gédéon was the best man. I gave them a special “Firehouse Blessing,” reminding the lovely couple of the importance of staying close to each other during difficult times, and if they ever needed anything, they now had fifty-five brothers and forever will be part of the FDNY family. Jacqueline and Jules looked at each other with glowing happiness as they made their sacred vows. Already they had been through good times and bad, but they could only envision a good life together.

  In the middle of the ritual, you could feel the firehouse suddenly transformed from a place of fatigue to one of hope and joy. At the end of the ceremony, firefighters threw rose petals from their helmets and sprayed fire extinguishers.

  The reception was at the historic old civic building near City Hall. The newlyweds rode the few blocks in the chief’s car, Jules’s last official FDNY ride. (I think Jacqueline was too nervous for Jules and me to ever respond to another fire together.) During the reception, firefighters danced their hearts out, purging nine months of emotions.

  After midnight, Jules and his lovely bride returned to the firehouse. In the kitchen, where so much had taken place over the previous year, they ate a piece of wedding cake.

  “This has been a place of sorrow, of loss, of tears,” Jules said. “But we were replacing the bunting of sorrow with beautiful things.” The newlyweds stayed up so late they missed the flight for their honeymoon the next day. For them, for all of us who survived, life would be forever different, but on this day, we celebrated. We had experienced a great tragedy, but people would find love, get married, have children, and live their lives with hope for the future.

  18

  HOW CAN I HELP?

  After Kevin’s funeral in February, all I wanted to do was get back to normal—whatever that was. What could be so hard about that? Ginny was worried about my long hours. Before 9/11, I’d worked two twenty-four-hour tours a week with lots of family time in between. After the attacks, I was working seven days a week. So I cherished normalcy and wanted to go back to a predictable schedule and do activities with the kids.

  But I also wanted to help shape the future of the FDNY. Based on my experience on 9/11 and recovery operations at Ground Zero, I had an innate sense of what we needed to do. And then I got an unexpected opportunity.

  At the beginning of March 2002, Chief Pete Hayden and I were summoned to FDNY headquarters to meet with new Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta, who was a top-notch reformer, ranging from his work on the Knapp Commission in the 1970s to heading up the Administration for Children’s Services in the 1990s. He introduced us to consultants from McKinsey & Company. The commissioner asked us to work with McKinsey, which donated its services to New York City to write separate reports for the FDNY and NYPD about the response to 9/11 and what to do differently in the future. Pete and I agreed to help. It was meant to be a short, three-week detail. Instead, our work with McKinsey took five intense months.

  McKinsey senior partner Carlos Kershner oversaw the core team of Lisa Frazier, Caroline Gaffney, Yakov Kofner, Gregory Parsons, Lee Miles III, and other support staff.

  In the FDNY, we pulled in EMS Division Chiefs John Peruggia and Walter Kowalczyk, Chief of Staff Mike Vecchi, along with many others on a part-time basis. But it was Hayden and I who worked every weekday as part of the core McKinsey team, often serving as interpreters of firefighting expressions and pro
cedures.

  I also worked a fifteen-hour night tour or an occasional twenty-four-hour tour once a week in the firehouse. Early on, Chief Sal Cassano told me, “Joe, you are detailed to the McKinsey project, so you don’t have to work in the field.”

  He was trying to ease my burden, and I appreciated that. But I needed to be in the firehouse to remain connected to the firefighters. An eighty-hour workweek became my new routine. Ginny was not thrilled but knew I was trying to navigate this new reality.

  Hayden and I had known each other for a long time. Pete, about ten years older than me, was considered a “driver.” Give him something, and he’d run with it and don’t get in his way. My role was more analytical, aimed at strategic thinking. Together, we made a good team. For a while, we shared an office. Of course, he had the bigger desk; rank has its privileges. And we had the shared experience of being in command in the North Tower. Both of us were motivated to move beyond the ashes, both personally and as a department.

  At headquarters, we took over a conference room and equipped an office to review audio transmissions from 911 operators and fire dispatchers, as well as the film shot by Jules and Gédéon. We did hundreds of hours of individual interviews with firefighters and EMTs who’d responded to the 9/11 attacks and barely escaped with their lives. Everything was very raw. Listening to tapes from civilians who’d died was particularly wrenching, as callers told dispatchers, “It’s so hot, I’m burning up. I’m going to die.”

  Among those tapes we eventually listened to were transmissions of Battalion 7 Chief Orio Palmer and his men inside the South Tower. They had taken an elevator to the 41st floor, halfway to the impact zone, which stretched from the 78th to the 84th floors. Extremely fit, Palmer made it to the 78th floor. “Numerous 10-45s, Code 1,” Palmer said, using the FDNY radio term for dead people. He saw a couple of pockets of fire and called for Engine companies to tackle them and Ladder companies for search and rescue. I was in awe of his determination and calm, decisive tone. It was tough to hear Palmer speaking to Lieutenant Joe Leavey from Ladder 15, who I had worked with for years. Under extreme conditions and only minutes before the collapse, Orio and Joe, with firefighters from Ladder 15 and other units, ran up three dozen flights of stairs to rescue those injured and trapped. It was their last act of bravery.

  One of those with Palmer was Ronnie Bucca, the only FDNY fire marshal killed on 9/11. A former Green Beret and member of FDNY Rescue 1, Bucca had become famous in the FDNY after surviving a five-story fall from a tenement fire escape in the 1980s. Nicknamed the “Flying Fireman” after his miraculous escape from death, he returned to work after a year of physical rehabilitation. After the 1993 bombing of the WTC, he insisted that terrorists would return to finish the job, but his warning had made little impact. I wondered how he had felt when he realized that, tragically, he had been right.

  After months of concentrated research, we knew more than anyone about what transpired that day. At times, I got frustrated.

