Chief Proper’s Saxophone
News for the Town of
Colonie Emergency Services
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 from 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
suprisingly 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.
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.
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 teams (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.
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 we 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.