Battalion Chief Billy Goldfelder’s Perspective, Loveland-Symmes Fire Department, Loveland, Ohio
I have been sitting here trying to describe what it’s been like to be back “home” in New York …. I could tell you a lot of stuff, but the media shows and reports plenty so you can derive your own feelings and thoughts. The bottom line is that the number of murdered brothers is approaching 400.
Here are just give a few thoughts from my angle:
Yesterday, I was helping coordinate the housing of about a dozen and a half visiting firefighters volunteering for non-heroic (but nonetheless important) duties, such as issuing gear. We showed them around some of the Long Island fire stations, where they were met like true Brothers. Members of the Manhasset-Lakeville, Great Neck Alerts, and Great Neck Vigilant Fire Companies made them all feel more than at home.
Note: The Great Neck Vigilant Fire Company is the home of Jon Ielpi, a missing member of FDNY Squad Company 288. Like many of the missing FDNY Brothers who also serve as volunteer firefighters, officers, and chiefs on Long Island and in other suburbs, Jonathan serves as the assistant fire chief of the Vigilants in his hometown when he’s not fighting fires in “the City.” (Late FDNY Chief Pete Ganci, for example, was a long-time member of the Farmingdale Fire Department; missing FDNY Captain Brian Hickey of Rescue Co. 4 is a former captain and current commissioner of the Bethpage VFD on Long Island; the list goes on …)
Jonathan is following in his Dad’s (Lee Ielpi) footsteps. Lee is a former chief of the Vigilants and a retired highly decorated hero of FDNY Rescue Co. 2. You’ve heard the expression: “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” That’s the case here. Both Lee and Jon (and the entire Ielpi family) are some of the sweetest, kindest, funniest, most caring and heroic people you have ever met.
When we left the Alert’s firehouse, we stopped at a bridge in Great Neck, where a makeshift memorial has been set up. It was incredible. This bridge (near the Saddle Rock Grist Mill) had a special place in my childhood. There were do many people paying tribute, lighting hundreds of candles, and showing their respect and hope for Great Neck’s hometown hero Jon Ielpi as well as the others who are missing.
From this small, two-lane bridge, we had a clear view of the murder site, with the smoke rising over the New York horizon, 15 miles away. It was beyond words….
I have attended several community candlelight services; several more are planned…. More of the Brothers’ names are being announced. More funerals will be scheduled. Like you, we are hoping and are awaiting word on every one of our Brothers ….
Take care. Without HOPE, we have nothing.
Firsthand account of World Trade Center rescue operations from Jim King, firefighter, North Arlington (NJ) Fire Department:
I have been at the site for the past three days. The first time our department went in was to support the Port Authority Special Response Unit with our cascade system. We supplied air for air bottles for PA police in the staging area.
Now I can now relate to people in foreign countries who have had their homeland bombed, what Germany looked like when it was bombed. Now I can relate to how the devastation looked.
On the second day we went to the site and started sifting through rubble and looking in voids. It didn’t feel unsafe. We focused on the job we had to do. The consensus at the site was that everybody wanted to help find firefighters and cops.
Talk consisted of what shield you were wearing and where you were from and thanks for coming. Atmosphere was business as normal. There was more of a security presence Friday because of President Bush’s visit-national guard and police. His visit shows rescuers and the rest of the country his support for the efforts.
I’ve been in the fire service for 27 years-being a marine in Vietnam is the closest I’ve come to this experience, but nothing of this magnitude, ever.
A lot of colors of faces, a lot of colors of turnouts, a lot of shields on helmets, but underneath you’re a firefighter, and now is the time firefighters have to pull together and keep the tradition of family alive, and no matter where in the country you are, prayers and support are needed, whether you’re in Hawaii or New York. You don’t have to be here to show support. Show it by flying the flag, writing, photos. Don’t forget that it happened and how it can unfortunately happen again.
First-Person Account: Alan DeRosa, Hazardous Materials Officer, East Rutherford (NJ) Fire Department
When the six of us–a captain, a lieutenant, three firefighters, and I, a hazardous materials officer-arrived in a basic life support ambulance at 7 a.m. on Wednesday, we were initially overwhelmed by the scope of the destruction. For the moment, it was hard to imagine how anything we could do would make a difference. However, we quickly recovered.
