If you have ever asked yourself what it was like to be at the base of Tower 1 when it 'collapsed',Tim Brown can tell you,because he was one of the lucky ones that day,saved by a late appearing colleague,who took his place in the doomed Tower....
File No. 9110414
WORLD TRADE CENTER
TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
FIREFIGHTER DEREK BROGAN
Interview Date: December 28, 2001
Transcribed by Laurie A. Collins
LIEUTENANT CHIAFARI: Today's date is
December 28, 2001. The time is 6:55 p.m.,
and this is Lieutenant Joseph Chiafari of
the safety command of the New York City Fire
Department. I am conducting an interview
with Derek Brogan, firefighter of Engine 5
of the New York City Fire Department,
regarding the events of September 11th.
Q. Derek, I'll ask you to state your name,
unit and tell us what took place on that day.
A. My name is Derek Brogan, assigned to
Engine 5.
We went out of the box about 8:30, at
Irving and 19th Street. Food on the stove. As
we were taken up from the box, we were backing
out of 19th Street, and we heard a plane go over
our heads. So me and the backup man, Jimmy
Andruzzi, looked at each other. We realized it
was low. We actually mentioned it to each other.
We continued backing out into the street. Just a
minute later our officer told us that a plane had
hit the Trade Center and that we were going on
the second alarm.
As we were going there, we heard the 10-60 transmitted. Going down 14th Street, we
started looking down the avenues and saw a lot of
fire down there. We mentioned to each other that
we had to stay together and this was going to be
probably the biggest disaster we've ever seen.
So we continued down to West Street and
made a left turn, getting a better look at the
tower. We knew that we had to go there and try
and help the people out.
We parked by the Verizon building. All
the members got off the rig. We all grabbed
extra cylinders. Manny Delvalle was with us. He
had the door position. He didn't take a roll-up;
the chauffeur took a roll-up. He figured he was
just going to park the rig on a hydrant and took
off for the building.
We got in the lobby. I believe either
the lieutenant or Captain Atlas from 10 Engine
came up to us when we got in the lobby and said
that we were to team up together, 10 Engine and 5
Engine. We thought that was strange. We thought
they would be up there already. [Fallen Hero's of Engine 10...
- Lt. Gregg Arthur Atlas, 44
- Jeffrey James Olsen, 31
- Paul Pansini, 34
Just as everyone was starting to walk
towards the center stair, which was the only stair we thought led up to the upper floors, we
heard the next plane hit the other building. We
looked out the windows at the reflection on the
Financial Center and saw the fire plume coming
down.
Then we really didn't know what we were
up against. We were kind of hoping that it was
an accident at the time for the first tower. But
once the other building got hit, we realized that
it wasn't an accident anymore.
We started marching up the stairs. I'm
not positive about what floors it was, but we
took a break on like 10 for a few minutes. All
the people were coming down, they were very calm.
They would yell from a couple floors up that
there was a burn victim coming down, and everyone
plastered themselves up against the wall and the
burn victim would come down. It was amazing to
see that they were actually smiling that they
were almost down the stairs.
Maybe about the 13th floor I started
having chest pains. I remember now what it was
from. I had crossed my extra cylinder over from
one side to the other side. I felt a tear go across, but in the chaos of what was happening I
never put two and two together.
So we stopped for a few minutes, got
some water. I felt better. I started walking
back up the stairs, got to 19, and I had chest
pains again. So we stopped. The lieutenant was
going to leave me there with a couple of other
guys to go back down. But I started feeling
better, and we went up again, to the 23rd floor.
There the chest pain was getting very
irritating. They called mayday for somebody to
come up and give us oxygen, because there was
myself and two guys from 9 Truck there. The guy
from 9 Truck was yelling that he couldn't feel his
arms.
So the Port Authority ESU cops came up.
They gave us some oxygen. There was an FBI guy I
think on that floor or one of the floors just
below it as we were walking up. He told us the
Pentagon got hit and the other tower got hit. He
misinformed us by telling us that NYU Hospital
got hit. I remember him saying that to me. And
he said, "We still have four planes in the air,
and we don't know where they are."
We were in an outer office on the 23rd
floor on the southeast corner, which I guess
faces tower two. Then we felt the rumble. You
just heard this noise that sounded like the
subway train going by but magnified by a
thousand.
When we heard that noise, we just all
got up. We didn't bother to look out the window.
We just made an exit out of that room. We got to
9 Truck. I remember them yelling that we had to
close the doors behind us. We closed the doors
behind us, and I went to go back in the stairwell
and there wasn't any room in the stairwell. It
was loaded with people.
So myself and a guy named Schroder from
10 Engine went down the hallway and found a
closet, and we darted into the closet. We were
in there maybe five to ten seconds. Then we
heard a knock on the door. We opened the door.
At that time the lights went out and the whole
place just was -- you couldn't see anything.
Dust, smoke, whatever it was.
Outside was a Port Authority cop. We
dragged him in with us. We couldn't get him all the way in the room because he was laying on
the floor and his leg was hanging outside of the
doorway. This wind came down the hallway and
blew the doors open that were in that office that
we were in. I remember me yelling that his ankle
was getting crushed outside the door.
That subsided after about 20, 30
seconds. The rumbling was still there, but the
wind was gone. We opened the door. We yelled
outside where 5 Engine was, because you couldn't
see anything. They said they were here. They
just kept on yelling. We found them in the
stairwell.
We went down with a number of
civilians, maybe like nine or ten civilians and
maybe four Port Authority cops, it seemed. We
were all carrying people and sharing our masks
with them.
As we got back in the stairwell, we
didn't know whether we were going up or going
down. But the rumbling was so intense that we
didn't really know what had happened. We just
assumed that our building had been hit by another
plane.
The officer just looked at all of us
and said, "That's it. We're getting out of here.
We're done. We're of no use to anybody here.
We've got to get these people out."
So we started going down the stairs.
It was a real slow haul down the stairs. We got
to the fourth floor, and the stairwell was filled
with rubble. We couldn't go down that stairway
anymore. So we went out into the hallway through
the fourth floor, and the officer again yelled
that we have to look for windows. Maybe we could
blow out a window and just get fresh air from a
window, whatever it was that was in his mind.
We went down the hallway, couldn't find
the windows. Then we heard him yelling, "Anyone
in the stairwell, go to the lobby." We followed
his voice back to the stairwell, went down the
four floors, and we had lost another member from
Engine 5. We had lost Gerard Gorman.
We had lost Manny Delvalle on the way
up the stairs. We saw him on maybe the first or
second floor, and then when we stopped on ten, we
posted a guy at the door and he just never passed
us. But he was carrying an oxygen bottle. Instead of carrying a roll-up, he had the EMS
oxygen bottle.
Our thoughts are that he might have
stopped to help one of the civilians that came
down that was burned. That's kind of what we
hoped he had done, because that would probably
have put him back in the street.
We had lost Gorman, so we waited down
at the lobby. We came down the center stair and
were waiting in the lobby, yelling up the stairs
for him to come down. He wasn't coming down the
stairs, and there wasn't anybody else coming down
the stairs. Our officer told us that he saw
Lieutenant Donnelly on the down the stairs. He's
from 3 Truck. But I don't remember seeing him
even, he vividly remembers seeing him and trying
to make him come with us.
We waited in the lobby probably about a
minute, and then the officer just told us that we
have to cut our losses and try to find our way
out, because you couldn't see anything. There
was gas leaking all over the place. The marble
was falling on top of us.
So we proceeded to go to West Street, pretty much the same place we came in. There was
no windows in the lobby when we showed up, and
there was no windows in the lobby when we were
leaving.
We went to step outside the window, and
we caught a figure. I don't know -- I remember
his face, but I don't remember what he was
wearing, whether he was a fireman or a cop or a
civilian. He was probably about 50 yards away
from us.
He just started yelling, "Come on." He
was looking up at the building and waving his
hand at us. So we went to walk outside the
window. Just as we stepped out, he started
saying, "Stop, stop, stop." That's when all the
bodies -- I don't know how many bodies, but a
bunch of bodies came down at that specific time.
It looked like it was raining bodies.
After about ten seconds, he just
started screaming, "Now you've got to run." We
ran and ran and ran and we got onto West Street,
and we started walking, looking for the rig. I
couldn't find the rig, which was only parked a
block up.
We looked back at the building, and the
dust had already settled from tower two falling
down, but we were blocked from the view. We
didn't know what had happened. So we look at our
tower and just assumed it was still standing. So
we didn't know whether to go back in or not.
