Chief Proper’s Saxophone
News for the Town of Colonie Emergency Services
The following article was written by 2nd Asst. Chief Kevin Terry of the Fuller Road Fire department and was first printed in the Colonie PBA publication the “Colonie Guardian” vol.17 no. 1 July 2002
September 11, 2001
As I sit here on May 30, 2002 and watch the coverage on television of the removal of the final remains of Ground Zero, I cannot but reflect on the tragic events of the morning of September 11, 2001.
The day started as many do when you are assigned to the C-line tour. I would normally sleep in until 09:00 or 09:30am. At about 08:58am, I was awoken by a telephone call that my answering machine answered. It was Mike Romano, an Albany Police officer and Assistant Chief in the Fuller Road Fire Department. “Dude, if you’re there turn on your TV, the City’s got a job at the World Trade Center. They said that a plane hit it.” I jumped from my bed and turned on my TV in the living room.
Every station
that I turned on had a different view of the heavy black smoke emitting from the
upper floors of the north tower. As I switched the TV to channel 10, I heard
Charles Gibson say that from his view, he just saw a large explosion in the
upper floors of the south tower. I called Mike back on his cell phone and told
him that a second plane had hit. He was in Albany Police court for an
arraignment, and I was filtering information to him as it happened. I then
called my girlfriend, Jill, to tell her what was going on. There were all types
of rumors going around as to extent of the terrorist activities going on. Jill
asked me if the rescue team that we both belong to would be activated for this
type of incident. I told her that FDNY’s resources far outweigh the resources
that we would be able to offer them. 
As I watched the incident unfold on TV, I
called Steve Leonardo to see if he had been monitoring what was going on. He was
watching it as well. We joked that we could be down there soon enough to get
good pictures of this major fire. At this point, neither myself nor anyone I
talked to had any inclination that these two giant buildings would fail. As I
watched, the information about the Pentagon and the unaccounted for flight over
Pennsylvania began to come out. I logged on to the Internet to attempt to get
any additional information as to what was going on in the country. As I walked
back out to the TV, I was awestruck when I saw the south tower completely
collapse before my eyes. I called Steve back to tell him what happened.
Immediately, we both began to think that the Urban Search and Rescue team might
be activated to assist with this incident. Shortly after this discussion, my pager was activated by the New York State Office of Fire Prevention and Control to put a team of responders on standby to respond to the City. I called Lieutenant Rich Villa on his cell phone and told him of the situation and inquired if Steve and I would be able to respond if needed. The Lieutenant referred me to the Chief’s office, where I spoke to Deputy Chief Geraci. The Deputy Chief told me to stand fast and that he would call me right back. Within two minutes Deputy Chief Geraci called me back saying that we were cleared to respond for as long as we needed to, but to just keep him informed of our location and our status. I thanked him and immediately began to put together my uniforms and all of my personal protective equipment.
At about 11:15 a.m. I met Steve at the team headquarters on Albany Street. Officer Gaunay was also assigned there to assist with any duties. We attended a briefing where we were told we were going to be deployed to the northern staging area. All of the team personnel and equipment were being gathered together for the largest deployment in our history. Our goal became to be on the road by 1:00pm. We were assembled in nearly a dozen vehicles to get all of us and our equipment in place. I drove my fire department chief’s vehicle with some equipment from the fire department on board. I had my girlfriend Jill, and Senior Dispatcher Tom Vogel in my vehicle with me along with a City of Saratoga Springs firefighter. We responded red lights and sirens from the team headquarters to Interstate 87 southbound. We made very good time until we approached the Ramapo rest area where traffic became much heavier. Just below the rest area we began to see the smoke cloud from the incident. As we approached the Tappan Zee Bridge traffic was gridlocked. It was a slow, painstaking trip over the bridge. All southbound Thruway traffic was forced to exit at exit 8. Just past exit 8 our convoy was met by an escort from the City of Yonkers Police Department. The north staging area was at the Yonkers Raceway.
