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Sept. 17, 2021 - Rudy Giuliani
59:45
Two Who Ran Directly to the Fire | Tom Von Essen and Tim Brown | Ep. 171
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This is Rudy Giuliani back again with another episode of Rudy's Common Sense.
We're now going to interview Thomas von Essen.
Tom von Essen was the fire department commissioner on September 11, 2001.
He was fire commissioner for a lot longer than that, but we're focusing on September 11.
And Tom will tell you his background, but he played a very, very integral role and probably had the most difficult job Because he lost, it would be like being a general of an army and you lost your 20 top commanders or 10 top commanders and maybe 50 of your top people and you were in the biggest battle of your life.
That's the way I look at it and Tom got us through it brilliantly.
So I love him.
He's done so much for the city and now for the country with handling the pandemic with FEMA.
It's just a great honor to have him with me, Tom.
Thanks, boss.
Great to see you.
Tom, we're just going to concentrate on the day.
So the purpose of this is so people get a sense of what really happened.
Because a lot of people don't know and a lot of people aren't alive.
And for many, many reasons, they have to remember this.
Take us through September 11th.
How did you start the day?
I was on East River Drive.
East River Drive, were you at work, going to work?
Going to Brooklyn.
I was on East River Drive going south, and I get a call, a small plane hit Detroit North Tower.
I kind of made the turn down there by 14th Street, by Con Ed over there, and I saw some smoke, and I said, oh wow, small plane.
Crazy, was a drunk guy, a rich guy, somebody, why would you, you know, don't think too much of it.
Responded there, got there really quick.
Went in those big triangular windows that they had.
They were blown out.
And I said, yeah, stepping through the window.
And as I'm stepping through, there's a horrible thud, you know, about 15 feet away.
And I look and it's a person.
I said, oh my God, small plane.
It's still not registering.
And when I got in there, the chief said, boss, it wasn't a small plane.
It's a commercial jet.
We can't put this fire out.
They've severed all the lines.
We got to just work on getting everybody out below it.
We're not going to be able to help anybody.
So he knew it was a, he knew it was a, uh, Commercial jet.
Because a lot of people didn't know that.
When I was informed, which would be about that time, I was told it was a twin-engine plane that hit the North Tower.
Terrible fire, but a twin-engine plane.
My guys got up there quick.
You know, we're not supposed to use the elevators, but of course, the first guys that got in there used the elevators.
And that's the only way to get such a quick assessment of the problem that they had.
And after that, nobody used the elevators because then we were worried about the fuel coming down through the elevator shafts and having fires and stuff like that.
But those guys got up there right away.
They were able to see that it was a commercial jet and the enormous damage and the fact that we weren't going to be able to put any fires out.
How close did they get?
Well, I'm sure they were below it, you know, maybe 85th floor or something like that.
Well, by that time the fire probably came down a little bit.
Yeah, there was a lot of damage even below the impact.
But they could see part of the plane?
Yeah, they knew.
Those guys reported that it was a commercial jet, so they had visual eyes on it.
And you know the Chiefs we had, we had lots of fights with all the Chiefs over the years.
The best in the world.
But when it came to fires, they were as good as they get.
And so we had some really great guys there in the lobby.
And they had control of it.
There was no chaos.
There was no panic.
They knew exactly what we had to do to help people.
Even though they knew we couldn't put the fire out, they were going to help as many people as we could.
And then felt the vibration 10 minutes later.
And I thought it was an explosion in the elevator shaft.
Guy comes running in, I'm not sure if it was Richie Scherer or somebody else, one of his guys, and he said, uh, boss, uh, the South Tower was hit.
Mall of America was hit, and the Sears Tower was hit.
And we said, oh my god.
What's going on?
We didn't have to be CIA agents at the time to know that it was terrorism.
And then we split half the leadership.
We had a lot of good chiefs.
We sent half of them to the South Tower trying to just do the best we could.
When I got there, both towers had been hit.
The second tower had just been hit.
And Pete Gansey was directing the North Tower.
Who's down on West Street?
There was another command post though.
And that was for the South Tower.
Is that right?
The first command post was in the North Tower in the lobby.
That's where I was.
Right.
Pete Gansey came and he set up a command post on West Street, which is where it should be.
Yeah, well, he had this.
He had a sort of catty corner, the two towers.
This gave him a view, a clean view of the North and a pretty good view of the South.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But he was there.
He was out in the street before the South Tower got hit.
But then when the South Tower got hit, he knew he had a major problem.
And we tried to, you know, just do the best we can, moving everybody around.
So he moved out there after the second plane hit?
He was out there before the second plane hit.
I see.
Okay.
Because they looked up and they saw it.
They saw it hit.
And then it was a short period later when it fell, that was the real surprise.
You know, nobody expected the South Tower to fall first.
It was hit lower, it was hit at a better angle.
You know, if you wanted to take it down, it was hit on a corner.
No, when you see it, Well we stayed a little bit longer in the North Tower lobby and then I went outside.
Oh yeah.
You heard that the second plane hit.
Where did you go?
Well, we stayed a little bit longer in the North Tower lobby and then I went outside.
Were they still taking people out?
Oh yeah.
People coming out of the stairways?
Yeah.
Yeah, lots of people coming down.