The guy just started screaming at us
again, "It's coming down. It's coming down." We
just took off. We couldn't find the rig. Me and
Jimmy Andruzzi got split up. I went up and I
tried to jump on the back of an ambulance that
was going north up West Street, but it only went
ten feet and stopped in traffic. So I got off of
that.
I started running up West Street. I
still had my mask on and looking back at the
cloud that was coming behind us. A clear burst
of air came right before the dust cloud came and
blew my mask off my shoulders. I just kept on
running.
I found a girl on West Street talking
on a cell phone like nothing had happened. I
just grabbed her under the arm and went up to
Stuyvesant High School and sat down there. That's pretty much where the dust cloud finished.
From there I saw a guy from Cabrini
that works in the Cabrini ambulances that is
familiar with us because we went with him all the
time. He just said, "What's the matter with
you?" I said, "I have chest pains." He put me
in the ambulance. We went to Cabrini. They did
an EKG. Everything was fine. They told me it
was a pulled muscle under my chest.
They gave me my -- well, first on 19th
Street they decontaminated me with a garden hose,
stripped all my clothes off in the middle of 19th
Street. After they did the EKG, they just gave
my clothes back and sent me back to the
firehouse.
I came back, called the division to
tell them that I was back here, and they sent me
around to all the neighboring hospitals around
here to start writing up lists of who was in the
hospital, who was admitted, who was treated, who
was released.
That's basically all there is about it
that I remember.
Q. Good. What was the highest floor you had gone up to?
A. 23.
Q. 23. Do you recall how long it took you
to get up there in terms of time? Can you
estimate from the time you left the lobby to how
long to get up there?
A. I never really looked at the time line
in the face of that. We were in the lobby when
the second plane hit, and we were on the 23rd
floor when the other building collapsed. Was
that an hour? I'm not positive.
Q. It was close to an hour.
A. Yeah. It was a very hard walk up.
Q. Actually when you got to the 23rd
floor, you actually went out on the floor itself.
A. Right. That's where we left to get
some relief from going up the stairwell. That's
when the chest pains set in, and that's when they
called a mayday. They came up within three
minutes. They gave me oxygen. Within two
minutes of giving me oxygen is when the other
building fell.
Q. When the other building fell, then, it
was the dust and debris from the other building that wound up on your floor?
A. Yeah.
Q. Had the windows, I guess, blown?
A. There were no safety lights. Nothing
went on.
Q. It was total darkness now up there?
A. Total darkness, yeah. We just happened
to be with two guys from 9 Truck which we know.
They're right down the street from us. So we
teamed up with them for a little bit, and they
went a separate way and went down a rear
staircase, and we went down the staircase that
we're familiar with. We went down that one and
got to the fourth floor.
Q. You've since seen those two guys from 9
Truck?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you hear anything unusual on the
radio or you weren't wearing a radio that day?
You had the nozzle position; correct?
A. Yes. I didn't have a radio. I didn't
hear any maydays for anyone to come out. I do
remember a guy from 10 Engine trying to find his
officer. I don't know if he was the control man or backup man or whoever had the radio over
there.
I remember the officer saying that he
was on the 43rd floor to come on up, and they
were coming up with us. I guess it might be a
little easier going up without a roll-up, so he
was making good headway on the stairs.
The staircase we were in, we were only
taking two or three steps and stopping, two or
three more steps and stopping. As you got higher
up, maybe for the first nine or ten floors, you
were sailing right up the stairs. But then as
you got more into the heart of the building I
guess where more of the population was, it was
harder to get up the stairs.
Q. I assume there were people coming down
the stairs at the same time you were going up?
A. There were a lot of people coming down
the stairs. It never ceased.
Q. Do you remember what stairway
designation it was, by chance?
A. I believe it was C, which was the
center of the building that we went up. We might
have went up that staircase to about 14 or 15. Then we just couldn't make it up that stairway
anymore, and we left to I think B, which would be
on the southeast corner and went up that stair.
That's where we got up to the 19th floor first
and then the 23rd floor after that.
Q. So the original staircase you did take,
that was the one that was blocked around the
fourth floor level?
A. No. From what I believe, there's only
one staircase that goes to the lobby of that
building. The other staircases go to the sky
lobby or the promenade or whatever that level is
called. We went right up the center staircase in
the core of the building where the elevators
were, and we went right up there.
When we were coming back down, we were
coming back down the southeast staircase, which I
think was B. I'm not positive it was B. I guess
the rubble had come up and gone through the
windows of the lobby and then to the staircase
and just knocked it out. That was the rubble
that was blocking our path to get down.
Which actually the guy that they were
calling for, Gerard Gorman, found his way down that staircase with a couple guys from 20 Truck.
I guess it wasn't as cluttered as we thought. We
just had the lead guy in front of us yelled back
there's no more stairs, they're all gone.
So in the darkness we believed
everything we heard. I was sharing my mask by
putting it on people's faces. Gerard Gorman was
sharing his mask by purging it. So maybe with
that loud hissing noise going on, he didn't hear
that we were getting off at the fourth floor.
That's the only thing I can imagine,
that we were all close together, but we couldn't
see anything. You would have to really get down
like eight, nine inches from the floor just to
see the glow-in-the-dark strip that was on the
staircase to find out where the last stair was on
the landing so you could make the turn.
Q. Any people you had seen prior to going
up the stairs in the lobby that you know are not
around today or any people you saw on the upper
floors that did not make it through this?
A. We didn't see 33 Engine, which we
thought we would see. We didn't see any familiar
faces, no familiar faces. We teamed up with 10 Engine, and that's who we stuck with all the way
up.
I remember asking a number of people
while we were going up, the civilians that were
coming down, what floors they were coming from,
how high up they were. I don't remember hearing
anybody from like above the 60th floor.
We had the mind-set that we were going
to the 80th floor for some reason. I guess I
just overheard that in the lobby, that we were
going to 80. In hindsight, it was higher than
80, tower one. But I remember on the way up we
were counting floors. We stopped on a certain
floor like 10, we've got 70 more to go; 20, we've
got 60 more to go.
I really don't know what we would have
done when we got up there, but we were trying to
get up there. We even started dropping our stuff
to see if we could have the companies that were
further up, leave their stuff and come back down.
We would just go without our rollups.
I was even thinking we would switch
bunker gear with them, trying with what company
you have to go as far as you can, go with a chain. But I really don't know if that would
have been (inaudible).
When we were a couple blocks away from
the building, we heard the noise coming down. It
was just like dominos only it was probably going
faster and faster and faster. Then you just
couldn't see anything.
Q. This is the second collapse?
A. This is the second collapse.
Q. Do you remember your exact positioning,
where exactly it was when you started to run at
that point?
A. We were just beyond the Verizon
building, which I think the Verizon building is
the north side of Vesey Street.
Q. North side of Vesey, yes.
A. So we were just a block beyond that.
Q. So actually on West Street, though?
A. On West Street. Luckily that's the way
we responded, so that's the way we started going
to leave. Had we come in from the south side, we
would have tried to go south and wouldn't have
been able to go south. I don't remember seeing
the other building laying in the street as we came out, but I don't remember the giant dust
cloud from the other building either.
I saw that guy that was 50 yards away
that was waving us out of the building. When
tower one fell down, I don't think we would have
been able to see 50 yards with the dust cloud
that came from that.
I only remember seeing the two guys
from 9 Truck. Other guys they said they remember
hearing 3 Truck giving maydays, having gotten a
radio at that point. We were just preoccupied
with trying to carry some people and hopefully
trying to find our way out.
There were a number of times we didn't
think we were going to make it out. You thought
when we got off the 23rd floor, that was it, you
were clear.
The chest pains, I thought it was a
heart attack. I had never had any heart attack
before, so you really don't know what it's
supposed to feel like. But it didn't feel good.
When the fourth floor was blocked, I
thought that our luck had run out there. When we
got to the lobby, I thought our luck had run out there. Then when the bodies came down when we
were leaving the building, I certainly thought
that was our last chance.
I would estimate we were out of the
building maybe two minutes before it fell down.
So in that little time line, I think it took us
between 20 and 25 minutes to come down from the
23rd floor, which is a long time. It seems like
two minutes, but it was a long time.
Q. Sure.
Any recollection of any talk of the
elevators before you went up the stairs? You
were in the stairwell, of course, but any talk of
the elevators?
A. Someone did mention in the lobby about
the elevators, but it was quickly dispelled. The
elevators aren't working. The elevators aren't
working.
I do remember seeing Joe Malone from
Battalion 6 as we were walking in the battalion
rig was parked on the east side of West Street by
the center divider in the street. He waved to us
and told us to be careful upstairs. He's gone
now.
