We continue to present the extraordinary stories of those FDNY firefighters who were on the scene and operating in different areas before, during and after the collapse of the World Trade Center's 110-story twin towers following the terrorist attack on 9/11. The interviews were conducted by Harvey Eisner.
Battalion Chief Jack Calderone Battalion 22
29 years
I was home when the attack occurred. I had the scanner on, so I heard the second alarm go out. My aide, Kenny Pogan, called me to tell me to put on the Manhattan fire radio frequency, to listen to it, a plane hit the World Trade Center. I was watching it on TV.
When the recall was announced, we came in and got our gear together, then called the Division for instructions. They said get everybody down to the Division. Battalion Chief Robert Muccio was on duty. Both towers had collapsed by that point and we knew that Chief Muccio's brother was working for the state on the 86th floor of one of the towers.
We got everybody together and we car pooled down to the Division, where Transit Authority buses were waiting for us. I went inside and talked to the deputies. No one had any directions, just go to the ferry terminal and go to Manhattan. While I was upstairs in the Division, I grabbed a pad of riding lists. I went down to the buses and I gave each officer a riding list, and I told them to form companies of six to eight people each.
One bus ahead of us filled up and they left. Ours filled up pretty rapidly and we left and there were still people coming. I don't know how many more buses there were after that.
We got down to the ferry terminal. The bus ahead of us had arrived a few minutes earlier. They already disembarked and got on a ferry that was pulling out as we got there. We were told we would be on the next ferry, but before it came in, somebody from the ferry operator came out and told us we had a phone call. We went in and took the call, and were given instructions to set up a triage and staging area, that they were going to start bringing victims and bodies over.
Photo from the Firehouse Collection The South Tower has collapsed, taking the middle portion of the 22-story Marriott Hotel with it.
Now, none of us had any radios. All we had was our own bunker gear. And more buses arrived after that. I guess the biggest group we had was about 400 firefighters and officers. One of biggest problems was that I had no radio to talk to the dispatcher. We had no radios to talk to each other. We were spread out across the ferry terminal. We wanted to set up. We had EMS people there, people we normally work with, and we were discussing how we were going to set up our triage area and staging area and where we were going to put things. It just got crazy, using runners back and forth.
I finally got someone from the Department of Ferries there to run a phone line out for us. I called the dispatcher. I knew at this point that they had manned the brush units and the reserve pumpers and I had the dispatcher send one of the brush units to whatever units were still in quarters in Staten Island and take a handie-talkie from each of those units. I managed to procure some tables from someplace. We set up a command post at the lower level of the ferry terminal. We worked with EMS and they set up their triage area. I had all the guys who were CFR (certified first responder) trained to assist EMS. We got Transit Authority buses down to the lower level. We worked with the police department and National Guard. We set up a temporary morgue in the (Staten Island Yankees minor league team baseball) stadium right next door to the ferry terminal. The National Guard got refrigerator trucks for us for the bodies.
Our EMS personnel arranged a full operating room staff, doctors, nurses. We were probably as best prepared as we could possibly have been without any prior planning for this. We were ready for anything that was going to come our way. We sat there for approximately six hours and I think we had a total of 16 injuries, all of them were walking wounded. The most serious was a broken bone.
All during the day, we were getting messages. Some were telephone messages. Some were from police officers coming over to us. We were getting these reports, the next boat will have X number of injuries, X number of DOAs. Some of the reports were very specific. We got a female with head trauma, compound leg fracture, very descriptive of injuries and none of it ever materialized.
I spoke to Patty Boyle, the battalion chief in Bayonne, NJ, who was working that day. He said they were getting the same reports over there and no one knew where these phone calls were materializing from. We couldn't track them down. I tried backtracking through the dispatcher to call the Manhattan ferry terminal and see what was going on there.