But you had been, your people had been trying to reach me.
And I was kind of like delaying, you know, hooking up with you.
Because I just felt like this is where I was supposed to be.
And then I finally left because they told me you were out on West Street.
I went around to get you, to meet you there, and you weren't there.
They said you had left.
Then I came around, went to OEM, and that's when the building fell.
Was Richie Shurer there at OEM?
Nobody was at OEM.
When I went there, there was nobody there, and it had been evacuated, and I thought, like, wow, that's crazy.
Why'd they do that?
But it turns out it was a really good move, you know?
And whoever engineered, whoever did that, was the right thing.
Then I went around the corner and the South Tower fell.
We got covered with all kinds of stuff.
When it cleared, I walked a little further and all of a sudden you came out from a building and that's why you always thought I was with you in that building.
I, until a few years ago when we talked about this, you know, we When I got there, first thing I was told was people are jumping out of the buildings by loader.
I didn't believe him.
I looked up.
I didn't see it.
I thought he exaggerated.
And then I asked Carrick, did you put in the hard lines?
Because I wanted to get a building with regular telephone lines because it was so hard to communicate.
I couldn't get you on the phone.
I couldn't get the president on the phone.
I could get Carrick.
I could get loader.
I couldn't get rewashing.
It was like episodic.
And Bernie points to Barclay Street right next to us and there already was a police van there.
They were chasing the people out.
I said, are they okay?
He said, they are very happy to be chased out.
They were Merrill Lynch people and we put phone lines in so that I could call the White House.
But I decided to go see Dancy first to find out what was going on.
So we saw Pete, I saw Father Judge for the last time.
He did something very different, very eerie.
Remember he was always smiling and how many fires were you at with him, Tom?
I mean, I was at 30, 40, 50, I don't know.
I always ask him to pray for me.
He would always say, it's better if you pray for yourself, it's more unusual.
He was like that.
I said to him, make sure you pray for me, he says.
He looked at me, he grabbed my shoulders and he said, thank God you have broad shoulders.
This is gonna be a tough one.
Really, really tough one.
And then he disappeared.
I think, you can tell me, he died outside of the North Tower?
No, he was in the lobby actually.
In the lobby, okay.
He was in the lobby with us and he was praying the rosary, you know.
He was just standing there.
And then when I left and the South Tower fell, he got hit with debris in the lobby.
In fact, Chief Pfeiffer, they found him.
He was with the rest of them.
But they all were okay.
He got hit with something and then they carried him over to St.
Peter's.
Well, that's why he was one of the few whose entire body was... Yes, he wasn't in any collapse or anything.
So he was hit by debris.
Other people around him were not.
Yeah, and that's why we had him down as the first one.
Remember that afternoon when we started getting numbers and... I remember, I was about to ask you to find him.
Somehow, you walk in and tell me, you say to me that he died and they're carrying him to St.
Peter's Church.
It was eerie, it was like... Yeah.
And I felt like, oh my God, this is just the time we needed him.
Time to take a short break.
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Thank you for returning. So the rest of the firefighters that went up, went up the stairs.
Yes.
Which, you know, is one of the things that saves so many people because I have people
telling me to this day that they were in the building, they came out, and one of the reasons
it remained not a...
Thank you.
Just jam and people pushing each other and knocking each other over and maybe killing each other because they could see the firefighters and they would calm people down.
It was critically important that they were in that state.
When you reflect back on it, maybe you wouldn't know it at the time, but it's critically important that they were in those stairwells.
Because in those stairwells, a lot of people were getting panicked.
Oh, yeah.
And the fact that they were there took it down.
Yeah.
This I get from the people who survive.
And I felt a great deal of confidence when Pete said to me, I felt really bad when he said, we can't get anybody below the fire.
But when he said, my guys will save everybody below, You know how experienced he was.
So you came out of the North Tower, and then you went to the Emergency Management Center, which Richie had given... He wasn't there, but he gave the order to evacuate it, because he felt it might get hit.
It was right there.
It was really right next to where we were.
So you joined us as we were walking up Church Street.
Yeah.
After the second building came down?
No.
Before?
Yeah.
Yeah, because that's where I was.
Yeah.
And the second building, I didn't even know it came down.
And John Huvane grabbed me and started running me.
I don't know why he was running me.
Did you see it?
No, I was, um, the first building came down and I was in the street, but I was protected by the north tower because I was on church already, you know, so all the smoke came down and just covered us.
It just got black, like you said, but I didn't get hit with anything because the building stopped all that.
That's probably the same, probably the same stuff that hit Father Judge in the lobby is the building stopped.
That's why I didn't get hit with it.
So then came out of it when it cleared a little bit and then all of a sudden walked the block and then you guys appeared.
That's where we had decided at that point we were going to use the police academy.
And I got the governor on the phone.
The governor said, I thought you were, we thought you might be gone.
And we decided we'd run it together.
And Tom, I think that was the best decision that we made.
And you've gone through a lot of emergencies now.
And I always preach this whenever I give lectures on leadership.
I don't know if I recommended it or he did.
It doesn't matter because we both thought it at the same time.
But we said we should be joined to the hip here.
No reason, George, for me to go back to Albany.
I'll stay here.
I'll bring my staff down here.
You have staff meetings every day.
