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Speaker 1

00:00

The following is a conversation with Niels Jorgensen, a New York firefighter for over 21 years who was there at Ground 0 on September 11th, 2001. He was forced to retire because of the leukemia he contracted from cleaning up Ground 0. This podcast tells his story, and the story of other great men and women who were there that day. Some of the stories we talk about are part of a new limited podcast series that Neils hosts called 20 for 20, with 20 episodes for the 20 years since 9-11.

Speaker 1

00:36

To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. As a side note, please allow me to say a few words about the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001. I was in downtown Chicago on that day, lost in the mundane busyness of an early Tuesday morning. At that time, I was already fascinated by human nature, the best and the worst of it, exploring it through the study of history and literature.

Speaker 1

01:05

In the years before, as a young boy growing up in Russia, I saw chaos, uncertainty, and desperation in the Soviet Union of the 1990s, wrapping up a century of war and suffering. But after coming to America for me, there was a sense of hope, like all of it was behind us. A bad dream to be forgotten as we enter into the new century. On 9-11, when I saw the news of the second plane hitting the towers, my sense of hope had changed.

Speaker 1

01:37

I understood that the 21st century, like the century before, would too have its tragedies, its evildoers, its wars, and its suffering. And unlike the history books, these stories will involve all of us. They will involve me in however small and insignificant a role, but 1 that nevertheless carries the responsibility to help. I became an American that day, a citizen of the world.

Speaker 1

02:08

I felt the common humanity in all of us. I felt the unity and the love in the days that followed. And I think most of the world shared in this feeling that we are all in this together. Evil cannot defeat the human spirit.

Speaker 1

02:22

There were many heroes sung and unsung on that day and in the years after. Often politicians fail to rightfully honor the service and sacrifice of these heroes. There is much I could say about that, but I don't want to waste my words on the failures of weak leaders. Instead, I want to say thank you to the men and women who rushed to Ground 0 to help, who put on a uniform to serve, who make me proud to be an American and a human being, and give me hope about the future of our civilization, here on a small spinning rock that despite the long odds, keeps kindling the fire of human consciousness and love.

Speaker 1

03:05

This is the Lex Friedman Podcast and here is my conversation with Niels Jorgensen. Take me through the day of September 11th, 2001 as you experienced it, as you lived it.

Speaker 2

03:20

September 11th, 2001, it was a bright, beautiful, sunny Tuesday morning, it was a late summer. There's a lot of folks who go to the beaches in New Jersey call it the short summer. So everybody's left there for Labor Day, but it's still beautiful enough to enjoy the weather.

Speaker 2

03:38

I left my house about 6.30 in the morning, and my 4 and a half year old daughter said to me, daddy, which truck are you driving today? The fire truck, the oil truck, or the Boar's Head truck? Because I had 3 jobs at the time. Most New York City firefighters and police officers, EMS, we don't make the most amount of money.

Speaker 2

04:01

So in order to live in that city, you have to hustle. And my wife stayed at home raising the children. So my daughter said, oh, so you should be safe because you're on the oil truck. I told her I was going on the oil truck that day.

Speaker 2

04:15

So she said, you should be safe today, daddy. So I left and worked for this great company on the North Shore, Staten Island, Quinlan Fuel. Very nice people, treated me very well. And it was my first day back actually for the winter season.

Speaker 2

04:30

I usually get laid off a couple months in the summer because things, you know, too hot to need oil. So I took the truck, started my route that day and a plane hit the tower. So initially I'm like, oh, it's probably some silly Learjet pilot. And he veered off track to get a better picture for a client and he hit the building.

Speaker 2

04:50

Probably hit a, you know, bad turbulence, gust of wind. It's very windy down in that area, Manhattan. So that was my first thought.

Speaker 1

04:58

Can we pause there for a second? So 6.30 a.m. You wake up, you leave, and then the plane hits at 8.45, 8.50, yeah.

Speaker 1

05:08

8.45 AM. Yeah. It's just interesting how you phrase it. So how did you hear that a plane hit something?

Speaker 2

05:16

I'm a big news radio guy, news guy, bit of a buff. I've been that way since I was a kid and I had the news radio on the local New York radio station and as I was driving the truck, I heard a emergency report, this just in, aircraft has just struck the World Trade Center. And where Quinlans is located, it's on the north rim of Staten Island, which is right on New York Harbor.