  “We know what happened,” I said one day. “Let’s get to what we are going to do about it for the future. How can we bring about change sitting in a conference room dwelling on the past?”

  Lisa Frazier, a chemical engineer from Australia, took me aside and said, “Joe, we need to get all the facts before we make any recommendations. Trust me. We’ll get there.”

  Lisa was not only smart, but she was also tough. She didn’t take any guff from Pete or me. She heard some of the most traumatic stories and didn’t flinch.

  In early May, we split the team to learn how the rest of the country’s fire departments handled major incidents like wildfires, tornados, and earthquakes.

  Hayden went to the East Coast and the middle of the country. I went with Lisa and the other half of the team to the West Coast to visit departments in Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. The departments we visited were more than willing to help us, but they wanted to hear personal accounts.

  I did my first 9/11 PowerPoint on the WTC with the Los Angeles City and County Fire Departments. I could feel the emotions in the room filled with dozens of seasoned fire chiefs who knew what leadership at a tragic fire scene meant.

  As I explained how I ordered firefighters, including my brother, to evacuate and rescue those trapped, I looked over at Lisa. For the first time, this tough Australian woman had a tear running down her face. Her work was no longer a consulting project; it was personal.

  We learned something new with every fire department we visited. The common thread reinforced the value of the Incident Management System and assigning an Incident Management Team (IMT) for large-scale events.

  On the long flight home, feeling supported by our West Coast fire chiefs, I sat with Lisa on the plane.

  “The commissioner is impressed with your work,” Lisa told me, “and he likes your insight on how the FDNY needs to change.”

  Of course, I was thrilled. Then she told me something I had trouble comprehending.

  “I think the commissioner wants you to come on staff,” she said.

  “Wait . . . what?” I said. I could not imagine jumping ranks so quickly, so I simply smiled and discounted the possibility.

  On May 28, 2002, I was promoted from battalion chief to deputy chief, based on a civil service exam now-retired Chief Byrnes had urged me to take a couple of years earlier. Standing onstage in front of hundreds of people, including my family, I raised my right hand to take the oath of office. As Commissioner Scoppetta congratulated me, he asked me to come on board as a staff chief. A staff chief position is usually for people having more than thirty years’ seniority. I didn’t even have twenty-one years on the job. He was asking me to go from having gold oak leaves on the collar to a two-star chief, virtually skipping the deputy chief rank with eagles on my collar.

  Stunned, I replied, “I can’t. I need more experience.” The commissioner just smiled.

  All night I thought about what the commissioner was asking me to do. I had survived 9/11 and worked endless hours on understanding how the FDNY needed to change.

  Part of resilience is shouldering the burden of knowledge to make a difference. The next day, I went back to Scoppetta and said, “How can I help?”

  The final FDNY-McKinsey Report, titled Increasing FDNY’s Preparedness, was published on August 19, 2002. The 169-page document examined the moment-by-moment response of the FDNY on 9/11. We were radically honest about everything, from a lack of interagency incident command and information sharing to inadequate technology and outdated procedures.

  The report recommended a plan for implementing FDNY changes in operational preparedness, planning and management, communications and technology, and family and member support. Its conclusions and recommendations would also play a significant role in influencing the 9/11 Commission.

  A week later, I raised my right hand again, and along with six other deputy chiefs, was promoted to a two-star deputy assistant chief. Little did I know that Commissioner Scoppetta would mentor me as a young leader through our many conversations, demanding excellence in everything and sending me for graduate degrees at the Naval Postgraduate School and the Harvard Kennedy School.

  Scoppetta acted swiftly on the McKinsey recommendations and instituted a new borough command structure. He appointed me as the chief for planning and strategy. Scoppetta then instructed Hayden and me to form work groups to implement the rest of the McKinsey recommendations.

  For almost 140 years, the FDNY had worried only about the day-to-day operations of putting out fires. After the tragic morning of September 11, our world had become more complex, and the FDNY, in turn, had to adapt. I would play a foremost role in making these recommendations a reality, designing the new Fire Department Operations Center (FDOC) and writing the first strategic plan in the FDNY’s long history.

  The strategic plan compelled the department to envision the future by enhancing emergency response operations, m
anagement, and diversity, as well as technology, health, and safety. We outlined twenty priority objectives, including enhancing our special operations units and designing new fireboats. Scoppetta said that he “considered the strategic plan one of the most important documents FDNY has ever produced.” This was an opportunity to turn the pain of 9/11 into a new purpose.

  * * *

  • • •

  For a year, members of the FDNY had been going to endless wakes, funerals, and memorial services. I had attended dozens. But we still needed closure. After the WTC site had been closed in May, I approached the fire commissioner and senior leadership to mention this concern.

  I had suggested that we conduct one large memorial service for the entire FDNY, a way to honor those we had lost together. The commissioner agreed. On October 12, 2002, after most of the individual funerals had occurred and after the first anniversary of the event, we held the FDNY memorial at Madison Square Garden.

  The last time I had been in Madison Square Garden was on October 20, 2001, to attend the “Concert for New York City.” I brought my fifteen-year-old daughter Christine. It seemed like the history of rock-and-roll all showed up for one concert to bring hope to the victims of 9/11. Organized by Paul McCartney, it included sixty artists, like The Who, David Bowie, Elton John, Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi, Jay-Z, Destiny’s Child, the Backstreet Boys, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Melissa Etheridge, to name a few. Every song was so emotional and uplifting that it felt like a concert finale.

  I was delighted to take my daughter to the best concert of our lives. After a month of sadness, Christine was smiling to be with me during a pretty cool concert for a teenager. The outpouring of the artists’ love made it a fantastic night to escape the reality of that day for six hours of performances and music.