I don't remember seeing Chief
Williamson that was with him, but I remember
seeing Joe standing in the street at the back of
the rig, waving to us.
Until the second plane hit, we really
thought it was an accident. We didn't put
together it was the clearest day, one of the
clearest days I've ever had. We didn't put
together that that plane went over our head until
when we actually were told that another plane had
hit.
I didn't know until I got to Cabrini
Hospital that another plane had hit the other
building, that it was actually a plane. When
they were decontaminating me, I thought maybe it
was something a little more sinister, you know,
because they wouldn't tell me anything. They
just told me --
Q. Of course. You go by sounds or what you hear. It's like not knowing exactly what's going on.
A. They were just telling me that I was exposed, and I didn't know what I was exposed to. I was just hopeful. When I heard it was another plane, I was actually kind of relieved that that's all it was. I do remember questioning myself, transferring from Staten Island to Manhattan.
Q. A lot different, huh? A high-rise building as opposed to a two- or three-story building.
A. I transferred here.
Q. Anything else of importance that you feel is necessary to add to this interview?
A. The evacuation of the people seemed pretty orderly coming out. I don't know if I would have been that orderly if I was running out of the building and I had the recollection of what happened in '93. They were definitely organized. Nobody was pushing, shoving. There was no emergency lights. There was no intercom system in the building that I remember hearing. If you read the papers, they said that they were announcing to get out of the building. I don't remember hearing any intercom system remarking that the other tower got hit or they were evacuating tower one. None of that.
None of the emergency lights worked. They should have had more staircases going to the lobby, because when you come out at that promenade level and you have to walk outside in between the buildings, and there was no one between the buildings. That's about it. I really don't recall much else. I really didn't recall much when I came out of there. It's just bullshit sessions that we had in the basement that triggered your mind to remember what happened.
Just the guys talking to each other was a great asset to try and piece this together and figure out that we were just as much victims as everybody that was in the building. We didn't have a chance to do anything. We didn't have a chance to put the fire out, which was really all we were trying to do.
Q. That's all we can.
A. I don't recall anything else.
Q. That's all. It's what you remember, basically, on that fateful day.
A. Yeah.
LIEUTENANT CHIAFARI: So the time is now 7:18, and this concludes the interview that we have this evening with Firefighter Brogan.
BATTALION CHIEF BURNS: Today's date is
December 7, 2001. The time is 4:30 p.m. I
am Battalion Chief Robert Burns, Safety
Battalion of the New York City Fire
Department. I am conducting an interview
with Peter Brown, firefighter from Engine 239
in regard to the events of September 11,
2001.
If you would, Peter, just tell us in
your own words what happened on that day.
A. My name is Peter Brown, Firefighter First Grade, Engine 239. We were sent on, I guess, a second alarm. We staged at the mouth of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. While we were there, the second plane hit. We got the word to go to the tower and proceeded through the tunnel. There was some traffic in the tunnel and Steve Siller from Squad 1 jumped on the rig. We proceeded through the tunnel. Steve Siller jumped out on Liberty and West Street.
We proceeded past the two towers up to Barclay, looked around. The rig faced south, we grabbed a hydrant and we started to stretch the 3 and a half back to Engine 24. They had water problems. We 3 Burns hooked up the 3 and a half, stretched it to like 6 lengths off us, hooked up, pulled some lengths off of them, put them all together, augmented them, hooked into 6 World Trade Center, into the sprinkler system, went back to our rig, got some -- put our masks on, I grabbed a cylinder and a personal search rope and we started heading back south again on West Street.
All this time there were people jumping from the building so we walked in the middle of the street. We walked as a unit down the street and the Lieutenant, I think, saw Chief Feehan and he said proceed to the staging area. As we were walking, the south tower started to collapse. The command said the south tower was coming down. We looked up, we saw the tower coming down. We ran back north, hid under the north pedestrian bridge behind -- I hid behind Ladder 3, and the dust clouds, debris cloud blew by us and hung around a while. It was pretty dark. We sort of thought we were buried underneath the bridge.
It was me, Kevin Martin and another guy was there who I thought was a Lieutenant, but I found out -- he was coughing. I helped him buddy-breathe and 4 Burns then he said he needed water so we ran around the side of the truck and got a can. I hit him in the mouth with the can a little bit to get some of the dirt and garbage out of his mouth. Finally the air cleared and we realized we weren't buried under debris and we regrouped. We got everybody together and Lieutenant Mancuso said, "Let's get out of here. This one's gonna come down." He said, "Get everybody together" and we went back to our rig. It was pretty much debris in our eyes and in our mouths.
We went back to the rig and sort of took off my mask and I had dropped some tools while we were running. I guess the cylinder and the rope I had. While we were there -- I was on Barclay, sort of went around to this other building there. It was, I think, the DC37 building, DC 10. Something like that. And while we were in there we went to the bathroom to wash up, get the stuff out of our eyes, the second building came down. After that it was pretty much an operation from a distance, I guess. We didn't get in too close. We stretched a few lines. There was cars on fire across the street in the parking lot. We stretched some lines and put them out and we did a variety of minor things.
BATTALION CHIEF BURNS: Okay that's it. That concludes our interview. The time is 4:34 p.m.
BATTALION CHIEF BURNS: Today's date is December 14, 2001. The time is 12:07 p.m. I am Battalion Chief Robert Burns, safety battalion, New York City Fire Department, conducting an interview with
FIREFIGHTER BROWN: Firefighter Sean Brown, Class 6, Engine 16.
BATTALION CHIEF BURNS: This is in regards to the events of September 11, 2001.
Q. If you would, Sean, in your own words, just tell us what happened that day.
A. Well, about 0845 hours, the morning of September 11, 2001, just about to come off tour. Lieutenant mentioned to me that might be staying a little later than usual today, due to the fact of a report of a plane hitting the north tower of the World Trade Center, and the lieutenant said to start gearing up.
Approximately at 0850 hours, 16 was called, was called first due on the third alarm. At that point, myself, Ronnie Cifu, Lieutenant Mickey Kross, Firefighter Paul Lee, Firefighter Timmy Marmion, Firefighter Pete Felluca and myself, Sean Brown, firefighter, Grade 6, responded to the scene.
We arrived via Church Street, tried to make the left turn onto Liberty Avenue, but could not. Liberty Street, excuse me. We could not gain access to the south tower, so we ended up backing up, staying on Church, and at that point, that was about 0900 hours.
When we started to back out, back from Liberty Street to Church, due to we couldn't gain access, the second plane hit the south tower, showering debris everywhere. So we proceeded northbound onto Church and ended up parking the rig on Park Place and making our way southbound towards the north tower, which would be Building 1.
So we made entry to the World Trade Center with our roll-ups and extra cylinders, and we at that point went into the lobby, where they were just setting up the command post, and that would be approximately ten after nine.
At that point, we were met by Ray Downey, Chief Ganci, Commissioner Feehan, and Father Judge and Tommy Von Essen, the commissioner. We were then teamed up with Engine 1, asked to proceed up to the 23rd Floor in order to set up communications.
We were with a couple of ESU cops, and one of the -- I would say officers from the Port Authority, so 4 S. BROWN our orders were to go up with engine one with three roll-ups, extra cylinders, and set up communications, and then proceed up to the 70th Floor.
We were warned that whoever was on the nozzle that day would be sucked out of the -- possibility of being sucked out of the building, but they said it would be about an hour walk up, but our main job was to set up communications.
We were on the 23rd Floor, set up communications, when we heard a rumble. I would say we were on the 23rd for about five to ten minutes. The building shook. Lights went out. Asked my officer if -- you know, what happened, and he thought maybe the top of the building got blown off.
I turned to him and I said, "What do we do?" And some chief appeared. Don't know who the chief was. Chief from the department appeared, said, "Start making your way out of the building. The south tower just collapsed. A third plane is coming towards the north tower."
At that point, we gathered up all our gear and were ordered to leave the roll-ups and start proceeding downward.
At that point, the team became separated. We were all together. A minute later everybody was separated, so it was myself and Firefighter Felluca. We started to head downstairs, and at that point Lieutenant Kross wasn't with us, became separated from us, so I ran -- we were at the 19th at that point, ran back up to 23rd to look for him, but to no avail. Radioed him. Couldn't get him.[You know,I think we have a hard time understanding what it means when they say they got separated ,and I think that comes from us not understanding just how dark in got inside the remaining tower after the first one came down.I know in my mind, it has taken a number of these interviews to begin to have a grasp of the situation of those in the remaining tower and what they faced getting out D.C]
So we started to head down. We ran into another officer from a Manhattan company that knew Lieutenant Kross, said he was starting to head down. We proceeded downward, ran into 110 truck. That was the first company from Brooklyn we ran into, told them what we heard, and then we heard a transmission over the radio.