I said, yeah, I'm probably going to have three or four now.
He said, well, we'll be part of it together.
I remember one of the first things you said at one of those big meetings.
They were enormous.
you are going to have to decide because you know the city, but I can get you everything you need from the state.
And I remember one of the first things you said at one of those big meetings.
They were enormous.
I mean, way too big, but you had no choice.
There were so many parties involved.
And the first thing you started, the first day you said, listen, these meetings are not for all of you
to tell me what you're doing and how terrific a job you're doing
and all this other stuff.
What we need to do here is for you to tell me what you need so I can tell.
Him and him and her to what they need to get it done.
And that was the thrust of the whole meetings.
It wasn't for us to be blowing smoke with each other, telling us how terrific we were.
It was to get what we needed done.
And all the right people were there.
The Army Corps of Engineers was there.
FEMA was there.
The governor was there.
You were there.
The senators were there.
So we had everybody.
Alba, you talk about.
They're just terrific people and a great mission.
It was really, I think, I mean, I was very proud to be part of it.
For me, that was kind of like the fun part.
The families were… Now the difficult part… That was the other story.
Let's get a little bit to the difficult part.
You lost your top people.
I mean, again, it's like an army.
You lost You lost your field commander, all your field commanders really, a lot of the chiefs, a lot of the key guys, Ray Downey, some of his people, they were your key search and rescue people.
That's exactly what you had to do, search and rescue.
After a day or so, it was obvious that we weren't going to recover anyone.
Sort of held that up for probably too long because we didn't want to tell the families.
We knew how they still hung on to hope.
But at least we didn't operate.
We knew that it was over.
The best people for doing that were Ray Downey, his people, the people who went to Oklahoma City.
And you didn't have them there.
I remember you had to pick people to replace them and you did it on a Sunday and it
was before we really, you were reluctant to do it because it really was a sign to the families that
we had given up the same time you had to do it. How did you decide that time? I remember
talking to you about it then but I want you to... It was... That was very hard.
Yeah, I remember you saying, I came to you and I said, boss, you know, I need more leaders because we've got so many people missing that we think they're gone, but we don't know.
But I said, I need to replace, you need supervisors, you need supervision.
And he said, really?
And you knew how happy a day the promotions were in the flight department.
Guys study for a long period of time.
They're very proud.
They have their units.
They go out to eat, drink, and everybody has a ball.
You know, they're so proud of finally accomplishing all that hard work has paid off.
And I said, no, we need them like right away.
And he said, really?
And he said, yeah, of course.
And you never said no to anything.
And we had it, I think it was that first Sunday, and we did it at Brooklyn.
Time to take a short break.
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It's time to cancel, cancel culture.
Thank you for returning.
That weekend you had to go, I remember talking to you several times that weekend.
It was very difficult to figure out who, yeah.
How many positions did you fill?
I think we did over a hundred positions that day.
Well, the easy part in the fire department is replacing somebody because you have a list number, and Tom Van Essen is number one, and Joe Schmo, and you go down the list.
So that's the easy part.
The top leaders, of course, you appoint them, so that was harder.
But we had a lot of terrific people.
The losses that we had, of course, on September 11th was that experience.
You can't replace that experience.
But we were able to, there's plenty of people waiting in the wings, you know.
Yeah, who had watched it, had been there, participated in it.
Yeah, they knew it.
But it was just sad because you took something away from them because they had wanted to have such a happy occasion, but it was sad.
But we never had to, we never could think about us.
We had to keep thinking about the families at the time.
Yeah, I remember when we did a press conference to explain it.
And you explained that this didn't mean we gave up, it meant we just need people right now.
And it was like a field commission.
It really was.
It was like we were in a war, really.
This was much more like a war than a fire.
Yeah, it was not something a typical fire department could handle.
I mean, it was way past what we normally could do.
Then I remember shortly after that, maybe Monday or Tuesday night, we got a hotel ballroom and we brought the families in.
That was maybe the worst But it gave me a real sense of that night, how difficult it was going to be.
The other difficult decision you had to make that I remember was relieving, reducing some of the number of firefighters that were there because they honestly were in jeopardy, in great jeopardy.
In fact, it's really just God's will that not more of them were hurt or killed during the operation.
It was a very dangerous operation.
I remember one of the union guys coming to me, really a real courageous guy.
And he said to me, he said, you got to get the guys off the pile.
He said, it's too much psychologically, this, that.
He said, of course, when you do, we're going to criticize you.
I'll never forget that.
What a weasel, you know?
And then when we did it, remember we had all... Oh, we had almost a demonstration.
They punched the cop and everything.
They started having a fight.
It was just terrible, you know?
Emotions were so raw.
In a way, when you look back on it, it's actually remarkable that it was so little of that.
Yeah.
It wasn't until the end.
And they were frustrated by that and they'd been working.
And I try to explain to people it's not the ordinary recovery operation.
These are people looking for their sons, their brothers, their best friends.
It's not like when we send the people to Oklahoma City.
It's a professional operation.
This is father, son, brother, brother.
And you know, speaking about that, about 18 teams came from around the country, the urban search and rescue teams from around the country.
And they really were professional and did a great job from FEMA.
It supported, you know, the police and firefighters from all around the country.
But the federal government supports the team in each individual city.
