We returned home a little tanned and rested. I was immediately swept back into the routine work of a battalion chief, watching over my four firehouses. Yet nothing was routine anymore. We continued to recover bodies at Ground Zero and attend endless funerals of firefighters as we entered the Christmas season.
Christmas Eve arrived and Santa Claus seemed a little less jolly. At my sister Mary Ellen’s home in Connecticut, we showered my two kids, Christine and Gregory, and her three children, Meaghan, Caitlin, and Scott, with gifts. But nothing would make up for the loss of Kevin. My parents especially seemed like part of their hearts had been torn from them. I made a slideshow of pictures of my brother so we could remember the good times. There were some smiles among watery eyes.
Seeing the old photos brought home the reality that firefighting had been part of my life since I was eighteen. The FDNY was my social world; every day was new and brought a sense of adventure. There was always something to learn, so it was intellectually stimulating as well. Now everything seemed harder, more uncertain. I needed to find a new path.
As a young boy, I had thought about how others dealt with difficult circumstances with integrity. After the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy in 1968, my teacher assigned Letter from Birmingham Jail. I read it in my basement bedroom and was shocked by the idea of segregation. But I was more impressed by Dr. King’s willingness to risk everything to stand up to such injustice. Throughout the coverage of his death, news stations would play his “I Have a Dream” speech, which profoundly touched me.
A few months later, I watched Senator Bobby Kennedy’s funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on TV. His brother Ted quoted Bobby: “Some men see things as they are and ask why. I dream things that never were and ask why not.”
Those words etched on my mind the idea not to be limited by my circumstances or by anyone else’s expectations. It was the beginning of a budding sense of purpose to speak out for change, even in my small world.
At age twelve, I joined the swim team at the Central Queens YMCA in Jamaica, and later at the Flushing YMCA. We swam year-round and competed throughout the region. We had an eclectic group: guys, girls, Black, brown, white, all swimming with each other. One of the best swimmers on the team was Reynold Trowers, a Black kid who eventually became a doctor. We looked up to fast swimmers and I tried to be like him.
That summer, I invited a bunch of kids from the swim team to Breezy Point for the day. The beach had private security; only visitors invited by guests could enter. Worried that my Black and Latino guests might get hassled, I went to the guardhouse and made sure they knew my group of friends had been invited.
As I began thinking about a career, being a professional firefighter didn’t occur to me, though Queens was a popular neighborhood for members of the FDNY and NYPD. I knew I wanted to find a path that would allow me to serve others.
Since my illness at age seven, I had idolized Dr. John Scalzo. He and his colleagues had saved my life. For years, I’d wanted to be a doctor, but Dr. Scalzo passed away a couple of years after my illness. If he hadn’t, I probably would have thought more about medical school.
So I turned to my other role models: priests who were family friends. They were well educated, interesting, and funny. In the late sixties, being a priest seemed like a radical way to make a difference, especially after Vatican II. The focus was on engaging in dialogue with other religions; changing the mass from Latin to English had a big impact on me, making it more personal.
In ninth grade, I attended Cathedral Prep in Elmhurst; with only two hundred students, the highly rated high school was considered a minor seminary. Since my parents couldn’t afford the tuition, our local parish priest, Father Anthony Mueller, paid for part of my education out of his own pocket. I made As and B+s but was never the academic star—more of an idealistic misfit. I ran track and then devoted my athletic time to competitive swimming at the Flushing YMCA. As part of the required community service, I worked with special-needs kids. I always looked for that different path. But I didn’t read the fine print—the part about priests not getting married.
After graduating from high school in 1974, I enrolled in Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception in Douglaston, Queens, to pursue a degree in psychology with a minor in philosophy. The priesthood was my future goal.
I lived on campus, about ten miles from my parents’ house, and set school records on the swim team. My teammates and I would rent a Winnebago and drive to Florida on spring break. We would attend Easter vigil at Cathedral, then set off on a wild adventure down south, which gave new meaning to going on “retreat.”
