Tuesday Away

Good morning. It’s 6:35 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11th 2001. You’re probably wondering who I am. Well, I’m a fireman for the FDNY in New York City. Though I work in New York I actually live in New Jersey with my wife and three children. It’s time for me to get up for the day so I can go guard my city, but I gotta do it quietly so I don’t wake up my family, they can be kinda grouchy in the mornings. As I get a shower and get dressed I look out of my bathroom window and I can’t get over how clear that sunny blue East Coast sky looks this morning. I can tell it’s gonna be a peaceful day.

So now I have all my work gear and I’m ready to roll. As I’m headed out the door my wife and the kiddos are still sleep. Though they only have like another 10 to 15 minutes of sleep time left I’m gonna let ‘em have it, they all have a busy day ahead with the new school year still in its earliest days. Before I leave out the front door I quickly peek into all their bedrooms just to get a glimpse of them before I start my work day. After looking in my kids rooms I look back in my room to see my wife last as she still sleeps. She is so beautiful, my family is so beautiful and I don’t know what I did to be blessed with such a beautiful family.

As I finally leave out of my house and get in my car I start my long trek to my Brooklyn firehouse to meet up with my team. Let me tell you a little somethin’ about my guys, we’re not just coworkers, not even just friends, we’re all brothers. That’s how it is when you sign up for this life. It’s a brotherhood of family. We all risk our lives for each other daily, just like we risk it all for the people we work to protect. Now I’m here at my firehouse and boy is everyone already busting my chops for being the last one to show up. They poke fun at me for always being late to the party, probably because they all have families too but they never let that stop them from being on time for work.

The time now is 8:45 a.m. I’ve been on duty for well over an hour now. I’m happy to say it’s been pretty quiet all morning long, I just knew it was gonna be an easy day. So me and the guys are sitting at our firehouse table playing cards and watching some daytime television. We also have some coffee and a dash of breakfast donut sugar to keep us up through the quiet. Suddenly the need to be kept conscious through what seemed silent quickly went out the window at the sound of a loud bang coming from the southern tip of Manhattan in the distance out the window, followed by a call over the radio: “We need all units to report to lower Manhattan. We have a plane crash at one World Trade, I repeat, plane crash in one World Trade”.

Oh my goodness. I’ve just been knocked back by what I’ve just heard, so has the rest of my team. One of our guys quickly flips the television to the news and sure enough the call is real. We honestly can’t believe the site before our eyes, the north tower is in flames and smoke.

To make matters of the horrible crash worse, we looked out of our firehouse window and could see the smoke billowing out into the sky in the distance. “Come on guys!” I tell everyone with assertion. “We gotta get down there fast.” Everyone quickly loaded up their equipment and we hopped in our fire truck and started making our way to lower Manhattan. As we’re in the truck and on our way to the towers the destruction becomes more apparent. Traffic is building up with thousands of people watching the destruction in the streets. What was originally a clear blue sky now has a long strip of dark grey smoke going across its skyline. The faces of the people we drove past were filled with looks of shock and disbelief.

As the towers were coming closer into view the disbelief started overcoming me as well. I knew we had a job to do and I was anxious to get into the towers and save as many people who’s lives are hanging in the balance as I could. Coming closer to the towers the traffic is getting heavier. I can tell city and school buses alike are being used to get port authority and other emergency services down to the towers in mass amounts. Amidst all the traffic we’re finally closing in on the towers. Now we’re just looking for room to park so we can get out and make our way to the top. We find a place to park and start readying our equipment. As we’re preparing ourselves the unimaginable unfolds before my eyes. Above my head I can hear the sound of a plane engine roaring. When I curiously look up to investigate a giant aircraft catches my eyes. It looks like it’s coming east of where I’m positioned. As my eyes continue to follow the plane, I myself and the thousands filling the street watch this large aircraft crash into the south tower of the World Trade Center.

Everyone on the ground around me screams and runs in terror, while ducking for cover from the falling debris of the vicious crash of a fire storm above us. Me and one of my guys quickly runs under our truck to keep from getting hit by falling debris. Oh my God my heart is racing. I thought this was a terrible accident when the news broke about the first crash, but clearly it’s not. This is a…is a…it’s an attack…a terrorist attack. This also means more planes are probably coming, so we have to hurry up and make our way into the towers so we can get as many people to safety as we possibly can. Me and my team quickly recover and start making our way inside the towers. We’re gonna make our way up the second tower first being that there is a somewhat clearer path in that direction.