They did a great job.
Well, Tom, how's the family?
OK.
Everybody's good.
I love you.
Same here, pal.
God bless.
Thank you.
Well, that's quite a story, huh?
We'll be back.
Thank you.
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And now I'm going to talk to Tim Brown. Tim was a New York City firefighter on that day
of September 11, 2011.
He was a very experienced firefighter and he was right in the middle of everything that happened.
He also has remained extremely involved and dedicated to helping with the families who have suffered through this Hi, Mayor.
their needs, the people who were injured afterwards.
He's been one of the real heroes, not only that date, but for the last 20 years of making sure that
the right thing is done for the people who suffered as a result of this attack.
But I'll have Tim tell his own story.
Tim, how are you?
Hi, Mayor, good to see you.
How you feeling?
I'm healthy.
I'm a good post 9-11 health guy.
So now tell me, let's go back right to the very beginning.
You're a firefighter.
Give us a brief history of your career in the department.
Right.
What I call a Bronx Harlem fireman.
I was assigned to the South Bronx in the mid-80s.
And I wound up being lucky enough to be chosen to be in the Elite Rescue Company 3.
So the kind of special forces of the Bronx Harlem Fire Department.
And when did that happen?
When did you go into three?
I was there in 1991.
Okay.
And I stayed there for a little over six and a half years, almost seven years.
You know, our good friend, my best friend, Captain Terry Hatton had been After me to go into your new office of Office of Emergency Management that you created.
And I kind of resisted that for a while because I was thoroughly enjoying being a Rescue 3 firefighter.
Right.
But in 1998 I made the switch and I came over to work for you.
So our office was 7 World Trade Center.
We built the Emergency Operations Center on the 23rd floor.
And that morning, as every morning, I went to the cafeteria on the third floor around 8 o'clock.
Okay, so that's okay.
So 8 o'clock, you're in the office, you're at 7 World Trade Center.
7 World Trade Center.
Third floor, and I always got my Cheerios and newspapers because, you know, we didn't have the smartphones.
Right.
So I bought all the local papers.
And I would go through all the papers to ensure I was up on what was happening in the city.
Right.
That might affect us, or that we could be effective on.
And the power went out, 846.
The power went out in the building.
Very unusual for a modern, high-rise office building.
The people who were in the cafeteria, facing the glass, facing the north tower, all at once jumped up and started running by me to the exit.
And I actually grabbed one young lady by the shoulders and kind of had to, you know, shake her back to reality.
And I said, what happened?
And she said, a plane hit the tower.
They could see it.
So that's the first I knew.
But, you know, what did we think?
What did we think right away?
We thought it was a small plane.
That's what I was told.
It's an engine plane.
Yeah.
And the pilot had a heart attack or something.
And we had had things like that before, helicopters into high-rise buildings, right?
So I was concerned.
I knew it was game time, but I didn't realize the gravity of what was beginning.
So what happened?
What did you do after that?
I saw Calvin at the elevator, he was my boss, car 3 in OEM, and he was already on his way out to go across to the North Tower, and he said to me, go to the 23rd floor to the EOC, full activation.
Full activation of New York City's EOC to support you is about 150 phone calls you have to make as quickly as possible.
Federal, state, city, and private sector partners who are all going to come into our EOC Brand new EOC that, you know, you built and helped to coordinate this right across the street from where it was happening.
Right.
So we had a watch command that was our dispatcher, listening post.
They were already busy making 150 phone calls.
The EOC, the watch command was Mike Lee.
The EOC was Mike Berkowitz.
And I saw both of them and they both gave me the thumbs up.
Everybody was on the same page quickly.
When did you first realize that September 11 was... because the same thing happened to me.
At first I thought it was bad but another twin engine plane hit the North Tower.
Terrible fire.
We start rushing down there.
Fits right in our plans, our protocol.
We've been through this before.
But then there came a point when I got there and I saw the towers and I saw a man jump.
I said, oh boy, this is way beyond anything we ever had before.
When did that happen to you?
We're trained as firefighters to always look at three sides of a building that's being destroyed by fire, by collapse, whatever.
So you have a size up in your head.
And I wanted to do that that day.
So I got my mayor's office jacket out of the trunk of my car on Vesey Street.
I put on the green helmet and the heavy leather boots, and I went up the survivor stairs, which were exterior concrete stairs to the plaza level.
And when I looked out over the plaza in between the towers, it was loaded with debris.
Plane parts, building parts, fire, black smoke, white smoke, and all the papers from the office.
All the reports from the office that were knocked out of the building, floating down.
And I began to realize that maybe my first assumption was wrong.
I still didn't realize the gravity of it.
When I really realized the gravity is when the second plane hit.
And where were you when that happened?
In the lobby of the North Tower.
How did you experience it?
How did you find out?
I didn't know.
I didn't hear it when the second plane hit.
But a fireman, I remember... You were virtually a tenth of a mile, not even a tenth of a mile away.
You were virtually next to it.
You didn't hear it?
Didn't hear it.
But I wasn't listening for it either.
We were a little overwhelmed and trying to figure things out.
And a fireman came running into the lobby yelling, a plane hit the other tower.
And I mean you could feel the gravity of those words in that moment because we all realized, oh my goodness, we're under attack.
Right.
