“I can’t believe they are not there anymore,” Tardio said. “How did we make it out of that building? Thirty seconds, another two flights higher . . . Why am I alive and so many others are dead?”
It was a question that would plague many others for years to come.
“Yeah, I don’t know why myself and the other guys were picked to survive this,” said O’Neill. “In a way, I feel that there must be a reason. What am I supposed to do to earn this?”
* * *
• • •
I had tried to call my wife, Ginny, several times that afternoon. I knew she would be out of her mind with worry. But I couldn’t get through on either my battalion chief cell phone or a landline. Cell towers had lost power, or maybe millions of people were jamming the lines. In midafternoon, I finally borrowed another guy’s cell phone, and, standing in the street to get a signal, I got a message through to my aunt Marie in Queens, my mother’s sister who lived three houses from my parents. “I’m alive. I don’t know where Kevin is. Please let Ginny know.” I knew my aunt would spread the word to my parents, Ginny, and the entire family.
* * *
• • •
With water from the river now available, we could extinguish some of the fires. But the blazes in WTC-7 had grown. The sprinkler systems on the lower floors of the forty-seven-floor building were fed directly by the city mains and on the upper floors by a gravity tank with backup water from the city mains, which were inoperable.
Over the next couple of hours, we held serious discussions about the risks and feasibility of fighting the fires in WTC-7. Without water for the sprinkler system, we made the decision not to send firefighters into the building. The fires burned out of control.
By late afternoon, fire could be seen on multiple floors of WTC-7. The idea that a forty-seven-story building would be left to collapse would have seemed preposterous that morning. Now it almost seemed inevitable. A final order was given to abandon the building.
“It was just one of those wars we were going to lose,” as Chief Peter Hayden put it.
I met up with Chief Daniel Nigro and Chief Frank Cruthers on the street at West and Vesey. I knew the building better than anyone. I told Nigro that there was a tank with 5,000 gallons of fuel for generators in the ceiling of the WTC-7 lobby. When the fire hit that, the result could be an explosion and the fire would increase. We needed to clear the area of people.
Just before 5 p.m., Nigro gave the order to pull the rescue teams back from the debris field around WTC-7.
Twenty minutes later, at 5:20 p.m., we watched as WTC-7 collapsed with that by now familiar roar, sending another cloud of gray debris and dust over the ruined landscape.
* * *
• • •
I waited for the new dust cloud to settle. Having worked for twenty-four hours, I needed to rest for a couple of minutes before going back to search for my brother and other victims. I walked up Vesey Street toward the Hudson River and the North Cove Marina. My steps created little dust pillows that looked like powder snow.
I found an empty bench coated with dust and sat down facing the Hudson River. My face, mustache, and bunker gear were also coated in dust. I imagined I looked like a bizarre figure carved of gray marble.
I gazed into the distance, physically and mentally exhausted. I needed to think. How could skyscrapers just vanish into piles of twisted debris? Where’s Kevin and other firefighters I ordered to evacuate? What do I, as a battalion chief, do now in this unthinkable disaster?
With every breath, I tasted the pulverized cement like a dry paste on my tongue. My eyes burned as I blinked, trying to focus with hundreds of specks in my eyes. After the dust from the collapse of WTC-7 had settled, I returned to the rubble field and continued to search for victims well into the evening, picking my way across steel beams and chunks of concrete. I listened for tapping or yelling or the high-pitched beeps of SCBA alarms. I heard nothing but other rescuers calling out.
Darkness fell about 7:30 p.m. Con Ed’s electrical power grid in lower Manhattan had been destroyed. Some big searchlights running off generators were brought in; for the most part, we used flashlights to keep searching.
I continued to walk the site looking for my brother and survivors trapped by the rubble. Not only the Twin Towers but the entire complex of WTC buildings had been destroyed. The rubble field was immense.
I saw no one from Kevin’s company, dead or alive, and a sick feeling coiled in the pit of my stomach.
By 11 p.m., I had been working for over twenty-nine hours, and awake for almost forty. The adrenaline rush of dealing with the crisis had long since ebbed. I hadn’t eaten since 8 a.m. and could feel the stress and exhaustion slowing my reflexes, my thinking. I was afraid I was no longer helpful.
Coughing up dust, bone-weary, I began walking up West Street, zigzagging seven blocks back to the firehouse. I could barely see; in the heavy boots, my feet hurt so much all I could do was shuffle.
As I walked, an eerie gray dust cloud hung over lower Manhattan. I saw no one on the streets except other firefighters or police officers, moving like ghosts in the night. On the worst day of my life, I was profoundly alone.
The entire downtown Manhattan area had lost power. Thanks to a backup generator in the courtyard, in addition to candles, a few lights were on in the Duane Street firehouse. I could hear the TV as news reporters talked about a third plane hitting the Pentagon and a fourth crashing in a field in Pennsylvania. I couldn’t grasp what they were saying. Were the four aircraft all connected? It seemed impossible, unimaginable.
After I dropped my dusty bunker gear in my locker, I asked if everyone was okay, afraid to hear the answer.
It was shocking.