Ferries were running, bringing mostly walking survivors over. On the return trip, they were bringing over people who had been cleared, hospital personnel, EMS personnel, some firefighters. Although we were told to set up a staging area, I was ordered not to let any other firefighters go over to Manhattan. I find it very strange that when Patty Boyle relayed the information he had been receiving over there, that it was virtually identical to the information we were receiving, and it just made me think that perhaps this was more of a planned thing to confuse us or overwhelm us.
In retrospect, I was listening to the radio tapes of units that were staging in Brooklyn. Two minutes after they were ordered to respond to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and report to West and Albany streets, there was a bomb scare in the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.
Let me backtrack. When the brush unit arrived on the scene with the portable radios, we distributed them to each chief officer on the scene and I kept the brush unit there to have a radio contact with the dispatcher. A few minutes after I established that radio contact, we had a bomb scare at the ferry terminal and it just seemed in retrospect to be too much of a coincidence. It was almost like these people were monitoring our frequencies and deliberately doing stuff. After we were there a while, it became obvious that we were going to have a logistics problem with the 400 personnel we had there, firefighters and EMS people, the cops, the hospital staff, nurses.
Photo from the Firehouse Collection Engine 74 and Ladder 12 were on their way down the south stairwell of the Marriott Hotel after the first collapse. They had been on the top floor minutes before, searching for occupants.
We attempted to get a RAC (Recuperation and Care) unit and they were all committed. Our next stop was the Jersey City Gong Club and they were already committed to Liberty State Park. Kenny Pogan, my aide, suggested the Bayonne fire canteen. We were able to get the dispatcher to have them come and had something supply the people to rehydrate them. As the day wore on, we were able to get a local politician to get the stadium food stands open and they started cooking and supplied food to everybody that was there.
EMS command, through whatever mutual aid network they had, somehow mustered approximately 40 ambulances at the scene. We also had mutual aid companies reporting to the scene, so we set up a staging area in the parking lot of the ferry terminal. We had 25 to 35 pieces of apparatus from New Jersey. One of the more frustrating things was that we knew the towers had collapsed, we were getting no information at all from Manhattan and I'm assuming that they had some type of a rescue operation going on, whether it was tunneling or trenching, and I had with me the Collapse Task Force from Elizabeth, NJ, which consisted of their heavy rescue, an engine, a truck, battalion and the collapse rig. And I couldn't get through to anybody who would comprehend that I had a trained unit who could do something worthwhile at the scene.
Speaking to people at the Emergency Operations Center that day, I couldn't get anybody higher than a firefighter to talk to and all I was getting back was, by orders of Chief (of Department Peter) Ganci, nobody is to go over there. Meanwhile, at this point Ganci was already dead. They were using his name and giving orders out and I couldn't get anybody to listen to the fact that I had a trained collapse task force there that could make a difference until well into the afternoon, before I finally got somebody from OEM (Office of Emergency Management) who we worked with, Bobby Wilson. He was on his way over there and was able to relay to the command post at the scene that we had these personnel who were trained, that this wasn't a rinky-dink operation, it was a legitimate heavy rescue unit that could make a difference.
Through most of the day, I had this frustration in trying to get valid information from anybody. There was no one spot to go to. The dispatchers couldn't get me anything when I asked questions. At one point, we had a police officer tell us the next boat in will have 200 DOAs, 200 bodies. We waited and waited and waited and finally I got on the radio with the mixer off. I asked the dispatcher, can you please verify with Whitehall Street if, in fact, this boat is enroute. We were told 25, 30 minutes ago that this boat was coming. When they got back to us, they said no one from the Manhattan side had any information about a boat with DOAs which, in fact, was the case at that point. But we didn't know this. We were operating blindly. Again, that number 200, I point out that Patty Boyle in Bayonne had the same call, there's a boat coming with 200 DOAs.
