On 9/11/2001 I was a fireman in Engine 5. Which is on 14th Street in the East Village section of Manhattan.
I was not even supposed to be working as I was taking a prep class on Staten Island for the upcoming lieutenants exam.
There are a few things I remember about that morning…looking at the clock in my car as I got inside and reading 8:46am and how blue the sky was. Not a single cloud. It was such a beautiful September day. So nice that I had a T-shirt, shorts and a pair of sandals I wore to the class I was going to. Funny thing about the sandals, the members of my firehouse, Engine 5 were all real City guys Manhattan, the Bronx…so when I would wear those sandals to work, they would give me the business. One guy even told me if we grew up in the same neighborhood, in this case Hell’s Kitchen, and I was wearing those, he would have stolen my lunch money every day.
On my way to the class, I was listening to 1010 WINS radio for traffic updates because you needed those whenever traveling in the City. I recall the announcer saying “we’re getting reports of something happening at the World Trade Center. It seems a small plane or a helicopter might have struck one of the towers.”
But on my way up Hylan Boulevard, the main thoroughfare on Staten Island, from the amount of smoke I could see, I realized it was not a small plane or a helicopter.
Our class was held at a local VFW post. As I arrived, I had to crest a hill from where you can see all of downtown Manhattan. Just as I reached the top of the hill the second plane hit the tower. It’s when I realized like everybody else…This was no accident.
Like almost every other VFW post there’s a bar and then a great room. The great room is where we would take our class. The bar had a TV on, and a lot of people are sitting at the bar watching the news reports and the crawl underneath. Some of us went inside and got our little practice exam that we do before we have the class. It was very hard to concentrate with everything that was going on. I remember the instructor for the class, a Chief on the job, speaking but he sounded like one of the teachers on Charlie Brown…wa wa wa. You couldn’t make out what he was saying.
I remember at the next table over seeing a member, an officer, who didn’t make it that day. I looked at him and he looked at me and I could tell we’re both trying to process what the hell is going on.
One of the guys came in from the bar and told everybody in the great room, total recall. We were all supposed to report to our firehouses.
So that’s how I began my journey to try and get to 5 Engine. I got in my car, got on the SI Expressway and headed over the Verrazano Bridge. Right in front of me Rescue 5. The guy sitting at the other table who didn’t make it was on the rig.
I got as close as the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. I remember seeing all the apparatus lined up to go through the tunnel and thinking what am I going do in my outfit. The sandals. All those Brooklyn companies that went thru the tunnel, didn’t make it. So those sandals might’ve played a part of me still being here.
I saw another guy I knew. We decided to hop in a Chief’s car and try and get to our respective firehouses that way. I turned to lock my car, and I began to hear all the screaming, turned around and the first tower was coming down. When you’re watching it live and it’s right in front of you, it comes down a lot faster compared to seeing it on TV. So we get in the Chief’s car, and it takes us to the Brooklyn Bridge. Little bit of a traffic jam with all the apparatus so the two of us get out and we go sit on the turntable of I believe Ladder 104.
While waiting to move who pulls up alongside of us but one of the younger brothers I work with in Engine 5. It was one of his first days of proby school. He knew me, I knew him and he said, “Pat what do we do? What do we do?” I said “you’re going take us to the firehouse.” We zoomed over the Brooklyn Bridge to one of the avenues, sped up to 13th St. and 3 Truck. He parked his car. I got on what’s called the detail bike. It’s like a beach cruiser with a big milk crate on it to put your gear in and I rode that over to 5 Engine. I got into my uniform and grabbed my bunker gear while I trying to figure out what I was going to do.
Since Engine 5 was already down at the scene, there was a relocator company from another borough. I can’t recall what number it was, but they were there and I remember yelling at them….”What are you guys doing? People dying down there you gotta get down there!” Looking back on it, I realized the relocator can’t respond unless they’re told to because they they’re supposed to protect the area they are relocated to in the first place.
I decided to ride back to 3 Truck on 13th St. When I got there a light duty fireman from 3 Truck, arrived in a Dept. suburban and a few of us piled in along with whatever tools and Scott bottles we could find and headed down to the WTC.
Riding down Broadway towards the World Trade Center you could see the chaos on the sidewalks of everybody around us. People were overcome. But we had to get down there. By the time we got down there we did not know the other tower had already fallen.
I got out of the suburban, put my bunker gear on and proceeded to try and get close to what was going on.
I met up with one of the junior members of the company. We tried to do what we could do. We eventually did find more members of our firehouse, including those working that day. That’s when I found out one of the guys, Manny Del Valle probably was gone.
Somebody had a cell phone, and I was able to make a phone call to my Parents in NJ. My poor Dad, a retired deputy chief from the Jersey City fire department was the one who answered the phone. He made an awful sound when heard my voice. It was like a guttural feeling of relief.
