Ordinary Heroes

by Joseph Pfeifer

  She turned to her brother Frankie, her other siblings, and her father for support. Friends from school helped. Her coworkers at the hospital understood what she was going through. Working with cancer patients had taught her patience, endurance, and kindness. She used that knowledge. But it was a dark time for Ginny, the kids, and my parents, as it was for so many grieving families.

  In the firehouse, firefighters were experiencing the same pain, as were Jules and Gédéon.

  The first time I saw Jules for more than a moment after September 11 was a couple of weeks later, when we sat in my office and he showed me some of the raw footage he had shot. He’d filmed continuously from the moment we answered the odor of gas call all the way through his emotional reunion with Gédéon at the firehouse, missing only eight seconds when he changed tapes. He showed me some of the most breathtaking segments.

  We watched together as his camera replayed American Airlines Flight 11, roaring low over the Hudson River, then hitting the North Tower.

  Jules had been the only cameraperson in the world to capture that singular, horrific moment. The terror was engraved in my mind forever, even without film to prove it had happened. But seeing the airplane aiming for the tower and disappearing into the building was raw and powerful and extremely disturbing.

  From the moment we arrived, Jules had stuck close to my side. Now I was looking through his eyes at myself taking command, giving orders as firefighters entered.

  I admired Jules’s willingness to keep filming when it would have been safer for him to leave as soon as we arrived at the North Tower. He had not been trained as a firefighter. No one would have thought less of him if he’d left. But Jules stuck it out and recorded an important part of history.

  At some point that morning, Jules noticed his hands trembling, whether from exhaustion or mounting fear.

  “When I saw firefighters worried, that’s when I started to panic,” Jules said. “I saw something I’d never, never seen in a firefighter’s eyes: uncertainty, disbelief.”

  I asked Jules if he had footage of me ordering the evacuation of the North Tower. I knew I had done it; I just wanted confirmation. If I was leaving, I had to make sure my firefighters left as well. And there I was, on camera: “Command Post to Tower 1. All units. Evacuate the building.” Then I repeated the order. It was good seeing my orders were captured on videotape. This would leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that the orders to evacuate were given right away.

  Jules showed me the clip of my brother in the lobby. Seeing Kevin silently turn and walk away to do his job, leading Engine 33 up the stairwell, was a very special moment to have on film.

  I was grateful to see that my memories of my actions that day meshed with the reality on film. It’s easy to second-guess yourself when things are happening quickly.

  As I saw in Jules’s footage, after the second collapse, we had parted ways. Jules had continued to film for a half hour, walking aimlessly around the treacherous site, asking people if they’d seen a French guy with a camera. People wouldn’t look him in the eye, which he took as confirmation that his brother was dead.

  “For the next half hour, I’m crying my eyes out, just going up and down the street, asking every firefighter I see, ‘Have you seen anyone from Engine 7 and Ladder 1?’ In my mind, I’ve lost my brother, I’ve lost James [Hanlon]—my best friend—and the entire company’s gone.”

  Jules had no idea that Gédéon was just a block or two away, also wandering around in the dust.

  Later that day, as firefighters arrived back at the house, Gédéon captured their joyful reunions before eventually being reunited with Jules. Between them, the brothers had shot astonishing footage against incredible odds.

  That footage was important not just for the historical record, but for the FBI as it worked to understand what had happened. About 5 p.m. on 9/11, a man and a woman had appeared at the firehouse and introduced themselves as FBI agents. The New York Field Office of the FBI is just down the block from the firehouse. They had heard Jules had filmed the first plane and asked to see his footage.

  Jules and Gédéon agreed to play the film for the agents and immediately took them to their parents’ home on the Upper East Side, where they slept when not at the firehouse. Jules’s fiancée, Jacqueline, met them at the door, relieved but alarmed by his red eyes and the crust of dust on his hair and clothing.

  Jules played the first tape. The group saw his breathtaking film of the hijacked American Airlines plane, silver against a pure blue sky, sweeping low and plowing into the North Tower.

  He had not been sure that he had captured the crystal-clear image until the moment he played it for the FBI agents. Jules and Gédéon copied that segment, then gave their other tapes to them. It took a couple of weeks to get the film back from the FBI.

  The brothers never hesitated to cooperate with the Bureau. “I’m not a journalist,” Jules said. “I wanted to help. My country has been attacked.” He’d become an American citizen in 1998 and was honored to assist his country—and to feel he had been chosen to be a witness to history.

  Jules and Gédéon returned to the Pile over the next few days to search for survivors, taking turns filming, determined to finish their film. Jules worked with the bucket brigades, balancing on the precarious surface that screeched and groaned and stank. That agonizing sense of helplessness, the smell of death was hard to bear.

  Firefighters on the Pile told Jules and Gédéon to film instead of dig. “People need to see this,” they said.

  It turned out the firefighters needed Jules and Gédéon, too. The guys were struggling with shock and trauma, all grieving, some wrestling with why they had lived when so many of their brothers had died. The list of the dead was growing longer, read on the intradepartmental radio every day. People ate at the kitchen table in silence; no one was sharing stories of that day.