During the summers, I continued working as a lifeguard at Riis Park, where each area of the beach had its own flavor, a sampling of New York City within a one-mile stretch of sand. The first beach permitted nudity. There were beaches where people gathered as families; beaches where LGBTQ folks openly mingled. African Americans celebrated their roots and music; Latinos did the same. There was also a beach for special-needs swimmers. I worked one of the busiest, Bay 9, which was predominantly Latino, so I got to use my high school Spanish. And every culture brought its own cuisine to the beach. The Puerto Rican and South American families introduced me to wonderful food.
Like my parents—and like most people in the area of Queens where I grew up—people on the beaches were working class. Despite the crowding, and the multitude of ethnicities, people got along well. Something about being in the water made all the difference.
The ocean currents could be treacherous, and I made many rescues. With experience, I could predict where and when people would get in trouble. Better to blow my whistle and prevent a problem than have to make a swimming rescue with a torpedo buoy strapped across my shoulder.
I got certified as a water safety instructor with a specialty in teaching water safety to special-needs kids. One warm summer day, a teenage boy who couldn’t walk because of an accident came to the beach and desperately wanted to go into the water. I dragged his wheelchair into the surf to where I could lift him up, then got him out past the breakers. I told him to stand up in the chest-deep water.
He looked at me with anger and sadness—like, How could you be so mean? since I knew he was paralyzed.
“Trust me,” I said. “You can do this.” I pulled him up, and in the buoyant seawater he could stand. He loved it. We stayed in the water for at least three hours. That became a lifelong metaphor for me: Water is the solution.
I continued training with the Vollies. The mid-1970s were the FDNY’s war years, as waves of arson swept the city, especially in the South Bronx, Brooklyn, and Harlem. As people moved to the suburbs, owners who couldn’t make money on their apartments decided to torch them for the insurance money. It was shocking to me, as a member of a volunteer fire department, to learn that landlords and developers were burning poor neighborhoods for profit. News stories of firefighters running into flames to rescue those in danger were a reminder of how brave, well-trained firefighters could make a difference.
When I was a junior in college, someone brought a bunch of applications for the FDNY to our Tuesday night drill at the Vollies. Tens of thousands of people took the FDNY test each time it was offered, competing for only a couple of thousand jobs. Scheduled for the summer of 1977, the test was like the Olympics: you got a shot at it only once every four years.
The competition was fierce because it was a popular civil service job. New Yorkers looked on the FDNY as the best fire department in the world, and on its firefighters as the bravest.
With roots in volunteer fire squads scattered around the region during Colonial times, the FDNY had been founded as an official force with paid, well-trained firefighters in 1865. For hundreds of years, those brave firefighters played an important part in the city’s history. They battled the Great Fire of 1776 during the Revolutionary War, as well as the Great Fire of 1835, which destroyed Wall Street. After the FDNY was founded, its firefighters fought the Brooklyn Theatre fire of 1876 that killed nearly 300 people and the General Slocum ship fire of 1904, in which 1,021 passengers and crew died. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, which took the lives of 146 garment workers, triggered the adoption of New York City’s fire prevention codes. In 1990, an irate person threw a gallon of gasoline up the stairs, killing 87 people at the Happy Land social club fire in the Bronx.
In 1977, when I decided to train hard for both the physical and written parts of the test, I had no idea that I would be challenged to the limits of my abilities. I joked that I was taking the FDNY test as an insurance policy in case I liked those girls on the beach too much. (By now, I had read the fine print about priests and celibacy.)
Between swimming, lifeguarding, and the Vollies, I was in good physical shape. But the FDNY required a much higher level of strength and endurance. The test required applicants to carry a 125-pound dummy up a flight of stairs and back down; hang from a high bar for a minimum of a minute; walk on a four-inch ledge with a twenty-pound pack on your back; and run an obstacle course, then pull yourself over a flat eight-foot wall, not to mention a mile run. The test was more about sifting through applicants than firefighting. I used the college facility to train with some friends for weeks.
The FDNY did the physical part of the test at the Brooklyn Armory. I was pretty confident I had done well, but when I got my results, there were 2,000 applicants who had scored higher than I did. That meant it would be two years before I’d even get called for an interview. That’s how tight the scoring was. I put a future with the FDNY out of my mind.