We had been going to Rutgers Football games together for a long time. It was actually his idea to get the first Block R on the original bubble. He had me email Bob Mulcahy, the Athletic Director at the time. My Dad made it to 92. He was still going to games with me into his late 80s sitting upstairs in Section 219. Even though it became an effort to get upstairs for him, he never wanted to move downstairs because as he said “Those are my seats and I’m staying!”
He’s the reason why I became a fireman. He was on his job for 43 years and always loved going to work.
Back to 9/11, we all were able to group up, just about all of us and did whatever we could…stretch hose lines, move things out of the way. There was a lot of work. We were all very tired, mentally and physically towards the end of the day. So when WTC 7 was about to go, alarms were going off, people yelling…”you gotta go, you gotta go!” I was just so tired. I didn’t feel like I could run at that point. But luckily myself and another guy from my firehouse ran the right way.
When it started to get dark, one of the guys who drove his own car, I think it was a big station wagon. We went uptown to 3 Truck and dropped off some of those guys then we went to our firehouse. I remember how many people gathered at Union Square, which is right by where 3 Truck is. It was the first time not even 24 hours later to hear people say it was our own fault and we shouldn’t do anything rash as a response. We were all just too tired to engage with those types.
One of the guys from 5 Engine who was actually in the building, he needed to get home to Staten Island because mentally and physically he was done. He was able to drive his own car and he took me to the Battery Tunnel where my car was. My wife is a school teacher in New Jersey and at the time in Middletown. She taught at Middletown North High School. And our oldest, we only had one at the time, he was in daycare right down the street. When she found out, after it was over, she picked him up and went to her parent’s house in Matawan and stayed there. So that’s what I did. I went down to Matawan just to see my wife and son not knowing when I was going to be back to see them again. I stayed over at my in-laws house woke up early and went back into the City to the firehouse. Where we got back to work. As bad as it was, and it was really bad. We didn’t even know how many guys were truly missing or dead at this point. The list of the missing and presumed dead was pages long. But I knew we were going to be OK, at least the FDNY was. Because in our kitchen on 9/12, not even 24 hours later (there were a lot of extra people there: NY State Troopers, National Guard, NYPD) a young cop asked, “Do you guys know when the next test is?”
I'm working tonight (9/10) and tomorrow (9/11). And if it wasn't for it being 9/11 tomorrow you might have heard or read about an incident I responded to earlier last night.
Feel free to ask me anything.
I was not even supposed to be working as I was taking a prep class on Staten Island for the upcoming lieutenants exam.
There are a few things I remember about that morning…looking at the clock in my car as I got inside and reading 8:46am and how blue the sky was. Not a single cloud. It was such a beautiful September day. So nice that I had a T-shirt, shorts and a pair of sandals I wore to the class I was going to. Funny thing about the sandals, the members of my firehouse, Engine 5 were all real City guys Manhattan, the Bronx…so when I would wear those sandals to work, they would give me the business. One guy even told me if we grew up in the same neighborhood, in this case Hell’s Kitchen, and I was wearing those, he would have stolen my lunch money every day.
On my way to the class, I was listening to 1010 WINS radio for traffic updates because you needed those whenever traveling in the City. I recall the announcer saying “we’re getting reports of something happening at the World Trade Center. It seems a small plane or a helicopter might have struck one of the towers.”
But on my way up Hylan Boulevard, the main thoroughfare on Staten Island, from the amount of smoke I could see, I realized it was not a small plane or a helicopter.
Our class was held at a local VFW post. As I arrived, I had to crest a hill from where you can see all of downtown Manhattan. Just as I reached the top of the hill the second plane hit the tower. It’s when I realized like everybody else…This was no accident.
Like almost every other VFW post there’s a bar and then a great room. The great room is where we would take our class. The bar had a TV on, and a lot of people are sitting at the bar watching the news reports and the crawl underneath. Some of us went inside and got our little practice exam that we do before we have the class. It was very hard to concentrate with everything that was going on. I remember the instructor for the class, a Chief on the job, speaking but he sounded like one of the teachers on Charlie Brown…wa wa wa. You couldn’t make out what he was saying.
I remember at the next table over seeing a member, an officer, who didn’t make it that day. I looked at him and he looked at me and I could tell we’re both trying to process what the hell is going on.
One of the guys came in from the bar and told everybody in the great room, total recall. We were all supposed to report to our firehouses.
So that’s how I began my journey to try and get to 5 Engine. I got in my car, got on the SI Expressway and headed over the Verrazano Bridge. Right in front of me Rescue 5. The guy sitting at the other table who didn’t make it was on the rig.
I got as close as the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. I remember seeing all the apparatus lined up to go through the tunnel and thinking what am I going do in my outfit. The sandals. All those Brooklyn companies that went thru the tunnel, didn’t make it. So those sandals might’ve played a part of me still being here.