As we pulled into the lot, it looked as if a large fire department parade was
going on. There was fire apparatus and ambulance as far as you could see. We
conducted another briefing here and shortly thereafter were dispatched to the
forward staging area at the FDNY training academy on Randall’s Island, under the
Tri-Borough bridge. When we arrived at Randall’s, we were told to get hydrated
and to find something to eat because it was going to be a long night. This was
my first opportunity to talk to some people that had direct knowledge of what
was going on in lower Manhattan. I met with staff from the Office of Fire
Prevention and Control. Deputy State Fire Administrator Dan Caffrey (retired
from FDNY), Chief Thomas Wutz and Deputy Chief Paul Martin. It was these former
co-workers of mine that briefed me on the situation-status. 350 firefighters
missing, 100 police officers missing, maybe more than 5000 civilians unaccounted
for. What hurt more than these numbers were some of the names that I began to
hear -- Deputy Chief Ray Downey, Deputy Commissioner Feehan, Lieutenant Dennis
Mojica, Firefighter Andy Fredricks, Firefighter Ray Meisenheimer and many
others. All individuals that used to work for the State part-time, all friends.
A decision needed to be made. We were staged at Randall’s and communication to
the scene was next to impossible. We knew that our help would be needed, but if
we couldn’t let the command staff know that we were here and available that we
would never get deployment orders. The call was made by Dan Caffrey to assemble
and caravan into lower Manhattan. We crossed the Tri-Borough Bridge and went
down 2nd Avenue to 34th Street to the West Side Highway. As we proceeded south
on West Street, the area was gridlocked with ambulances, police cars, and fire
apparatus. We sat in traffic for over an hour attempting to make our way
southbound toward the site. We eventually cut over to Washington Street a couple
of blocks north of Manhattan Community College. As most of our team members
exited vehicles and assembled on the street, the discussion of the group was
centered around the degree of damage. Paul Martin, Jill and I went for a walk
out toward West Street and then down closer to the site. Once I got my bearings,
I discovered that we were a half-mile fro
m the Trade Center. The outer perimeter
was being secured by NYPD officers. We were notified by radio that there may be
an assignment for our team. As we worked our way back to the staging area, I saw
Dan Caffrey talking to Tom VonEssen, the Commissioner of FDNY. We were once
again briefed that we were going to Ground Zero, the north side, West St. and
Vesey St. Our tool tractor trailer and our lumber flatbed trailer were escorted
down West Street by a front-end loader that plowed the road of debris to allow
us to proceed. I made sure that Jill was on the flatbed trailer and then got on
the back myself.
As we slowly drove down West Street, I saw Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, Police Commissioner Bernie Kerrick, and Fire Commissioner Tom VonEssen
walking north on West Street. The Mayor stopped walking to shake our hands and
thank us for helping out the people of his city.
As we approached the site,
everyone began to put on the flimsy paper dust masks that were being passed out.
The smell was like nothing that I had experienced before, a combination of
smoke, wet dust, and dirt. Once we got a parking spot on West Street just north
of Vesey Street in front of the 40-story Verizon building, everyone had a
similar look of awe on their faces. There were exhausted firefighters everywhere
we looked. There were abandoned fire apparatus lining the streets, some still
flowing water through unmanned nozzles. The command post on our side consisted
on two eight-foot tables with two telephones on them. The team management tried
diligently to keep all of our members within arms reach of our trailer.
Accountability was going to be so important at this mammoth scene.
Almost
immediately, an off duty FDNY firefighter approached our trailer and solicited
our help. He wanted to utilize wire slings to assist in pulling over the north
pedestrian bridge. We instinctively began to assemble tools, equipment, and
manpower to work on this task. As we walked toward the bridge our presence was
questioned by an FDNY chief who was in charge of the sector. We were immediately
told to go back to our trailer and await orders from the command post.