When I graduated from college in 1978, the commencement speaker was Mario Cuomo, who had just lost the New York City mayoral election to Ed Koch; Cuomo would later be elected governor of New York for three terms. A dynamic, inspirational speaker, he talked about a life of service by starting with the individual. That appealed to my desire to pursue a higher purpose.
For graduate school, I enrolled in the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, Long Island, fifty miles from my parents’ house. A little more expansion of my small world. I planned to get a master’s degree in divinity, with an additional concentration in counseling.
Every semester, we had to do community work. Most of my peers taught religious education in a parish. In some rich parishes, the men studying for the priesthood were doted on, encouraged with gifts. I had become a bit more radical, pushing the idea of helping the poor, reaching out to those who were hurting. I did my community service in the Suffolk County jails, walking the tiers of the cells, talking to people awaiting trial for all kinds of crimes. The guards opened the door and locked me inside, but I never felt at risk. The people behind bars were willing to tell me their stories and I would listen. I would reach through the bars of their cells to shake their hands.
On the less serious side, in my second year, I became the bartender/manager for the campus pub, keeping it open late. It is amazing how you can solve the problems of the world late at night over a beer.
After two years at seminary, we each had to do a year-long internship in a parish. We were supposed to help out at mass, teach religious education, do home visitations. I picked St. Augustine’s, a poor trilingual parish in Brooklyn—English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole. We would give out food to many who were so grateful. I also worked at a Lutheran medical center as a student chaplain in that hospital’s clinical pastoral education program, which was worth graduate credits in counseling. I visited with patients as they struggled with illness or injuries. Wearing an intern’s white lab coat, I listened to the concerns of patients, visitors, and staff, whatever their religious beliefs.
Throughout the seminary, I was always the guy who thought differently. I wrestled with God and couldn’t understand why God allowed me to have uncertainty if he was calling me to be a priest. In that wrestling, really getting in the mud, I kept asking, God, do you want me to be a priest or get married? What are you calling me to do with my life?
And then I got an answer—sort of.
In the summer of 1981, I finished my intern work in a parish for the year and got the call from the FDNY.
I requested a leave of absence for two years, arguing that being a firefighter would help in my formation. But what the Fire Department wanted to do was shape me in a different image. They were looking to create ordinary heroes.
The six-week fire academy on Randall’s Island, from early September to the first week of October, resembled military boot camp, with short haircuts and instructors screaming in your face. Coming from an academic background, I had to adjust.
Training to be a firefighter was like training to be a soldier in the Army: learning to follow orders, to use your tools properly, and to understand the wiles of your very dangerous enemy—fire.
But it was also fun, always a challenge, and never boring.
We ran, did calisthenics, and read manuals on the physics and behavior of fires. How does the fire grow? What’s happening to a room on fire? How is the building being destroyed while you are going in? The sheer amount of material was overwhelming, like drinking from a firehose. The science of fire and the skills of firefighting have grown exponentially. New firefighters now spend four or five months in the academy.
Understanding fire behavior and firefighting procedures gave us a base knowledge of what to expect. This allowed us to recognize the anomalies and adjust to them. Overcoming fear by familiarization was the key to developing a firefighter. Fear was now a tool to combat the unexpected.
The academy taught us to pull hose, climb ladders, search smoke-filled rooms, and use the SCBAs. There was a term, “smoke-eaters,” for older firefighters who knew how long they could last without an air mask before they passed out. That sounded like a bad idea. Carbon monoxide is deadly. I’d rather wear my SCBA and make it last longer by controlling my breathing, an old scuba diving trick.
We learned to properly hold a Halligan tool (named for a chief who joined the FDNY in 1916) while someone else hit it with an ax to force a door open. And we climbed hundred-foot aerial ladders carrying hose. I had to overcome any latent fear of heights. Instructors would put a ten-foot scaling ladder flat up against the building. We had to climb straight up to enter a window, reposition the ladder into the next window, and climb that.
