Fall and Rise

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  Jay climbed toward the fifth floor, stepping over holes in the stairs, pushing aside or squeezing through piles of fallen sheetrock, using a twisted handrail to haul himself through debris and beyond gaps in missing steps. It reminded him of a stairwell in a tenement on the verge of collapse. When he reached the fifth-floor landing, Jay heard Mike Warchola call again for help. Halfway to the sixth floor landing, Jay ran into an immovable pile of debris.

  “Mayday,” Warchola called a third time, his voice weak, his tone distraught.

  Jay leaned into the blockage, trying desperately to clear a path, but it wouldn’t budge. Jay knew that calling for more men wouldn’t be enough; he’d need a crane to lift the load. Jay’s heart sank as he pressed the talk button and told his old friend: “I’m sorry, Mike. I can’t help you.”

  He heard no reply.

  Jay used his radio to call other firefighters, giving them Warchola’s last reported location. Not all his calls went through, but eventually among those outside the North Tower who heard Jay was another friend, Deputy Chief Nick Visconti. Visconti didn’t have the heart18 to tell Jay the truth: Mike Warchola couldn’t be inside Stairwell B on the twelfth floor of the North Tower. Anyone outside the wreckage could see that location no longer existed. Warchola and anyone else with him were buried somewhere in the canyons of rubble surrounding the surviving six stories of Stairwell B.

  Jay climbed back down, navigating the broken walls and taking care not to fall into holes. Smoke and dust still filled the dark, damaged stairwell. Along the way, Jay pried open the door to the fifth floor and found a custodial bathroom. He knew that the toilet wouldn’t work, but it might come in handy if they were trapped more than a short time. He also found Chief Picciotto’s bullhorn and passed it down to him.

  Jay felt most energized by his discovery of a torn-open freight elevator shaft. When he rejoined his troops on the fourth floor landing, Jay told them: “We’ve got our ropes. We can rappel down maybe to a subcellar and find the PATH train station.” From there, he said, they could walk the tracks in a rail tunnel under the Hudson River and emerge in Hoboken, New Jersey. His men looked at Jay like he’d lost his mind.

  “Hey, Cap,” Tommy Falco said, “what if we can’t get in down below? It’s not like we can just run back up the stairs.”

  “All right, killjoy,” Jay said, even as he stored away the idea. He’d consider it again if all else failed and they remained trapped for two or three days. Meanwhile, Matt Komorowski found sprinkler pipes on the third floor. If they got thirsty, they could break into them in the hope of finding water.

  For now, there was nothing to do but wait.

  As they settled in, Jay heard the radio squawk with a Mayday call from Battalion Chief Richard Prunty, an avuncular figure with a white walrus mustache, somewhere below them in the North Tower’s lobby. Chief Prunty said he was hurt, dizzy, pinned under a steel beam. Jay already knew they couldn’t reach him, but he and Lieutenant Jim McGlynn tried to keep the chief talking. Unsure whether Rich Prunty could be heard by potential rescuers outside the stairwell, Jay and Jim McGlynn relayed his pleas for help to anyone monitoring their radio channels.

  An hour passed. Prunty was slipping away. They heard a final transmission: “Tell my wife and kids19 that I love them.”

  The survivors inside Stairwell B had no idea what the world looked like outside their chrysalis. They didn’t know that Mayor Giuliani had ordered an evacuation of Lower Manhattan20 below Canal Street, an evacuation that sent hundreds of thousands of people through dust-covered streets uptown, across bridges, or onto tugs, ferries, fire boats, Coast Guard vessels, and pleasure craft that sailed from the smoldering island like a modern-day Dunkirk.

  Jay and his crew coughed and rubbed dust from their eyes. They sat quietly. Most turned off their radios to conserve batteries, while Chief Picciotto, on the stairs a floor below Jay, put out a Mayday call on the command channel. Another hour passed.

  Tommy Falco caught Jay’s eye. “Hey, Cap. What do we do now?”

  “I don’t know,” Jay replied. “I’m making this up as we go along.”

  Jay used a different frequency, the primary tactical channel, Channel 1, and put out Maydays of his own. Deputy Chief Tom Haring answered: “Okay, Ladder 6, I got you.”