  As captain in a firehouse, Ron Schmutzler wore many hats. “Sometimes you’re a priest. Sometimes you’re a friend. Sometimes you’re the disciplinarian.” But in the uncharacteristic silence, he was at a loss. He had no idea what to say to the men.

  Schmutzler and Tardio knew Jules and Gédéon wanted to talk to the men at some point. So they asked the two filmmakers to begin interviewing the guys in the Duane Street firehouse—or, as people started calling it, the “Miracle House” or “Lucky 7.”

  Those nicknames wielded a two-edged sword. As New York residents stopped by the firehouse to express their condolences, they were stunned to learn that no one in our team had died, as if their survival diminished what they had done. Nothing could be further from the truth.

  Jules and Gédéon agreed, not for the purposes of their film, but to help the firehouse. They were trusted by that point. We’d been through hell together.

  At first, the captains thought the men might chat for a few moments in a small upstairs room. But then one of the Naudets came down and told them, “Some of these guys are up here for over an hour and they won’t stop talking.” The dam holding all their emotions inside had been broken.

  Telling stories was what the firehouse did naturally, and now it had a therapeutic role. All of the firefighters were questioning themselves. Had they done the right thing? Could they have saved more people? What emerged were amazing tales of bravery and survival—plus a lot of luck.

  I had no hesitation. I trusted Jules. On September 30, I sat with him in that tiny room with green walls that hadn’t been painted in four decades. So much had happened in such a short period of time: 102 minutes from the time the first plane hit to the collapse of the North Tower.

  As Jules and I walked through the experience again, my emotions were raw. I had been through an extreme event beyond what I could ever have imagined. I had lost my brother and dozens of close friends. The department had been gutted and thousands of people at the World Trade Center were missing. At one point, as I recounted that day, I just had to paus
e. I remember saying, “I’m not sure if I love the job anymore.”

  But, for me, storytelling in that little room with Jules helped me start to comprehend the depth of what took place by simply verbalizing what I did and felt. And so it was for the other members of Engine 7, Ladder 1. While the interviews were done individually, it felt like something we were doing together as a firehouse. I was taking control of the memories by sharing my story in my own words.

  * * *

  • • •

  As bodies were found, the funerals and memorial services began. Among the first, on September 15, had been the funerals for Chief Pete Ganci and Father Mychal Judge, the chief of department and its beloved chaplain.

  On September 10, the day before his death, Father Judge had given a homily at the rededication of the Bronx firehouse Engine 73 and Ladder 42. The words of his talk proved he knew the life of firefighters, and they proved prophetic.

  “That’s the way it is,” he told those gathered in the firehouse. “Good days. And bad days. Up days. Down days. Sad days. Happy days. But never a boring day on this job. You do what God has called you to do. You show up. You put one foot in front of another. You get on the rig, and you go out and you do the job—which is a mystery. And a surprise. You have no idea when you get on that rig. No matter how big the call. No matter how small. You have no idea what God is calling you to. But he needs you. He needs me. He needs all of us.”

  After those first two funeral services, I attended dozens of FDNY memorials and funerals.

  As firefighters, we think of ourselves as having two families—our family at home and the firehouse family. Every holiday is divided between time at home with family and working at the firehouse. When a firehouse suffers a line-of-duty death of one of its members, firefighters feel like they have lost a brother or sister and are compelled to take care of the fallen firefighter’s grieving family. It is a special part of Fire Department culture to arrange funeral details, provide for the needs of the spouse and children, do necessary repairs to the family’s house and vehicles, generally help however we can. It is a deeply emotional time for the firehouse, and everyone bonds together. As the number of line-of-duty deaths rose to 343, the needs became overwhelming. Yet we tried.

  In my brother’s firehouse, the members of Engine 33 and Ladder 9 cared for ten families of fallen firefighters and fire officers. Since I was working endless hours with no days off, members of Engine 33 drove my father to his prostate cancer treatments. My parents could have taken Access-A-Ride, but just being with a firefighter from my brother’s firehouse meant more to them than anything else. It was a way for my parents and the firefighter to feel close to Kevin.

  A huge dry-erase board at the firehouse listed each day’s wake, funeral, or memorial service for a fallen brother. Some days had a half dozen listed. If you are not working, you are expected to attend your fellow firefighter’s funeral. In previous years, it was not unusual for 8,000 firefighters in uniform to line the streets at the funeral to pay our last respects as the caisson—a special fire engine fitted with a lift—carried the firefighter’s coffin to the burial place. It was followed by the Emerald Society Pipes and Drums, a band entirely composed of active and retired FDNY firefighters who volunteer their time and pay their own expenses.

  Some days, firefighters attended as many as two or three services, grieving for friends lost and experiencing the raw emotions of their deceased fellow firefighters’ spouses, parents, siblings, and children. Not only did they attend the funerals, but they also hung bunting, planned the ceremonies, gave eulogies, and helped the family with all arrangements. Anything the parents, widows, or children needed, the firefighters tried to provide.

