A Decade of Hope (3 page)

 

Certainly one of the lessons of this entire experience was my own inadequacies. You do the best you can, but if you think you're up to the task of something like 9/11 and the aftermath, you're fooling yourself. You think you can brush aside the pain of the death of these people by gallows humor, or by saying, We're firefighters, we're gonna be tough. And that doesn't work. I was not up to the task of everything that challenged us. There were times when I was terrible at home. We all had frustration, and whom do you take your frustration out on? Usually the people closest to you, because, in your mind, they don't understand what you're doing. They don't appreciate what's going on, so you shout at them and get angry with them. Looking back, there were certainly incidents like that that I'm not proud of.

Maybe it took me some time to realize the proper sequence of the events of importance to prioritize what we were doing. Supporting the firefighters who survived and were still around needed to be attended to. We were all worried about the next attack, as we weren't all convinced that this particular operation was over. Maybe something else was coming? Other buildings? The Empire State Building? Transportation hubs? We thought about these things every day, at least until the end of 2001. And the families of those who died . . . Everyone had different needs. Everyone had different expectations of what we would or could do for them. What we
should
do for them. Mayor [Rudy] Giuliani, I thought, was great with us, with the families. I think eventually we did a good job with them.

Thankfully there were so many people within the department who were talented, and who made up for my own inadequacies, because I couldn't be at the WTC site every minute of every day. I couldn't be at every one of the 343 funerals. I couldn't be at every interagency meeting that was held. There was a limit to what I could physically do, mentally do. Members of our department helped out, with funerals, especially. People did a great job making me look like I did a good job, I think. I owe a lot to them. The further it gets from those days, the more I realize that if I hadn't had a lot of people to lean on in this department, I would have been completely shot day one. I would just have had to walk away from it. Crawl up, roll up into a ball, and be totally useless, because it was an overwhelming task for anyone to do without that caliber of help. But I had it.

I never got used to the funerals; I don't think anyone did. There were 343—it was one, and then one more, and one more. It wasn't just a big number: These were individuals with families, relatives, friends. Invariably these firefighters were the nicest people in their neighborhoods. They were the coaches of the Little League teams. They worked at soup kitchens. They were good and solid individuals. They took care of their families. You heard this every day for months. You saw the kids who lost their fathers, mothers who lost their sons, and I always tried to feel that I was a sponge that would absorb everyone's grief. I was never good at watching sad movies; I'd always be the one crying. So I'd go to these funerals, and I'd come out and feel weak just witnessing this profound grief. What happened to so many families was overwhelming. At times I'd speak, and the effort of writing a speech and delivering it in some presentable manner made it possible for me to get through that particular day. I'd have to put on a strong face.

The firefighters did a good job with that too. They didn't break down at the funerals, and they were strong for the families. People were assigned to each family to take care of them. The bagpipe band figured a way to cover every funeral, to give that special Fire Department dignity that is so meaningful to the family. We didn't think it possible, but they did it. We have a Ceremonial Unit, which got very good at making every funeral move forward like clockwork. I was pretty sad that we had to get good at managing funerals, but as a department we did, though it took its toll on everybody.

I can think of only one or two funerals of members who were not buried from a church. I can't believe that all of these people were churchgoing folk, but I think everyone's spirituality grew during this period. Maybe the highlight for me was when I went to Rome in November. The Italian government asked me to send a few firefighters, including a group of family members of those who had died, and they asked me to come as well. At first I said, “I can't go. There's too much here.” They said it was only for two days, and that the group was going to have an audience with the pope at the Vatican. To see the pope seemed to be time well spent for me and for the department and, certainly, going to St. Peter's for a mass dedicated to the FDNY members lost on 9/11 conducted by the pope was historic. I was almost speechless when it came time to go up and say something to him. It was overwhelming, and I felt very uplifted by it for months after that.

The terrorism of 9/11 was a worldwide event and reached that extraordinary level where we had the pope praying for us. Not only for the people who had died and for their families, but for all the people who were continuing the work down in Ground Zero, and those protecting everyone else in the city. I'd never been across the Atlantic before, and I came back with an outlook that was certainly stronger from that visit, stronger from just being near Pope John Paul II, who will soon be a saint. I did feel just being in his presence that he had an aura.

To this day I ask myself what I could have done differently. I was the chief of operations, a big responsibility. What would have resulted in less of a loss of life? Did I do my job adequately? Or would somebody else have done a better job? Chief Ganci was in charge, but I also had a lot of high-ranking experience. I was the second in command and had as much responsibility in that incident as anyone. And I still wish there was something I could have done differently.

There have been times when people asked me, “How could you send my husband into the building like that? How could you do that?” And that's a good question. I understand someone's asking that, and it hurts to hear it. But I also understand it hurts me less than it does her. It's not an off-base question—not everyone patted us on the back to say, Don't feel bad, I don't blame you. People were angry with the department for what happened. Some people, not many. Most families were unbelievably gracious in dealing with their loss, and not getting on us, but it was a day-to-day struggle just trying to find some sort of balance. Even the firefighters wanted to know, What are you going to do different next time? I mean, if we get called to the Empire State Building now, what are you going to do differently? You're in charge. How are you going to keep us safe? And the wives would ask, How are you going to keep my husband safe? Do you know?

And I didn't know. I could not give them a guarantee to keep our people safe. No one could, and you can't guarantee it today. But we've had a decade to look back and change our policies. Maybe we can keep a higher percentage of the members safe, but we cannot say unequivocally that this will not happen again. We all know this is firefighting, and there is much stress involved with that. And danger.