Speaker 2

05:43

And you could see Statue of Liberty a mile or 2 away in the distance and then past that is the towers. So I just literally stopped the truck and looked out and I saw the smoke. So there was smoke. Oh, it was dark black smoke.

Speaker 2

05:58

It was just, yeah, I mean, it was burning fully at that point.

Speaker 1

06:03

Did you have fear of what the hell happened?

Speaker 2

06:06

I was initially scared for anybody involved. I realized, I said, there's gonna be lots of fatalities, obviously, depending on the size of the aircraft. The business day there had started probably at 8, 830 so those buildings should have been packed at that moment so that was a thought across my mind.

Speaker 2

06:27

But from our being responder perspective if you're off duty normally you do not go to a scene. They don't want you to because of accountability and safety. The on-duty platoon will handle it, and if it's something very horrific, then they will have something called a recall, which is any police, firefighter, or EMS personnel is obligated to go to their command immediately, check in with their command, get their gear, and stand by and await orders for deployment, or to remain in that command for

Speaker 1

07:05

routine duties. How often throughout history have there been recalls?

Speaker 2

07:09

I believe the 1 prior to that was like in the 1968 riots, possibly, and then maybe in the 70s, there was another blackout and riots. And I remember my dad talking about it and he actually always said, just remember if something bad's going down, don't just rush in, you will wait the recall or at the very least, if there isn't a recall, you get to your firehouse. And because if you show up somewhere, there's a good chance that no 1 knows you're there.

Speaker 2

07:39

And now you, in your well-intended movements, you get lost or trapped or no one's looking for you. So that's the whole thing with checking in and now you're with a squad or group of guys and everyone knows, hey, there's Nels, there's Lex, okay, they're on this team. So I said, all right, they're not going to need us. It's probably going to be a fifth alarm and you know, there'll be 250 firefighters there.

Speaker 2

08:10

They'll handle it. It's going to be a bad day for those guys. But you know, our guys take on some heavy stuff and they'll be fine. A few minutes later, the second plane hit and I knew immediately, I'm like, okay, we're under attack.

Speaker 2

08:25

So I just flew the truck back in. I told my boss I have to go. He understood, he knew something was way wrong and I just was flying. At the time I actually had a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, kind of a goofy car to be driving but I loved it.

Speaker 1

08:41

So for people who are just listening, you're kind of a big guy.

Speaker 2

08:43

Well, yeah, I definitely need to lose about 50 pounds.

Speaker 1

08:47

No, I don't mean it in that way.

Speaker 2

08:48

You're fraying, big hands. As my beloved friend Bobby Adams would say to me, I was driving around in a clown wagon and he also says I have a waving hairdo, waving bye-bye. So thanks, Bobby.

Speaker 2

09:01

Good luck. But yeah, he's a great friend. Yeah, so I took the Volkswagen and I flew in and I was heading over to Verrazano Bridge and hit the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. And my phone rang and my wife normally doesn't curse or raise her voice and she was yelling at me and she said don't go in there go to your firehouse well first she asked well, she knew I was on the way, but she just wanted to know where and I Said I'm on I'm on the curve, which is 65th Street on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway called dead man's curve we We actually used to do a lot of car wrecks up there.

Speaker 2

09:35

And I was hitting that curve pretty fast. And then right around the curve is the exit to the firehouse. And I had to decide, well, am I driving right in to the battery tunnel to the city Or am I going to the firehouse? And then I said, but I have no gear.

Speaker 2

09:50

I'm gonna be ineffective. How do I show up with no gear, no protection? So she said, do what your dad would follow the recall, go to the firehouse. I hung up the phone, I said, I love you, gotta go.

Speaker 2

10:03

And I did, I went to the firehouse and I'm glad I listened to her. I had my father ringing in my ears. My dad, beautiful guy, he's

Speaker 1

10:12

82,

Speaker 2

10:12

he did 34 years in New York City Fire Department. He came down end stage non-hodgkin's lymphoma. He's 38, back in, going on

Speaker 1

10:24

39, 1978.