And so I think everybody took a collective very, very deep breath and said, okay, how are we going to move forward now?
And we got together, I'll just say the leadership, the fire, police, mayor's office got together very quickly and decided how we would split our forces between the North Tower and the South Tower.
So now you have both towers.
Yeah.
Burning.
Yeah.
And not just like eight floors of fire in each tower, fueled by full wings of jet fuel.
And now we're starting to hear the crash of the bodies onto the glass overhangs.
Very, very loud.
I remember of these poor people who had to make a decision to jump or to burn.
And so this was it was escalating so fast.
And now how any way to estimate the number of people that jumped?
I've heard estimates of over 200.
Yeah, I I would say that's right, because I saw after I saw the first man jump.
And this is this is before any of the building, obviously, before any of the buildings came down.
I probably saw another 10 or 12 just in the period of time I was there.
Between both towers, you know, there is some video of it, which is horrific, but between the both towers, I'd say over 200.
And then what happened?
So the leadership got together.
It was decided that myself and Assistant Chief Donald Burns from the Fire Department would go to the South Tower and open that command post and begin managing the immediate five alarm fire that Chief Burns had already ordered.
And you know Chief Burns, our good friend, right?
41 years in the New York City Fire Department.
I tell the story that if you look up Irish Fire Chief in the dictionary it would be his mug because he had the red rosy cheeks and he had the lines of experience in his face.
And I remember he only talked out of one side of his mouth.
So this side didn't really move.
And he had a thicker New York accent, right?
So he was our good friend.
He was my good friend.
And I said, Chief, what do you need me to do?
And he said, Timmy, there's not much you and I can do.
I've ordered a fifth alarm.
Another 350 firemen.
But it's going to take them a while to get here because all the first 350 are going to that tower.
That tower meaning what?
The North Tower.
So the first five alarms, the first 350 firefighters who are closest are already responding to the North Tower.
So the North Tower...
The North Tower is considered the North Tower because the island of Manhattan goes from south to north.
Yes.
So there were two towers.
Yes.
One is built here, so that's the South Tower.
Yes.
And then the one built above it was the North Tower.
Yes.
And it was the first one to be hit.
That's correct.
But the second one to come down.
Correct.
Which people, which I didn't know, believe it or not, until that night.
I mean, I just saw the impact of it, but I just assumed the first one hit would be the first one down.
And it was the opposite.
They believe, in the studies that NIST has done, they believe it's the way the plane impacted the building and all that.
So, I said to Chief Burns, what do you need me to do?
He said he's already ordered a fifth alarm.
And he said, do your best and be careful.
You know, everything now that we said to each other, Had severe gravity to it.
No, no, I know it was totally different than Normally if you're fighting a fire Be careful be safe.
Yeah, there's certain gravity to it.
But you know, you've done it before yeah, I remember I met father judge on the way down and it's before I saw the man jump and it's still when I thought this was an emergency within our Experience.
And I said to him, Father, pray for us.
And he always used to respond by saying, it'd be better if you prayed.
It would be more unusual.
And instead, he grabbed me.
He grabbed me.
So good.
He very rarely grabbed me.
He grabbed me really tight.
And he held me.
He said, this is different.
Thank God you have big shoulders.
Well, thank you, Father.
I didn't understand until later that day what he meant by that.
But I think he had been in the building.
He had come out to get the Eucharist.
He was going to his car to get the Eucharist and the oils that you use.
And because I saw him, he immediately left me.
And then I saw him come back and go down under the building.
Right.
And I think everyone thinks he was killed by debris.
Well, you know, he is clearly in the footage, the video footage in the North Tower and you can actually see in that that he's very concerned.
Yeah.
I never saw him.
He was Jolliest guy, the happiest guy, bigger than life, always smiling.
I never saw him like that.
I never saw his face like that.
And maybe that was the first moment that I said, this must be worse.
Because look at the way he's reacting.
When he said big shoulders, I said, oh my goodness.
And then almost immediately I saw the man jump and then I knew this was something we've never really trained for that.
I mean it was such an unusual thing.
So now tell me what happened because you were literally there when the building came down.
Right.
I saw some horrific things.
I saw some people trapped in an elevator and they were getting burned because the elevator... So how did you... where were you when you saw that?
In the South Tower, in the South Tower elevator lobby.
A woman had come over, running over to me... And why did you decide to go to... the decision was made that you would handle the South Tower?
Myself and Chief Burns, yeah.
And then how about the North Tower?
The other leaders stayed there, the leaders from OEM and the other fire chiefs.
Gansey, I guess, right?
Yeah, stayed in the North Tower.
Right, because when I met with Gansey, his command post was catty-cornered to the North Tower.
Right.
And he had Ray Downey with him.
Yes.
Who was organizing people to go in.
And as I was there, they left to go in the building.
So Chief Burns and I went to the South Tower.
I went to the elevator.
He went to the command post.
And the elevator car had free-fallen 70 floors.
Anybody in it?
Yeah, it was full.
Full of people.
Did they get seriously injured?
No, not yet.
But the emergency brakes on the elevator car stopped it before it hit the concrete pit.
It's how it's designed.
But they were stuck now and all you could see is the people's feet at the top of the opening because the car didn't come all the way down.
So these people came down 70, Yes, sir.