That's why I'm a believer in the randomness of things rather than the purposefulness of them. It wasn't that the good or the kind were spared above others, or that one life was more valuable than another. I was spared, and some other person's life was taken. I'm sure many of those lives were more valuable than mine, and their families may have needed them more than mine needed me. I don't know. Certainly many, many of them were better people than I, as I learned at the funerals, hearing the eulogies.

St. Paul says that you see through a cloudy glass, and someday you'll see it clear. Someday there will be a clearness to this, and then all of us might go, Aha, that was it. But no, this is not understandable. I've tried to tell myself that maybe I should be out there doing more good in the world, because there was a reason that I was saved, and the reason was that I was going to do something great with my life. I've had ten years, and I've done okay during that time, but I certainly haven't made an impact on the world in the past decade, unless there's something coming up that I don't know of.

My father is a retired firefighter and has always given me good advice—an old firefighter's advice. Some months after 9/11 he told me to go to every firehouse that had lost people. There were about ninety such firehouses, so each night I'd go out and stop at a few on the way home. I would talk to the members, and say, “I'm sorry about your loss.” Sometimes it was a short visit, and everybody was like, Okay, fine, nice to see you, Chief. In other places it was very spirited—a lot of anger, a lot of fear—and I spent hours getting roughed up in the kitchen. But I took the blows, as they say, and I think it was very good advice from my father. It showed them that I was out there listening to the guys, thinking about them, caring about what they said, caring about what they felt. I might not be able to change everything that they wanted me to, but I listened.

My retirement was a sudden thing, really. In September of 2002 I did not get a tenured appointment from City Hall, so I put my retirement papers in. It shouldn't have been, but I just let it be; I was now going to be without a job within thirty days, so I decided to visit every battalion, got every fire company together. So again at night I would stop at a few battalions, and companies would come over with the rigs, and I spoke to each one of them, thanking them for what they had done, which made me look good. I got a lot of honors, including the [Cavalier] of the Republic of Italy, and the [National Order of the] Legion of Honor, Chevalier of France. I might be one of the few people in this country to have been awarded both of those, and the only reason that I was was because of the firefighters in New York City.

It was a good way to go out, and the last day on the job I went back to Ladder 123. I had always had a lot of respect for that company, and although I never worked there, I had a son-in-law there, and a nephew. I took the irons [an ax and a Halligan tool] that night, and I was on the back step [a term for being on the fire truck]. It was my last tour of duty in the FDNY.

I was still a firefighter, even after all those thirty-three years, having risen through the ranks: lieutenant, captain, battalion chief, deputy chief, assistant chief, chief of operations, chief of department. I don't know if I was still on full duty, or even legal, but I was going out the way I came in. I found that what I missed when I got promoted through the ranks is what I liked about the job in the first place: the actual firefighting with people I trusted. So it was kind of like going full circle for me, and I left the job in a pair of jeans, a pair of work boots, and a T-shirt. Fortunately, there were no memorable fires that night, and I thank the people of Brooklyn for that. I was an older version of the guy who came on the job in 1969, and rode the back steps of many different fire trucks. It was a lot of fun with the firefighters in the kitchen, and so it was a nice way, a good way, to end my career.

It did not come the way I wanted it at the time, as I had planned to stay in the job practically until they threw me out. But again, things don't always happen the way you think they are going to happen, so you make the best of how it goes. It was quite a year, and I have trouble remembering other parts of my life in the Fire Department because of that last year. I was once asked in an interview if, other than the World Trade Center, I could name some other fires I had been at that were memorable. And I couldn't. Because once those buildings collapsed, it was like the hard drive in my mind took up all the memory, and there was no room for other recorded events. Sometimes they come back to me now, but at the time I couldn't even think of things that hadn't occurred in that twelve-month period, from September 11, 2001, to September 9, 2002, when I retired.

 

If you were a survivor of Pearl Harbor, I think that would always be the defining event of your life, no matter what else happened to you. Certainly because I am a survivor of September 11, and was chief during that time, my life subsequent to that has become centered around 9/11. That's all I think about. But it had such an impact on my life that I think I'm a better person now. I'm more apt to think about people's feelings. I've become more in touch with the importance of everything that I do every day, and how nice it is to have these days. To have a life, even the parts of it that aren't so much fun, is still something to experience. If I get delayed at an airport—the kind of minor inconvenience that used to drive me crazy—it doesn't seem to matter anymore. Such things have much less impact now, because all of us who were there were impacted by something so big that all else seems pretty small in comparison. Some people, unfortunately, have never gotten over it enough to function. Some, maybe many, lost the way they used to be, the way they enjoyed their life, because it hurt them so badly. They weren't able to get to the point where they could compartmentalize that hurt, and live with it. Not everyone can simply say, You know, it's time to move on. That's unrealistic—you don't move on to a place where this is no longer a part of you. It's always a part of you. I'm lucky enough to have been able to have a life after 9/11 that's been wonderful. It doesn't mean that I don't have pain, but I can still see beauty, and enjoy each day.

 

I think some of us knew that the World Trade Center was built outside of the building code in New York. I can't speak for people there that day who were knowledgeable about the details. I knew about it because it was Port Authority, and the authority is exempt from local building codes. I don't know if any of our department leadership was on the job when it was being built, but maybe we were just at the beginning of our careers. Were any of us aware that those trusses might have rendered the building less strong than others that we'd been in? Probably not. We were probably not as aware of the skeletal structure as we should have been. And that speaks to some ofof the inadequacies I felt afterward. Here I was, in a very high position in the department, and I didn't know this. We all should have known more, maybe. But I can only speak for myself. I have always considered myself to be knowledgeable, but I wasn't as knowledgeable as I thought I was.