The Maydays started coming in to vacate the north tower. So as we started going down, we started running into Brooklyn companies and telling them to -- that we were told to vacate the building.
At that point, we proceeded down. Most of the civilians -- we didn't see any civilians at that point. It was mainly firefighters. Made it down to the lobby. There were about maybe 30 firefighters that were with us. Made it to the lobby, and the lobby was like a war zone. All the windows were blown out, and the command post wasn't there.
We proceeded out onto West Street and proceeded to start walking north, and the building was a little listed when we came out, and we made it to the corner of West and Vesey when the building came down. That was myself, and Firefighter Tim Marmion and Firefighter Pete Felluca.
At that point, attention was called upon me to go back and get -- there was a chief that they pulled out, so I ran over to grab that chief, and proceeded to move to pull him towards the ambulance. We got him the help he needed.
I have medical training, so I figured I would do my best to help him out, and put him in the ambulance. Then the building totally collapsed, and I would say I was on West and Barclay. The guys from the company were on West and Vesey.
I radioed to the company, and they -- their precise words were, "Run, run for your life," and me, the chief and some ESU cop that jumped in to help me dragged him to an ambulance, put him in an ambulance, took off and proceeded to get caught in the dust cloud.
Had all my gear on, had my hood on, and I still was wearing my mask at the time of the dust cloud. Call it luck, as you may, chief. Can't tear it off my back, though. It's free.
Proceeded to realize before I got hit with the cloud I was walking northbound on West, and I was about West and Barclay, proceeded to keep walking west, and got caught in the cloud and ran into one of the chief's that got caught in the cloud, but didn't have -- he was so far back from the scene, didn't figure he'd get caught in the dust cloud, so he didn't have his mask, and helped him out, pulled him out of the scene, too.
So we shared some air, and at that point after the dust cleared we went back and started looking. I got on the radio and started looking for my team and ended up meeting back at Vesey and West where we originally were together, and after that was just all started looking for people. That's it.
BATTALION CHIEF BURNS: Great, Sean. Thanks for the interview. The time is 12:16 p.m.
CHIEF LAKIOTES: Today's date is January 15th, 2002. The time is approximately 9:20. My name is Battalion Chief Art Lakiotes, safety command, New York City Fire Department, conducting an interview with
MR. BROWN: Tim Brown, OEM, detailed out of Rescue 3.
CHIEF LAKIOTES: Pertaining to the events of September 11th, 2001.
Q. Tim, if you would, just take me to when you first heard about it and then how did the day's events unfold for you.
A. OEM's offices are in Seven World Trade Center, so we were there when the first plane hit. I was on the third floor. I was eating breakfast. The electricity went out in the building for about three to four seconds, and then it rerouted and came back on. I knew something major had happened, although I did not feel any vibration or hear any crash from where I was sitting.
The folks that were in the cafeteria where I was that had a window seat all got up pretty much at once and started running. I asked them what happened. They said a plane just crashed into the tower, which was the north tower.
So I ran down the escalator to the lobby level, where I saw my direct boss, Calvin Dreydon, who is the deputy director for operations for OEM, going down to the street level. He told me to go up to our office on 23 and make sure that we were getting our EOC up and running and that our communications was being properly supervised. We call it our watch command.
So I went up in the elevator to 23. First I went to my desk, got my portable radio. It's a police radio, fire radio and OEM radio. I went into our watch command. The supervisor, Mike Lee, was there running operations, so we were fine there. I went into the EOC. We had the supervisor, Mike Berkowitz, there running that, so I was comfortable that we were doing our job properly.
I went down to the street level. There was a lot of debris falling in the street, which is Vesey Street. My car was parked on Vesey between the federal office building, the post office, and Five World Trade. I went to my car to take off my tie and my shoes, put on boots, helmet, and a Mayor's office jacket.
I went back to the corner of West and Vesey, where the police department was calling mobilization. Our car two, John Odermatt was there. I told him that I was going to go through Six World Trade into One World Tower to the fire command post.
I walked in the walkway between five and six to get a three-sided look at One World Trade Center to see what it looked like. The whole plaza area was burning debris, plane parts and bodies; a lot of fire in the plaza area.
I communicated with a Port Authority cop who yelled at me and told me to get out of there, it was too dangerous. Of course he was standing there. I don't know who that guy was.
I went into the lobby of One World Trade Center. A lot of people were self-evacuating very orderly, quickly. People were helping each other, and they were streaming out as quickly as they could.
The one thing that was limiting their escape the most was probably the size of the escalators. They were bottling up at the top of the escalators, trying to get on the escalators, trying to get down. But it was orderly.
I believe you have to go down a level to get to the fire command post. So I went down that level. I went past the core of the building where the stairwells were. There were a lot of firemen there. By "a lot," I would probably say 30 or so firemen there.
The people I remember seeing were Terry
Hatton and Chris Blackwell. Terry Hatton from
Rescue 1 and Chris Blackwell from Rescue 3. I
gave them both hugs. Terry said to me, "I love
you, brother. It might be the last time I see
you." Then he went in the stairwell. Then Chris
Blackwell looked at me and said, "This isn't
good, Tim." That was the last I saw him also.
Those are the two guys that I remember seeing,
although there were a lot more people there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_workers_killed_in_the_September_11_attacks
From there I went to the fire command station where my boss was, Calvin. I believe at this point Rich Schirer was there. I think I saw the Commissioner there. I think we had a tape, kind of, of the people that were there.
Q. Yes, I think so.
A. Yeah, I think the tape came in after I left.
Q. Yeah, it could be.
A. I was probably there for three minutes at most. We did right away -- one of the thoughts that crossed my mind almost immediately was to get air cover from the military. We weren't sure this was a terrorist attack, but we knew there was a good possibility that it was.
So we had sent that message pretty quickly back to our communications folks to try and get in touch with the White House and with FAA and try and get some help.
There were a lot of people streaming in and out, a lot of firemen coming in. The second plane hit. Again I did not feel that. We did not know that happened until a fireman came into the lobby and told us that another plane had hit number two, the south tower. Calvin directed me to go to the command post in the south tower to help the Fire Department with their operation there and to let him know everything that was going on.
I'm not exactly sure how I got there. I remember going out through a broken window and running I believe south along the West Street side of the complex as fast as I could so I wouldn't get hit by anything.
I remember running across a parking lot. It was across from the hotel, which would have been the southeast corner of Liberty and West. There's a parking lot there. It was near the pedestrian walkway and all that.
Q. There's a large parking lot.
A. Right.
Q. The building that was up there, would it be a Church?
A. It was gone from there.
Q. Yes, obliterated.
A. Okay, okay.
Q. It was just a very huge parking lot, black top.
A. Right, okay. I was over there.
Q. I was a lieutenant in 10 and 10.That's why I remember a lot.
A. Okay. So this is your neighborhood, then.
Q. Yeah.
A. Okay. So I remember running across a lot of debris. I didn't have on fire gear, so I remember trying to avoid the fire as much as I could. I ran into the doors of the Two World Trade on the Liberty Street side.
I saw Chief Burns inside there. He was the first fire personnel that I saw in the lobby. I asked him if there was anything I could do to help. He was like, well, it's just like -- there was nothing anybody could do except try and get people out.
So we tried to encourage -- I remember seeing a six-person team from ESU in that lobby. I directed them to wait. I directed them to wait and not to go upstairs until they reported in to Chief Burns so we had some accountability of who they were and where they were going to go. They finally did communicate with Chief Burns, and then they went upstairs.
Again, an orderly evacuation of two. A lot of people were leaving.
We finally set up -- prior to this I believe it was the west side of the core of the building there were elevators. Someone had come to me and said that there were people trapped in one of those elevators.
So I ran around the corner, and the hoist way doors were open, but the elevator car was only showing about two feet at the top of the door. You could see all the legs of the people that were in the elevator. I would guess there were about eight people in the elevator.
The elevator pit was on fire with the jet fuel. People were screaming in the elevator. They were getting smoked and cooked. There weren't a lot of firemen there at the time. I grabbed some of the Port Authority employees and asked them where the fire extinguishers were and told them to get as many fire extinguishers as they could so we could try and fight this fire. As they were doing that, firemen started showing up, and I started asking them to get big cans, let's try to put this fire out. [So there you go you no plane nutters,the jet fuel from your no planes,has found itself in a elevator in a building you said did not get hit by an airplane,could you keep up please? DC]
I turned around, and I came
face-to-face with Mike Lynch from Ladder 4, who I
knew. I worked for Ladder 4 for a year. He was
one of the young guys there then. I knew Mike
was a very competent guy. I said to Mike,
"You've got this?" He said, "I'll take care of
it." I left the elevator knowing that he would
take care of it.[The 9 from Ladder 4 who did not go home that day..