We also had to rappel down from the roof of a six-story building, a tactic sometimes used to rescue people who were trapped. It was terrifying looking over the edge, even with a net below. Eventually, it became fun. I never did it at a fire scene myself, but I commanded at a job where firefighters rappelled down a building to save a person who otherwise would have died.
Always our instructors stressed safety. When I started, the turnout coat was very light and not protective. Water would go down into your boots. You’d get the top of your ears burned, a sign you needed to get out. We changed to bunker pants and a coat made of Nomex with a heavy thermal lining, and these days a Nomex hood for head and ear protection. Other equipment, such as thermal cameras, which show the location of the fire, have improved safety.
There were other lessons. During training for first aid, I corrected the instructor who was talking about hyperthermia. I had literally memorized the manual while competing in first aid with the Vollies. He went off on me, but later apologized and said I was right. Even so, I learned being right isn’t everything. In the fire academy, the firehouse, and life, creating a team was paramount.
My parents came to my graduation from the academy. My father was so proud and my mother was supportive, but I’m sure Mom thought I was crazy. My brother was intrigued. After graduating from Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, Kevin had become a paramedic and rode with ambulances for the NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation. He was so skilled that doctors would ask him to intubate patients in the emergency department. We had many discussions about how to get the Fire Department to take over the relatively young Emergency Medical Services (EMS). FDNY did so in 1996.
As a probie, I was assigned to Engine 234, which was in the same firehouse with Ladder 123 and Battalion 38, in Crown Heights, in the middle of Brooklyn on the corner of St. John’s Place and Schenectady Avenue. This was a poor, congested neighborhood made up of African Americans and Hasidic Jews. St. John’s Place East was one of the busiest firehouses in the city for occupied structural fires.
Every FDNY firehouse grabs its personality from the community, especially in distinctly ethnic areas like Crown Heights, Harlem, Chinatown, and Little Italy. Hundreds of languages are spoken in New York, and each firehouse and EMS station has its own culture, depending on the population and the work it does. High-rises or tenements? Industrial or residential? Apartment buildings or private dwellings? Many firehouses interact a lot with school kids, teaching them “stop, drop, and roll” and showing them the fire trucks. But wherever you are, there is always an emotional connection to the community, symbolized by the silhouette of the firefighter in a helmet searching for people who need help—a symbol of hope.
My first firehouse had a lot of minority firefighters. The Vulcan Society, the fraternal order for African American firefighters within the department, had its building around the corner. I didn’t realize until later when I got promoted and worked in different firehouses that the FDNY was 90 percent white at that time. In January 1982, the first women were accepted by the department as the result of sex discrimination lawsuits. My initial firehouse received one of the early female firefighters, who was exceptional. Today, diversity is our goal, to better serve our city’s wonderful mix of cultures and people.
For a year, I wore a helmet with an orange front patch that read, “Prob Firefighter,” to distinguish me from full-fledged firefighters. Probies are inexperienced and, at times, dangerous to themselves. Firefighting requires a set of skills, but it is also an art that can only be developed over time with experience.
At a fire scene, I often watched the most senior person in the company to see what he would do. I remember one older firefighter standing in front of a building as it burned, arms crossed, taking it all in. He took a moment to think, then went to the location where he expected to find a victim. He made the rescue and got a medal for it.
Firefighting is, above all else, learning to control your physical and emotional reactions as you focus on the task at hand. When an alarm comes into the firehouse, you hear a tone alert. Your heart starts to pound. You throw on your gear and jump on the rig. You hear loud sirens in the background as you listen to the radio, trying to glean bits of information. Is someone trapped? As adrenaline flows, your mind races, thinking even before you get to the scene: What do I need to do to get that person out?
Some runs were extremely dangerous—fire blowing out a window, down a hallway, multiple people trapped, no easy access. In every big fire, it was important to have a sense of fear, which is a warning device. Fear allows you to pick up on information that helps you follow through on your mission. You develop a sense of fear (awareness) and a sense of courage (calmness) at the same time. They are not two separate elements. They come together in that moment of danger.