One of our firefighters, Dennis Taormina, Jr., worked on the 92nd floor of the World Trade Center and is among the missing. Ironically, he served as the fire warden for his floor.
We left the ambulance with a contingent of medical personnel for their use and proceeded in our turnout gear to the site. At Westside Avenue and Vesey Street, we were directed by a FDNY officer to establish a water supply for fires burning in the Verizon Building-one on the sixth floor and two in the basement.
Because the pressure in the area hydrants was negligible, we stretched a 500-foot 3 1/2-inch line from a marine unit in the river to FDNY Engine 84. We then stretched another 3 1/2-inch line across Westside Avenue to Engine 39 and fed Engine 50 and Truck 163 behind the Verizon building. We staffed the engines while FDNY firefighters extinguished the fires.
We then moved to the American Express building site to assist with search operations, digging by hand. All we recovered were fragments of body parts, which we tagged and bagged. We dug down to the major beams and steel girders, which had to be removed by heavy construction equipment.
We moved to the South Tower site to help search operations there. The work was interrupted by the threat of a collapse of the 1 Liberty Street building. We were able to resume work after about an hour. Once relieved from this duty, we established a 2 1/2-inch line for rescuers to use to put out fires in the piles of debris in which they were digging (on Vesey Street, between the North Tower and the Verizon building).
There is a vast difference in viewing the disaster scene in newspaper photos and on television screens. There were eight- to 10-story-high piles of rubble that appeared to be never-ending. They stretched for at least five blocks in every direction. We were on the scene for 12 hours.
Eyewitness Account: Brian Hendrickson, Oakland (NJ) Fire Department; Curtiss-Wright Flight Systems, Power Hawk Division
It’s as if a volcano erupted, a tornado struck, and a bomb fell all at the same time. The scene doesn’t seem real; it’s like a movie-surreal, a word used by so many to describe this horrible atmosphere.
When we got here, about a block and a half from the Ground Zero, I thought, “This is indescribable.” There was smoke from fires in the rubble. Every time the rubble was exposed to oxygen, flames appeared-caused by electrical fires and things of that nature.
Debris is everywhere-so many papers, computer disks, credit card statements. The mounds of debris remind you of a garbage disposal site.
My company, Curtiss-Wright, came in at the request of the FDNY Rescue 1, the New York FEMA team. We are here to maintain rescuers’ tools in working order (recharge batteries and other maintenance tasks) and to deliver equipment that will facilitate access to smaller areas in the search zones.
I was struck by the number of American flags at the scene, put there by rescuers, who defiantly persevered in their mission to help the victims despite their exhaustion and nagging sense of personal loss as they feverishly search for their comrades-in some cases, virtually all members of their companies and squads. Yet they hold out the hope that they will find some of their colleagues and other victims alive. They will not quit looking. They are doing what they are trained to do: work effectively despite their personal feelings and exhaustion. As always, they are meeting the challenges they face.
The fire department lost so many of its senior officers. Firefighters were constantly streaming in. I met some from Chicago and California-even Israel.
The support for rescuers is phenomenal. People are applauding those engaged in rescue efforts-emergency workers, contractors, construction workers.
Firsthand account of World Trade Center rescue operations from Raymond Kiernan, fire chief/commissioner, City of New Rochelle (NY) Fire Department
FDNY asked us at the time the first tower collapsed to relocate to a staging area in the Bronx, which is where out-of-city departments were staging. We would be assigned from there. As we were getting ready to go, the second collapse occurred, and FDNY told us to go directly to the World Trade Center. We responded with an engine, a ladder, and a heavy rescue. The units staged in two areas on West Street.
We have a different radio frequency than FDNY, so we could have conversations between the two staging areas without having chatter going over the fireground channel.
We were assigned to the incident area because we had a telescoping light tower on our rescue. A lot of rescue equipment was lost in the collapse, so when it got dark we supplied light to the scene and light and power to run the command post.
After we set up the rescue with the lights, we did whatever tasks we were assigned. I went with a few chiefs into the work areas to observe operations. You just knew the FDNY rescuers would not leave that pile. They had 200 brothers under that mess and nobody was going to get them to leave the pile.