I could not get through to Washington because of the things that were going on. I did get in touch with S.E.M.O. up in Albany, and they said they were already ahead of us and they had already spoken with people, trying to get us air cover.
So being comfortable with that, I went to the command board which they were setting up right next to the doors on the Liberty Street side, the south side of Two World Trade, inside the lobby. At that command board were Chief Burns, Chief Jack Fanning, and I remember seeing Carl Asaro also there. So at this point I just stayed in the background, because things were crazy.
Someone, a fireman, came in through the lobby, through the doors on the Liberty Street side, and told us that there was already a fireman who was killed on the Liberty Street side by a jumper, a guy from 216. Although we knew it was serious, we knew that disaster was beginning to happen.
Now the people coming down the stairwells were not so healthy anymore. A lot of people coming down were burned very badly. A lot of people were broken and bloody. There were people helping people, like carrying people.
We had been directing people to go to Seven World Trade where we had set up a triage area, and I was directing them to go underground as much as they could to get to seven. But a lot of these people that were coming down now were not ambulatory and overwhelmed. So the lobby started filling up with badly injured people, people that were dying.
So watching all the confusion, I always try to think of what I can do to help. I said, well, we have no EMS in the lobby, and we're going to have to move these people or everybody is going to be stuck in the tower and we're not going to be able to evacuate.
I told Chief Burns that I was going to
go find EMS and bring them back into the lobby,
which is something that saved my life. I went
out to the Liberty Street side. I saw Mike Lynch
again at Ladder 4's rig, which was pulled right
up next to the building, taking the Hearst tool
off the rig.
He yelled to me to help him get it off the rig and carry it in, so I started running toward him. Before I could get to him, another fireman had come up and started helping him. So I said, "Are you all set?" He said, "I got it."
I ran to continue my mission to find EMS. I found EMS staging underneath the pedestrian bridge at West and Liberty. I saw my friend Charlie Wells. I got under the pedestrian bridge where they were standing so we were protected, and I said to Charlie, "We need you guys in the lobby of number two." He looked at me like I was crazy. He said, "All right. Just give me a minute to get helmets on people, and we're going to go in with you."
So I waited I'm thinking around two minutes there. He got two paramedics, himself and me. I said, "Okay. Follow me." We ran to the south side of the hotel to stay close to the building, trying not to get hit. We ran along the edge of the hotel.
When we ran by the southwest corner of the hotel, I noticed that the doors to the Tall Ships restaurant were wide open and there were people inside there.
As we ran towards the rear, which is the three side of the hotel, and rounded the corner to go into Two World Trade Center, in the doors, we heard the roar above us. I know I never looked up. I don't think anybody ever looked up. But there was no question what it was. It was a very tremendous sound, which I think we hear on the tapes.
So we just turned and ran for our lives. Now it was the flight/fright thing, because everybody knew we were all going to die. We ran back along -- I knew right from the start that I was going to go into the lobby of the hotel to try and get protected.
As I ran by the medics, I yelled at them to follow me. Charlie and one of the medics, who I don't know their names, followed me into the lobby of the hotel. The other guy ran back toward the pedestrian bridge. Charlie tells me everybody lived of that group.
We ran into the lobby. No sooner did we get into the lobby of the hotel, which was crystal-clear when we went in, then it went completely black in an instant with the dust.
The roar was just getting louder. The dust started blowing in our faces. I'm guessing around 30, 35 miles an hour the wind was. Everything started blowing toward us that wasn't nailed down. You could not any longer run into the wind because you were getting pummeled by stuff. You couldn't see anybody to communicate. You couldn't hear anything. It was becoming our grave.
So I turned around and started running back toward the door where I came in. Intellectually I knew we couldn't go outside, because we would get killed by the steel. So now I knew we were trapped. I wound up crawling on the floor as the wind got stronger and the roar got louder.
I found what I'm guessing was a 12 by 12 boxed out steel column, which I tried to become one with. I got as close as I could to it. I hugged it, hoping that anything would tent over me. I just held onto it.
I had a helmet on. The helmet got blown off by the wind. I'm no meteorologist, but I'm guessing that the wind at its height was around 70, 75 miles an hour. I had to hold onto that steel column with all my might so I wouldn't get blown out into the street, not realizing it was probably all over, thinking about my brother and things like that.
I thought it lasted four minutes. Somebody told me it lasted a much shorter time than that. But it stopped. You could hear an eerie silence at first, and then you could start to hear people starting to move around a little bit, people that were still alive. I was amazed that I was alive.
You still couldn't see anything. I went back toward what I thought was the door where we had come in from Liberty Street. As I got over there, I ran into a truck with its lights on. By the front of the truck, I thought it was a box truck. I did not recognize it as a fire truck, although it could have been. I thought it was a bomb. The headlights were still on, very eerie.
I turned around and ran the other way, thinking that it was a bomb, telling everybody to run the other way. We ran into a steel roll down gate that was down. Someone had said we can get out this way, so now there were more people around.
So all the men -- I couldn't tell you if they were civilians or firemen. It seemed to me there were a lot of civilians here. Our fingers were going underneath the door. We tried to lift it up. After we got it up two inches, you could see all the fingers coming the other way, because there were people trapped on the other side of it. We got that door up about two feet, and there was a girl behind us that said we found a way out. So everybody formed a chain. There was a fireman that knew he was already outside in the rubble, but he was okay. He was screaming at us to come toward him, "Come this way. Come this way."
So we went that way, which was the West Street side of what was left of the building. We went across. Then I just wanted to get away from the building, so I ran across all the rubble over to the American Express building, where I went in the lobby there. I just wanted to get to the river and to be able to get a view of what was going on.
I went into that lobby, and all the doors were locked. I couldn't get through those doors. I tried to break the glass doors, and I couldn't break them.
I had the police and fire radios in my back pocket, so I did not hear what was going on, really, on them. I had the OEM radio in my hand, and my boss was calling for help. He was trapped. That's what brought me back to reality.
I went back out to West Street, ran north on the West Street side over the rubble, trying to find him, thinking that he was dying, trapped in the rubble. I went by Chief Feehan, who I know for a long time, shook his hand. He said "Be careful, be careful," to me. I kept running. I remember him being on West, north of the American Express building. He was alone at the time.
I went up to Vesey Street and made a left going west on Vesey Street toward the river. I found Calvin at four World Financial Center. A fireman had already rescued him and pulled him out. He was with EMS.
Then my other boss, car 2, John Odermatt, grabbed me and said, "Timmy, we have to go and try to reestablish city government. You've got to come with me. Calvin is okay." So we left Calvin in the hands of EMS and went back north on West Street.
At some point -- I'm not sure where, I either went in Barclay Street or Murray Street over to West Broadway and trying to find our command bus, which was a little bit further north on West Broadway. I started walking north on West Broadway when number One World Trade Center started to collapse.
I looked back over my shoulder. Everybody started running. That collapsed. I knew that my friends were in there. I just ran north on West Broadway. I used a telephone, a landline, because I couldn't use the cell phone to call my brother to tell him I was still alive. That phone call was made an hour and 42 minutes after the first plane hit. So I know that's the time line.
Then we wound up just up at 24 and 5 with the Mayor and other folks up there. I saw Terry's wife up there. I had an unhappy encounter with her. Basically that's it. We just tried to regroup after that. That's everything I remember.
Q. A lot of guys that were in the --
A. Lobby.
Q. -- restaurant, 131?
A. 131 Truck?
Q. Yeah. I was wondering if you ran into them.
A. They were in the lobby and they were --
Q. I guess the gate was between the restaurant and the hotel lobby. When they closed the restaurant, they use the gate to segregate the restaurant from the rest of the building.
A. Oh, okay.
Q. They said that they got that up. They went out to Liberty Street on the corner.
A. Oh, okay. So they were coming toward me as I was coming toward them.
Q. Right.
A. You couldn't tell who was who or anything like that. Did any of those guys die? Mostly everybody that was in that lobby area
Q. In that general area of the lobby, the guys got out.
A. Further north than the lobby.
Q. North and south. It seemed like you were in the middle.
A. I think I was in the south end of the lobby. That's that part that's still standing.
Q. I'm saying, if you were on the south side or the north side, it looks like you --
A. Lived.
Q. -- survived.
A. In the middle where two came down, it sliced it in the middle. You have guys that were in the north part that lived also?