Speaker 2

10:26

And this guy, He's my hero. He was gonna die, they sent him home. They said, there's really not much we can do.

Speaker 2

10:37

Go get your affairs and he says, but Doc, I have 3 young kids. And she called him a couple hours later. She said, I got in touch with Sloan Kettering and they have a new drug. We want you to be a test pilot.

Speaker 2

10:53

He said, hey doc, he's got a heavy Brooklyn accent. I'm a fireman, I'm a fireman, I'm not a pilot. So she said, no, no, we want you to try this drug out. And it's, if it works, we may have some success.

Speaker 2

11:08

But if not, he says, yeah, I'm gonna die. So let's do it. So every 2 weeks for 4 years, he'd go for treatment. But he was assigned to a desk job after that, after the cancer tumor removal and the heavy treatments.

Speaker 2

11:27

And he'd get up every morning at 04:00 in the morning and he'd walk down to the train station in Staten Island, take the train, and then he'd take the ferry across the harbor, and he'd get off looking at the towers, and then he'd take a subway into Brooklyn. And on every other Thursday, he'd leave at noon, and do the same exact reverse route, and he'd get to the cancer center, and my mom would meet him, and he'd get his infusion, and within 2 hours he'd be violently ill for a few days, really badly ill. And I just remember, you know, he's 10 years, I was 10 years old, and he just had to have the room darkened out and he'd be so sick and I'd just go in and wipe the vomit on his face, just try to give him a little water but he couldn't take it down because he'd throw it up. And maybe on Saturday, he'd start coming around a little bit, drink down a little bit of tea.

Speaker 2

12:27

And on Sunday morning, he'd put his robe on, he'd go down, mom would make him black coffee and toast. He'd sit up, watch the news, watch a game. And then Monday morning, he'd go back to work. He did that for 4 years.

Speaker 2

12:41

And he's 82 and he's still here.

Speaker 1

12:45

You said that your dad's a man of a few words, but when he talks, they're profound. So what words were ringing in your ear when you were driving?

Speaker 2

12:55

I just always remember him saying, kid, they give the recall, you go to the firehouse. You don't go where you think you should. You go to the firehouse, you follow your orders.

Speaker 1

13:05

So do the smart thing, do your job. Yes, sir.

Speaker 2

13:07

And every time we'd hang up the phone, it's fireman talk. He'd say, I love you, keep low. My dad couldn't tell me he loved me until I told him when I first got on a flight upon when I was 22.

Speaker 2

13:20

And my dad grew up in a tough household. My granddad was a good man, but a tormented man. He was sent away from home at 12 years old. He was from Denmark and I'm named after him, Grandpa Nils.

Speaker 2

13:34

And I think his demons took up a large part of his life, his anger, whatever it was, his fear. We got the sense that maybe when he was a child, he was an apprentice baker, living with strangers, working for them. And we think maybe he was abused, and that's why he took it out on my dad, and my grandma, and my aunts, but they made it up to each other at the end of my granddad's life. My granddad turned out to be the best grandfather ever.

Speaker 2

14:04

I think he tried to heal and heal everyone by his change of behavior. So he's proof that you can change, you can improve if you work on it. But I know I'm going off track here, but-

Speaker 1

14:16

But you were man enough in your, you say in your 20s to tell your dad-

Speaker 2

14:19

My dad, yeah. And my dad- Do you love him? I got on the job and he said, I had a go kid, I was the tour, we called tour duty.

Speaker 2

14:27

I said, oh, dad, it was great, it was great, I love it. And he goes, just remember, you keep low, you always keep low. And keep low means you stay down below the flames. You know, if a room flashes over and it's burning, if you stay up high, you're gonna get burned badly.

Speaker 2

14:42

But if you get down on your belly and you crawl, you'll get out. So he'd always say that when he'd hang up the phone and I said, well, I love you, Pop. And he says, well, thanks, kid. I said, well, you can say it too.

Speaker 2

14:56

And-

Speaker 1

14:57

Oh, nice, you pressured him.