At this
early stage in the incident, there was little command and control. It was more
like small companies of firefighters that had a minimum number of tools, would
go from area to area to try to do something, anything. Not long after this Danny
McDonough, a retired FDNY Rescue 3 firefighter and NYTF-1 member who is assigned
as a liaison for our team to the FDNY, got us an assignment cutting steel beams
that had fallen north of the north pedestrian bridge. Pete Benedetto, Steve, a
couple others and myself assembled our cutting torches and carried them to the
area where Battalion Chief John Norman was operating. We worked for about 45
minutes cutting through the 30- and 50-ton steel beams.
We were not making very
fast progress. These beams needed to be cut into lengths that would be able to
be lifted by the machinery that was on site and fit in the dump trailers that
were beginning to line West Street. We worked until about 3:30am, when we were
sent back to our trailer. When we arrived there most people had tried to find
somewhere to bed down. I found Jill inside the equipment trailer sitting on a
spool of rope, resting her head on a workbench. Steve and I decided to find
somewhere to catch a couple of winks. We decided to explore the Verizon building
that we were parked in front of. There were about half a dozen 2 ½” hoselines
stretched through the front doors of the building all going into different
stairwells off of the lobby. We found a mailroom on the first floor that was
unoccupied. It was a fairly wide-open room, about 20’ X 45’ with an office at
one end. The only problem was that the fire alarm was going off in the building
and there was about ½” of dust covering the floor.
We went back outside to let
the rest of the team members know of our discovery and brought our sleeping bags
back in with us. We broke the alarm strobe and clangston off of the wall and
brought our flashlights into the mailroom. Steve and I established position in
the office at the end of the room. As everyone began to settle down and fall off
to sleep, a sudden crash occurred in the mailroom. The conduit that was holding
up the alarm strobe had fallen free of the ceiling and landed on a filing
cabinet. Everyone in the room jumped, but no one made a sound until a lone voice
said “Is everyone OK?”. With no response we all tried to settle back down again.
We slept for all of an hour and a half when we were awoken by Team Leader Mike DellaRocco. DellaRocco, who is the Executive Deputy Chief of the Schenectady
Fire Department, stated that we had very limited information regarding what our
assigned duties would be. Steve and I decided that we would see if we could find
a bathroom to use. We went West on Vesey Street toward the Hudson River. We
passed a good Samaritan who was giving out bad, cold coffee. We decided to go
into the World Financial Center complex. There were a few NYPD officers milling
around the building, but surprisingly there was no real effort to secure the
building. We tried a couple of rest rooms, but with all of the water mains
damaged, there was no way to flush any of the urinals or toilets. We were then
greeted in the men’s room by two female NYPD officers who were looking for a
cleaner toilet to use.
After the business was taken care of we explored in the
building toward the Winter Garden Atrium. The Winter Garden was a common area
between office buildings that hosted many shops and cafes as well as an area for
indoor concerts. The whole area looked like it was abandoned. There were half
filled glasses on the tables and merchandise knocked over in the stores.
Everything had ½” of dust on it. We knew where to go to get out of the building
by following the most heavily traveled areas in the dust. When we got back
outside, we headed back toward the trailer. It was only now that we saw how
large of an area that the major damage covered.
Our first assignment for the morning was to begin to cut some of the steel beams
that fell on Vesey Street, between Building 6 and the Verizon building. We
utilized an exothermic torch and numerous oxyacetylene torches. It would take
several minutes to make each cut in the enormous beams. This is when we saw the
first group of trades-people arrive on site. A group of laborers were assigned
to assist us with the removal of the debris surrounding the beams we were
cutting. In an instant there were 100 men grabbing anything that could be moved
and carrying it toward the trucks aligning West Street. It was very apparent at
this point that this operation would be much more efficient to be handled by
workers who cut steel everyday. Within two or three days the responsibility of
providing trained torch operators was that of the welders and demolition unions.