  Relief spread. Jay described their location. More captains and chiefs chimed in over the radio, old friends of Jay’s whose voices bolstered his spirits. They told Jay that every off-duty member of Ladder 6, along with Jay’s old company, Ladder 11, had joined the search. More radio calls, more promises, all with one theme: “I’m coming to get you, brother.”

  Some of Jay’s radio contacts had questions that struck him as odd. They asked for more details of the survivors’ location, about how Ladder 6 had entered the North Tower, and where they’d parked their truck. One radio caller flat-out asked Jay how to find the North Tower. With no way to envision the smoking acres of rubble around him, Jay grew annoyed. He thought: “This is not that hard, gentlemen. My five-year-old daughter could follow these directions. It’s one of the big buildings on the corner.”

  Jay urged Josephine and his men to be patient, assuring them that help was on the way. He guessed, incorrectly, that firefighters and other rescuers were overwhelmed by hundreds or even thousands of injured or trapped people. No one on the radio told him that responders could devote unlimited manpower to the fourteen people inside Stairwell B because they comprised the largest single group of known survivors.

  Visibility improved enough for Jay to look out a small hole, but he could only see a wall of twisted steel. He and the others heard fires breaking out nearby. Explosions rocked the stairwell, pelting them with a shower of debris. Amid the barrage of noise and falling pieces of sheetrock, Josephine began to cry.

  “I’m scared,” Josephine said.

  “We’re all a little scared,” Jay told her. “Just hang in there.”

  Jay was long over the frustration he’d felt earlier about Josephine’s slow pace. Josephine was part of Ladder 6, now. During the occasional debris storms, Mike Meldrum draped himself across her body. Sal D’Agostino wrapped her in his coat.

  “As long as we’re here,” Sal told her, “nothing is going to happen to you.”

  The explosions stopped. The wait continued. K-9 Officer Dave Lim used a radio to ask someone to check on his partner, Sirius, in the basement of the South Tower. He used his cellphone to reach his wife, Diane, who told him that she didn’t want to hang up21 until either she died or he did.

  Another hour passed. Someone found a can of soda, so they passed it around. The dust settled more. A beam of light pierced a hole Jay hadn’t noticed previously in the stairwell wall above where he sat. Flecks of dust twinkled in the beam, like a sudden spotlight on a darkened stage. Jay stared at it until comprehension dawned.

  “Guys,” Jay said. “There used to be one hundred and six floors above us, and now I’m seeing sunshine.”

  Still Jay didn’t understand how much, or how little, of the building remained. As far as Jay knew, Mike Warchola remained alive, awaiting rescue eight flights above them.

  Smoke and dust cleared further. Within ten minutes they could see through a manhole-sized hole in the stairwell wall to a firefighter from Ladder 43 walking in the rubble, about eighty feet away. They tied a rope around Chief Picciotto and lowered him out the hole to a place where he could stand amid the mound of twisted steel and masonry. Picciotto reached the firefighter and tied off the rope for others to use as a guide. Jay sent out members of his crew, one after another, along with Dave Lim, Mickey Kross, and Bob Bacon. Lieutenant Jim McGlynn stayed behind on a lower level of the stairwell with Jim Efthimiades and Jeff Coniglio, who hoped they could find Chief Prunty alive.

  Jay remained inside the stairwell with Tommy, Sal, and Josephine, who still couldn’t walk. “Cap,” Tommy said, “we can’t leave her.” Jay told him they’d wait with Josephine until other firefighters arrived with a rescue stretcher to carry her out. Soon Lieuten
ant Glenn Rohan climbed into the wrecked stairwell with several other members of Ladder 43 to help the men on the lower levels and to evacuate Josephine. One of the newcomers addressed her as “ma’am.” Another called her “doll.”

  Ladder 6 didn’t appreciate that. Sal firmly told them: “This is Josephine.”

  Jay explained her immobility to Glenn Rohan, then reassured Josephine she’d be in good hands. It’d take some time to get a metal-ribbed stretcher called a Stokes basket, but she’d be going home soon.

  Jay told Ladder 43 what he knew about Chief Prunty down below. When Jay mentioned that Mike Warchola was hurt somewhere above them, Glenn Rohan gave him a strange look but didn’t say anything.

  Sal went out through the hole. Tommy followed, then poked his head back inside: “Cap, wait until you get a look at this.”

