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Fire personnel's plain words convey searing images

WILLIAM MURPHY | STAFF WRITER

August 13, 2005

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, more than 500 fire personnel who worked that horrific day told their stories, with a poignant mix of plain words and searing images, as they watched the towers collapse and 343 of their colleagues die.

The oral histories, taken by fire department officials and released under court order Friday, were notable for their lack of overstatement on the costliest day in the department's history.

Some remembered the debris clouds wrapping them in darkness and wondering if they were dead. The chief marshal, Louis Garcia, was on a golf course with department buddies that morning and recalled the expletive he used when he called in to find out what had happened.

The interviews with 503 firefighters and other workers were edited before they were released under the terms of a court order that allowed removal of anything deemed so personal it would cause pain or embarrassment.

And the words doubtlessly lost some impact, but clearly not all, by appearing on a printed page rather than the spoken voice of the witnesses to history.

"It got very black. It got very quiet," Assistant Commissioner Stephen Gregory recalled in his interview. "It was very peacefully quiet; so peaceful that I thought I was dead."

Many saw horrors; others saw the inexplicable, such as the sight of two fire chiefs arguing. Cause unknown and outcome unknown.

And many had recollections of the last time they saw a colleague -- ever.

Battalion Chief Stephen King turned to his aide as he walked into the north tower and said: "Bobby, this not going to be a good day." Firefighter Robert Crawford, a 32-year veteran, was still missing when King was interviewed. His body was recovered that Thanksgiving Day.

What appears here, excerpts of those interviews, could never adequately convey in words those experiences.