Carrying what feels like a hundred pounds of equipment we make our way towards the second tower and on the way there was a site of horror. As I looked around I saw a scenery of destruction. There were pieces of the airplanes all over the place. This was accompanied by more falling debris from the building, pieces of what looked like confetti style paper work slowly floating down through space and a gut wrenching image of dead bodies. At first I didn’t understand what the bodies were doing there. I asked myself were they blown out of the building? Were they hit by falling debris? My questions were suddenly answered when one of my partners grabbed me forcefully and yelled “WATCH OUT!” As he forcefully moved me to the side a human being fell out of the air and landed about 15 feet away from us. I then realized how all those bodies got there. They were people who either fell or…even jumped to certain death from the smoke and fire of the building’s impact zones. This horrible realization only made me wanna get inside even faster.

Amidst the destructive landscape we had to run through, me and my team finally made it inside the south tower. Strangely enough it was a little more peaceful inside than it was outside, I think that’s the calm before the storm. As our team gets ready in the lobby of the south tower we are surrounded by a packed crowd of other ladder companies, police officers and port authority all preparing to begin our ascension into a dark grey airborne abyss. As we begin our blind ascent countless tenants of the tower pass us with horror on their faces. Many of them are bleeding and wounded, others are covered in dust, all of them are filled with exhaust, terror and pain.

Continuing our climb we encounter numerous wounded civilians. Many of them are helping each other make it out of the building. This climb is taking us a lot longer than we had anticipated, mainly because of the weight of our equipment. Every ten floors we stop and catch our breaths and then we continue our climb. The closer we get to the top the smaller the number of civilians we encounter. By now we’ve reached what seems like the 60th floor where we encounter a wave of screams and banging on the walls around us. It’s people who are trapped in the surrounding offices due to the doors being jammed. At this sound our whole battalion team goes office door to office door. We use the full weight of our bodies as well as our equipment to pry the office doors open. It takes some doing but we are successful. When we start getting the doors open dozens of people come pouring out of every office space. Many of them made their way down and out of the tower, others stayed to assist us in getting the other doors open where others were trapped.

After freeing the trapped civilians we regroup and continue our blind ascent. The further up we go, the hotter and more smoky it gets. I can tell we are getting close to the impact zone. We just heard over the radio that two of our guys have already made it to the impact zone in this tower and they could use our help. We’ve just made it to like the 70th floor. We’re comin guys, we’re on our way. As we continue our exhaustive trek something mistifying starts to happen. We start hearing cracks in the walls around us and the building starts shaking erratically and we are all knocked off balance. The lights suddenly go out and it’s dark, but even in this grey dark we can see a large debris cloud coming towards us as pieces of the roof above us start to come apart. We all quickly turn around and make a dead sprint running as fast as we can back towards the stairwell we just came from. We drop all of our equipment as the falling debris gets closer. As we enter the stairwell and start running down the debris field closes in on us and we are engulfed by thick black smoke.

After blacking out for what seemed like a few minutes I finally come to and find myself lightly covered in a rubble of debris. I’m able to quickly dig myself out thanks to a hole of light peeking through where I’m buried. I can tell it’s the sunlight so I start walking towards it. The building must’ve collapsed and I rode the debris field down to the ground. I can’t believe I survived it, but I can’t see the rest of my team. They must’ve gotten misplaced by the debris field, but I’ll find them. As I walk towards the sunlight I feel this overwhelming sense of inner peace. It was unlike anything I had ever felt before, it was almost divine.

When I finally make it outside to the sunlight something unexpected hits my eyes. It was a big golden gate surrounded by white clouds. I looked at it with confusion and then turned around to look at the debris field to find that it wasn’t there. Below me in the distance was the north tower of the World Trade Center, still standing , but surrounded by a large cloud of smoke which used to be the south tower that I was just in and it was all growing distant from my view. Oh wow. I now realized what was happening. I didn’t make it out of the tower alive, I’m dead. The golden gate opens up and a lady with short hair in a white robe walks out and approaches me. She holds out her hand for me to grab. When I grab her hand she tells me “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

I’m at the gates of Heaven because I died saving lives in the towers. That’s why I feel this divine peace. I only wish now that my wife and kids could’ve had the chance to see me once more before I left. I’d say the same for my friends, but I’m sure most of them will be joining me shortly. I know it’ll be a tragedy to the living that I am no longer among them, but I will be reunited with them all one day. Until then I will watch over them always. Let your loved ones know how much you love them as often as you can, because your final moments with them could be a mere Tuesday away.

~~Dedicated to all the rescue workers who perished on September 11th 2001.