The search and rescue was a very private thing for FDNY. We were there to offer help but we did not want to be intrusive.
I couldn’t believe the scene. I thought where I was observing was horrible until I saw another part of the collapse. It was like some kind of horror movie. Fire trucks were squashed to the size of a desk. Firefighters were climbing piles, trying to listen, trying to find voids. Finding fatalities. When they carried out a firefighter, everyone stopped and took off their helmets.
I have been in the fire service 35 years, and I never saw anything even remotely like this, and I hope I never see anything that tops it. I knew a few guys involved. I can only imagine what FDNY feels like losing hundreds they knew.
This is reason to show that fire departments, especially locally, need more money from the federal government for domestic preparedness. No matter what type of event occurs-manmade or natural disaster–firefighters must be equipped and trained to meet these needs. We are the guys who are going to get he call. We need training to make it happen. Tons of money goes to the Department of Justice and others, but we need money to come locally to fire departments. This shows that fire departments in America really need to be beefed up. All this falls on the fire department, and the fire department is usually the only one not funded to a great degree.
The world was forever changed on Tuesday, September 11, 2001
The fire service will never be the same.
Bill Manning, Associate Publisher/Editor in Chief, Fire Engineering
I was at my desk making travel plans. Plans for the future. Looking ahead.
Someone ran into the office. A plane had just crashed into one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. We grabbed a TV and set it up in my office. By this time, our whole staff was in the room, horrified, wondering, among many things, how that plane got there and how the fire department would conduct the operation.
Suddenly, a large plane came into view on the screen, headed for the towers. It banked to the left. The television screen went blank. We were under attack.
Two of us hopped in a car and headed south, listening to radio reports along the way. The Pentagon was hit. What was next?
We drove about 20 minutes to a hill in New Jersey, a few miles from the city, that offered a breathtaking view of the Manhattan skyline. From there, with a small group of onlookers, we watched in utter disbelief as the Twin Towers fell. It seemed impossible, but it was real.
Like many, we wept.
Throughout the day, we gathered information from the media, tried to call loved ones, made a lot of consolation calls. We spoke a lot of angry words. We knew the time of the incident. We knew some 50,000 people worked in the towers alone. We knew our brothers in the New York City Fire Department would be in there, meeting the situation head on, with selflessness and determination–in the end, as in the beginning, in a virtual circle of life-giving and hope, helping others.
The following evening we made it across the bridge into a virtual ghost town. The smell of the collapse was everywhere.
The lower two miles of the island were completely shut down except for those involved in the response and a few hardy residents who chose to tough it out. Making it through initial barricades, walking southward into a hell that used to be the high-rise canyons of the downtown financial center. Each step brought us closer to a scene that resembled a war zone.
Fire vehicles, police vehicles, National Guard trucks, heavy equipment, service trucks of every imaginable type, rehab and food stations-all were stretched out along West Street as far as the eye could see. Police directed trucks through the eye of a needle to get resources to the site. Amidst lines of National Guardsmen and federal workers and medical personnel in their scrubs, amidst a wash of utility employees and tired firefighters covered in white dust, I noticed a resident walking her dog.
Great clouds of dust lifted up into the evening sky from behind the many buildings that hid the view of the collapse site. Word was passed that nonessential emergency workers were to stand by outside an eight-block-radius because of secondary collapse threats posed by at least two other large buildings adjacent to what used to be the towers.
We hitched a ride with a fire equipment manufacturer providing services to one of the FEMA USAR task forces. We were now two blocks from ground zero.
Those two blocks were long in my mind. I was overwhelmed with a sense of dread and confusion. As I walked, to the left of me, as my boots crunched bits of debris, firefighters and other workers moved along a chow line, silhouetted in the darkness by the eerie light cast from the collapse site. A little farther along, a machine with giant steel forceps grabbed crushed and burned cars and removed them from the street.
We were now just one block east of West and Vesey streets. Sixty- to 100-foot piles of what was once the North Tower hissed and steamed. Aerial master streams wet them down. Firefighters had set up a small rest area with tables and chairs from the shell of the building. Someone erected a small, handwritten sign: “Steve’s Caf�Today’s menu: 1. Water 2. Water 3. More Water.”