Our next mission was to assemble our paratech rescue struts as well as a cadre
of other equipment and bring it over to the opposite side of the site. They
wanted our group to operate between where the south tower was and where the
burned out shell of building 4 was. As we were loading the equipment into a
pick-up truck, the first “running of the bulls” occurred. A panic rapidly spread
over the crowd of rescuers that either there was going to be a secondary
collapse or another building was going to fail. As I looked up from the bed of
the pickup, all I saw was Firefighters, Cops, construction workers and everyone
else running north on West Street. My first priority was to find Jill. I went
forward to the accountability board where she was stationed but everyone had
abandoned their positions. I distinctly remember seeing the FDNY command post
sitting vacant in the intersection. I ran into Jimmy Hughs at our accountability
board. We both were trying to get an idea of where all of our team members were
while the rest of the world ran by. We took up the rear of the group as we
jogged north for a couple of blocks. I found Jill on the sidewalk by the
Schuyler High School building. After a few minutes we were given the all clear
and returned to the trailer. When we got back to our command post, we
immediately made an announcement that the pedestrian bridge in front of the
Manhattan Community College would be our meeting place if another such event
occurred. I was called on the radio to our command post to meet Chief Tom Wutz
and Deputy State Fire Administrator Dan Caffrey. A 2 man canine search and
rescue team from Savannah, Georgia had been teamed up with our group to provide
assistance. Caffrey wanted Fire Protection Specialist Shawn Brimhall to escort
one of the K-9’s and handler and me to escort the other. Shawn and I assembled
our PPE, some small tools, and our handie-talkies. We were told to enter the
American Express of the World Financial Center and to follow the hose lines from
the Winter Garden to the second floor windows on the east side of the building
that exited onto the pile.
On the way to our mission, I ran into a couple of our
team members who were assigned to a transit, observing the buildings surrounding
the site watching for any movement. As we headed toward our access point, I
realized that I didn’t have my camera with me. The windows that were serving as
our door to the pile gave me my first view of “Ground Zero”. These windows faced
West Street, just south of the north pedestrian bridge. We were staged just
inside these windows, awaiting security clearance to go onto the pile. From this
point there was debris as far as the eye could see. The piles went from street
level to 60 feet in the air. Dave, the K-9 handler assigned to me, gave me a
quick briefing of how his partner was trained and how he was trained to
indicate.
Once we were given the blessing to enter the pile, the dog indicated
about 3 feet from the windows that we just passed through. As we worked our way
out toward West Street, Dave noted that his partner was indicating very
erratically and was acting strangely. We came to the conclusion that the dogs
were oversensitized by all of the body odors that were present. These K-9’s were
trained on a pile of debris that contained a single small sample of scent within
it. With thousands and thousands of pieces of flesh and matter within the pile,
the dogs had difficulty narrowing down the origin of the scent. As we crossed
West Street, the heat on the pile was unbelievable. The heat of the afternoon
sun along with the radiant heat from the fires burning in the debris below us
had many firefighters on the pile working in just t-shirts and bunker pants. We
worked our way east on the pile toward the former north tower. I reported to an
FDNY Battalion Chief to tell him who we were and what our capabilities were.
With such a high level of desperation among the firefighters looking for there
own, we began to be requested all over the pile. A large group of firefighters
called us over to West Street. As we approached the firefighters, I could make
out a light bar among the rubble. We were evidently right over West Street. The
rubble that the firefighters were working around was 105 Truck. The 95-foot
tower ladder had rubble over the top of the bucket and about halfway up the cab.
The firefighters were digging under the assumption that either some brothers or
civilians may have climbed under the truck as the buildings fell down. As I
surveyed the immediate area, I knew that we were not capable of moving the
debris that entombed the truck. There was a look of sheer desperation in the
eyes of these firefighters wanting us to be able to find something, anything.
The perimeter check of the truck checked negative.
