I’d told that to Jules in September, only two weeks after the attacks, when he interviewed me. I had meant it. But moving through the grief and realizing that we could effect change—that I could be part of something bigger than myself—had by now given me a shred of hope that I would find my post-9/11 compass.
The documentary ended by showing photographs of every dead and missing member of the FDNY—343 men, arranged in groups of four—to the haunting song “Danny Boy,” sung by Ronan Tynan, in homage to those ordinary heroes. It was a moving and powerful tribute, emphasizing the tremendous loss we as family members had suffered.
Some firefighters had a hard time watching it. Steve Olsen was in Orlando at Disney World when it aired. Halfway through watching it in a hotel room with his family, Olsen had to leave. He went outside and took a walk. It was too painful. A week later, he was back working at Ground Zero.
Many firefighters seen in the footage would never be found, but the film will for generations be a witness to the history of their bravery and sacrifice.
Over twenty years, almost a billion people would see the documentary. One of those people was Jake Knight, a young teenager from New Zealand being treated for acute myeloid leukemia, a rapidly spreading form of cancer. During six months in the hospital’s isolation ward, he felt helpless. “The only thing that gave me strength and hope during that time was a documentary, 9/11,” he said. “I would watch it at least once a week. If the firefighters could deal with 9/11, I can deal with my sickness.”
After Jake gained his strength back, Make-A-Wish Foundation granted him his wish to visit the FDNY and meet me. Jake and his mom flew to New York City, where we met at FDNY’s headquarters and made him an Honorary Firefighter. As soon as we started talking, we had this sense that both of us had gone through something tough. From that moment, we became lifelong friends. The film 9/11 gave Jake the courage to get through treatments, and we at the FDNY inspired him to be a firefighter, which is his dream.
17
EMERGING FROM THE ASHES
The airing of the 9/11 documentary told our story from inside the World Trade Center and showed the guys from Engine 7 and Ladder 1 emotionally returning to the Duane Street firehouse. Covered with dust, glassy-eyed firefighters hugged each other as they stood on the apparatus floor, now empty of rigs that had earlier been crushed by the falling high-rise buildings. Upon learning that everyone from the firehouse was alive, we watched Captain Tardio from Engine 7 say what we all were wondering: “How did we make it out of there?”
After the film appeared, New Yorkers again made a point of knocking on firehouses’ doors to say thank you.
Some teenagers from a nearby high school came to visit Duane Street on their own to meet the firefighters of “Miracle House.” Very touched by the movie, they shook firefighters’ hands, checked out the apparatus, then asked the guy on housewatch, “Can we meet the chief?”
Duane Street was still split in two: the WTC Incident Command took up one half, and Engine 7, Ladder 1, and Battalion 1, the other. I was in my office on the second floor, above the apparatus bay. When the housewatch called, my aide picked it up. “A bunch of kids want to see you,” he said. “Can the chief come down?”
“Sure,” I said. For years, I’d talked to kids about fire safety.
A half dozen excited teenagers milled around on the apparatus floor, checking out our replacement engine, ladder, and battalion SUV, chatting with firefighters in uniform. The teens looked at me with recognition, and a bit of awe, even though I wasn’t wearing my bunker gear and helmet.
I shook hands with each one of them, and then one girl piped up. “I thought you were taller,” she said. I laughed. It was clear she perceived firefighters as bigger than life, almost like superheroes. Maybe today, she saw her heroes as more ordinary, someone she could become.
The appreciation from the community was gratifying. But for firefighters inside Duane Street—and in firehouses all over the city—the sheer numbers of those lost were overwhelming. Firefighters felt a sense of camaraderie as they continued to do normal runs, but the trauma remained.
Added to the angst was the nine-month recovery period of searching for bodies or body parts of the deceased so that families could hold a funeral. Those who discovered human remains experienced a sense of mission accomplished, yet what they saw was more than anyone should see, especially as bodies started to decay. Some perhaps shuddered to think how close they’d come to the same fate.
After many months, some families resigned themselves to the fact that their loved ones might never be found, so they settled for a memorial service. When remains were found, they held a funeral. This meant that the FDNY had more than 343 services for those lost.
The FDNY had to figure out how to take care of its members’ mental health and, at the same time, continue recovery operations on the Pile and the normal FDNY functions to save life and property.
Trauma and grief were not the only reasons firefighters sought counseling. After 9/11, the job and the firehouse went through rapid change. Many, like Captain Tardio with twenty years of service, were considering retirement. Others perhaps left the job in response to their families’ fears for their safety. Others stayed but were promoted more quickly than they might have been, with new responsibilities. New firefighters were coming in. The constant shifts in the firehouse family brought new stresses. Nothing seemed to be the same anymore.
Constant news coverage of the attacks and new threats of terrorism compounded firehouses’ stress.
In my firehouse, some firefighters felt the tension between belonging to a “miracle” firehouse, which had been spared, and “survivor guilt” over being so lucky. Being called heroes was for those who had made the supreme sacrifice; we were just ordinary people searching for a new normal.