I saw another guy I knew. We decided to hop in a Chief’s car and try and get to our respective firehouses that way. I turned to lock my car, and I began to hear all the screaming, turned around and the first tower was coming down. When you’re watching it live and it’s right in front of you, it comes down a lot faster compared to seeing it on TV. So we get in the Chief’s car, and it takes us to the Brooklyn Bridge. Little bit of a traffic jam with all the apparatus so the two of us get out and we go sit on the turntable of I believe Ladder 104.
While waiting to move who pulls up alongside of us but one of the younger brothers I work with in Engine 5. It was one of his first days of proby school. He knew me, I knew him and he said, “Pat what do we do? What do we do?” I said “you’re going take us to the firehouse.” We zoomed over the Brooklyn Bridge to one of the avenues, sped up to 13th St. and 3 Truck. He parked his car. I got on what’s called the detail bike. It’s like a beach cruiser with a big milk crate on it to put your gear in and I rode that over to 5 Engine. I got into my uniform and grabbed my bunker gear while I trying to figure out what I was going to do.
Since Engine 5 was already down at the scene, there was a relocator company from another borough. I can’t recall what number it was, but they were there and I remember yelling at them….”What are you guys doing? People dying down there you gotta get down there!” Looking back on it, I realized the relocator can’t respond unless they’re told to because they they’re supposed to protect the area they are relocated to in the first place.
I decided to ride back to 3 Truck on 13th St. When I got there a light duty fireman from 3 Truck, arrived in a Dept. suburban and a few of us piled in along with whatever tools and Scott bottles we could find and headed down to the WTC.
Riding down Broadway towards the World Trade Center you could see the chaos on the sidewalks of everybody around us. People were overcome. But we had to get down there. By the time we got down there we did not know the other tower had already fallen.
I got out of the suburban, put my bunker gear on and proceeded to try and get close to what was going on.
I met up with one of the junior members of the company. We tried to do what we could do. We eventually did find more members of our firehouse, including those working that day. That’s when I found out one of the guys, Manny Del Valle probably was gone.
Somebody had a cell phone, and I was able to make a phone call to my Parents in NJ. My poor Dad, a retired deputy chief from the Jersey City fire department was the one who answered the phone. He made an awful sound when heard my voice. It was like a guttural feeling of relief.
We had been going to Rutgers Football games together for a long time. It was actually his idea to get the first Block R on the original bubble. He had me email Bob Mulcahy, the Athletic Director at the time. My Dad made it to 92. He was still going to games with me into his late 80s sitting upstairs in Section 219. Even though it became an effort to get upstairs for him, he never wanted to move downstairs because as he said “Those are my seats and I’m staying!”
He’s the reason why I became a fireman. He was on his job for 43 years and always loved going to work.
Back to 9/11, we all were able to group up, just about all of us and did whatever we could…stretch hose lines, move things out of the way. There was a lot of work. We were all very tired, mentally and physically towards the end of the day. So when WTC 7 was about to go, alarms were going off, people yelling…”you gotta go, you gotta go!” I was just so tired. I didn’t feel like I could run at that point. But luckily myself and another guy from my firehouse ran the right way.
When it started to get dark, one of the guys who drove his own car, I think it was a big station wagon. We went uptown to 3 Truck and dropped off some of those guys then we went to our firehouse. I remember how many people gathered at Union Square, which is right by where 3 Truck is. It was the first time not even 24 hours later to hear people say it was our own fault and we shouldn’t do anything rash as a response. We were all just too tired to engage with those types.
One of the guys from 5 Engine who was actually in the building, he needed to get home to Staten Island because mentally and physically he was done. He was able to drive his own car and he took me to the Battery Tunnel where my car was. My wife is a school teacher in New Jersey and at the time in Middletown. She taught at Middletown North High School. And our oldest, we only had one at the time, he was in daycare right down the street. When she found out, after it was over, she picked him up and went to her parent’s house in Matawan and stayed there. So that’s what I did. I went down to Matawan just to see my wife and son not knowing when I was going to be back to see them again. I stayed over at my in-laws house woke up early and went back into the City to the firehouse. Where we got back to work. As bad as it was, and it was really bad. We didn’t even know how many guys were truly missing or dead at this point. The list of the missing and presumed dead was pages long. But I knew we were going to be OK, at least the FDNY was. Because in our kitchen on 9/12, not even 24 hours later (there were a lot of extra people there: NY State Troopers, National Guard, NYPD) a young cop asked, “Do you guys know when the next test is?”
I'm working tonight (9/10) and tomorrow (9/11). And if it wasn't for it being 9/11 tomorrow you might have heard or read about an incident I responded to earlier last night.
Feel free to ask me anything.