We were next called further
north to search an area just south of the north pedestrian bridge. As we
negotiated the beams and debris, I saw that we were getting dangerously close to
the shadow of III World Financial Center. This building had a tremendous gouge
out of the side of it. At this point no one was assured of the stability of
these surrounding structures. After a few more searches we were called by team
leader Warren “Fuzzy” Carr to return to the command post. Once we finally got
back to the trailer, Shawn and I were interrogated by our team command staff as
to the enormity of the pile. We were re-hydrating ourselves and tried to cool
down. At 4:00pm our squad was scheduled to go off duty for 12 hours. We were
told that we could take a shower at the Manhattan Community College. Tom Vogel,
Jill and I walked a dozen blocks north to where my car was parked to get our
personal supplies. We walked into the college and found the locker rooms on the
second floor.
Due to the fact that all of the natural gas service was shut off
south of canal street, the hot water heaters at the college were not functional.
Mayor decided that one of us should stand guard over our supplies while the
other showered. I went first. It was the coldest shower of my life. The second I
was done, I relieved Mayor so he could get cleaned up. While I was getting
dressed, I talked with a few police officers from New Jersey that were getting
changed in the locker room. When we were all cleaned up, we went out to West
Street to meet up with the rest of the squad. One of them had found where Mr. Subb was handing out sandwiches on the street. We loaded up and attempted to
find Chief Wutz. Our overnight accommodations were made at the Salvation Army
shelter on East 14th Street. On the drive up there I called Mike Romano and my
parents, who were vacationing in Myrtle Beach, to let them know what was going
on. We met up with an officer from the Salvation Army who showed us where the
cots were and where we could sleep. When we entered the auditorium, there were a
number of team members already sleeping. Jill and I went behind the curtain on
the stage to assemble our cots and take a nap.
September 13, 2001
We laid down at about 11:00pm and were awoken at 03:15am to get down to the site
to relieve the night crew by 04:00am. Once the night crew was relieved and sent
back to the mission, we were given our assignments for the tour. I was assigned
to the command post to work with the team leader and Jill to develop an
accountability system for the site. Our team began to do atmospheric monitoring
for the site to try to determine the level of contaminants in the air. Our
hazardous materials specialist advised us that we should wear Tyvek suits at the
site to protect ourselves from all of the contaminants.
Around noontime Jill and
I took a walk over to the Embassy Suites hotel at Vesey Street and North End
Avenue, kitty corner from where the north tower had stood. We spoke to Michael
O’Leary who was the building manager. He had been at the hotel since the
incident had began. He told us how after the south tower had collapsed, he
assisted wounded emergency responders as they tried to take shelter in the
hotel. He said that he was taking a couple of firefighters to an awaiting
ambulance in the rear of the hotel when the north tower collapsed over them. We
asked Michael if we would be able to make accommodations in the hotel. He
brought us to a conference center on the second floor of the hotel where we
could set up. I called Steve on the handie-talkie to come over and give us a
hand setting up the room.
As Steve got there, Michael opened up the room for us
to go in. As the doors opened, the room appeared as a snapshot in time. There
were laptop computers left out, luggage in the corners of the room, keys on the
tables and other personal property strewn across the room. We assembled all of
the valuable items to have them secured by the hotel. While we were in the
process of setting up our space, we were notified by radio that OFPC personnel
had been able to make arrangements for hotel rooms in Mid-Town. In the middle of
the afternoon, we had our second “running of the bulls”. A gas leak was rumored
in the area and a low flying helicopter along with some unsecured glass panels
falling from window frames caused another mass exodus from the West street end
of the site. One of our team members tripped while exiting the trailer, and fell
breaking her ankle and getting trampled by some workers evacuating.
At 4:00pm
the change of shifts occurred. Steve, Jill, and I drove up West Street toward
the Clarion Hotel on East 40th Street. We gave a ride to a medical intern who
was assisting at the site but needed to return to his hospital office.