It had to be going down like a rocket.
Yes.
And then there's a device there that breaks it?
Yep.
On the way down, the brakes realized, uh-oh.
So they must have got banged around terribly.
I'm sure they were screaming and... Had this just happened?
Right before I got there.
And you can see their feet?
Yeah.
But there's not enough space for them to jump out.
So what happened?
So what they needed was a real fireman, not a mayor's office guy.
They needed a real fireman with tools and equipment and all that.
And so in my frustration, because they were getting burned.
The elevator below them was on fire with jet fuel.
So it was about as exigent a circumstance as you could have.
And I turned to my right and my shoulder hit a fireman and I looked up at his face and it was fireman Mike Lynch from Ladder 4, who was my friend.
In fact, Terry Hatton, our good friend, was mentoring Michael to come over to Rescue 1 and work for Terry in Rescue 1.
Oh, good.
So he was a good friend of ours.
Very, very highly respected firefighter in Ladder 4.
And he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, Timmy, I got it.
Those three words.
He saw my face and he could hear the people screaming.
He could see what was happening.
It was horrific.
But he was a consummate professional.
I got it.
He had the training, the experience, the tools and equipment because he brought a whole fire truck full of tools and equipment with him and the intestinal fortitude to save the lives of those people.
So how did he do it?
He wound up going out to his truck and getting the, we call them the spreaders, the Hurst tool that we use in car accidents.
And it's a very powerful hydraulic spreader.
And he went out to his truck.
He was taking the motor off.
He yelled to me to help him.
But someone else got there first because it's really heavy.
And so they got it off.
So he brings the tool back into the lobby and he used those spreaders to increase the opening and force the elevator car down.
We know he got three women out and saved their lives before the whole building came down and killed them.
And killed all the rest of the people in the elevator.
So he was doing this He was doing this when the building, as we said, the South Tower came down first.
So there was no warning that this tower, nobody thought the tower... And we didn't think so.
You know, Chief Downey, our expert, thought the fire would just burn up and it would burn itself out because we'd had high-rise fires like that before.
Not like as bad as that.
Yeah.
Well, so did Gansey.
Gansey said to me, we'll be here a long time.
We're going to have to arrest these guys after a while and we're going to have to come up with a rotation system, but we're going to be here a long time."
I said, Chief, what do you mean by that?
He said, days.
This is going to be going on for days.
So what I assumed he meant by that was the building was going to come down slowly, like they usually do, and we'd be left with some kind of a some kind of a stubble or part of the building but it never conceived of the of a complete collapse so while he was doing this and getting out the people who I assume then ran out once they came once he got them out yeah three women survived they identified him they identified his photo and said that's the fireman who saved my life
And everybody else in there died with him?
With him.
And later I told, after the collapses, I told the incident commanders exactly where they would find Mike Lynch and these people in the Hearst tool.
And that's exactly where they found them, eventually, because they were buried pretty deep.
So once you did that, what was the next thing?
Over our radios, the OEM radios, we got an urgent message.
The third plane incoming, confirmed by the FBI, it's ours.
Immediate impact imminent.
Get in cover, get in the stairwells, take cover.
So I left Michael in the elevator scene and I went to the command post and I found a landline that works.
And I called the operator and I said, I'm with Mayor Giuliani in the World Trade Center.
I need to talk to the White House.
And she tried to get through and she could not get through.
I said, then the Pentagon, and she's the one that told me the Pentagon was under attack.
Wow.
Because we didn't know.
Our situational awareness was difficult because we were kind of under it.
Yeah, yeah.
And we were getting rumors.
Yes, lots of rumors.
To their credit, the FBI thought Flight 93 was coming to New York.
Who wouldn't think that?
We didn't know.
I finally talked with New York State Emergency Management and they assured me that the fighter jets were coming to protect us as fast as they could.
And as far as I remember, in New York City's modern history, the army of the New York City Police Department, the Port Authority Police Department, and the New York Fire Department couldn't handle something.
Right.
And we needed help.
We needed the help of the United States military.
Yeah, first time.
Right, and that's what you were thinking, I think.
Absolutely.
You know, pretty early on too.
Absolutely.
When we got out of the building, we were trapped in.
We made our way up to the firehouse in the village, in the south part of the village, the big one.
Because we actually thought of using that as a command post for a while until we ended up with the police academy.
When I called the governor, the governor thought we were missing.
We were in a building, they didn't see us come out.
And we came out the back way, so nobody saw us come out.
So we were trapped for about 20 minutes, but he thought it was longer because he heard no word from us.
He said, Mayor, while you were missing, I ordered the National Guard and put them on Rikers Island.
I know you don't usually like to have the National Guard substitute for the police.
What do you think?
I said, George, I need all the help I can get this time.
So now, so now you're out.
And you're at the command post.
I'm inside the lobby at the command post inside the lobby of the South Tower.
And the lobby was filling up with injured people.
And I believe what was happening was they were coming down the stairwell, a dark, wet, smoky stairwell, single file, because they weren't very wide.
And the firemen and the police were coming up and the civilians were going down.
And a lot of the civilians were badly injured.
And so when they came to around 70 floors, they came to a door that said lobby on it and they pushed that door open and it's bright and it's dry and there's cops and firemen there.
