They awoke Tuesday as a full contingent of 29 firefighters and officers. By noon, 12 were missing or dead.
Entire truckloads of New York firefighters vanished in the chaos of Tuesday’s attack, and Ladder 3 was among them. Their story has spread through the ranks of New York’s firefighters, a group that together is facing the estimated loss of 200 to 350 men and women.
Few fire companies in Manhattan are intact, but no one doubts that Ladder 3’s losses are among the deepest. The tale unfolding in its brick-and-stone firehouse on the city’s lower east side offers a hint of the mourning that lies ahead for a city that lost more firefighters in a day than the entire country historically loses in a year.
“All you can do is hope they are still alive,” said Ladder 3 firefighter John Gates, 35.
In story after story, survivors of the aerial attack on the World Trade Center recalled the blurred image of firefighters dashing toward the wounded buildings while everyone else ran for their lives. Later, hundreds of the firefighters would disappear when the towers fell.
Among them are the members of Ladder 3. The list includes their leader, Capt. Patrick Brown, honored for a daring rescue he led a decade ago.
Also on the list is Jeff Giordano, earlier this year named “hero of the month” by a New York newspaper for his work on the job and as a fundraiser for burn victims.
Fire officials have not estimated the number of missing or dead firefighters, but other city officials put it as high as 350. The missing include all five of the city’s elite search-and-rescue squads as well as some of its highest-ranking figures: the chief of the department, Pete Ganci; the 1st deputy commissioner, Bill Feehan, and Battalion Chief Raymond Downey.
Cookies, hugs from neighbors
At Ladder 3’s firehouse on a quiet street near Union Square, the remaining members milled about somberly and spoke in muted tones.
They brightened when neighbors arrived to offer hugs or a plate of cookies. The back room was stacked up with lasagna, cupcakes and energy drinks offered in gratitude. Well-wishers had decorated the front of the garage with bouquets. A wall across the street had been claimed by supporters and plastered 10 feet high with notes of gratitude.
Most didn’t want to talk, though they would when the topic was their captain, Brown.
“He is my mentor, the nicest man I ever met,” said Gates, a bear of a man with steel-blue eyes that were smoke-scarred and bloodshot. “How do I describe that? It’s indescribable.”
“The Michael Jordan of firefighters” was how Gavin McCutchen put it.
Their captain was a hero
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“He had a chest full of medals, and in his company everyone was a star,” said McCutchen, who served with Brown before moving to an engine company in Queens. He stopped into his old firehouse to offer support.
Brown made headlines in May 1991 when, as the lieutenant leading a rescue squad, he orchestrated an impossibly daring rescue of two fire victims. Rappelling from the roof of a midtown office building, the members of Brown’s group plucked two men to safety.
Still asked about the incident a decade later, Brown had told a reporter earlier this year: “There are so many unknowns in this job. Sometimes I wonder. It worked out fine. But even now I think, `Man, oh man, that was such a close call.'”
Danger is always part of a firefighter’s life, but the magnitude still stunned the men.
“We’ve seen this on a small scale, but nothing like this. This is everyone, the whole city,” said Jim Kehoe, who retired from the Ladder 3 but returned Thursday to help.
At times, the rescue effort seemed impossibly cruel.
At one point, Ladder 3 Lt. Steve Browne burst into the garage to announce that television was reporting that three firefighters had been found alive in the rubble. Hours later, the story proved to be a rumor.
Even as hundreds of New York firefighters were clawing through the debris, more from other cities were arriving.
Thirty-nine Chicago-area firefighters arrived at dawn Thursday after an all-night drive. Their first sight: the sun rising over gnarled and ash-covered hulks of ladder trucks and engines.
They joined rescuers at 7 a.m., armed with concrete-cutting saws, shovels and buckets to haul debris. But most of the work could be done only by hand, prying and moving concrete and steel, said a Chicago battalion chief, Jim O’Donnell.
Brother-in-law missing
Chicago paramedic John McKillop has particular reason to be in New York: his brother-in-law. John O’Brien, a former agent in the FBI’s counterterrorism unit in New York, had taken a new job two weeks ago in the security office at the World Trade Center.
In the moments after the first plane crashed Tuesday, O’Brien had called his wife and said he was out of the building and helping others to evacuate, McKillop said. O’Brien’s family has heard nothing since.
“Whatever’s needed, I want to be here to help,” McKillop said. “This is something that will stay with me the rest of my life.”
That same feeling stayed with the members of Ladder 3. As morning turned to afternoon, John Gates stepped anxiously out into the street, scanning both ways for the bus that would take them back downtown.
“I can’t wait any longer,” Gates said. “I want to get going, doing something.”
Finally, a bus arrived , borrowed from New York University. Members of Ladder 3 grabbed their helmets and coats, and climbed aboard. It drove off toward the World Trade Center with only seven heads visible.