  Jay looked out in disbelief. Nothing he’d experienced or imagined prepared him to see the smoking remains of New York’s two tallest buildings arrayed around him. The violence of the collapse had pulverized nearly everything inside, leaving no recognizable trace of furniture or computers or phones or carpets. Jay saw no sign of the more than twenty-seven hundred people22 who’d arrived at the Twin Towers that morning as workers, visitors, or emergency responders, or as airplane passengers and crew, but who’d soon be counted among the departed.

  “Oh my god,” Jay told himself. “We got bombed. They used airplanes like missiles.”

  Jay understood that the twelfth floor no longer existed. He realized that if he and the other survivors in Stairwell B had been a little higher or a little lower at 10:28 a.m., they’d almost certainly be dead, too.

  Jay followed his men as they traversed the rope line toward West Street, navigating deep crevasses of misshapen steel, fighting to keep their footing on an inch-thick coating of talcum-like dust. At one point, they balanced along a foot-wide beam stretched across a pit of rubble, like explorers crossing a log bridge over a ravine.

  Jay looked north and saw fire consuming the forty-seven-story building known as Seven World Trade Center, across Vesey Street from the tower remains. The Secret Service had an office in an adjacent building. As the Stairwell B survivors made their way across the rubble, fire reached an ammunition storage room there. The sound of gunfire convinced Dave Lim that terrorists were launching a ground assault. He reached for his service weapon, knowing that he carried forty-six rounds.23 Dave resolved to go down fighting, but he soon realized that wouldn’t be necessary. The gunshots stopped. (Hours later, at 5:21 p.m., WTC 7 collapsed24 with no one inside.)

  As Stairwell B emptied of survivors, Lieutenant Glenn Rohan and three other firefighters climbed down through the dark. They forced their way into the remains of the lobby to search for Chief Prunty, who’d last been heard from about two hours earlier. They found him fifty feet below where they entered Stairwell B, pinned under a steel beam. They tried CPR but knew it was no use. Unable to lift the beam, they said a prayer and packed up. Before they climbed out, Glenn promised: “We’ll come back25 to get you tomorrow, chief.”

  Jay kept a close watch on his men as they traversed the rubble. Finally, they faced a steep rise of broken masonry to reach West Street. Fellow firefighters dropped ropes down to them for one hard, final climb. Covered in filth, his eyes burning, Jay emerged on the street feeling spent. He looked back toward the pile and saw Josephine emerging from the stub of the stairwell, carried aloft by firefighters aboard a stretcher. A medic tried to usher Jay toward an ambulance.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Jay said. “Where’s the command post?”

  Jay wanted to check in with the chiefs before leaving. He wasn’t driven by protocol or pride. From the radio traffic, Jay knew that scores of firefighters had been searching for him and the others in Stairwell B. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if someone got hurt or killed while looking for him after the survivors were safe.

  Jay walked a block south to Liberty Street. Hundreds of firefighters milled around. They’d removed their helmets to observe a moment of silence, and now they were looking for a fire to fight, someone to help, or a lost comrade to bring home. They understood that many of their number were missing, though they didn’t yet know the magnitude of the loss. Deputy Chief Peter Hayden, who hours earlier sent Ladder 6 and so many other firefighters into the North Tower, stood atop a damaged pumper truck.

  The chief looked down, Jay looked up. Each man’s eyes welled with tears.

  “It’s good to see you,” Chief Hayden said.

  “It’s good to be here,” Jay said.

  Endless work remained, the shift wasn’t over, and Jay wanted to help. But he knew better. “My guys are shot,” Jay said. With a nod, the chief dismissed Captain Jay Jonas and the men of Ladder 6. But first, Hayden offered a small piece of welcome news.

  “Now you’re going to get promoted to battalion chief.”

  His eyes moist, his body aching, Jay looked up at Chief Hayden. Jay had devoted countless hours to working, training, and studying, in the hope that someday he’d hear the career-defining words that he’d made chief. But now his mind was elsewhere.

  As he walked away, Jay said simply: “It’s gonna be good to be around for that.”