After about an hour and a half, we had everything set up to handle whatever was going to be thrown at us. Everything was running smoothly. It was just total frustration because we sat there and nothing happened. Then it got to the point where we started, I don't want to use the word revolt, but guys were getting impatient. They wanted to get over there and work. They wanted to do something. If we had victims coming at us, I wouldn't have had that problem because they would have been occupied. We had 400 people here now raring to go ready to work with nothing to do. And basically that's what we did for the day. We sat there and waited and watched the towers burn and with the exception of those 16 or so victims that walked over, walked off the ferry, we did nothing.
After about six hours being at the ferry terminal, and after we had things running as smoothly as they could be and nothing at all happening, we got a phone call from Emergency Operations to start winding down at the ferry terminal and send the guys back to their units and reduce the number of people there. At that point, I felt that I should come back here to the battalion and ride and let Chief Muccio make his way up to the Trade Center, which he did. I mentioned earlier that Chief Muccio, who was working here, knew his brother had been in the one of the towers when it came down. In fact, he died.
Later that night, we were sent to Staten Island Hospital to check on some injured members, I think the number was two, maybe three members were injured. When we got there, I wound up having over 20 members in the hospital. As a matter of fact, I had most of 6 Truck in the hospital. After compiling a list of members there and sending that to Emergency Operations so we could account for those people, I spoke to the Division and suggested that they assign a chief to the hospital because there were constantly more people coming in and most of them were members. One of the recall chiefs was put there with a firefighter and took over that function. We went back into service.
The 22 Battalion was in Staten Island the whole time. The 21 early on relocated to Brooklyn and then went to the fire. The 22 actually had a working fire a couple of blocks away with New Jersey units that afternoon. The following morning, they had one right around the corner from there with New Jersey units.
I did a borough status report before I left to go to the Division and we were down to 30% availability on the island when I left. That was maybe 20 minutes after the second collapse.
I could see the smoke. I saw the fighter jets going over, a lot of military helicopters. The biggest thing was the frustration of being there prepared to do whatever had to be done and nothing happened, just looking out the ferry slip at that cloud of smoke coming up. For not having any kind of a formal disaster plan that we were involved with, things went real smoothly. The people there made things happen the way they should happen. Everybody worked well together, us, EMS, the police, the hospitals, the National Guard people. Ferry people, they supplied us with tables and chairs. We were able to set up a command post. We were down there with nothing and we were able to have an operational command post with 400 people. The police captain from the 120th Precinct was there. We got him to assign us an officer, I believe it might have been a sergeant, with a radio so that we could at least hear what information they were being given.
At one point, we had a female police officer come up to us with information, like I said, very specific information that a boat's coming over with these injuries. Where was this information coming from? We had EMS right next to us and we were passing back and forth what we were getting. The only thing is we don't know where we were getting it from, all these sources that we were getting this information from and none of it was valid.
Firefighter Bill Spade Rescue 5
16 1/2 years
I worked in Ladder 1 for about six years, so I have a familiarization with the World Trade Center area, and also from getting detailed to other companies downtown. I responded to the trade center numerous times. I've been in Rescue 5 since April of '91 and been working the last three years in Tactical Support 2.
That morning, I started work at 7 o'clock. The TAC starts at 7 A.M. Usually at that time it's kind of quiet in the firehouse, but everybody seemed to be up that morning around the kitchen table. There were about 12 or 13 guys around the firehouse table. I called my wife at 8 A.M., which I normally do when school starts. I had a 6-year-old at the time and a 2-month-old. I called her. That was the first day she had to get the 2-month- old and 6-year-old ready for school by herself. I was away at work for the first time since school started, so I called her at 8 to make sure everything was OK. She said yeah, they're on time, everybody's up. I said good, fine, I'll talk to you later.
At about 8:40, the alarm went off in the firehouse, for the engine and rescue to respond to a steam leak at Bailey Seton Hospital, which is nearby. I was left back in quarters by myself and I assumed the house watch. I was out there maybe two or three minutes, straightening up the house watch area, when the phone rang. It was an off-duty fireman, Anthony Rocco from Rescue 5. He was on his way home on the BQE (Brooklyn-Queens Expressway) and he told me he saw a plane hit the World Trade Center.