“I’m not any better than anybody else,” O’Neill said. “I’m just a firefighter. In a way, I feel that there must be a reason. And it’s scary to think what the hell the reason might be. What reason—what lies in my future?”
One firefighter quietly confided to his captain one night that he didn’t want to be alive.
“I don’t want to go kill myself,” he said. “I just don’t want to be alive right now. I don’t understand what that means.”
The captain empathized with the firefighter’s feeling. The two men talked about survivor’s guilt, and the captain urged him to seek counseling. The firefighter agreed.
For me, the concern was how we would manage the next extreme terrorist attack on skyscrapers. I also was worried about my firefighters and the pressures they were under, with both their physical and mental health. I talked to the captains to make sure they were looking after their guys and the officers. I told them, “Call me anytime you need help.”
* * *
• • •
The FDNY’s Counseling Service Unit (CSU), a small unit located in SoHo, a mile and a half from the World Trade Center, was first created to take care of firefighters with alcohol or substance abuse. In the 1980s, it expanded to care for firehouses with a line-of-duty death or those units that responded to a tragic fire with multiple deaths, especially those of children.
After a tragedy, a professional counselor with a peer counselor, usually a trained fire officer, would hold a Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) with firehouse members. With my graduate education in counseling and after attending several CISD courses, I had become one of those peer counselors a decade before 9/11.
In these group settings, firefighters told their accounts of fatal fires. The professional clinician conducted a group session in the firehouse. Peer counselors listened empathetically to each firefighter’s story to ensure that no one felt isolated. The session ended with information about PTSD and additional mental health resources.
With the collapse of the WTC towers, the CSU immediately shifted into high gear. The old one-to-one or small-group couns
eling models in a handful of firehouses would not be enough. Working with key professionals, Malachy Corrigan, the director of CSU since 1982, developed a crisis counseling plan to care for the mental health of more than 15,000 firefighters, EMS, dispatchers, and civilian personnel.
One of the most innovative services used in the aftermath of 9/11 was the Firehouse Clinician Program. Built upon Malachy’s firehouse counseling model, the program was expanded to forty-two firehouses hit hard by the trauma of 9/11.
A professional counselor physically worked in the firehouse. They met with on-duty firefighters to listen and give them information about PTSD. The clinician pointed out that emotional reactions to the events of 9/11 were normal. They arranged opportunities for firefighters to tell stories of their experiences and about the friends they’d lost. At any time, a firefighter could walk up to the counselor to have a more personal conversation.
The counselor was not there to do psychotherapy in the firehouse; instead, they offered an empathic ear, made mental health services accessible, matched services to the needs of the firehouse, and identified individuals who were feeling depressed or isolated.
To accomplish these goals, the clinician first had to build trust among the firefighters, which started with the captain. If the clinician had the captain’s confidence, firefighters would follow suit. When I ran into the clinician walking around the Duane Street firehouse, I made a point to say hello as a sign of support for the program. But at the same time, I knew that she was there for the firefighters. As during fires, there are times when the chief needs to get out of the way.
According to CSU, crisis counseling is about relocating memories of the deceased from your head to your heart. After building trust, firefighters often would point to pictures on the wall of fallen firefighters and tell firehouse stories about the person. It was a way of keeping good memories alive.
The healing power of groups and storytelling fits nicely into firehouse culture. However, when people were on duty, the clinician had to walk a tightrope of encouraging storytelling without opening the floodgates of emotions.
Every thirty days, we rotated six hundred firefighters to the World Trade Center Task Force for recovery operations. This group was separate from the rest of the job with a different work schedule. At the end of each thirty-day detail, we required everyone to attend a debrief that provided information on PTSD and destigmatized counseling services. We could mandate debriefings, but we could not order counseling; instead, we made it welcoming and easy to attain.
With more than seventy members of the FDNY losing a father, brother, or son, CSU created special group sessions. In October, CSU asked me to attend a session with a group of firefighters who had lost a brother. I was to be part of the group and not a peer counselor.
However, during these sessions, as firefighters started to tell their emotional stories, I slipped into the familiar role of peer counselor. I understood their pain and compassionately mirrored back what they were saying. I answered any questions they had about that day, especially if I had seen their brother.
By the end of the second session, people were grateful that I was part of the group, but I felt exhausted. The group did not relieve my stress but instead intensified my overloaded emotions, commonly known as “compassion fatigue.” I was using my emotional energy to worry about the guys losing their brothers. I, too, had lost my brother. But my capacity for playing both roles—chief and counselor—was being stretched to its limit. I quietly backed out of the brothers’ group. I was learning to know the limits of my ability to help others.
To normalize the benefit of counseling, Chief Hayden and I did a short videotape about the importance of counseling services. This tape went to every firehouse and EMS station. By this time, firefighters recognized and trusted us, which we used to reinforce that it was okay to have strong feelings about losing friends and the changing post-9/11 world. We emphasized that counseling was just another tool to manage post-traumatic stress.