Everyone from the Duane Street firehouse, all fifty-five firefighters and officers—the thirteen of us on duty and the forty-two who’d rushed to assist them—had survived.
Not a single person was missing or dead. All accounted for. Tardio, Walsh, and the firefighters of Engine 7 and Ladder 1 who had answered the call with me that morning, who had gone up inside the North Tower first, had made it out. Some were injured, but they were all alive. Relief washed over me, but I didn’t comprehend right away that it was a miracle.
In a state beyond exhaustion, body aching and eyes burning, I got into my car to go home. Lower Manhattan had no streetlights or traffic signals. Thankfully, no one else was on the road as I struggled to keep the car in one lane. I’d never seen the streets so empty. The horror had driven everyone in New York inside, huddling for protection, perhaps out of fear there’d be yet another attack.
Rainbow halos encircled the streetlights in Queens no matter how much I blinked to clear the grit from my eyes. I got to my home around midnight. I unlocked the front door and climbed the squeaking wooden stair to the bedrooms.
8
FEAR AT HOME
On the morning of September 11, Ginny had been at our home, sitting in our breakfast nook, drinking coffee and reading a book.
Ginny knew firefighting was a dangerous job; statistics show it is more dangerous than police work. But like every spouse of a firefighter, she pushed that reality to the back of her mind. I loved the FDNY, and she was secretly happy to have time alone when I was working a twenty-four-hour shift. She had some time to herself, to relax from the demands of her job as a nurse at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and her involvement with our children’s schools and competitive swimming schedule.
We live in a very close-knit neighborhood with attached houses, and our neighbors are like family. A little before 9 a.m., our neighbor Reta waved at Ginny from her yard and said she should go down to the park and watch the fire at the World Trade Center.
“Joseph is working there today,” Ginny told Reta. Instead of walking down to the park, she turned on the TV and saw the top of the North Tower engulfed in flames.
She knew I was a
ssigned to Battalion 1 in lower Manhattan and would be the first chief to arrive at the WTC, since I was on duty. Ginny was not too concerned since I had twenty years of experience fighting big fires and I taught about high-rise fires to new chiefs at the academy.
But when the South Tower collapsed, she went numb.
“This can’t be happening,” she told herself. The nightmare Ginny never allowed into her thoughts erupted into anxiety. By the time the North Tower collapsed, she was in full-fledged panic. What if her husband of seventeen years didn’t come home?
Was she a widow?
In her nursing career working with seriously ill patients, Ginny had learned to project outward calm so that patients and family members didn’t get upset, and to focus on what she needed to do next. She did her best to marshal all that training now as she faced the loss not of a patient, but of her husband. Our children were safe at school, but she wanted them near, to hold them close. She tried to call the school, but couldn’t get a dial tone. She finally got a call through to her older brother, Frank Schneider, a priest.
“Please help me, Frankie,” she said through tears. “I don’t know what to do. I know Joseph is there. I think he’s dead.”
Frank tried to reassure her. “Remember, Ginny, Joseph is very smart and he will figure out how to come home to you and the kids.”
Ginny ran six blocks to St. Margaret’s School, where Gregory was in eighth grade. She knew the principal, Sister Bridget, after years of giving hearing and eye tests to kids as a volunteer. Ginny knocked on the school door. When Sister Bridget answered, she explained that all the children had been gathered in the auditorium; many of the kids had parents who were firefighters, paramedics, or police officers. Ginny’s determination to remain calm crumbled as she fell into the nun’s arms, sobbing.
“I need to take Gregory home because I think my Joseph is gone. I know he is at the WTC. I don’t know what to do.” Sister Bridget held her as she cried.
Ginny and Greg walked back to our house. Christine was still in her high school class, five miles away. My wife and son sat on the sofa hugging each other, not knowing what to do or think. Hour after hour passed, and there was no message or call from me.
In the late afternoon, my father arrived. He and Ginny had always had a close relationship. A quiet, humble man, my father now looked to her “like a piece of him had been broken off.”
“We heard from Joseph,” he said. “He’s okay, but we don’t know where Kevin is.”
She rejoiced to hear I was safe, but knew my father’s heart was shattered at the thought his youngest child might not have survived.
About this time, a classmate’s mother brought Chrissie home from high school. My wife and kids huddled together, knowing very little except that I was alive. She felt relief, but fears remained. Had I been injured? What about Kevin, her brother-in-law, our kids’ favorite uncle?
That night, President George W. Bush appeared on television to speak to the nation. “Good evening. Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.”
For Ginny, it was much more personal than that.
We’d met when I was three months into firefighting. I had raised my right hand on September 5, 1981, and was sworn in to the FDNY in front of City Hall by then Mayor Ed Koch.
After the FDNY training academy, my first assignment was to Engine 234, a busy firehouse in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
As a new firefighter, I cleaned the tools on the rig and the pots in the kitchen. My job was to learn from other firefighters, so I listened carefully to their fire stories and asked a lot of questions. I was curious to learn as much as I could from every fire and emergency. We were very busy, and I had at least an occupied structural fire or two every tour along with other small fires and emergencies. I was thrilled to be a firefighter, but considered it a temporary job.