With all the joking that goes on at the firehouse, I thought he was kidding, so I asked him, who do you want to talk to, there's nobody here. He said no, I'm not kidding, it's real. So I said, if it's real, I've got to go. I hung up with him and I called SOC (Special Operations Command) here. I got Lieutenant McQuade on the phone and I said, did you get any report of a plane hitting the trade center? He said, yes, TAC 1 and the chief just left for that box, nothing's confirmed yet, but if you got it as a verbal, you head out also, I'll get you a ticket. I said OK and hung up with him. I called the Staten Island dispatcher and said I was going to head for the city for the box that just came in, so they said OK, we'll put you on it. It's a one-man unit, the TAC. I grabbed my gear, it's all in one bag. I threw it in the rig and took off for the trade center.
As I was approaching the toll plaza to the Verrazano (Narrows Bridge, which connects Staten Island and Brooklyn), I looked out to my left. It was a bright, clear day and from the firehouse to the trade center it about 12 or 13 miles. As I looked out from the toll plaza, to my left I could see smoke coming from the tower. At about the same time, I heard the first unit say, second alarm on arrival, we've got fire through the skin of the building. I think, all right, we've got a job.
As I was going just a little farther up the bridge, I heard a chief say, we've got jumpers. At that point, I knew it was serious. I reached the top of the bridge and I was thinking that we were going to be there a while, and what tools I should bring and what am I going to need when I get to the site.
I was driving along in the HOV (high-occupancy vehicle) lane. The cops already had it shut down. I was making great time. I seemed to be the first emergency vehicle in the express lane, and as I got toward the Gowanus (Expressway), the road went up the hill and down to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. At that point, it slowed up a little bit because you had the express buses, people coming from Staten Island into work. The tunnel had already been shut down for that kind of traffic, so they were pulled to the side. I was taking my time, thinking that I didn't want to get in an accident. I was looking out to my left and I could see all the people on the express buses on their cell phones. I was thinking how this was being broadcast back to families right away, people were telling them what's happening. I was thinking about my wife, that she was going to know right away what was happening and that I was responding because she knew that you go to anything major in the TAC.
I continued down the hill to the tunnel. I was not too far from the entrance, going down the hill to the tunnel, and I saw the second plane come through and hit the tower, and there was a great big ball of fire. Then I thought, wow, the chiefs are going to have their hands full with this one.
The plane was like a black thing that seemed to be coming through the sky, and I saw it hit. Then I saw the great ball of fire. Then one thing I noticed as I was in the plaza getting to the tunnel was all this paper coming down. It seemed to be raining paper. My first thought was that it was propaganda, saying we did it or whatever, taking the blame for it, but then I realized it was the trail was coming right from the trade center. It was all the paper coming out of the trade center.
I went through the tunnel. I knew it was shut down because I was driving in the middle and I had no oncoming cars. As I pulled out of the tunnel, I made the right onto West Street and almost immediately I started to hit things in the street and then I realized they were body parts strewn all about the street. I tried to avoid them, maneuvering around, but it just seemed to be so many, so I thought I would just take a straight path up the block.
As I was going by one of the streets, there was a traffic light. A car was parked there, with a jet motor through the back of the car. It seemed to be a small or midsized car and the jet motor went through the trunk of the car, the back seat of the car. And it seemed that whoever was waiting for the light, this motor came down and it looked like they opened the door and walked away. And I thought, wow, somebody got lucky, maybe this is going to turn out to be a good day, fortunate for some people.