Speaker 2

14:58

And he did, and he said it. And now every time we talk, he says it. So, you know, they talk about masculinity and whatnot.

Speaker 2

15:06

And my dad is 1 of those tough, tough guys with a soft edge. And that's how he brought me up, you know, to be a protector. I hate bullies. I was bullied really badly as a kid and I really hated it and now I find myself sometimes throwing myself into situations to protect people that are being violated and hurt and I just can't walk away from it.

Speaker 2

15:32

But that's my dad. My dad was that, you know, just a great guy. But anyway, yeah.

Speaker 1

15:37

You still listen to, therefore, see, you probably want to rush right to the towers, but you went.

Speaker 2

15:43

Yeah, so anyway, I did, I listened to him. I listened to my wife. I went to the firehouse, and it was really strange.

Speaker 2

15:49

It was eerie because the computer dispatch system was still beeping, which meant it sent a dispatch and the truck received it, Ladder 114, My truck company received it and they left, they were gone. So there was this beautiful old building built in the 1880s with a spiral staircase, just a narrow old brick garage and it was empty. And I just heard the computer chirping. And I looked down on a ticket

Speaker 1

16:16

and it

Speaker 2

16:17

said, Ladder 114 respond, the Vessian West World Trade Center aircraft into building. And I said, oh God, I just hope they're not on a death ride because this now was 2 towers and they were burning. They were free burning And I knew this was really, really bad.

Speaker 2

16:35

And I got on the phone and I called commands right away. I called the 40th battalion and chief's aide just said, look, get 12 guys, sign them in to the journal. There's a journal of daily events, everything that takes place in the firehouse 24-7 has to be logged. And I logged myself as coming in, reporting for duty.

Speaker 2

16:57

And as the guys came in, I logged them in. And then 1 of our lieutenants took command. We grabbed up a bunch of gear, and they basically told us, get 12 guys, get a city bus, and get down to the battery tunnel. They said it would probably be closed.

Speaker 2

17:15

There was threats it was gonna be blown up to get to the Brooklyn Bridge. And so we did. We got a city bus, we flagged it down and the bus driver said, I'm sorry I can't give you the bus, I will drive you. And he took us and we stopped at engine 201 which is just about a quarter mile down the road from us.

Speaker 2

17:35

That's our affiliated engine company and my childhood best friend here Johnny Shard was he was assigned there and he was on shift and then they went through the tunnel. And we picked up those guys, the off-duty guys from 201 and then we kept going down 4th Avenue and we picked up 239's crew. And then we hightailed it down the bridge and there's a lot of traffic, there's a lot of people fleeing, coming over the bridge and waves, so it affected the inbound.

Speaker 1

18:11

What was the mood like?

Speaker 2

18:14

It was somber because just prior to getting on the bus, the first tower went down. So we figured that I had heard 114, my lieutenant Dennis Oberg, I heard him on the radio and He said, 114 Manhattan, we're on your frequency, what do you need us? And they said, Tally Ho, which is our nickname, Tally Ho responds in the Vessian West to the command post and receive your orders.

Speaker 2

18:44

And I heard Dennis say, Tally Ho,

Speaker 1

18:45

10-4.

Speaker 2

18:49

And Dennis, a little while after that, they were proceeding to go into, I believe it was, I get this mixed up and I'm sorry, I should know this right at the back of my hand, but sometimes it's just such a haze. But the second tower hit was the first 1 to go down and they were heading over to go in it. And all of a sudden he looked up and he saw like what he thought to be disintegration and he turned the guys around.

Speaker 2

19:14

He said, run, just run. Don't look back, don't look up, go. They sprinted as fast as they could and they dove under a fire truck. And the guys that were sprinting behind him 40 feet away were underneath a pile that was 10 stories deep.

Speaker 2

19:30

They were killed. And just further into that pile was his rookie son, who, Dennis' rookie son, who was working in Ladder 105, which was my first command on the department. I worked for, proudly served for 3 years. And just beside them was my childhood best friend John Shard and his His crew from 201 and They they were all killed And the strange irony to them to that is that Dennis Dennis's son Dennis jr.