I was in the middle of seminary, studying to be a Catholic priest. But I had requested a two-year leave of absence. I had applied to the FDNY four years earlier, while I was in college. I’d gone through a rigorous application process that included physical fitness evaluation and tests on fire department procedures and protocol. I had gotten high marks, but the job was so competitive, I hadn’t been accepted until 1981.
I loved serving in various capacities in the community—prison and hospital ministry, working with folks in impoverished areas of New York. But once I heard I had been accepted by the FDNY, the adventure of being a firefighter was hard to resist. As much as I loved working with people, I wrestled with God over my vocation, over forgoing marriage, over the nature of good and evil and how I could make a difference when people are in need.
I figured I’d work as a firefighter for a couple of years, to enjoy the adventure, and return to seminary to finish my master’s degree. Then I’d commit wholeheartedly to the priesthood.
After about three months of being a firefighter, my seminary classmates invited their families and me to attend their annual Christmas party, highlighted by the “end-of-semester skit,” where they made fun of their professors. I was excited to return and see my friends.
The play was hilarious, and in the cafeteria later I caught up with classmates, assuring them I was coming back, but meanwhile having a ball as a firefighter.
One of my classmates, Frank Schneider, the play’s director and an academic star, introduced me to his family, including his sister Ginny. We gazed at each other for a moment, and I wondered why I had never met her before. With dark brown hair down to her shoulders, hazel eyes, and a shy smile, she was cute and looked like a kind person. I could not keep my eyes off her and knew I wanted to get to know her better. I was twenty-five years old; she was a year younger and had an apartment in Manhattan. I was still living with my parents when I wasn’t sleeping at the firehouse.
A couple of days later, I convinced Frank to give me his sister’s phone number and to put in a word for me. I called her and left a message. Her brother told her to return the call. She finally did, and we made a dinner date.
We dined at a restaurant in Bay Ridge, an upscale area of Brooklyn, and fell in love.
The wrestling with God intensified. I drove Ginny crazy. She would ask, “Well, what do you do for a living?” “Oh, I fight fires, I save lives. Try to be a hero. But my life belongs to God.” I guess I was caught up in the romance. She’d just laugh, knowing how much I loved her. Later, I told Ginny that she “stole me from the hand of God.” The truth is that God had other plans for me. Better plans.
Every year, the St. Patrick’s Day parade in March is a big deal for the FDNY. It stretches some thirty blocks up 5th Avenue from midtown to the Upper East Side. All the firehouses have people who march in the parade.
That year, since Ginny had an apartment on the Upper East Side, after the St. Paddy’s Day parade, twenty firefighters crashed her place for a party. Ginny took the firefighters’ bravado and jesting in stride and became a big hit with the guys.
We dated for a year and a half. At the end of what would have been my third year of seminary, my classmates were ordained deacons and made the commitment to celibacy. For me, it was Ginny and the FDNY, or the priesthood. I knew the answer in my heart was Ginny.
All that wrestling with God was over. I was in love with a beautiful and wonderful woman.
I proposed to Ginny and told the seminary I would not be returning. We got married on June 3, 1984. Her brother, now Father Frank Schneider, a diocesan priest, performed the ceremony. In fact, seventeen of my former classmates, now priests, concelebrated the wedding with us.
Living in Manhattan was very different from Queens. We went out to eat at least once a week, which was easier than cooking. All my spare time was spent studying FDNY manuals and building codes to earn a promotion to lieutenant. The FDNY was so competitive, 85 percent of people who took the test didn’t make rank
; if you failed, you wouldn’t have a chance to retake it for four years. After my daughter was born, I rocked her crib with one foot while studying.
Ginny took my crazy schedule and constant studying in stride. As an oncology nurse, Ginny understood working under pressure. And together we worked out our schedule, with its emphasis on family, which was as important to her as it was to me. She had seven siblings. One sister married Richard Hogan, a firefighter she’d met through me. Rich’s sister also married a firefighter, Hank Banker. Depending on our work schedules, three of us related by marriage might be on duty at the same time, in the same firehouse.
Ginny and her sister entered into the FDNY extended family with gusto. Like most FDNY firefighters and their spouses, we had an optimistic bias, even when a firefighter died in the line of duty. That will never happen to us.
Now, as Ginny watched TV on the night of September 11, her husband, brothers-in-law, firefighter friends, their wives and children—everyone in her extended family was under assault, facing unthinkable loss.
Kevin was a big part of her life as well as mine. He lived six blocks from our house, and half a block from our kids’ school. Almost every day after school, the kids would stop by the three houses where he, my parents, and my aunt lived. They’d chat and get a snack. During the summer, Kevin would take the kids out on his sailboat or to play on the beach.
On the night of 9/11, emotionally exhausted, Ginny went to bed but was unable to sleep, tossing and turning as she wondered when she would see me again. When she heard the front door open and me walking up the creaky stairs of our seventy-two-year-old house, she rushed to the hallway at the top of the stairs to embrace me, weeping uncontrollably. Christine and Gregory burst from their rooms with cries of “Dad!” We hugged, cried, and desperately clung together, all of us drenched in tears of an emotional reunion, filled with love and disbelief.
Ordinary Heroes Page 8