I worried about people who didn’t have that fear. The smartest firefighters are constantly aware of the hazard as they move into situations where everybody else is running away.
One of my first fires in an occupied residential structure was an accidental blaze in a tenement building dating back to the early 1900s. We didn’t know the origin of the fire. We were on the second or third floor. The Ladder searched the apartment and told us in the Engine that the fire was in a back room. I was on the nozzle.
As a nozzle firefighter, going up against fire can be like fighting a wild animal that has a mind of its own. Flames race across the ceiling as heat surrounds you. Disintegrating plaster falls as the beast tries to outdo your maneuvers. Its intention is to consume everything in its path, leaving charred remains.
When we entered, the smoke was so black I couldn’t see. Somehow, I held on to the nozzle, and squatting down, duckwalked into the room to stay below the heat. Other firefighters were pushing me from behind, keeping the hose straight. Then, while on my knees, gripping the hose with all my power, I hit the ceiling with the water, rotating the nozzle clockwise. I felt the intense heat and saw a glow in the corner. I quickly shot it with a blast of water, driving the flames back.
Outside, the Ladder was breaking windows to enter and search, and opening the roof bulkhead door to let out the smoke. The room started to clear. Now able to see, we continued to extinguish little pockets of fire. Not only did I put out my first fire, I learned that teamwork was absolutely necessary.
In my first few years, I was going to a lot of fires and loved the excitement, the adrenaline rush, and the FDNY culture. A “10-75”—a working fire—would bring four Engines and two Ladders, two chiefs, a Rescue, and a Squad to the scene. The FDNY has a lot of resources, so it sends lots of people. You can always turn them around—but if you need them, you can’t wait.
The St. John’s East firehouse was in a crime-ridden neighborhood with shootings about once a week, sometimes more. Several times, we scurried into the street in front of the firehouse to treat someone with a gunshot wound. We threw the victim in the back of the chief’s SUV and raced to the hospital in our makeshift ambulance while I did CPR.
The housewatch for Engine 234 was a six-foot-square fishbowl with large plate-glass windows in one corner of the building. Though people generally like firefighters, we were afraid we’d catch a stray round, so we installed bulletproof glass behind our housewatch windows. Police officers sometimes dashed into the firehouse to get off the street. They’d hang up their gun belts and we’d feed them.
It wasn’t always about firefighting.
In February 1983, a blizzard dumped two feet of snow on New York City. The only thing moving on most roads were fire trucks. We got called to a house where a seventeen-year-old pregnant woman had gone into labor.
By then, I had been certified as an EMT; we had another EMT and an obstetrics kit on the rig. The baby was coming so fast, and the ambulance couldn’t make it through the snow. We had to deliver the baby ourselves.
I kept talking to the mother as I was delivering her baby, reassuring her that she could do this. The head emerged, followed quickly by the baby’s body. I cradled the tiny girl, suctioned her mouth, and heard her cry. It was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. I cut the umbilical cord, wrapped the baby in blankets, and gave her to the mom. We then bundled up mother and child and carried them up the block to an ambulance waiting on the main road. Plowing through heavy snow, we followed the ambulance to make sure they got to the hospital.
The next day, the newspapers wanted to do a story on the blizzard baby. When I walked into the hospital room, the mother didn’t acknowledge me at all. I was crushed. But when I started talking, she immediately recognized my voice and started smiling. A hospital nurse brought the newborn out, and we posed for photos. We’d made a difference for this young family. They would face enough challenges ahead of them, but they were at least healthy, which made me and my fellow firefighters feel very special and part of their lives.
After every fire and emergency run, we returned to the firehouse and talked. What went right, what went wrong, and how to fix it. That was how the firehouse built teamwork and resiliency. Somebody might write a memo, do a magazine article, or suggest a drill. Everyone, no matter their rank, participated.
Unfortunately, line-of-duty death was not uncommon. In 1978, three years before I joined, six FDNY firefighters, including a battalion chief, were killed in a five-alarm blaze at the Waldbaum’s supermarket in Brooklyn when the roof collapsed. Many more were injured.
When even one firefighter is killed in the line of duty, it is traumatic for the whole department.