Speaker 2

20:05

Was working underneath the under the wing of a senior man, as we say. A senior man is a guy with a lot of experience and he'll watch over you, make sure you don't veer off, like I veer off a lot in talking, and you don't veer off and you get yourself hurt. In the morning of the 1993 bombing, Henry Miller was my senior man. And I was the young guy under his wing and he protected me.

Speaker 2

20:41

And toward the end of the day, he looked around and he said, kid, it's a bad day. And He said, they didn't do it right. They blew it up in the middle. If they did it in a corner, they would have dropped this building half mile down at Canal Street.

Speaker 2

20:57

But don't kid yourself, they'll be back and they'll do it and they'll do it right next time. And it's so strange and so prophetic because he was there with him, he died with Dennis, he knew it. And like 1994, we had

Speaker 3

21:10

a training manual with a picture of

Speaker 2

21:12

the towers with a target. And it said, not a matter of if, but a matter of when be prepared.

Speaker 3

21:22

And it's haunting, it was like people knew, right?

Speaker 2

21:24

And we didn't stop it. And So we got off the bus, but just prior to that, coming over the bridge, the second tower was gone now. And we're

Speaker 3

21:36

just destroyed because we're like, our guys are there, they're all in there. Now we're feeling like cowards because we got there late. And

Speaker 2

21:45

Initially we're thinking there's 500 guys that are gone because it was a 10th alarm assignment, which means

Speaker 1

21:52

50, 60

Speaker 3

21:53

fire trucks, 5 to 6 guys per, you're looking at at least, no, it

Speaker 2

22:01

was even more, 10th alarm plus multiple alarms on top of it. It was a dispatch basically equivalent of 5 to 600 firefighters. We figured out they're all in there, all gone.

Speaker 3

22:12

All the police officers, Port Authority police, NYPD police, court officers just up the street from the courts,

Speaker 2

22:21

transit cops from the train tunnels. Like just, you know, we knew everybody was going and now they're gone.

Speaker 1

22:28

So what you saw, what were we looking at? What did it look like? So you saw rubble and then you knew that many, that 105 and 201, many of those guys are in the, they're dead.

Speaker 2

22:40

What did you see? Yeah, and we thought 114 was in there too. We didn't realize at that point, we didn't even realize that they had gotten under that truck.

Speaker 2

22:47

We thought they were all gone, but yeah, it looked like a movie scene with just end of the earth destruction. It's just massive piles of intertwined steel, what was left of the steel. And there was no cement, it was all just dust. And it was just a burning pile of dust and concrete and plastic and it was just everything was just pulverized.

Speaker 2

23:15

And it was truly hard to mentally compute that. Like it was like what, and then there was just fighter jets, couple fighter jets just circling and you just heard the flying by over your head. I mean you literally see the guy banking a turn around the Brooklyn Bridge and just coming back and I'm like, holy shoot, we're under attack? And we couldn't really get concrete intel as to what exactly, we knew planes, but then we kept hearing There was multiple devices, there was devices in a battery tunnel, and there was devices on a George Washington Bridge, and in the subways, and it was just chaos.

Speaker 2

23:55

I mean, we kept it together, obviously, because that's kind of, we try, that's what we do. But the just constant barrage of different reports. It was like, holy shoot. And then as we were being deployed, it was a little frustrating, but they were trying to take command and send us in groups now because they realized we have to start searching this.

Speaker 2

24:15

You could hear the alarms on the Scott Airmask, the packs we wear to go into the building, it has a motion alarm. And if you stop moving for 30 seconds, it just sounds like this whining, this screaming bell, it just keeps going and going. And you could hear multiple units of those going off and you're like, wait a minute, there's guys with those, where are they? And it's emanating from underneath the pile.

Speaker 2

24:43

And it was just surreal and truly like a war zone. I mean, I was a soldier in the reserves and I never saw combat and I would never claim that I did, but we trained, we trained for a lot of situations and we trained in real life atmospheres and whatnot, and this was just beyond that by leaps and bounds. It was bizarre.

Speaker 1

25:08

Did you see the towers collapse?