They feel like they're safe and they collapse.
So we had these injured people all over the lobby of the South Tower.
It was impacting our evacuation and slowing it down.
So Chief Burns asked me to go out and get the paramedics and bring them back in to evacuate these people because all the cops and firemen were going up the stairs.
And that's why I left the South Tower.
I went out onto Liberty Street.
As soon as I got out the door, burned into my visual memory forever, right there, was a dead fireman in the middle of Liberty Street.
He had been killed by the debris?
By a woman who jumped and crushed him.
And now the two bodies were one.
And it had just happened because his partners, his company, The guys who were running into the South Tower with him were now grabbing at what a minute ago was their partner.
And they're grabbing at the body, trying to pull him out of the way.
But it was horrific.
It was horrific.
How many people would you say you saw injured below?
I've always wondered, there really isn't a good number for the number of people that were killed and injured before
the buildings collapsed.
I think I saw, I mean, dozens, maybe, probably hundreds, I guess.
Hundreds, right.
I think.
So they were killed mostly by debris, but also by falling bodies.
Falling bodies, debris, and a lot of them, no, not a lot, some of them were burned immediately in the lobby.
Because the jet fuel... Yes, it was seeping down in unexpected places.
In the elevator shafts.
Right.
It would be perfectly fine over here, and then there'd be a fire that would break out.
That's right.
Fireball.
It'd look like something from hell.
So now this would be about the time that the...
That the South Tower came down.
Right.
So where were you when that happened?
I had left to go to find the paramedics.
I found them under the South walkway across West Street, the pedestrian walkway.
Captain Charlie Wells from EMS and myself and two other paramedics grabbed a stretcher and the four of us were running to go back into the South Tower.
So you had gone out to bring in medical help?
Yes.
Because there were so many people that were injured in the lobby at this point.
That's right.
And we were on the sidewalk about 20 feet from the door of the South Tower when it collapsed.
If we had crossed that threshold... So you were about to go in?
Yes.
What stopped you from going in was the building collapsing?
Yes.
Wow.
It was... So you had how many people with you?
There were four of us all together.
And one of them had a stretcher?
And the stretcher, yeah.
And some equipment?
Yeah.
Some medical equipment?
Yes.
So you're walking toward there, figuring no reason you didn't think you'd get in.
And then what stops you?
The loud crack of a piece of steel.
You just heard that?
Very loud.
It echoed through the canyons of lower Manhattan.
We heard it.
None of us even... I mean, I'll just say it about me.
I never looked up.
I knew what it was.
It was so loud, I knew what it was.
You didn't actually see the implosion?
Did you know it was imploding?
I knew a major part of the building was coming down.
And did you run away?
Yes.
Because you're 20 feet away.
Yes.
You had to turn around and go the other way.
We ran into the Marriott Hotel.
From our training experience, in many, many building collapses, I know as a trained rescue fireman, you cannot outrun a building collapse.
It happens too fast.
And I knew we had to get cover.
So we ran right next door into the Marriott Hotel, Three World Trade Center, hoping that that building would protect us.
And we got... I'll just talk about me now, because we got lost.
Like that, it went pitch black.
The South Tower was collapsing onto the Marriott, and the Marriott was collapsing around us.
Everything that wasn't nailed down was in my face.
I hit the ground trying to avoid stuff, and I knew that in the many building collapses that we had found people alive, they were next to a vertical column, because that's the strongest part of a building.
So I knew in this moment that my only chance of living was to find a vertical column.
So I started crawling as fast as I could, just searching.
You couldn't see anything.
The noise I compare to sitting on the tarmac at JFK airport surrounded by 747s full blast.
The dust was so thick that it closed your eyes and your ears and your nose, and I was trying to stick my mouth in my shirt so I could breathe.
And I was crawling, and I found a vertical column.
And I don't think I found it.
I'm a faithful man, and I think I was led to it to survive.
I grabbed onto this huge column.
Huge.
With all my strength I held on to it because the wind in that space was trying to blow me out.
So when the building is collapsing, all that air has to escape somewhere.
And it was going right where I was.
It was escaping where I was.
So it blew my legs up in the air.
It was trying to blow me out back into Liberty Street.
I knew if I let go of this column that I was certainly dead.
Even if I held on to the column I was likely dead.
I believed.
And I just thought in that moment how upset I was that I couldn't tell my family I loved them one more time and give them a hug before I left.
And then it stopped as fast as it started.
But you were certain you were going to die at that point?
And then it just stopped.
And then you were able to get up and get out?
I never got pinned down.
I went one way toward Liberty Street but you know the building was collapsed so there was no door left or anything.
And then I turned around and I went back toward the lobby of the Marriott and there was a metal roll-down gate.
I figured out later that was to separate the lobby of the Marriott from the Tall Ships restaurant at night when they were closed.
And that roll-down gate had gone down so I put my fingers under it to raise it up and I lifted it and all these fingers came from the other side of about 15 people who were trapped on the other side of it.
And together we lifted it up and I told them we have to keep going that way and they said there is no that way.
We're trapped.
Because the collapse came down right where they were and killed half the firefighters and civilians they were rescuing.
But this half, who are still alive, I'm guessing around 15, were on a ledge that was just a few feet wide.