I proceeded to the corner of Liberty and West streets. As I pulled up, I looked up and reminded myself that I can't park in a collapse zone, but then I thought, well, everywhere around here is a collapse zone. I parked the rig there at Liberty and West. I had to go around to the passenger side of the vehicle to the compartment there to get my gear. That's where the debris was coming down and I kind of hugged close to the rig as I got dressed. I went around the driver's side again and I double-checked to make sure I had everything I would need, took a halligan, two flashlights and my gear. Some officers were keeping their companies back behind the rigs at this point. It was dangerous just to cross the traffic on West Street.
I was on the northwest corner of the Liberty and West. I just started to go out into the street to make my way across when three guys from Hazmat came up to me and asked me if I had any tools they could borrow, hand tools, but I said I don't have many hand tools. I opened up all the compartments on my rig so that if anybody else had to go to the rig for something, at least the compartments would be open. As I was opening the rear compartment, I saw that Rescue 2 was parked behind me, a little bit more on Liberty. I told the guys from Hazmat that they could go over there and take Rescue 2's tools, they're already off their rig.
I saw Pete Carroll from Squad 1. I just briefly said hello to him and we both headed off into the building. We just run across West Street and people were jumping and debris was coming down. I got into the lobby of the Marriott Hotel, where I saw Chief (of Operations Sal) Cassano. He was ordering some companies to the go to the 70th floor. I can't be sure of the amount of companies. For a moment, I thought I'll team up with these companies and start helping out, but then I realized that if things went bad, these guys weren't going to be looking for me, they weren't going to be remembering my frontpiece.
Cassano was the only chief I saw at the Marriott. He also said, we're switching to Channel 7 on our radios, everybody. Being in the TAC, I had a citywide radio, and when I switched to 7, I wasn't picking up the frequency that they seemed to be broadcasting on. It didn't seem to be working, so I went to the chief. I said chief, TAC 2 is here, what can I do for you? He said to me, go to the North Tower, report to the command post there and operate there.
I started to leave the Marriott and that's when I ran into (Ladder 9 Lieutenant) Bobby La Rocca. We've known each other from Rescue. He had just entered and I was about to leave. He said, what are you doing? I said, I was just told by Chief Cassano go to the North Tower. He said, I'll team up with you, I'm off duty. He asked how do you want to do this, do you want to go through the building or we go on the outside? I said, I don't know the direct way through the building, we can see what it looks like on the outside. There was a small overhang on the outside, it seemed to be 15 or 18 inches, so we were able to hug the wall of the Marriott underneath it. All the way to the North Tower we hugged the wall. People were dropping right at our feet from above.
From where we were, I'd say we saw 15 to 20 people down. At one point I stopped and thought, I saw the second plane hit, it was a terrorist action, and for one second I said to myself, they have no regard for human life, all the life that's coming down and being taken, they have no regard for the amount of people that were just dying in front us.
Bobby and I made it to the North Tower. I remember there was the chief's car parked underneath a glass canopy. Right past that were some electric doors, and they opened for us. We walked inside the North Tower right there and the only person that we saw there was Reverend Judge (Father Mychal Judge, an FDNY chaplain). I'd known him for a while and he wasn't himself. He was saying his prayers nervously and a lot of things seemed to be bothering him.
The body parts and the bodies were still coming down and I remember that the bodies would come down and the door would open up due to the movement and then they'd shut. A body would come down and they would open. It was kind of eerie, I guess, now that I think back on it. The reverend was saying prayers and I remember a body part came flying right in the glass doors, and that really shook him up. Bobby and I looked around for a command post, but we didn't see anything set up at that point. We could see upstairs and see a staircase that led down to the concourse level. People were milling around up there and they didn't seem to know how to get down and out of the building. I said to Bobby, why don't we go upstairs and find a way to evacuate these people in an orderly fashion, and he said it seemed like a good idea. To our left there was a staircase with escalators and we took that up to the next level. As we were going by, we saw an abandoned beverage cart. I said to Bobby, let's grab some water, put it in our pockets, we can probably use this later on, we're going to be here a while. We both grabbed bottled water and put it in our pockets as we went to the staircase.
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