Q. Yeah, Tommy Gallagher was in the north part, and Brian, when the first collapsed.
A. Right. Then the second one. I heard there's videotape, actually, of number two -- of the hotel in between the collapses. So you have two parts of the hotel standing, and the middle is gone.
Q. Yeah.
A. You can see it?
Q. Photos, not video.
A. Okay. Photos.
CHIEF LAKIOTES: That concludes the interview. It is approximately 9:45.
Q. Of course. You go by sounds or what you hear. It's like not knowing exactly what's going on.
A. They were just telling me that I was exposed, and I didn't know what I was exposed to. I was just hopeful. When I heard it was another plane, I was actually kind of relieved that that's all it was. I do remember questioning myself, transferring from Staten Island to Manhattan.
Q. A lot different, huh? A high-rise building as opposed to a two- or three-story building.
A. I transferred here.
Q. Anything else of importance that you feel is necessary to add to this interview?
A. The evacuation of the people seemed pretty orderly coming out. I don't know if I would have been that orderly if I was running out of the building and I had the recollection of what happened in '93. They were definitely organized. Nobody was pushing, shoving. There was no emergency lights. There was no intercom system in the building that I remember hearing. If you read the papers, they said that they were announcing to get out of the building. I don't remember hearing any intercom system remarking that the other tower got hit or they were evacuating tower one. None of that.
None of the emergency lights worked. They should have had more staircases going to the lobby, because when you come out at that promenade level and you have to walk outside in between the buildings, and there was no one between the buildings. That's about it. I really don't recall much else. I really didn't recall much when I came out of there. It's just bullshit sessions that we had in the basement that triggered your mind to remember what happened.
Just the guys talking to each other was a great asset to try and piece this together and figure out that we were just as much victims as everybody that was in the building. We didn't have a chance to do anything. We didn't have a chance to put the fire out, which was really all we were trying to do.
Q. That's all we can.
A. I don't recall anything else.
Q. That's all. It's what you remember, basically, on that fateful day.
A. Yeah.
LIEUTENANT CHIAFARI: So the time is now 7:18, and this concludes the interview that we have this evening with Firefighter Brogan.
File No. 9110272
WORLD TRADE CENTER
TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
FIREFIGHTER PETER BROWN
Interview Date: December 7, 2001
Transcribed by Elizabeth F. Santamaria
A. My name is Peter Brown, Firefighter First Grade, Engine 239. We were sent on, I guess, a second alarm. We staged at the mouth of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. While we were there, the second plane hit. We got the word to go to the tower and proceeded through the tunnel. There was some traffic in the tunnel and Steve Siller from Squad 1 jumped on the rig. We proceeded through the tunnel. Steve Siller jumped out on Liberty and West Street.
We proceeded past the two towers up to Barclay, looked around. The rig faced south, we grabbed a hydrant and we started to stretch the 3 and a half back to Engine 24. They had water problems. We 3 Burns hooked up the 3 and a half, stretched it to like 6 lengths off us, hooked up, pulled some lengths off of them, put them all together, augmented them, hooked into 6 World Trade Center, into the sprinkler system, went back to our rig, got some -- put our masks on, I grabbed a cylinder and a personal search rope and we started heading back south again on West Street.
All this time there were people jumping from the building so we walked in the middle of the street. We walked as a unit down the street and the Lieutenant, I think, saw Chief Feehan and he said proceed to the staging area. As we were walking, the south tower started to collapse. The command said the south tower was coming down. We looked up, we saw the tower coming down. We ran back north, hid under the north pedestrian bridge behind -- I hid behind Ladder 3, and the dust clouds, debris cloud blew by us and hung around a while. It was pretty dark. We sort of thought we were buried underneath the bridge.
It was me, Kevin Martin and another guy was there who I thought was a Lieutenant, but I found out -- he was coughing. I helped him buddy-breathe and 4 Burns then he said he needed water so we ran around the side of the truck and got a can. I hit him in the mouth with the can a little bit to get some of the dirt and garbage out of his mouth. Finally the air cleared and we realized we weren't buried under debris and we regrouped. We got everybody together and Lieutenant Mancuso said, "Let's get out of here. This one's gonna come down." He said, "Get everybody together" and we went back to our rig. It was pretty much debris in our eyes and in our mouths.
We went back to the rig and sort of took off my mask and I had dropped some tools while we were running. I guess the cylinder and the rope I had. While we were there -- I was on Barclay, sort of went around to this other building there. It was, I think, the DC37 building, DC 10. Something like that. And while we were in there we went to the bathroom to wash up, get the stuff out of our eyes, the second building came down. After that it was pretty much an operation from a distance, I guess. We didn't get in too close. We stretched a few lines. There was cars on fire across the street in the parking lot. We stretched some lines and put them out and we did a variety of minor things.
BATTALION CHIEF BURNS: Okay that's it. That concludes our interview. The time is 4:34 p.m.
File No. 9110346
WORLD TRADE CENTER
TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
FIREFIGHTER SEAN BROWN
Interview Date: December 14, 2001
Transcribed by Maureen McCormick
BATTALION CHIEF BURNS: Today's date is December 14, 2001. The time is 12:07 p.m. I am Battalion Chief Robert Burns, safety battalion, New York City Fire Department, conducting an interview with
FIREFIGHTER BROWN: Firefighter Sean Brown, Class 6, Engine 16.
BATTALION CHIEF BURNS: This is in regards to the events of September 11, 2001.
Q. If you would, Sean, in your own words, just tell us what happened that day.
A. Well, about 0845 hours, the morning of September 11, 2001, just about to come off tour. Lieutenant mentioned to me that might be staying a little later than usual today, due to the fact of a report of a plane hitting the north tower of the World Trade Center, and the lieutenant said to start gearing up.
Approximately at 0850 hours, 16 was called, was called first due on the third alarm. At that point, myself, Ronnie Cifu, Lieutenant Mickey Kross, Firefighter Paul Lee, Firefighter Timmy Marmion, Firefighter Pete Felluca and myself, Sean Brown, firefighter, Grade 6, responded to the scene.
We arrived via Church Street, tried to make the left turn onto Liberty Avenue, but could not. Liberty Street, excuse me. We could not gain access to the south tower, so we ended up backing up, staying on Church, and at that point, that was about 0900 hours.
When we started to back out, back from Liberty Street to Church, due to we couldn't gain access, the second plane hit the south tower, showering debris everywhere. So we proceeded northbound onto Church and ended up parking the rig on Park Place and making our way southbound towards the north tower, which would be Building 1.
So we made entry to the World Trade Center with our roll-ups and extra cylinders, and we at that point went into the lobby, where they were just setting up the command post, and that would be approximately ten after nine.
At that point, we were met by Ray Downey, Chief Ganci, Commissioner Feehan, and Father Judge and Tommy Von Essen, the commissioner. We were then teamed up with Engine 1, asked to proceed up to the 23rd Floor in order to set up communications.
We were with a couple of ESU cops, and one of the -- I would say officers from the Port Authority, so 4 S. BROWN our orders were to go up with engine one with three roll-ups, extra cylinders, and set up communications, and then proceed up to the 70th Floor.
We were warned that whoever was on the nozzle that day would be sucked out of the -- possibility of being sucked out of the building, but they said it would be about an hour walk up, but our main job was to set up communications.
We were on the 23rd Floor, set up communications, when we heard a rumble. I would say we were on the 23rd for about five to ten minutes. The building shook. Lights went out. Asked my officer if -- you know, what happened, and he thought maybe the top of the building got blown off.
I turned to him and I said, "What do we do?" And some chief appeared. Don't know who the chief was. Chief from the department appeared, said, "Start making your way out of the building. The south tower just collapsed. A third plane is coming towards the north tower."
At that point, we gathered up all our gear and were ordered to leave the roll-ups and start proceeding downward.
At that point, the team became separated. We were all together. A minute later everybody was separated, so it was myself and Firefighter Felluca. We started to head downstairs, and at that point Lieutenant Kross wasn't with us, became separated from us, so I ran -- we were at the 19th at that point, ran back up to 23rd to look for him, but to no avail. Radioed him. Couldn't get him.[You know,I think we have a hard time understanding what it means when they say they got separated ,and I think that comes from us not understanding just how dark in got inside the remaining tower after the first one came down.I know in my mind, it has taken a number of these interviews to begin to have a grasp of the situation of those in the remaining tower and what they faced getting out D.C]
So we started to head down. We ran into another officer from a Manhattan company that knew Lieutenant Kross, said he was starting to head down. We proceeded downward, ran into 110 truck. That was the first company from Brooklyn we ran into, told them what we heard, and then we heard a transmission over the radio.
