Firehouse by David Halberstam

Author:David Halberstam
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hyperion

Back at the firehouse, there was a darkening sense of what was happening, of how terrible it was, a tragedy beyond anyone’s comprehension. By the early afternoon, there was talk that the department might have lost more than 300 men. Most of those gathering back at Sixty-sixth Street—many of them sent in from other houses—knew all too well from watching television and seeing both buildings pancake down that this collapse was likely to have been fatal to anyone under it. Gradually, there was a strong sense that the unthinkable had happened, that every man they had sent down from 40/35 might have died. Throughout the day, there were more and more reports, and the news was unrelentingly bad. Not only had their own men probably been lost, but also a number of other firemen with exceptionally close ties to the firehouse, men who still palled around with the 40/35 men: Larry Virgilio, who had worked there for years before going over to Squad 18 (a special unit committed to dealing with hazardous materials); Mike Boyle and David Arce, the boyhood friends who had become firemen together and, even after moving on to Engine 33, still played on the 40/35 softball team; and Larry Stack, a big strapping man of about six feet four inches who had served as a lieutenant at 40/35 in the early ’80s, and had worked there as well as a covering captain when one of the house’s regular officers was either sick or on vacation. Stack was widely regarded by the men as an almost perfect officer, balancing an instinctive sense of command with just the right amount of warmth, which he always seemed to summon at just the right time. Slowly it dawned on everyone that they were witnesses to, and part of, the worst day in firefighting history.

One of the genuine heroes who emerged at 40/35 that day was Mike Kotula, who had been among the men playing golf in Maryland. On his return, Kotula had joined the others from the house in the search for their buddies at Ground Zero, and he saw at once how hopeless it all was. Trying to find anything under that grotesque mountain of rubble had been more than he could bear. So it was that when he got back to the firehouse around midnight on Tuesday, he had begun almost purely by instinct to man the phone, taking the incoming calls from the wives and families and closest friends. He had done it in part because he could not bear to go back down to Ground Zero, but he had also done it because he believed that someone who knew and loved all these men and their families should be on the phone—this was not a job for a stranger.

His new task was in those heartbreaking hours and days very important, and he stayed on the phone, almost without a break, through Saturday night. Early on, he had taken a brief break to eat while one of his colleagues manned the phone.

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