Strong of Heart: Life and Death in the Fire Department of New York

The Site

May 30, 2002

"How will we ever get through this?" is the question I asked on the night of September 11.

"How?"

Maybe the answer is here, all around me. Not just in the cleanup, not just in the purpose demonstrated by all who came and labored in these months.

The answer is in the enduring spirits of all assembled here. That, for me, is the miracle in all of this: having looked horror in the face, we bear the pain without losing heart.

–– Thomas Von Essen

Excerpt

Can You Talk About the Loss?

"Commissioner Von Essen, can you talk about the loss to the fire department?"

I didn't know. I was a wreck, twisted inside, dirty outside, my hair mussed, my tie crooked, my clothes coated with dust, my brain scrambled, my whole self, like everyone else, suddenly lost in a horrible, surreal new world.

It had been maybe twelve hours since two hijacked jetliners had slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, igniting massive fires that brought them crashing to earth a short time later. Thousands of people were missing and presumed dead. Rubble was scattered across the southern tip of Manhattan. All day long, people in shock had been streaming uptown, away from the disaster, marching across the bridges from Manhattan by the thousands in an eerie mass exodus. The entire city was shut down, the whole country grieving and angry from the suddenness and brazenness of such an attack on the world's most powerful nation.

I was standing behind Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, my boss of five and a half years, in the auditorium of the city's Police Academy, as he spoke to dozens of reporters packed together in front of us. Lights shone down, cameras snapped and whirred. But unlike the usual mania of a news conference, the atmosphere was subdued and sorrowful.

Until a minute before, I had been marveling at the coolness the boss was displaying under such immense pressure, though I had seen similar demonstrations many times in the past.

I had also been hoping no one would ask me to speak. I didn't want to have to say anything.

The loss to the department? For starters, more than three hundred firefighters were missing, most of them feared dead. I always took the death of a firefighter, any firefighter, hard. In this case, the victims included dozens of men I had counted as close personal friends. All day long, people had been whispering their names into my ear, each one feeling like a punch to my gut.

Bill Fechan, seventy-one years old, our first deputy commissioner, the number two man in the department, who had first become a firefighter in 1959 and gone on to hold every rank during his career, even, briefly, mine.

Pete Ganci, fifty-four, the tough bulldog with a chest full of medals who as chief of department was our highest-ranking man in uniform, the one who oversaw all the firefighters.

Ray Downey, sixty-three, a sharp and seasoned chief who as head of our special operations had become an internationally known expert in disaster recovery and building collapse, skills we had never needed more than now.

Father Mychal Judge, sixty-eight, the Franciscan priest and chaplain who in many ways embodied the soul of all that we were.

And there was much more than just the names and numbers, as horrible as they were. Our command structure itself had been severely crippled. We had lost hundreds of years of experience, knowledge, and wisdom.

Death had reached into dozens of firehouses in the cruelest, most sudden way imaginable and left voids that might never be filled. At that very moment, hundreds of weary and anguished men were desperately clawing through the mountainous piles of rubble that were strewn across several acres, seeking any signs of life they could find. We nurtured hopes that there were survivors in the rubble, and horrible doubts that no one was alive. Thousands of other current and former firefighters, not to mention the parents, spouses, and children of our people, were reeling from psychic wounds that cut deep and would certainly last years, if not a lifetime. All were asking, "Why?" and none had an answer.

How would they all get through this? At that moment, after a long day of tears, work, worries, and just putting one foot in front of the other, I wasn't sure if or how I would endure the hours and months to come, let alone everyone else.

The loss to the department? How could anyone begin to calculate it? In a matter of minutes, we had been devastated beyond belief, more than any training or planning had prepared us for, far beyond anything any of us could have imagined in even our worst nightmares.

"We've got over three hundred people that are missing, that we can't account for," I said, fumbling a little to get the words, any words, out and keep the tears back. "We believe that many of - many of them are gone. We don't - we'll keep looking. We have hundreds of people over there now, trying to find as many possible locations that they might be, in - in some way, in a void or whatever and, you know, still able to breathe and - and still alive. But we believe that most of these people, I think, are - we are not going to be able to pull out, so we'll just keep working on it."

Then another reporter asked the inevitable follow-up question: "How does that make you feel?"

How do I feel? HOW DO I FEEL? I glared at the reporter who had asked the question, one I had known, and generally liked, for a long time. How the hell do you think I feel about it? I am the fire commissioner, and I feel as if we were talking about my own children. It's my duty to protect every firefighter I couldn't. How would YOU feel?

Just then, I felt as if I wanted to rip her throat out. The mayor put his hand on my shoulder, gripping it hard, as if to restrain me from leaping forward.

"I don't know what to say. I - we lost people that have given over forty years."

"Commissioner Feehan had held every rank in the department, probably the most valuable people-person in the department. When I got this job, the mayor and Commissioner Safir said, 'Make sure you keep BillFeehan.' I haven't regretted that one day. He's given his whole life to this department.

"Chief Ganci, the same thing, chief of the department, thirty-three years, thirty-four years."

"Ray Downey, we just honored him with a dinner, almost forty years of service, world-renowned for situations like this, telling me how dangerous it was when we first got there, all the possibilities, everything he was trying to do to, you know, to get the people out.

"Father Judge, I don't know if you know Father Judge, one of the nicest men you could possibly find in the whole world."

"We haven't found other people yet, either, and I don't even want to mention their names. Some of the best people in this department. I can't find anybody from five rescues and seven squads, and it's just - it's a devastating thing."

"I - I don't know - well, the fire department will - will recover. But I don't know how."

Strong of Heart. Copyright by Thomas Von Essen. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.(Continues...)

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