Speaker 2

25:10

As we were coming over the bridge, the first 1, as we were deploying from the firehouse, We had a television on and I saw it go down. And it just, it was just like, and we were so involved in getting gear together and getting, okay, team set up, and okay, you're gonna be with these 2 guys. And I just yelled, I said, guys, and they're looking at me.

Speaker 2

25:32

I dropped to my knees and I started praying. They're like, what the hell's wrong? I said, I couldn't even say. It's like, I said, 114, they're in there.

Speaker 2

25:40

And they're like, what? I said, the tower's gone. And all you saw on the TV was just this pile of dust. And I guess because they didn't see it going down, they probably thought I truly lost it and then the realization came, it was like, wow, the tower's down.

Speaker 2

25:57

So now it was like, wow, this is really on. So we just took off and got that boss.

Speaker 1

26:04

So if you thought many of the guys in 114 were dead, if you thought that, did you think you're going to die? I mean, if you're rushing into the, towards the rubble.

Speaker 2

26:19

As crazy as it sounds, I never thought that the other tower would go down. I said, okay, maybe some freak chance that 1 went down, but no, the other one's not gonna go. Like, they're built so strong.

Speaker 2

26:30

You know, I was in those towers so many times and I made dinner up in the top 4 restaurant windows on the world and I'm saying, nah, there's no way. Like how the hell did this 1 happen? But I was having a hard time mentally processing that the building was gone. And believe me, if you don't have fear in this industry and police, fire, military, then you're kidding yourself or you're a danger to everyone.

Speaker 2

26:57

I don't care who it is, as tough as they are, this and that, everybody has a certain level of fear with doing this. And I don't care how long you do it, there's always that chance of something going bad. And everyone who does it has that certain amount of fear. But at that point, it was such a feeling of disbelief that fear wasn't even kicking in.

Speaker 2

27:18

It was just like, what the hell just happened? And I honestly think it was almost like a shock and it just stayed that whole day.

Speaker 1

27:27

So the building is, before it collapses, is burning.

Speaker 2

27:30

It's just burning, I mean, upper floors, up in the 78th, up to the 80s, and then it's, you know, there's the way that the cut was from the plane. It wasn't just straight across. It was, you know, from the 78th, then, you know, on up to maybe the 86th.

Speaker 2

27:43

And, you know, then the jet fuel had come down and was burning down and there was people on the ground who were doused with jet fuel that was already burning and they were lit on fire on the ground. It was just insane how vast the destruction path was.

Speaker 1

28:03

As a firefighter, what are you supposed to do with that scale of fire?

Speaker 2

28:11

I think the first bosses in, the first chiefs, were just gonna do their best to get, as we get hose lines, what our whole theory is, or our tactics is, to get water at the fire, at the base of the fire, and get the truck company, which is the ladder company, They're the guys who break the doors down, put ladders up, this and that, to get them to where the life is most expected and get them out of there. So I think the chief's tactics at that point was let me get multiple engine companies, let me get 456 hose lines fighting this fire, this massive fire, and let me get 15, 20 truck companies up there just yoking people out of there. Yeah, but you gotta

Speaker 1

28:53

go up the stair, everything's not working.

Speaker 2

28:55

Yeah, guys had to walk up 80, 90, 100 flights of stairs, And there's audio of officers and firefighters speaking to each other on the radio channels. And unfortunately at that point in time, we had very, very bad communication system. We'd been fighting for years to get radios that work properly.

Speaker 2

29:15

We couldn't, because it was a lot of money. We fought for years to get the full bunker firefighting suits, which is the pants and the coat. We used to have just coats and these roll-up rubber boots and guys were burning to death. And we had to fight, and unfortunately we lost 3 guys in 1 vicious, vicious fire in

Speaker 1

29:33

1994.

Speaker 2

29:35

And then they finally said, enough's enough. Give these guys the gear. So it's a strange phenomenon in the first responder world and in the military world.

Speaker 2

29:47

It's really 1 of the most important things that takes place in society, the most pertinent organizations, and we can't get the funding we need. It's crazy. They'll throw money at every nonsensical thing, but when it comes to gear, equipment, protective equipment, trucks, this, couldn't get it. Just all the ways you

Speaker 1

30:09

could take care of people. I saw since 9-11, the wars in the Middle East have cost America over $6 trillion. And the amount of that money that was spent on the soldiers, in this case the first responders is minimal.