And right there was seven stories down, and here was a metal roll-down gate.
So the gate was up now, we turned back around, and we were able to get out.
And they came with you?
They came with us, yep.
And in the end, I believe the number was around 35 people who were in that area of the Marriott Hotel.
And then where did you go?
Believe it or not, I wanted to get away, as far away as I could.
And I was going to go to the Hudson River and jump in the Hudson River and I thought swim to New Jersey. Crazy.
But then I heard Calvin, my boss, my friend, over the radio, trapped in the rubble yelling for help.
And that brought me back to reality.
So I ran up the West Side Highway.
I saw Commissioner Feehan, Chief Downey.
This is right before they died?
Right.
I saw them within 10 minutes.
And they were yelling to me, Timmy, be careful.
You know, these are all our friends, right?
Of course, yeah.
You've done hundreds of these together, yeah.
And so they were yelling to me, Timmy be careful, Timmy be careful.
Within 10 minutes they'd be dead.
And I lived.
They were crushed when the second tower came down.
Captain Al Fuentes was with them.
So you're running past them to go try to find Calvin?
Yes.
Did you know where Calvin was?
You have an idea?
About.
And I found him very quickly.
The fireman up like V.C.
Street and the West Side Highway.
The fireman found him pretty quick and got him out.
But he was covered in the white dust and in blood.
And so they were getting ready to put him in the ambulance.
So our number two at OEM, John Odermatt, right?
One star NYPD chief, was also there at that kind of at that scene with Calvin.
And he grabbed me and said, Mayor wants us to get with him.
So you've got to come.
Calvin's okay.
Come with me.
We're going to help the mayor.
And that's when we started running after you, probably a little bit behind you going north.
Trying to catch up to you.
So we had already gotten out of Barclays Street, or on Church Street, walking north toward the firehouse in the village and ultimately the police academy.
Right.
But it's before the second building.
Right.
Before the second building came down.
I believe you were ahead of us.
We knew where you were headed.
Yeah, I was about five blocks north.
When the second building came down.
So maybe we were very close to you, I don't know.
But I remember the people behind me screaming and I turned around and I saw the antenna of the North Tower just lean a little bit and then go down and disappear.
So you watched that implosion?
Yeah.
And I knew Terry and Patrick and Father Mike.
You knew they were in there?
Yeah.
I had just been with him, you know, a few minutes ago.
And, you know, Terry said it to me, right?
I saw Terry before he went in the stairwell.
And we hugged.
And he kissed me on the right cheek.
And he said in my ear, I love you, brother.
I may never see you again.
Because Terry was always seven steps ahead, right?
Terry was one of the best.
He knew where he was going and the risk.
Right.
And after he said that to me, Mayor, he turned around and he went in the stairwell and he went up with his men and they all went up.
They knew it, and they still went up.
That was the bravery of the police officers and firefighters.
Yeah, that's the bravery that saved America.
That's right.
Because the next day could have been a story of complete attack on America, and instead it was also a story of the bravery of these firefighters and police officers.
Which you said real early on, and I actually got a... It was awe-inspiring.
I got upset with you for saying it was the worst day and the best day of my life.
Because I couldn't see what you were talking about.
You didn't see the best day.
That's right.
And it took me a long time to... I think bravery and courage is probably the most unique and unusual emotion or feeling that people can express.
And when somebody can do that, it just...
It gives people the sense that goodness can win out.
And it did.
It took a long time, but it did.
You've also now, after it's over, you've done a lot of work with the survivors and their families.
I've done a lot.
You know, we said in the firehouses, never forget.
Every day we take care of the This man, I should tell you, does it more than just about anybody.
We mentor their children. We fight for the sanctity of the reputation.
This man, I should tell you, does it more than just about anybody. He devotes his life to it.
You know, my measure is what would Terry do? WWTD, what would Terry do?
And I try and measure myself to what I think he would have done.
You remember at his funeral at St.
Patrick's, I said he was the kind of man I'd like my son to be.
Yes, I remember that.
I meant that.
That's right.
From the bottom of my heart.
And then I felt a real connection to him and Beth because they met really in my office because I gave him so many medals.
He was showing up.
Every week.
And then I watched him twice.
I watched him once in Queens down in a pit.
The diner collapsed.
Yeah, with a woman and he wouldn't come out until she came out.
He was holding her hand.
Then I saw him take somebody down from the top of a building on Times Square.
That's right.
In fact, I was walking up to it and I'm looking at the guy doing it.
I'm looking, I'm looking, and then I didn't know if it was ESU or fire.
I said, who is it?
It's fire.
He said, oh shit, it's probably Terry.
That's right.
And Terry was an unusual combination of great bravery and experience, but also really smart.
Yeah.
Really smart.
And that was more unusual to find someone like that.
You know, the leaders of the fire department recognized that in him.
That's why they put him in Rescue 1 as the captain.
And eventually, I believe he would have been the chief of the New York Fire Department.
Oh, no doubt about it.
Yeah.
No doubt about it.
Well, I can't thank you enough.
Thank you, sir.
For what you did that day, but even more importantly, what you've done over the years, because you've helped keep people together.
An awful lot of people broke down a year later, two years later, five years later, and you've been there to help them.
Thank you for everything.
Tim.
God bless you.
Thank you.
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