A Decade of Hope (28 page)

I walked around looking for Andre, or anybody from Rescue 5. I saw Rescue 1's rig, but where was Rescue 5? Ground Zero was too big, and there was so much debris around.

A chief came, and after taking a roll call sent most of us back to our respective quarters. More off-duty personnel were already at my firehouse. I got cleaned up; I was full of soot: My ears were totally covered, my nose, and that smell. It's the worst feeling, as if you'd gotten slimed.

I didn't think that I'd lost Andre. I said to myself,
To have any hope you have to have a positive mental attitude
. I kept saying to myself,
Don't get negative
.
Positive mental attitude
.
If anybody had a chance, it would be those guys in Rescue. They are trained for that.
It's the Rescue guys who end up pulling firemen out when they get in trouble, so they must have known how to get themselves out. I was not thinking that they could have died instantly. I was just in a daze, almost on autopilot. My first priority right now was to accept that this happened. That's what we're trained for.
It can happen; I can't do anything to change it. But what can we do to alleviate any of the suffering? We can at least save some lives.

Nobody said anything specific to me, but people were talking: “Man, seventy percent of SOC was decimated. They were working, and they're not here anymore, and nobody's heard from them.” Not that they were dead, but nobody's heard from them. That's when people started thinking negatively.

When I got home, people were there waiting—some friends of mine, cops in Freeport and Nassau County, making sure Mom and Dad were okay. They hugged me, and they were like, “He's going to be okay, he's going to be okay.” “You heard from him?” “No.” “Okay,” “Don't worry about it.” And I guess it was just their positive attitude, so I said, “Okay, probably it's going to be fine.” I was in denial.

But you know, when I saw the damage, when I was doing a quick search, the mountain of broken concrete and steel, I knew there was no way that anyone was going to find any survivors. But there's denial, wishful thinking.
No, no, no, they weren't in that pile. They are going to be okay.

Every day my mother would ask, “Did you hear anything?” She was real upbeat. Dad was too. I said,“No, but, you know, they are Rescue guys, they're fine.”

A week or so later they began sending people to make formal announcements. They would send a chief. I was at work in front of my firehouse, and a chief came up to me and said, “We haven't heard anything from them. He didn't make it.” And I said, “What do you mean, he didn't make it? Nobody knows anything yet. I refuse to believe that. I refuse to believe that. As a matter of fact, get out of my face.”

He understood the way I was feeling, and I went on, “No, he's fine. He's in Rescue. They're fine. It's up to us to find them. They rescue us all this time, when we're in trouble.” I said, “Now it's our turn for those of us who made it to go after them. He's fine.”

I told my parents that they were saying that he was dead, and I told them that I didn't believe it, that I believed that we were going to find him. My mother said, “Yeah, we're going to find him. We'll find him, honey.” I held on to that. I honestly believed that he could have been wounded, or gotten amnesia. Ten years later, ever though I don't believe it anymore, there's still a small portion at the back of my mind that says there's still a possibility. Because nothing was ever found of him.

Over at Bellevue they still have a lot of body parts but just don't have the DNA technology to positively identify them. Some of those parts are so badly damaged that it's going to take some future form of testing to assess them. And so, until I get that confirmation, I'm not going to 100 percent believe that he's dead.

The professional fireman in me tells me that he's not coming back. I've accepted that, and that's what's helped me move on. A lot of the things that I've gone through and that I've strived to become are not just for me anymore, but for both of us. I'm living for both of us. It's one thing to be brothers and siblings; it's another to be twins. Twins often feel the same thing. But when the North Tower fell, I didn't feel anything—there was no feeling of separation. That's why I still hold on to that little hope.

Out at the Fort Totten Counseling Unit, we had the brothers' meeting, for all the guys on the job who had lost brothers. Right after 9/11 a captain said, “Hey, Zack, do you want to take a leave?” I said no; I thought I was just sad. I lost a twin brother, but people were like, Don't worry, we can handle it without you. I was supposed to have my vacation that October, but I kept putting it off. My captain kept saying, “Why don't you take a leave?” I kept saying, “No, I want to stay and continue to do this, to find Andre.” He finally made me go out on vacation—I was on that high of working on autopilot. Even when I finally went on leave I was spending time at the site. I don't think I am very sick from working there, except for a little cough every now and then. What protected me was that I knew when the federal government was telling us the air was fine to breathe, they were lying, and so whenever I was down at the pile, I wore the respirator mask, as uncomfortable as it was.

 

When I officially returned to work after 9/11 and after my vacation time, I started to have anxiety attacks, and I'm like, “What's going on with me?” Lieutenant John Violi, one of my best friends, said, “Hey, Zack, you okay?” I said, “I don't know what's wrong, but for whatever reason, I'm having anxiety attacks, dizzy, panting, feeling weird whenever we'd pass the site.” He said, “Zack, I'm putting you out, and I want you to call counseling.” So I went on special leave for counseling. At first I didn't even tell them that I was still going down to the site, but I had to continue to be part of this situation, the recovery at Ground Zero. In the long run the counseling helped, but I was going crazy at home not doing anything, so in August or September of 2002 I went back to work, after nine months in counseling.

Andre and I never worked jobs together, because we worked in different boroughs. But on Father's Day in 2001, Harry Ford, John Downing, and Brian Fahey were killed in a collapse at a hardware store fire. Andre and I went to the funerals, and I remember at Harry Ford's I said to him, “You have to promise me something: If anything ever happens to me, or if I die doing this job that we love, you're close with Britney.” That's my daughter, and Britney looked up to my brother as a second father. I said, “Promise me you'll take care of her as if she was your own daughter.” And Andre looked at me and said, “Absolutely.” But he added, “Then you have to promise me something too. If anything ever happens to me, promise me that you'll take care of my son, Blair, as if he were your own.” I said, “Without a doubt, absolutely.”