The Maydays started coming in to vacate the north tower. So as we started going down, we started running into Brooklyn companies and telling them to -- that we were told to vacate the building.
At that point, we proceeded down. Most of the civilians -- we didn't see any civilians at that point. It was mainly firefighters. Made it down to the lobby. There were about maybe 30 firefighters that were with us. Made it to the lobby, and the lobby was like a war zone. All the windows were blown out, and the command post wasn't there.
We proceeded out onto West Street and proceeded to start walking north, and the building was a little listed when we came out, and we made it to the corner of West and Vesey when the building came down. That was myself, and Firefighter Tim Marmion and Firefighter Pete Felluca.
At that point, attention was called upon me to go back and get -- there was a chief that they pulled out, so I ran over to grab that chief, and proceeded to move to pull him towards the ambulance. We got him the help he needed.
I have medical training, so I figured I would do my best to help him out, and put him in the ambulance. Then the building totally collapsed, and I would say I was on West and Barclay. The guys from the company were on West and Vesey.
I radioed to the company, and they -- their precise words were, "Run, run for your life," and me, the chief and some ESU cop that jumped in to help me dragged him to an ambulance, put him in an ambulance, took off and proceeded to get caught in the dust cloud.
Had all my gear on, had my hood on, and I still was wearing my mask at the time of the dust cloud. Call it luck, as you may, chief. Can't tear it off my back, though. It's free.
Proceeded to realize before I got hit with the cloud I was walking northbound on West, and I was about West and Barclay, proceeded to keep walking west, and got caught in the cloud and ran into one of the chief's that got caught in the cloud, but didn't have -- he was so far back from the scene, didn't figure he'd get caught in the dust cloud, so he didn't have his mask, and helped him out, pulled him out of the scene, too.
So we shared some air, and at that point after the dust cleared we went back and started looking. I got on the radio and started looking for my team and ended up meeting back at Vesey and West where we originally were together, and after that was just all started looking for people. That's it.
BATTALION CHIEF BURNS: Great, Sean. Thanks for the interview. The time is 12:16 p.m.
File No. 9110458
WORLD TRADE CENTER
TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
FIREFIGHTER TIMOTHY BROWN
Interview Date: January 15, 2002
Transcribed by Laurie A. Collins
CHIEF LAKIOTES: Today's date is January 15th, 2002. The time is approximately 9:20. My name is Battalion Chief Art Lakiotes, safety command, New York City Fire Department, conducting an interview with
MR. BROWN: Tim Brown, OEM, detailed out of Rescue 3.
CHIEF LAKIOTES: Pertaining to the events of September 11th, 2001.
Q. Tim, if you would, just take me to when you first heard about it and then how did the day's events unfold for you.
A. OEM's offices are in Seven World Trade Center, so we were there when the first plane hit. I was on the third floor. I was eating breakfast. The electricity went out in the building for about three to four seconds, and then it rerouted and came back on. I knew something major had happened, although I did not feel any vibration or hear any crash from where I was sitting.
The folks that were in the cafeteria where I was that had a window seat all got up pretty much at once and started running. I asked them what happened. They said a plane just crashed into the tower, which was the north tower.
So I ran down the escalator to the lobby level, where I saw my direct boss, Calvin Dreydon, who is the deputy director for operations for OEM, going down to the street level. He told me to go up to our office on 23 and make sure that we were getting our EOC up and running and that our communications was being properly supervised. We call it our watch command.
So I went up in the elevator to 23. First I went to my desk, got my portable radio. It's a police radio, fire radio and OEM radio. I went into our watch command. The supervisor, Mike Lee, was there running operations, so we were fine there. I went into the EOC. We had the supervisor, Mike Berkowitz, there running that, so I was comfortable that we were doing our job properly.
I went down to the street level. There was a lot of debris falling in the street, which is Vesey Street. My car was parked on Vesey between the federal office building, the post office, and Five World Trade. I went to my car to take off my tie and my shoes, put on boots, helmet, and a Mayor's office jacket.
I went back to the corner of West and Vesey, where the police department was calling mobilization. Our car two, John Odermatt was there. I told him that I was going to go through Six World Trade into One World Tower to the fire command post.
I walked in the walkway between five and six to get a three-sided look at One World Trade Center to see what it looked like. The whole plaza area was burning debris, plane parts and bodies; a lot of fire in the plaza area.
I communicated with a Port Authority cop who yelled at me and told me to get out of there, it was too dangerous. Of course he was standing there. I don't know who that guy was.
I went into the lobby of One World Trade Center. A lot of people were self-evacuating very orderly, quickly. People were helping each other, and they were streaming out as quickly as they could.
The one thing that was limiting their escape the most was probably the size of the escalators. They were bottling up at the top of the escalators, trying to get on the escalators, trying to get down. But it was orderly.
I believe you have to go down a level to get to the fire command post. So I went down that level. I went past the core of the building where the stairwells were. There were a lot of firemen there. By "a lot," I would probably say 30 or so firemen there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_workers_killed_in_the_September_11_attacks
From there I went to the fire command station where my boss was, Calvin. I believe at this point Rich Schirer was there. I think I saw the Commissioner there. I think we had a tape, kind of, of the people that were there.
Q. Yes, I think so.
A. Yeah, I think the tape came in after I left.
Q. Yeah, it could be.
A. I was probably there for three minutes at most. We did right away -- one of the thoughts that crossed my mind almost immediately was to get air cover from the military. We weren't sure this was a terrorist attack, but we knew there was a good possibility that it was.
So we had sent that message pretty quickly back to our communications folks to try and get in touch with the White House and with FAA and try and get some help.
There were a lot of people streaming in and out, a lot of firemen coming in. The second plane hit. Again I did not feel that. We did not know that happened until a fireman came into the lobby and told us that another plane had hit number two, the south tower. Calvin directed me to go to the command post in the south tower to help the Fire Department with their operation there and to let him know everything that was going on.
I'm not exactly sure how I got there. I remember going out through a broken window and running I believe south along the West Street side of the complex as fast as I could so I wouldn't get hit by anything.
I remember running across a parking lot. It was across from the hotel, which would have been the southeast corner of Liberty and West. There's a parking lot there. It was near the pedestrian walkway and all that.
Q. There's a large parking lot.
A. Right.
Q. The building that was up there, would it be a Church?
A. It was gone from there.
Q. Yes, obliterated.
A. Okay, okay.
Q. It was just a very huge parking lot, black top.
A. Right, okay. I was over there.
Q. I was a lieutenant in 10 and 10.That's why I remember a lot.
A. Okay. So this is your neighborhood, then.
Q. Yeah.
A. Okay. So I remember running across a lot of debris. I didn't have on fire gear, so I remember trying to avoid the fire as much as I could. I ran into the doors of the Two World Trade on the Liberty Street side.
I saw Chief Burns inside there. He was the first fire personnel that I saw in the lobby. I asked him if there was anything I could do to help. He was like, well, it's just like -- there was nothing anybody could do except try and get people out.
So we tried to encourage -- I remember seeing a six-person team from ESU in that lobby. I directed them to wait. I directed them to wait and not to go upstairs until they reported in to Chief Burns so we had some accountability of who they were and where they were going to go. They finally did communicate with Chief Burns, and then they went upstairs.
Again, an orderly evacuation of two. A lot of people were leaving.
We finally set up -- prior to this I believe it was the west side of the core of the building there were elevators. Someone had come to me and said that there were people trapped in one of those elevators.
So I ran around the corner, and the hoist way doors were open, but the elevator car was only showing about two feet at the top of the door. You could see all the legs of the people that were in the elevator. I would guess there were about eight people in the elevator.
The elevator pit was on fire with the jet fuel. People were screaming in the elevator. They were getting smoked and cooked. There weren't a lot of firemen there at the time. I grabbed some of the Port Authority employees and asked them where the fire extinguishers were and told them to get as many fire extinguishers as they could so we could try and fight this fire. As they were doing that, firemen started showing up, and I started asking them to get big cans, let's try to put this fire out. [So there you go you no plane nutters,the jet fuel from your no planes,has found itself in a elevator in a building you said did not get hit by an airplane,could you keep up please? DC]
- Capt. David Terence Wooley, 54
- Lt. Daniel O'Callaghan, 42
- Joseph Angelini, Jr, 38
- Peter Brennan, 30
- Michael E. Brennan, 27
- Michael Haub, 34
- Michael F. Lynch, 33
- Samuel Oitice, 45
- John James Tipping II, 33
I could not get through to Washington because of the things that were going on. I did get in touch with S.E.M.O. up in Albany, and they said they were already ahead of us and they had already spoken with people, trying to get us air cover.
