DEP organizational chart for 9/11 emergency response, Sept 2001

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A Firefighter’s Story D o o c 3 CD cessor chief earlier in the day is al­ building before us. The command companies. I remember thinking then O By Dennis Smith ready missing, along with the com­ chief has taken the firefighters out. that these were truly unusual men, mand center Itself, which is some­ I leave the hoses and trucks and smart and thoughtful. he south tower of the where beneath mountains of cracked walk through the World Financial I know the captain of Rescue 1, ‘ World Trade Center concrete and bent steel caused by the Center. There has been a complete Terry Hatten. He is universally loved has just collapsed. I am second collapse, of the north tower. evacuation; I move through the hall­ and respected on the job. I think about helping my friends at Now several hundred firefighters ways alone. It seems the building has Terry, and about Brian Hickey, the Ladder Company 16, are milling about. There is not much been abandoned for decades, as there captain of Rescue 4, who just last and the firefighters are inches of dust on the floors. The month survived the blast of the As­ have commandeered a crowded 67th large and beautiful atrium with its toria fire that killed three firefighters. Street crosstown bus. We go without palm trees Is in ruins. Including two of his men. He was stopping from Lexington Avenue to the staging center on Amsterdam. We Work, mourning Outside, because of the pervasive working today. gray dusting, I cannot read the street I am pulling a heavy six-inch hose signs as 1 make my way back. There is through the niuck when I see Mike don’t talk much. Not one of the passen­ gers complains. and silence in the a lone fire company down a narrow Carter, the vice-president of the fire­ street wetting down a smoldering pile. fighters union, on the hose just before At Amsterdam we board another bus. The quiet is broken by a lieuten­ city’s ruins. The mountains of debris in every di­ me. He’s a good friend, and we barely ant; "We’ll see things today we rection are 50 and 60 feet high, and it is say hello to each other. I see Kevin shouldn’t have to see, but listen up, only now that I realize the silence I Gallagher, the union president, who Is we’ll do it together. We’ll be together, notice is the silence of thousands of looking for his missing firefighter son. and we’ll all come back together.” He for us to do except pull hose from one people buried around me. Someone calls to me. It is Jimmy opens a box of dust masks and gives place to another as a pumper and On the West Street side the chiefs Boyle, the retired president of the Iwo to each of us. ladder truck are repositioned. It is begin to push us back toward the union. “I can’t find Michael,” he says. We walk down West Street and re­ quiet: no sirens, no helicopters. Just Hudson. Entire companies are unac­ Michael Boyle was with Engine 33, port to the chief in command. He the sound of two hoses watering a counted for. The department’s elite and the whole company is missing. I stands ankle-deep in mud. His prede- hotel on West Street — the six stories rescue squads are not heard from. can’t say anything to Jimmy, but just that remain. The low crackle of de­ Just last week I talked with a group of throw my arms around him. The last Dennis Smith i.s a former firefighter partment radios fades into air. The Rescue 1 firefighters about the diffi­ thing I see is Kevin Gallagher kissing and author of “A Song for Mary." danger now is the burning 47-story cult requirements for joining these a firefighter — his son. n

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