For Andre's service, I was supposed to lead the eulogy, but my sister-in-law didn't want me to do that. That devastated me. I pretty much lost it, and Dad had to hold me away from her. Since then there has been a dispute over visitation rights of my brother's family, and I've only seen Blair three times. But I'm not going to kill myself worrying about this—I'm not. I hope he'll come to realize what's going on. But it's tough on my mother, who prays about it every day, besides having to deal with 9/11. I don't even get to see my own kids, because I'm going through a control issue with my children's mother. It's tough, and that's the hardest thing for my parents. My mom has not been able to see Blair, her oldest grandchild, the only boy, and now my two daughters. Mom just turned eighty, and her own blood is not able to pay respects to their grandparents.

 

But I keep going, and try to do positive things. One thing that I take great pride in is that I'm one of the main post advisers for the Fire Department Post of New York Explorers, the one in Queens. [The Exploring program, which is operated with the Boy Scouts of America, gives fourteen- to twenty-year-olds a chance to work with firefighters.] I took it over, and it's given me purpose. I was a Boy Scout, and Andre was too. As a matter of fact, when Chief Cassano, now commissioner, found out, he was very honored. He said, “I have to come by and check out your post. You're doing a good job. Keep it up.” It gives me a lot of satisfaction when I do community service. Twice a month we also do Meals-on-Wheels with the Explorers, and POTS, Part of the Solution, a community soup kitchen in the South Bronx. I know I'm not going to be able to change every single one of these kids; it's just not going to happen. But if I can turn just one kid's life around and help him to see that there's something better out there, it's all worth it.

I think I learned a lot about giving from the New York Fire Department. Our unselfishness. Our commitment. Our desire to always be there and never give up. Our bravery. Our courage. But more than anything, our unselfishness. I think that's probably the key word. I find all firemen are like that, the world over. I used to play with the Fire Department football team, The Bravest, and when we went out to Los Angeles County, the LA firefighters said to us more than once, We don't know what it is, but it seems that you in New York City have a bond and a love for each other that is not matched anywhere. The firefighters in New York City know who we are, and know what we want to be, and the other firefighters around the world want to be just like New York City firefighters.

Ken Haskell is a New York City firefighter, as was his father. Ken is an expert in rescue techniques and teaches this important lifesaving subject to firefighters all across the country. His two brothers, Tommy and Timmy, were also FDNY firefighters, and both were lost in the mayhem of 9/11.

 

 

 

M
y father was a marine. In 1969 he joined the New York City Fire Department, starting out with 35 Truck and then moving over to Ladder 174 in East Flatbush. He had an active firefighting career, but he had a minor heart attack in 1979, and so he retired. Afterward he started his own contracting business, which is how he supported our family, and my brothers and I basically grew up learning the trade. Working with my dad was an invaluable experience to me, for I learned so much from him. He died in 1994, but I still learn from him today.

Timmy was two years older than me, and Tommy was four years older than me. My mother and father had a big family to raise, five kids, all close in age—my sister, Dawn, is the only girl, and then there's also Kevin. Our father was very involved in our lives, in a good way. He was our coach for Little League and football and always taught us things. We lived on the water in Brooklyn, and he'd show us how to take care of a boat and drive it around the bay. He was very comfortable just letting us do our own thing, be ourselves. My father gave us guidance to be the man that he was, but it wasn't as if he ever forced anything on us. I think he would have liked to have seen us all join the marines, because we all knew what the marines did for him, but he never pushed it. It was the same with the Fire Department. His attitude was, Look, guys, when you're ready you've got to take these tests if you want the job. It's a good job. If you don't want it, it's something you can fall back on if whatever else you decide to do falls through.

I remember that some of my fondest memories as a kid were going to his firehouse for Christmas parties, and being in the city was always unique, but becoming a firefighter wasn't something that I aspired to as a young boy. As I got older, though, I saw that the people my dad employed in his contracting business were all firefighters he was working with. I was really struck by the bond they had with one another, and the work ethic every one of them had. Each guy brought something to the table. They all busted their asses, and their being guys from my father's firehouse really resonated with me as a kid. Working alongside my dad and those guys, and hearing the stories they would tell about the job they had the night before—who got hurt, who got burned, or something funny that happened in the firehouse kitchen—probably had more to do with my going into firefighting than anything. Besides, of course, the fact that my father was a fireman. As I got older it just became my natural progression.

I was actually a police officer before I was a fireman. The NYPD hired me, and I did about three years with the PD before I rolled over to the Fire Department. I worked in the Fifty-third Precinct and the Seventy-first, which are in the Flatbush and Crown Heights areas. I was part of the Street Crime Unit, where there was a lot of interesting work, and I was doing real well. But then the Fire Department called. I almost didn't leave, and the whole time I was in the fire academy I had some regret, thinking about how much I had enjoyed the Police Department. But my father was going, Are you crazy? Just give it some time. And once I got a taste of firefighting, I thought,
This isn't so bad
. I don't regret it at all. I love the Fire Department.

And my brothers, Tommy and Timmy . . . They were great firemen. They loved it too.

Timmy was more of a laid-back kind of guy. He wanted to be in Special Operations, and so he requested a Squad Company. Tommy was actually kind of a buff: You could rattle off a box number [an area] and he'd tell you what street it was on. Timmy loved being a firefighter, but Tommy wanted to go up the ranks. He would have risen higher up earlier, but they froze his list for two years. He was a rising star, no doubt, a superstudent. He was in the top five of every list—the lieutenants', the captains', and the battalion chiefs'. He wrote a ninety-five or better on each test. When Tommy was studying, that was his life for the year leading up to the test. Because I was so involved with the carpentry business, I never put that kind of studying time in.