Between September 2001 and June 2005, CSU provided direct counseling services to over 7,100 active-duty members and 500 retired members. In 2002 alone, CSU counseled nearly 2,900 active-duty members. Many in the FDNY took advantage of services for themselves and their family members.
Despite the resources, some firefighters continued to suffer for years. People who retired within the next year or so often regretted it; they no longer had the firehouse and the people who understood their experiences.
Many firefighters struggled with memories triggered by odors, sounds, the sight of an airplane against a blue sky, the numbers 911 and 343. They wrestled with insomnia and nightmares. Some avoided lower Manhattan. A few firefighters turned to drugs and alcohol, even lost their jobs and their marriages.
“I’m not on the fire department no more because of 9/11,” one firefighter told an interviewer ten years after the event. “Not married no more because of 9/11.”
Post-traumatic stress was part of the 9/11 experience. Fortunately, most firefighters did not develop debilitating long-term PTSD, thanks in large part to being able to share their stories and their connection with each other and CSU.
* * *
• • •
Recovering from trauma requires turning memories into new dreams by connecting to others, reflecting on the past, envisioning the future, and enhancing the present with a new purpose. This sounds theoretical, but I discovered this process during my own journey of finding resilience and watching the FDNY, little by little, bounce back.
In the firehouses, the increased intensity of connecting was more apparent. Firefighters gathered in the kitchen, TV room, or apparatus floor just to be with each other. Almost every firefighter Jules interviewed said that the firehouse was the most comfortable place to be after 9/11. They did not have to explain what they did or how they were feeling. Everyone knew each other’s story and understood their experience.
Like me, firefighters felt the need to protect their families from the horrific details of that day. Yet the memory and emotions could not be kept bottled up inside. The firehouse became a place sometimes to vent, but mostly simply a place to be understood.
The firefighters’ families were a different story. Those who’d lost a spouse, parent, sibling, child, or friend also went through the trauma process. Though firefighters tried to be there for those who had lost a family member, many houses were overwhelmed with losses.
Ginny’s post-9/11 journey to resilience mainly focused on our children and their routines—their schoolwork and swim practices with weekend swim meets. There was the hope of doing well in school and swimming and a vision for college. Getting Christine and Gregory to work hard and look toward the future took some of the pain away from losing their uncle. Ginny also made time for small things that gave her comfort and pleasure: reading novels, sewing, taking walks. On the anniversaries of 9/11, Ginny and I always take a long walk on the beach, quietly remembering how lucky we are to have each other.
But she had to change some habits. Ginny had relished reading the New York Times front to back each day. But the paper’s continuous news coverage of 9/11’s aftermath prompted her to suspend that practice for a while. She had to draw the line to avoid the constant reminders about the day she’d almost become a widow.
Eventually, like me, she sought a new purpose in her career, obtaining a Wound, Ostomy, and Continence Nursing Certification, recognizing her skills in a specialized nursing field. This is a demanding job where nurses take care of patients’ surgical wounds, pressure ulcers, and ostomy appliances for bodily functions. Of course, all these stories would come out at the kitchen table, which would quickly ruin my appetite. But, as Ginny put it, her work allowed patients to go home to live everyday life with their families. Her new purpose gave others hope. She eventually got back to reading the New York Times and is one of the few people I know who can complete its crossword puzzle.
Like Ginny,
who had believed for a time that I had died, many significant others of surviving firefighters were glad not to have their stories in the public eye, but they hated that others did not recognize the pain they went through that day. The CSU provided counseling, giving these families a place to tell their stories and move beyond the grief.
Moving beyond grief sometimes meant becoming even closer to the firehouse. There are many stories of how children whose firefighter parents died have grown up to be amazing young adults. Some became “legacy firefighters,” men and women who joined the FDNY after a family member died in the line of duty. In one class of three hundred probationary firefighters, there were twenty-one legacy firefighters. Their family sacrifice became part of the new firefighter’s identity and purpose.
* * *
• • •
On May 30, 2002, we reached the bottom of Ground Zero, eight months and nineteen days after the Twin Towers collapsed. The “Pile,” now the “Pit,” had been swept clean. We had removed 108,342 truckloads of rubble. Human remains had been found all over the site. A map with red dots marking each retrieval showed people inside and outside the buildings’ original footprints. Little decisions had made the difference between life and death. If I had gone south when I came out of the tower instead of north, I would not have survived.
Of those firefighters who died, bodies of fewer than half had been recovered. A stretcher, bearing only an American flag, was placed in the center of the ramp at the lowest point of the Pit to represent all the victims who died that day.
At exactly 10:28 a.m., the time the second tower fell, a series of five clangs of the fire bell, repeated four times, broke the stillness of Ground Zero. Since 1870, the code 5-5-5-5 has signaled the line-of-duty death of a firefighter.
Ordinary Heroes Page 16