Once a year, in the first week of June, the FDNY celebrates Medal Day on the steps of City Hall. It is a day on which we recognize acts of bravery and initiative. Firehouse members and families come out to cheer their fellow medal recipients. For each medal, a short description of the heroic act is read. We marvel at their courage and wonder how they could even be alive after running into such dangerous circumstances.
For the firefighters receiving the medal, the rescue is exciting but at the same time part of the job. When they are recognized by their peers, who understand exactly what dangers and challenges they face, they feel appreciated and understood by those who truly get it. Running into danger requires courage and training. When it’s done, firefighters feel privileged to have an opportunity to make a difference in someone’s life, and that is extraordinary.
I worked as a firefighter for six years at St. John’s East, three years in Engine 234 and the other three in Ladder 123. Occasionally, I was sent to other firehouses in the battalion to balance manpower. Over time, I changed, not only in my level of skill, but also in my physical reactions to danger, my intuition. I learned to listen to the fear, but control it to do what I had to do.
As a firefighter often working in darkness, your other senses become keener as you listen for moaning victims or sense a temperature change. Experienced firefighters are like bloodhounds. Even from a mile away, we can tell if it’s a real fire or a false alarm. A burning car and a burning building don’t smell the same.
Working on the Fourth of July in the 1980s meant running all night chasing blazes set by fireworks, which would fly into a window and burn very quickly. After putting it out, we could go to the roof and be able to pick out the next fire.
Every now and then, I’d be detailed to be the chief’s aide in Battalion 38. The chief is like a conductor of an orchestra, getting everyone to work together. One time, as we were driving between firehouses, we received a run a block away and got to a fire before the units. I told the chief I’d go inside and find out what was happening. The idea is to find any people as soon as possible. Fire rapidly spreads, so every minute counts.
I did a quick search of the fire apartment and found an elderly woman trapped in a bedroom, frozen in terror.
Over the years, I’d learned that if you gave people clear direction, they would follow it.
I told her what we were going to do, guided her past the flames while shielding her with my coat, and got her out before we had water on the fire. Though it wasn’t a terribly dangerous rescue, I received a citation and a ribbon on my jacket.
I made lieutenant in August 1987 with a little less than six years on the job. On my first day as a lieutenant, an older firefighter looked at me and said, “You look younger than my son. I need to retire.” And he did.
As an officer, it’s not enough to know what to do. You become responsible for firefighters and their safety.
When a fire becomes more and more complex, and we have to make decisions, the stress level increases. One of the most difficult times as an officer is receiving a “mayday” message, a signal that the firefighter is in trouble. “Mayday, mayday, mayday”—repeated three times—means the firefighter is trapped, doesn’t know their way out of the building, or is seriously injured. It tells the other firefighters to stop talking on the radio and listen. In just three words, a lot is being communicated. Something is seriously wrong—a life-or-death situation.
In a type of checklist, officers need to know the firefighter’s location, their unit, the assignment, and what resources are available so we can make sure the firefighter gets out of the building alive. Leadership is more than giving orders. It’s about sharing the danger and making critical decisions.
I bounced around firehouses for a year covering open spots, then got a permanent slot in Ladder 128, which was quartered with Engine 259 and Battalion 45, located directly across the street from Calvary Cemetery in Sunnyside Queens—thus the nickname “Tombstone Territory.”
Ladder 128 was slower than my Brooklyn firehouse, near two expressways, and one of the few Ladder companies at the time to have a Hurst tool, the so-called “Jaws of Life” apparatus. We worked a lot of car accidents and had to use it to pry metal apart to free the injured. You could read the manual all you wanted, but only practice gave you proficiency with the tool. A nearby junkyard processed vehicles. I’d order ten cars and we’d cut them up for practice. Everybody loved a hands-on drill. Occasionally we got into power struggles with police responders, who also had Hurst tools. Who gets to do the rescue?
I was starting to recognize patterns. Under stress, groups turn to their own because that’s who they are more comfortable with. I’d seen that dynamic play out on the street at major fire scenes and emergencies, even car accidents. To overcome it, I dealt with the local police precincts, talking to lieutenants and captains to break down these barriers.
