BY TOM BRENNAN
The three of us were supposed to be in Dallas, Texas: the old-timer, me; my retired-too-young, dynamo friend, Den, from FDNY’s Rescue 1; and “Mojica,” a lieutenant presently assigned to Rescue 1 who was my newest friend from the last fringes of my career as he was just starting his. Den had asked me to go to Miami-Dade that day to help him demonstrate some rescue tool assemblies, but I successfully “ducked.”
The plane had hit World Trade Center Tower One, and everyone on the early morning “tube” was scrambling to be expert commentators. A few years earlier, a chief officer ordered the emergency evacuation using the alarm system of one of the Towers. It had taken three and a half hours to vacate the building and completely tied the rapid transit system of lower Manhattan in knots. I knew this would be trouble beyond belief!
I telephoned Den at the same time I called to my wife Janet. “A plane hit the World Trade Center,” I told my friend as he raced along Alligator Alley toward Miami.
The second Tower was hit “live” and had Katie and Matt mumbling dumbfounded. I had no breath!
“I’m driving up to Rescue,” Den said. I knew that script before he delivered it. “I can’t,” I said. What could I do? No knees, no ankle, one-half a heart-useless!
I could never just “join the buffs” standing by craning to see what they could never begin to understand.
I hurried my wife to my daughter’s home and hugged and smiled at my grandson. By the next day, I had a ticket on a plane going to LaGuardia Airport. I had to go. That is what we all always did. “Be there,” then figure out your value.
Den had joined his brothers on top of and inside the “Pile” at the “Site” day after day and night after night. He called me on the phone when he got a break or “hit” a void.
I clutched my list of names-names of the missing brothers that had been faxed to me. I read every one hundreds of times. Friends, great firefighters that I was lucky enough to have shared the brotherhood with and worse-sons of brothers! “Ceiling pullers” and “nozzle melters” that had become great leaders, teachers, and wonderful grandfathers.
I meandered to 43rd Street and the quarters of Rescue 1. Den had said to meet him there when he got out of the site for the night. I stood outside with the flowers and the candles and the notes and the noise and the apparatus. I couldn’t go in, I couldn’t say a word-nothing above my heart seemed to work. Who the hell was I to be standing there?
“We know who you are, Cap, and what you did. Join us for a cup of coffee?”
Den returned with the team he was part of. He was crusted with soot and concrete dust, dirt, and a face full of “rescue makeup.” He was a mess to some, but for us in this business, he wore a mantle of courage, stamina, and drive that only another firefighter would stand in awe of and let pass by. They all did!
He had come for his brothers; the job; and, most definitely, for Mojica! “We found him,” he said as he passed me in the truck bay. He never even looked up or at anyone. First they had found Manny Mojica from another company and near him was the Lieutenant. Neither ever knew much about each other.
“We cut him out of there with torches. I laid on top of him as I cut so the metal would not burn his skin,” said Den. “Nothing was going to hurt him anymore!”
His team was to find 10 more in the next night-after-night and day-after-day ritual in the “Pile” at the “Site.”
We had funerals to attend, phone calls to make, and belongings to return.
My daughter asked if I would take her new friend, Jack, with me when I went through all the checkpoints to the “Pile.” She never asks for anything, so we put an FDNY shirt on him, sat him in the back of the department van, and returned again to the “Site.”
Professional faces of our brothers darted in and out of our view-grief-“hidden but not so well” for another time. We talked to each other with a “nod” of the “job” and whispered names of the boys that we all loved-names that were on the rumpled list still in the bottom of my pocket.
Jack just stood there. “Sorry Jack,” I said, mistaking his expressions.
“I tried a few times to get through on the phone to my friends that I knew from work like you did,” he began, “but they’re all here! 700 of them are lost in this pile, and I have no one left to talk with.”
“You sure do,” we said in unison as Den and I hugged our newest brother.
Now there are thanks and applause and tears. There are remarks that these rescue workers never heard when they were alive. All this is intended to help the rescuer, his family, and the rescued and the lost get through this never neverland of disaster and pain. And we will. We will heal and recover and respond and care and love each other and our fellow man and adjust to the lessons that are so vague now. But we shall never forget-especially each other.
TOM BRENNAN has more than 35 years of fire service experience. His career spans more than 20 years with the Fire Department of New York as well as four years as chief of the Waterbury (CT) Fire Department. He was the editor of Fire Engineering for eight years and currently is a technical editor. He is co-editor of The Fire Chief’s Handbook, Fifth Edition (Fire Engineering Books, 1995). He was the recipient of the 1998 Fire Engineering Lifetime Achievement Award. Brennan is featured in the video Brennan and Bruno Unplugged (Fire Engineering/FDIC, 1999).