Speaker 2

30:25

Compared to it, yeah. Almost nothing. They, Lex, they closed down, I believe it's either 7 or 8.

Speaker 2

30:34

In May of

Speaker 1

30:36

2002,

Speaker 2

30:37

they closed down 9 firehouses in New York City for budget reasons. We hadn't even finished cleaning up the World Trade Center site and they slashed the budget and still to this day have not reopened those firehouses. There's a million more people now living in New York City than there were in

Speaker 1

30:55

2001

Speaker 2

30:57

and the fire protection is way less than it was and it's a sin. It's really a sin.

Speaker 1

31:03

Can I ask you a difficult question? So there's this famous photograph of a falling man. So many people had to decide when they're above the fire or in the fire whether to jump out of the building or to burn to death.

Speaker 1

31:21

What do you make of that decision? What do you make of that situation? Those people who jumped, those

Speaker 2

31:28

were acts of sheer desperation. I've been in fires and just minor burns, but minor in situation, but I've been trapped, caught somewhat, ended up in a burn center for nothing serious at all, but I, for those brief seconds, half a minute, was thank God if I didn't have my fire gear on, I would have been burned to a very, very horrible level. Those people were burning alive and they had the choice of either to stay there and burn alive or to launch themselves.

Speaker 2

32:05

And some of them, I don't fault them, but they had a few folks, they won't show it anymore because they say, I don't know why, it offends some people, but they had a couple folks that took umbrellas and they took garbage bags because they thought that it would slow down their acceleration rate to the ground and maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't be killed. And that's, to me, a true sense of desperation for humanity to say, I'm going to die either way, but let me take my chance. And I don't know the exact number of those folks who did that, but our first member of the fire department killed, firefighter Daniel Serf, from engine 216, was struck by a jumper. And 1 of my dear friends was ordered to help take him, and they knew he was passed away because he was hit by a flying missile.

Speaker 2

33:00

I mean, 120 miles an hour, a body lands on you, those 2 bodies are now crushed. And they were ordered to take that firefighter and bring him across the street to engine 10, ladder

Speaker 1

33:11

10.

Speaker 2

33:11

It was literally a firehouse, less than 100 yards from the facade of the Trade Center, from the Trade Center complex, they were literally right there, and there was plane parts that went into that firehouse, landed into the front doors, onto the roof, but the building itself was not destroyed. So it was used as a mini command center for quite a while. So my friend was ordered to take Daniel's body in respect and bring it over to this firehouse and give it some semblance of dignity and lay it out on 1 of the bunk room, the bunks we have in the bunk house, and just cover it with a sheet and put a sign, please firefighter killed, do not disturb, and then we'll get to him later, because obviously this operation's gonna go on for days.

Speaker 2

34:00

And my friend, who's such a great, wonderful guy, is so still to this day filled with guilt because if they weren't taking his body out with the respect and dignity that they did, it took a while because It's a tough situation. His ladder company was coming over the bridge. There's a famous picture of ladder 118. You see this tractor trailer fire truck.

Speaker 2

34:26

It's the 1 where the guy in the back also drives. And it's a zoomed out shot and you see the Brooklyn Bridge and you see only the fire truck in the middle, and you see the 2 burning towers in the distance. Well, his engine company was just ahead of them on the bridge, and the only reason that engine company lived is their initial duty assignment was to take that firefighter and bring his body over. It's like the military, we don't leave anyone behind.

Speaker 2

34:51

These are our guys. As some guys say, it's all about the guy right next to you and nothing else really matters. When that guy right next to you goes down, it stops. You get that guy to safety, or if he's dead, you get him out.

Speaker 2

35:05

So in that timeframe, that saved his life. But that's a heavy burden to carry now for the rest of your life, because you say, if I wasn't helping my dead friend, I'm dead.

Speaker 1

35:16

Yeah. What did it look like at ground 0? What did it feel like? What did it smell like?