As we drove up West Street above 14th Street, both sides of the street were
lined with television satellite trucks. Boston, Texas, California, and Florida
were among the areas represented. A little further north we saw two familiar
faces. John Gray and Benita Zahn from Newschannel 13 were broadcasting from the
sidewalk. Benita came over to my truck and conducted a quick interview with us.
Once we got to the hotel, we needed to find a spot to park all of the vehicles
and get all of us checked into the hotel. The first priority was to take a hot
shower.
After we were cleaned up we walked up to 42nd Street and got a couple of
slices of pizza for dinner. We talked to 4 NYPD recruits who were taken out of
the academy and assigned to foot posts throughout the city. We got back to the
room by 9:00pm and began to watch some of the news coverage of the incident. I
knew that we needed to get to bed, because we needed to be in the lobby at
03:15am for breakfast.
September 14, 2001
While eating breakfast, Jill came down with some intestinal issues that kept her
from coming down to the site for the day tour. Steve and I drove down to the
site in the pouring rain. Once on scene, I ran into Matt Peterson and Greg Serio
who had worked the night tour. Due to heavy rains and lightning, all activity on
the pile was suspended. We were assigned into 4 person team
s (3 rescue
specialists and 1 rescue squad officer) and told to find a dry place to wait for
an assignment. Initially we went into the lobby of the Verizon building, but due
to the numerous generators running in the lobby the carbon monoxide level was
too high for us to remain inside. We all moved to the next building north of the
Verizon building. Everyone tried to get comfortable on the furniture in the
lobby.
Not long after, the manager of the building showed up and told us to make
ourselves at home and utilize anything that we needed. He told us that the
cafeteria was in the basement, but due to a broken water main the basement had
about two feet of water in it. As we explored the rest of the lobby area, we
found an unlocked newsstand that had bottled water and a snack bar. With the
manager’s comments in mind, we took enough water for the squads staged in the
lobby.
The weather broke around 11:00am or so. Steve’s group went out onto the
pile first to search some of the newly exposed voids with our searchcams. My
group was second to go out onto the pile. Steve’s squad and mine were working
relatively close to each other. The debris on the piles was very wet and
slippery form the soaking rains. We were working hand in hand with ironworkers
that were cutting holes in the steel beams so we could put our searchcam probes
into the pile. Steve and I began to work the same void where we had a strong
odor of decomposition.
As we dug around this area we found an FDNY battalion
chief’s vehicle. The more debris that we removed the more evident it became that
the chiefs’ vehicle was crushed down to about 18 inches from the pavement. This
particular area checked negative of any substantial-sized body parts. As we were
moving debris in 5-gallon pails, we were having the K-9 teams check each bucket.
If the dog indicated on the bucket, the contents would be dumped out and more
extensively checked. My group was continuing to work an area with a particularly
pungent odor. As we cleared debris, we found no parts bigger than a loaf of
bread.
After about 2 hours we were being relieved by another squad. All of us
were soaked through to the skin. We decontaminated our tools and ourselves and
went to get something to eat. The Salvation Army had set up a mobile canteen on
West Street and was serving hot meals 24 hours a day. Both Steve’s and my group
were told that we would not be going back out onto the pile. We gathered our
gear and got ready for the night tour to relieve us.
On the ride back to the
hotel, we once again ran into the NewsChannel 13 anchors and once again gave a
quick interview. Once back at the hotel, Jill was feeling much better. Jill,
Steve and I went to ESPN Sportszone in Times Square for dinner. All of the TV’s
in the restaurant were tuned to the various news stations that we were all glued
to. After dinner we passed through all of the street vendors selling various WTC
memorabilia. Once back at the hotel we immediately retire for having to get up
at such an early hour again.
September 15, 2001
Saturday morning when we awoke the weather was much better than the day before.
Upon arrival at the site, we were once again broken down into squads and groups.