  After his ferry ride, on the train home to Glen Ridge, New Jersey, Ron Clifford thought the worst of his personal ordeal was over, even as he understood that the nation’s had only begun. He watched as a woman who worked on Wall Street guzzled vodka straight from a bottle. He called his sister Ruth’s cellphone, hoping to tell her he was fine, so she wouldn’t worry. No answer, so he left a message.

  Fellow passengers read out news updates from their BlackBerry devices about planes crashing into the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. Rumors flew wildly around the train car about more planes, more targets, more death.

  Ron fell into Brigid’s arms at the station. He apologized for ruining his clothes but was too spent to explain all that had happened. At home, Ron stripped out of his soiled blue suit and set aside his yellow tie. As he prepared to shower, Ron’s phone rang: David McCourt, his sister Ruth’s husband, sounded dazed.

  “Hey,” David said, “do you know where Ruth is?”

  Believing that Ruth had flown west from Boston several days earlier, along with Ruth and David’s four-year-old daughter Juliana, Ron said, “Huh? She’s in California.”

  “I think she was on that flight,” David answered.

  Ron’s mind refused to piece it together.

  “What flight? What are you talking about?”

  “I got a call from Allan Hackel,” David said, referring to the husband of Paige Farley-Hackel, Ruth’s close friend and Juliana’s godmother.

  Ron remained fiercely in denial. He told himself that David had recently gone through cancer treatment, and that’s why he must be confused. Ron said he’d clear it up by calling Paige’s husband. “Give me Allan’s number.”

  Hours earlier, Allan Hackel heard on his car radio that a plane struck the North Tower, but he’d dismissed it. “There’s a million planes flying,”26 Allan told himself. He focused on the direct route from Boston to Los Angeles. “I don’t think they’re going to New York to get to L.A.” But when Allan reached the advertising company he owned, his grown son Peter and daughter Jodi, from a previous marriage, crowded into his office.

  “What?” Allan had asked. “Was that Paige’s flight?” Jodi embraced him. Allan’s mind went black. A single thought formed: “My life is gone.”

  When Ron called, Allan sounded defeated. He assumed that Ron already knew the worst. “They were the two most beautiful, spirited girls that walked the earth,” Allan said tearfully of Ron’s sister, Ruth, and Allan’s wife, Paige. “And that gorgeous little girl.”

  Ron refused to accept it: “What are you talking about, Allan?”

  “They were here, and they were driven to the airport early this morning.”

  Ron felt the bottom drop out, but still he clung to a whisker of hope. Allan told him that Paige was on a dif
ferent flight from Ruth and Juliana. Ron went to his computer and joined countless people trying to determine what had happened to their loved ones’ flights.

  Ron called his half-brother, Spencer, who lived in Boston, and told him to rush to Logan Airport to see what he could learn.

  Jennieann Maffeo had wanted her sister Andrea to be notified about her burns before their parents, but the request got lost on her way to the hospital. Using the information Ron gave the ambulance driver, someone called Jennieann’s boss at UBS PaineWebber, who in turn called the Maffeo home in Brooklyn to deliver the news that Jennieann was alive, but grievously injured.

  Just as Jennieann had feared, her elderly mother was too distraught to speak. Frances Maffeo gave the caller Andrea’s work number. Eventually, the telephone trail led Andrea back to Ron.

  Ron leapt to answer the phone, thinking it might be news about Ruth and Juliana. Andrea heard anguish in Ron’s voice when she explained who she was. Ron set aside his fears for his sister and niece and tried to focus on Jennieann.

  “Her arms,” Ron told Andrea. “My god, her arms are burned.” He was too distracted, too distraught, or too kind to tell Andrea the full extent of Jennieann’s injuries.

  Jennieann’s boss didn’t know where she’d been taken, so Andrea asked Ron. He didn’t know either. “I saw horrendous things,” Ron said.

  They talked briefly about what happened, about how he had come upon Jennieann in the Marriott lobby. Ron confided in Andrea that they were in the same boat: he was awaiting word about his sister and niece. They heard a click—another call on Ron’s line. Ron placed Andrea on hold, then quickly returned.

  “I have to go,” Ron said. “My sister’s dead.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Andrea said. “Can I do anything?”

  “Just let me know how your sister is. She has to be okay.”

  Andrea said she’d stay in touch, and she promised to pray for him.

  At the command center at Chelsea Piers, Moose Diaz heard his name read among the missing emergency responders.