Ground zero slams the mind with the onrush of the gruesome and surreal: Directly in front of you, 100 stories of the South Tower collapsed, pancake fashion, into a few hundred feet of tightly condensed steel and concrete. To the left, a few stories of the charred remains of the North Tower, whose collapsed remains created huge, twisted, hissing piles over the entire area. From the northern perspective, it was impossible to grasp how far the piles extended southward, but it seemed like they stretched all the way to hell. Giant steel structural members stuck out of the pile in every direction. A billion broken pieces, a billion shattered dreams.
The air was charged with dust and the uninterrupted sounds of heavy equipment hard at work. Huge cranes picked off pieces of building from the top of the South Tower pile, placing them in the cleared street. Adjacent to them, firefighters combed a 30-foot-high pile of debris, passing five-gallon-buckets by hand. The command post was abuzz with activity. I could not help but think of my friend Ray.
Teams of weary but determined firefighters streamed through the muck to and from the avenue to hell. One firefighter, tired of face, was saddened by the fact that they had recovered only one live person that day.
Hard at work. Gritty. Determined. Ready. These are thoughts that passed through my mind as I watched this surreal play, the aftereffects of the unthinkable. But this is, after all, the nature of firefighters and our fire service. And at that moment it was so abundantly clear, in the eyes of the relentless firefighters at the scene, that the brothers and sisters who perished in the World Trade Center live on in the hearts and minds of firefighters across this great country, immortalized in the acts of courage, large and small, every day. They live on, friends, carried on the wings of your greatness. And that brings a sweetness to our bitter tears. They are alive in you.
Firsthand account of World Trade Center rescue operations from John Lewis, firefighter, Passaic (NJ) Fire Department, and FDIC West Conference Coordinator:
On Tuesday, September 11, we were dispatched by our chief to the scene to see what assistance we could offer. There were 13 of us. We drove across the George Washington Bridge in a marked fire car, wearing bunker gear. We were stopped at the bridge by Port Authority Police, who were conducting a bomb sweep at the bridge. When that was concluded, we were allowed to cross. We followed a NJ Task Force 1 truck in to Reade between Greenwich and Hudson, approximately 4 blocks north of site. That was as far as we could go in our vehicles.
When we first drove in, it was daylight. As soon as we turned the corner and parked the car, it was night. There was no light, just generators to light the fireground. We saw vehicles twisted and thrown all over the place-police and fire vehicles and ambulances. The piles of steel and bricks in the street were as high as 20 to 30 feet. Only emergency workers were on the streets. The city looked like it had a foot of snow on the ground, there was so much dust.
We were fully geared up with lights and equipment @ 6 pm. We walked up to the site at Vesey and West Streets, looked for the staging or command post. We ended up at Liberty and West Streets. As we stood in the rubble, we were told by a dog handler that his dog had indicated in the pile. We began digging in that spot with West Orange (NJ) Fire Department personnel. We uncovered an overturned but unoccupied engine company vehicle. We continued to work for an hour and then went to rehab.
In rehab area, we saw guys from Philly, Bayonne, Jersey City. Everyone was covered in ash. You couldn’t tell company numbers from helmets.
We returned to the work area and saw FDNY members digging for a body. The FDNY members were on automatic-there was no talking, no camaraderie-just a concerted effort focused on the rescue efforts, just digging.
We offered assistance and were assigned by an FDNY division chief to work with 59 Truck on another pile after members found a radio mask and an officer’s tool. Our efforts proved futile. We worked an hour until we were exhausted (it was now 2 am) and advised the FDNY crew we were going to rehab. We left the scene after rehab.
The safety aspect was a big concern-you could hear steel and buildings creaking; and there was no good footing anywhere. Every time you turned around, someone was yelling to put a helmet on.
We saw a few chiefs asking people to leave so they could bring in fresh crews, but crews just didn’t want to leave the scene.
I’ve been a firefighter for 23 years. We had a plane crash in my previous department. A corporate jet crashed into three or four buildings). It doesn’t even compare to this. I’ve taken terrorism training, and nothing prepares you for this.