Our initial orders were that the team would begin to demobilize through the
weekend because the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Teams were beginning to arrive
on site.
When Chief Wutz approached the FDNY command staff with that prospect,
we were told that FDNY wanted us to remain on site for the foreseeable future.
We had to begin to look at a long-range plan for being able to deploy personnel
to the City on an on-going basis. It was determined that the majority of the
team would return home on Saturday night leaving a skeleton crew of about 25
people for the weekend. My group was first due for assignments on this morning,
so I ensured that all of my people were hydrated and properly equipped. At about
09:00am my group was deployed to the area of the north tower to assist FDNY and
NYPD ESU with a large void they had uncovered. Due to the terrain, it took us
about 45 minutes to get to the void from the access point on West Street.
Now
that the larger heavy machinery was being utilized on site, traveling around the
site became much more hazardous. The machine operators are focused on their
operations and may not see people walking around the machinery. Once we entered
our work area my group had been assigned to, we found that we were working in a
void within a valley of debris. As debris was passed from the void, it had to be
passed up about 25 feet.
In this area we found a section of a bathroom door from
the aircraft that struck the building. The firefighters at the bottom of the
void had a visual on the uniform of an airline employee. We passed torches,
reciprocating saws, lights and search cams down to the bottom. The size of the
debris in this area was as large as I had seen since my arrival on the pile. We
were all trying to fit down into the void, but because of the configuration on
the debris, there was only room for one or two people at the bottom. So
essentially we formed a human chain to pass equipment and tools down and then
pass the debris back out. We worked this area for about 2 hours when we were
contacted by the command post to return for rehab. We left some of our equipment
with a Lieutenant from 157 Truck who was commanding the operation.
Once back at
the command post, we were notified of who was staying the weekend and who was
being demobilized. Jill and I were on the group to be demobilized; Steve was
staying until Tuesday. This was the most emotional part of the incident thus far
for me. We had come as a group to help search for people who were our teachers,
friends, and heroes and now we were going to have to go home, leaving some of
our brothers behind. Jill and I took a walk around the site and saw some of the
piles of destroyed apparatus with messages and prayers written in the dust and
rosaries hanging on them. We took some pictures and gathered all of our
belongings to head back to the room to clean up and check out. While we were
showering the funeral service for FDNY Chief of Department Peter Ganci was being
televised.
The thing I remember the most of the whole afternoon was an older man
on the street corner playing religious and patriotic songs on his saxophone
while I watched the Chief’s funeral service.
By 3:00pm w
e were once again in a
caravan, but this time we were headed north, to our homes. We traveled with
Captain Mike Kelleher from the Troy Fire Department and Firefighter Mike Denny
from the Schenectady Fire Department. As we came up the Thruway we saw flags
hung from just about every overpass that we went under. When we got back to our
Albany Street headquarters, we were received by Officer Bob Uhl, who escorted us
to St. Clare’s Hospital for our medical review. That took a couple of hours for
all or us to get blood drawn and chest x-rays taken. There was a buffet at the
hospital in the waiting room for our dinner. When we were all done we returned
to Albany Street where many of our team members families had shown up to welcome
us back. The first people that I saw were Chief Grebert and his sister Jeanne
Mesick embracing.
This is my best recollection of the events of our first five days operating at
the World Trade Center incident. Our team operated for 24 hours/day for 16 days.
We were demobilized on September 26 at 4:00pm. I would like to thank the other
120 team members that responded over that 16 day period for making me proud. We
were the first team in and the team that operated the longest on-scene. Everyone
has their own individual recollections of this incident, I was just lucky enough
to get an opportunity to express mine here.
I would also like to thank Supervisor Mary Brizzell and the Chiefs of the Police
Department that gave Steve Leonardo, Matthew Peterson, Thomas Vogel, Phil
Wingloski, and I the opportunity to help the City of New York during their great
time of crisis.
Chief Kevin Terry
Fire Chief-Car 21