  For months, the FDNY had so many funerals that our members could not go to them all. Firefighters from around the country came to New York for a week at a time to make sure every firefighter had mourners to show their respects.

  On November 2, 2001, we held a memorial for my brother at St. Margaret’s. We held out hope that we might recover Kevin’s body and then we could have a proper funeral. But for now it only seemed right to have some sort of ceremony. The church was packed with family and firefighters in uniform.

  The Saturday before 9/11, Jean Nichols, a firefighter from Canada, had come to New York and taken photos of Kevin in uniform. Dressed in full bunker gear and helmet, standing in front of Engine 33, he looked into the camera, handsome, smiling. We used one picture for the memorial card and the altar. There was no procession with a caisson because there was no body. Nobody from Engine 33 had yet been found.

  That same day, Mayor Rudy Giuliani went off the deep end. The press, who had lauded him for his strength and resolve in the face of the devastation during his appearances on television, saw another side of him.

  On this day, Giuliani pulled rank and announced his decision to close Ground Zero. New York City needed to get back to “normal.” Searching the Pile dominated the TV news every night. Businesses in lower Manhattan were shuttered. He wanted to bulldoze the site and move on. He told first responders to abandon recovery efforts and to go home.

  The Pile was shrinking, but the removal of tons of debris had slowed as we began going beneath street level. During construction of the WTC complex, a concrete “bathtub” had been built underground to hold back the river. The four construction companies working on salvage operations brought in engineers to shore up the bathtub by driving steel rods into the bedrock to keep water out as they removed structural beams.

  The towers extended six stories below grade, and much had been compacted in that zone. The FDNY had lost ninety-one vehicles; many still had yet to be located.

  But most importantly, human remains were still being found. An argument erupted with the mayor on one side and the rank-and-file first responders on the other. The mayor had protestors and firefighters demanding that Ground Zero remain open arrested at the site.

  I still hoped that my brother’s body would be located, and I knew other families felt the same. But Giuliani wouldn’t listen to FDNY’s pleas to continue recovery operations.

  Until families of those lost said something. They told the mayor, “You are not shutting down the site. You will try to recover our loved ones.”

  Giuliani reversed his decision.

  The families also demanded that President Bush and Congress create a commission to understand what had happened on September 11. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was set up in late 2002.

  The controversy was just another stressor in firehouses across the five boroughs. I saw it in the houses in my battalion.

  There was anxiety about another “wave of attacks.” We considered the possibilities of terrorists exploding dirty bombs, collapsing bridges and tunnels, and attacking shopping malls. What if firefighters battled an arson fire only to be killed by a secondary device planted by a terrorist?

  “You could tell there was a lot of fear in the guys’ faces,” Captain Tardio said. “Nobody ever said, ‘I ain’t getting on that rig.’ You know, the guys still did their job.”

  But rigs had been destroyed, tools lost, firehouses decimated. Many beloved and respected fire officers and firefighters were dead. Those suddenly promoted had to take on jobs they may not have sought, with the additional burden of training the influx of probies. Would they be safe?

  O’Neill frankly admitted he had more trepidation about the job than he had before 9/11. “And it’s something I don’t like in myself. But it’s there. And I don’t think you can suffer the kind of losses that we suffered without thinking twice about everything we do as firefighters.”

  Schmutzler explained to the guys at roll calls and drills how important it was to get back to their purpose. If the bells went off, they were going to a fire.

  “If you can’t do it, let’s get you into counseling, let’s put you on light duty,” Schmu
tzler said. “If you have to go sick, you have to go sick. But if you come through that door, and if you put that uniform on, you better be ready to go. You have to come here and be ready to give 110 percent of yourself all the time.”

  But the captain was also struggling himself. “I didn’t know how I was going to get through the days, but I couldn’t tell them that. I can honestly say I wasn’t there 110 percent.”

  Captains Tardio and Schmutzler kept their eyes open. But they saw the guys only in the firehouse during their tours. “You don’t know what’s happening when he goes home,” Tardio said.

  One night, firefighters from Ladder 1 were at the Pile when they uncovered their own crushed rig. For weeks, recovery efforts had been exhausting and bore little fruit except for persistent coughs and irritated eyes. Schmutzler realized the men needed to find something of value. When they dug out the sign that said “Ladder 1” on the side of the boom on the rig, one of the firefighters put it on his shoulders, and guys followed as he jogged to the firehouse. Everyone cheered as they hung it on the wall.

  “I felt like, wow, we still have our truck, you know?” Schmutzler said. “It was just something that we all needed to do.” A month later, they would find my battalion car completely destroyed several stories below grade in front of the North Tower. Firefighters removed a badly damaged car door and hung it on the wall of the apparatus floor, along with the sign from Ladder 1 and part of Engine 7.

  13

  FAMILY TIME

  After two months of intense work as chief of planning for the WTC Incident Command, I turned the role over to my colleague Battalion Chief Andy Richter. I needed to get back to my job as a chief in Battalion 1, which was just a few feet away on the other side of the firehouse. I still checked on how the planning section was doing and visited Ground Zero every day that I worked, but I had routine duties.