Speaker 1

35:24

What, you said there was a sense that it was almost like a war zone, but can you paint a picture of how much dust is in the air, how hot is it, how many people are there, and again, how did it feel like?

Speaker 2

35:40

It was just, it was a scene of controlled chaos. Controlled because there was a semblance of command and we were just trying to do our jobs. But it was such a frantic pace because we're now digging frantically knowing that there's life underneath this pile.

Speaker 1

35:58

And this is throughout the afternoon of that evening.

Speaker 2

36:01

Yeah, I mean, this was nonstop, just nonstop really for days. But for my particular crew, we literally kept going. We initially were dispatched over towards number 7, had just gone down, and we were searching the post office that was there.

Speaker 2

36:17

There was reports of people trapped. And we painstakingly searched every single inch of that building to make sure no 1 was left in there. And then we were deployed to the pile. And the pile is sort of ambiguous because it was just such a vast, vast pile.

Speaker 2

36:32

I mean, it went for city blocks. And we were assisting in the retrieval of 2 Port Authority police officers, were lucky enough to survive, but they were trapped. They were deep down into a crevasse and they had to be physically dug out and extricated. So there was a couple hundred, few hundred guys involved in that process of bringing in equipment, jaws of life, airbags to lift steel, to cut pieces of steel.

Speaker 2

37:00

It was just a huge operation. And we were back toward the logistics end of it, shuttling in gear and bringing in stretchers, bringing in oxygen, whatever was needed. And you were trying to climb over this jagged pile of debris. It wasn't like you just walked 100 feet on a street with something, you were trying to climb over this I-beam and then down into this hole and then back up that hole.

Speaker 2

37:25

I mean, just to run 1 piece of equipment took a half an hour to get 100 feet, 200 feet. You know, Mind you, some of these pieces of equipment are 100 pounds. Generator for a Hurst tools is massive motor on a frame. Unstable ground.

Speaker 2

37:41

Unstable ground, just horrible conditions. Fires were still burning aside you, beneath you. And at 1 point, I kind of veered off to the side and I was with this other fireman from my father's old ladder company, 172. And it was strange because we were down quite a bit down, like 70 feet down into this ravine of debris.

Speaker 2

38:04

And he says, brother, what do you hear? And at the time it was like dust, it was like sand just falling down a pile and it was hissing from gas pipes and water pipes. And I said, I hear the gas lines, I hear the sand, I hear the concrete. He goes, no, no, what else do you hear?

Speaker 2

38:23

And just the side of us was a lady's pocketbook and a high heel shoe and someone's sneaker with nobody with it. And I said, I don't know, I don't hear anything. He says, me neither. He goes, no one's coming out of here.

Speaker 2

38:40

And I said, no, no, no, there's gotta be someone coming out of here. I mean, there's thousands of people in here and they're coming out. He says, brother, we would hear him calling for help, they're gone. And I still at that point thought there was a chance and after about the fourth day they just said, this is a recovery now, There's no more life, there's no more chance.

Speaker 2

39:05

And on our first night, we went full tilt till my crew, my specific crew of 12, 15 guys, and 4 in the morning, we just couldn't breathe anymore. We couldn't see, We were caked just with, it was like if you took flour and just kept dousing yourself. And the lieutenant just said, look guys, we're gonna go back, we're gonna get some medical aid and then we'll come back in a few hours. And we took a city bus back through the battery tunnel and unbeknownst to us that morning, this off-duty firefighter, Steven Siller from Squad Company 1, he raced down there with his pickup.

Speaker 2

39:46

And he couldn't go any further because the traffic was stopped up because they had a report of a bomb. So everything was held up. And he grabbed his fire gear and he put it on, stuff weighs about 60 pounds, and he ran through the tunnel. 2 and a half miles, got to the end of the tunnel, fire truck was coming in from the other way, he hopped on the back, got him up to West Street, jumped off, tried to look for his company, where they were.

Speaker 2

40:16

And he was never seen again.

Speaker 1

40:19

He's gone. He just ran through the tunnel.

Speaker 2

40:21

Ran through the tunnel and he got there to help his team, right? It's all about the team, it's all about the guy right next to you. And he's the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, Stephen.