After my promotion to captain, I often covered Engine 40, Ladder 35, in the Lincoln Square area. There, I met Ray Pfeifer, a young firefighter. Though our last names were the same, we weren’t related. A tall muscular guy with tousled blond hair, Ray was the unofficial mayor of the firehouse, with a big personality and so well connected that he knew how to get anything done. The two Pfeifers became good friends.
A lot of firefighters don’t want to work in Manhattan. They can’t afford housing, and heavy traffic adds hours to their commutes. But I loved it. Instead of inspecting warehouses, we’d check out a loft, Lincoln Center, or a luxury high-rise office building. We’d do night inspections of theaters while a production was going on, standing backstage at plays no one could get a ticket to, making sure the doors were open and safety procedures were being followed while watching the actors onstage.
I put in as permanent captain for Engine 40, Ray’s house, but another captain got it. I was assigned to Engine 307, a busy firehouse in Jackson Heights, Queens, a mixed neighborhood with a majority Latino population. The company next to us was Ladder 138, where I met Orio Palmer, also a captain.
The area was overpopulated. Two families would crowd into an apartment designed for one. We’d see illegal apartments in the basement, storage of combustibles in unsafe surroundings, and other circumstances that created dangerous fires.
Throughout a firefighter’s career, going down a hallway or into a staircase is one of the most dangerous things you can do. When you are leading a team, there needs to be a high level of trust. Firefighters must believe you are not going to ask them to do anything that you wouldn’t do.
In one building, I was taking firefighters down an interior stairway into a basement fire when something didn’t feel right. Sensing sudden extreme heat, I pulled everyone out. Fire roared up the stairs. I learned another unit had opened a cellar door in the back, feeding air to the flames. We managed to retreat with no injuries, but I was furious at the person who did that and didn’t tell me. They could have killed my unit.
Over the years, I learned to combine knowledge with experience. I worked in busy firehouses and went to many fires, which is the best teacher. But no two fires are alike, so experience is not enough. For me, this meant spending twenty-five hours a week studying fire procedures and laws for promotion tests as well as to be a better fire officer.
Kevin had decided to take the FDNY test in 1989. Though Kevin loved being a paramedic, he wanted the adventure and excitement of firefighting. I helped train him and some of his friends. As with me, it took two years for the FDNY to call him up. I attended his swearing-in ceremony and graduation from the fire academy and felt enormous pride in my kid brother. Assigned to Ladder 108, a fairly busy house in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Kevin continued moonlighting as a paramedic.
I made battalion chief in 1997 and bounced around Manhattan firehouses a bit before I got assigned to Battalion 1, with quarters in the Duane Street firehouse. As a captain, you hear everyone’s problems; only the serious stuff comes to you as a chief. I was still in the firehouse yet in a middle-management position, the best of all worlds. But the responsibility for the safety of dozens of firefighters at a fire is not something to take lightly.
I loved being a battalion chief. My brother and I were having the time of our lives in FDNY. Promoted to lieutenant in 1999, Kevin had been assigned to Engine 33 on Great Jones Street in NoHo (North of Houston), sometimes referred to as the Bowery U, since NYU was just down the block. It is a historic firehouse not far from Duane Street. We’d run into each other on multiple alarms.
Joining the FDNY had worked out perfectly for Kevin. NoHo was an exciting neighborhood for a single guy. His firehouse had a good reputation. He had bought my aunt Nell’s house, two houses from where we grew up. Though he had not yet married, he had girlfriends.
We would help each other with house renovations. But we made a pact not to do any renovations in the summer. Instead, we went sailing. He also introduced my kids to sailing. My rule was, if you could swim across the bay—about a mile—you could go out on the boat with Uncle Kevin. My kids said, “No problem. How fast?”
In the late summer of 2001, Kevin cut back on socializing so he could study for the captain’s test. He took vacation time and traded mutual tours to get blocks of days off. That’s why it was surprising when I saw him in the lobby of the North Tower. I’d thought he was off duty.