BY TOM BRENNAN
I sit here every month and try to get some vital information together to form what I call “Random Thoughts.” In most cases, for the past 15 or more years, I have tried to focus on firefighting tips that work “on the asphalt” and lace them with some humor and make it interesting to keep my brothers and sisters coming back. It is fun for me, and I hope it has been fun for you.
Deadlines (in this business are the alarm bell) come in louder now because it is so hard to focus on thoughts for a column. It has been hard since the morning work hours of September 11.
Everyone on the Internet, in the magazines, and on the television and other media driven by nonfirefighting personnel wants to know if FDNY can move on from this, can the fire service itself move on from this, can we all move on from this? I do not have the answer; I have the hope and the thoughts. Some I hope will leave me. Some I hope will never leave me.
Sometime, long before the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, a responder from FDNY decided that it was necessary to evacuate just one of the World Trade Center towers in the early afternoon of the workday. Under those (although mistaken) orders, the emergency evacuation of people lasted three and a half hours! It tied up the entire transit system of New York City and clogged the streets and avenues of lower Manhattan for hours. That was just one of my random thoughts as I watched the events unfold this September.
I remember that one emergency person ordered Con Edison to shut the power to the World Trade Center since the 1993 bombing was reported to be an electrical transformer. That caused a loss of lighting, communication, and elevators to 110 floors of humanity that noontime. I hoped that they didn’t lose it now! Another thought.
As the physical events of that 11th day of the month unfolded live before us all, I knew that there was massive life loss, that emergency workers, my brothers and the brothers of my brothers, were in the worst tactical position ever seen or thought of in the civilized world that we always had protected so well.
Then the events turned into lists of names.
I remember one of my mentors in 105 Truck. He said to me, “We would like you and Janet to come to our home for dinner. Please come early; the children would love to meet you both.” Who gets invitations like that? Who gives them? Special people!
We had no children yet and immediately fell for Jim and Norma’s seven. I remember picking up Ed (11 years old) and Steve (seven years old) and taking them to the only hill I could find on a snowy day in “my neck of the woods” on Long Island. Ed would make his father proud and walk into Ladder 102 on his first day. Steve would surprise me in Ladder 111, saying, “Hi, Mr. Brennan. I am assigned to the engine.” Ed, a battalion chief, now is lost! A random thought.
I was teaching for the volunteer fire service in Suffolk County. I was in the Deer Park fire station talking my talk and looking like I had enough gold to take over a country. I don’t get impressed often, but a couple of “kids” knocked me for a loop with their attitude, smile, enthusiasm, respect, and love of the thing they do! I stopped the class and asked who they were. “We are brothers,” they said. “Real brothers,” smiling. “We are the Vigianos.”
“Not John’s boys?”
“Sure are.”
I stopped the class. I walked into the middle of the room. I was puffed. I said to all, “I am going to take the time here to tell you all just how wonderful a father these two firefighters have.” And I proceeded to tell the stories of the times and fires I shared with their wonderful father. I will never forget that moment.
Now John and Joe are both lost, and their father continues to look every day in the pile and pit of downtown Manhattan. Another thought.
“Hi, Lee! Long time, brother!” Lee had been one of the youngsters in the Brownsville Engine 227 where I was lieutenant of the truck. He had moved on to Rescue Company 2 and made a wonderful name for himself. Now we had met in this beach community to stand at the funeral of another legend of mine-my chauffeur of 111 Truck who passed on only a couple of months after retirement.
His jaw out, Lee told me how proud he was that his son Jonathan was on the “job.” And now Jonathan is gone, and Lee is there with his tools every day-looking, searching. A random thought.
“What is a Brennan doll?” one said at the tool sink. “Oh, you pull the string once,” said the taller one, “and he talks all day!” Brian and Dennis were the newest duo in Ladder Company 105 and dear, dear friends. Both moved through the ranks together and now were battalion chiefs-Dennis not two miles from where he started and Brian in his beloved rescue system. Both came to help on the 11th. Brian was hit with each building and survived, and Dennis Cross did not. Brian, broken and bandaged and uniformed, helped Dennis’s Jo Ann down the aisle at the mass to remember his friend. A random thought.
My newest friend, Dennis, was retired also; we swapped stories of yore and kidded the rescue and the truck for hours. His best friend, Dennis Mojica, was working that night and then it was on to Texas for the three of us. Hearing of the disaster, retired Dennis turned his truck on Alligator Alley and headed north.
“I am going to help,” he said to me on the cell phone. “I am at least going to try and find Dennis 1.” We all knew where he would be-on the way up the stairs. You see, no one could have made the stairs to the objective of the fire floor before both towers came down.
He worked with the “Brothers of 43rd Street.” They were looking for everyone in Rescue 1 but also focused on 11 of their own! Dennis found his friend Mojica. He was the mole that day and cut his friend out of the pile while protecting him from further hurt with his hands and body and face, and the sparks fell, freeing the spirit of his friend from the dusty, steel entrapment.
More random thoughts. Perhaps someday soon we can get back to where we need to be-both in the job we love and in this column I struggle with. But for awhile, I want to hold on to these-and so much more.
In the words of my friend, Peter Ganci, “Get the ice.”
TOM BRENNAN has more than 35 years of fire service experience. His career spans more than 20 years with the Fire Department of New York as well as four years as chief of the Waterbury (CT) Fire Department. He was the editor of Fire Engineering for eight years and currently is a technical editor. He is co-editor of The Fire Chief’s Handbook, Fifth Edition (Fire Engineering Books, 1995). He was the recipient of the 1998 Fire Engineering Lifetime Achievement Award. Brennan is featured in the video Brennan and Bruno Unplugged (Fire Engineering/FDIC, 1999).