So being comfortable with that, I went to the command board which they were setting up right next to the doors on the Liberty Street side, the south side of Two World Trade, inside the lobby. At that command board were Chief Burns, Chief Jack Fanning, and I remember seeing Carl Asaro also there. So at this point I just stayed in the background, because things were crazy.
Someone, a fireman, came in through the lobby, through the doors on the Liberty Street side, and told us that there was already a fireman who was killed on the Liberty Street side by a jumper, a guy from 216. Although we knew it was serious, we knew that disaster was beginning to happen.
Now the people coming down the stairwells were not so healthy anymore. A lot of people coming down were burned very badly. A lot of people were broken and bloody. There were people helping people, like carrying people.
We had been directing people to go to Seven World Trade where we had set up a triage area, and I was directing them to go underground as much as they could to get to seven. But a lot of these people that were coming down now were not ambulatory and overwhelmed. So the lobby started filling up with badly injured people, people that were dying.
So watching all the confusion, I always try to think of what I can do to help. I said, well, we have no EMS in the lobby, and we're going to have to move these people or everybody is going to be stuck in the tower and we're not going to be able to evacuate.
He yelled to me to help him get it off the rig and carry it in, so I started running toward him. Before I could get to him, another fireman had come up and started helping him. So I said, "Are you all set?" He said, "I got it."
I ran to continue my mission to find EMS. I found EMS staging underneath the pedestrian bridge at West and Liberty. I saw my friend Charlie Wells. I got under the pedestrian bridge where they were standing so we were protected, and I said to Charlie, "We need you guys in the lobby of number two." He looked at me like I was crazy. He said, "All right. Just give me a minute to get helmets on people, and we're going to go in with you."
So I waited I'm thinking around two minutes there. He got two paramedics, himself and me. I said, "Okay. Follow me." We ran to the south side of the hotel to stay close to the building, trying not to get hit. We ran along the edge of the hotel.
When we ran by the southwest corner of the hotel, I noticed that the doors to the Tall Ships restaurant were wide open and there were people inside there.
As we ran towards the rear, which is the three side of the hotel, and rounded the corner to go into Two World Trade Center, in the doors, we heard the roar above us. I know I never looked up. I don't think anybody ever looked up. But there was no question what it was. It was a very tremendous sound, which I think we hear on the tapes.
So we just turned and ran for our lives. Now it was the flight/fright thing, because everybody knew we were all going to die. We ran back along -- I knew right from the start that I was going to go into the lobby of the hotel to try and get protected.
As I ran by the medics, I yelled at them to follow me. Charlie and one of the medics, who I don't know their names, followed me into the lobby of the hotel. The other guy ran back toward the pedestrian bridge. Charlie tells me everybody lived of that group.
We ran into the lobby. No sooner did we get into the lobby of the hotel, which was crystal-clear when we went in, then it went completely black in an instant with the dust.
The roar was just getting louder. The dust started blowing in our faces. I'm guessing around 30, 35 miles an hour the wind was. Everything started blowing toward us that wasn't nailed down. You could not any longer run into the wind because you were getting pummeled by stuff. You couldn't see anybody to communicate. You couldn't hear anything. It was becoming our grave.
So I turned around and started running back toward the door where I came in. Intellectually I knew we couldn't go outside, because we would get killed by the steel. So now I knew we were trapped. I wound up crawling on the floor as the wind got stronger and the roar got louder.
I found what I'm guessing was a 12 by 12 boxed out steel column, which I tried to become one with. I got as close as I could to it. I hugged it, hoping that anything would tent over me. I just held onto it.
I had a helmet on. The helmet got blown off by the wind. I'm no meteorologist, but I'm guessing that the wind at its height was around 70, 75 miles an hour. I had to hold onto that steel column with all my might so I wouldn't get blown out into the street, not realizing it was probably all over, thinking about my brother and things like that.
I thought it lasted four minutes. Somebody told me it lasted a much shorter time than that. But it stopped. You could hear an eerie silence at first, and then you could start to hear people starting to move around a little bit, people that were still alive. I was amazed that I was alive.
You still couldn't see anything. I went back toward what I thought was the door where we had come in from Liberty Street. As I got over there, I ran into a truck with its lights on. By the front of the truck, I thought it was a box truck. I did not recognize it as a fire truck, although it could have been. I thought it was a bomb. The headlights were still on, very eerie.
I turned around and ran the other way, thinking that it was a bomb, telling everybody to run the other way. We ran into a steel roll down gate that was down. Someone had said we can get out this way, so now there were more people around.
So all the men -- I couldn't tell you if they were civilians or firemen. It seemed to me there were a lot of civilians here. Our fingers were going underneath the door. We tried to lift it up. After we got it up two inches, you could see all the fingers coming the other way, because there were people trapped on the other side of it. We got that door up about two feet, and there was a girl behind us that said we found a way out. So everybody formed a chain. There was a fireman that knew he was already outside in the rubble, but he was okay. He was screaming at us to come toward him, "Come this way. Come this way."
So we went that way, which was the West Street side of what was left of the building. We went across. Then I just wanted to get away from the building, so I ran across all the rubble over to the American Express building, where I went in the lobby there. I just wanted to get to the river and to be able to get a view of what was going on.
I went into that lobby, and all the doors were locked. I couldn't get through those doors. I tried to break the glass doors, and I couldn't break them.
I had the police and fire radios in my back pocket, so I did not hear what was going on, really, on them. I had the OEM radio in my hand, and my boss was calling for help. He was trapped. That's what brought me back to reality.
I went back out to West Street, ran north on the West Street side over the rubble, trying to find him, thinking that he was dying, trapped in the rubble. I went by Chief Feehan, who I know for a long time, shook his hand. He said "Be careful, be careful," to me. I kept running. I remember him being on West, north of the American Express building. He was alone at the time.
I went up to Vesey Street and made a left going west on Vesey Street toward the river. I found Calvin at four World Financial Center. A fireman had already rescued him and pulled him out. He was with EMS.
Then my other boss, car 2, John Odermatt, grabbed me and said, "Timmy, we have to go and try to reestablish city government. You've got to come with me. Calvin is okay." So we left Calvin in the hands of EMS and went back north on West Street.
At some point -- I'm not sure where, I either went in Barclay Street or Murray Street over to West Broadway and trying to find our command bus, which was a little bit further north on West Broadway. I started walking north on West Broadway when number One World Trade Center started to collapse.
I looked back over my shoulder. Everybody started running. That collapsed. I knew that my friends were in there. I just ran north on West Broadway. I used a telephone, a landline, because I couldn't use the cell phone to call my brother to tell him I was still alive. That phone call was made an hour and 42 minutes after the first plane hit. So I know that's the time line.
Then we wound up just up at 24 and 5 with the Mayor and other folks up there. I saw Terry's wife up there. I had an unhappy encounter with her. Basically that's it. We just tried to regroup after that. That's everything I remember.
Q. A lot of guys that were in the --
A. Lobby.
Q. -- restaurant, 131?
A. 131 Truck?
Q. Yeah. I was wondering if you ran into them.
A. They were in the lobby and they were --
Q. I guess the gate was between the restaurant and the hotel lobby. When they closed the restaurant, they use the gate to segregate the restaurant from the rest of the building.
A. Oh, okay.
Q. They said that they got that up. They went out to Liberty Street on the corner.
A. Oh, okay. So they were coming toward me as I was coming toward them.
Q. Right.
A. You couldn't tell who was who or anything like that. Did any of those guys die? Mostly everybody that was in that lobby area
Q. In that general area of the lobby, the guys got out.
A. Further north than the lobby.
Q. North and south. It seemed like you were in the middle.
A. I think I was in the south end of the lobby. That's that part that's still standing.
Q. I'm saying, if you were on the south side or the north side, it looks like you --
A. Lived.
Q. -- survived.
A. In the middle where two came down, it sliced it in the middle. You have guys that were in the north part that lived also?
Q. Yeah, Tommy Gallagher was in the north part, and Brian, when the first collapsed.
A. Right. Then the second one. I heard there's videotape, actually, of number two -- of the hotel in between the collapses. So you have two parts of the hotel standing, and the middle is gone.
Q. Yeah.
A. You can see it?
Q. Photos, not video.
A. Okay. Photos.
CHIEF LAKIOTES: That concludes the interview. It is approximately 9:45.
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