My cousin Glenn drove Engine 54 for a firehouse in the theater district in
midtown Manhattan.
At age 50, Glenn was a senior member of his company. Not too long
before 9/11, my husband and were in Manhattan to see a show on Broadway and we
decided to walk over to Glenn’s firehouse to say hello.
Glenn wasn’t there that day, but the younger guys on duty were
more than happy to laugh and socialize with the family of one of their
brothers. It was obvious they were a close-knit bunch of guys who loved to
taunt and mess with each other.
We left the firehouse with a smile on our faces and a bounce in
our step. These young, handsome, cheerful and robust bunch of guys had that
kind of effect on you.
As fate would have it, Glenn’s firehouse was one of the first to
respond when disaster hit the World Trade Center on that beautiful morning in
September 2001.
He was on his last day of vacation. Shortly after the planes hit,
all the off-duty firemen were called in to work. As they stood somberly
awaiting their assignments, one of the men asked the question on everyone’s
mind, “Were any of our guys lost?”
The answer they heard — “everyone” — was too horrifying to fully
comprehend.
Everyone from Engine Company 54 who happened to be on duty the
morning of Sept. 11, 2001, was gone — 15 men in all.
In a state of disbelief, the survivors started to ask about the
men in surrounding firehouses.
The word — everyone — was repeated over and over again. The
shocking truth was that almost all the firehouses in the nearby communities had
lost all the men who were at work that morning.
At 1 a.m. that night, the guys from Engine Company 54 were down at
the World Trade Center site, digging through the rubble, desperately hoping to
find their brothers alive. As dawn approached, the full impact of the
devastation came into focus — 50,000 desks, chairs, file cabinets and
computers, as well as the steel and concrete of the world’s most majestic pair
of skyscrapers, were reduced to white ash and unrecognizable rubble.
The surrounding buildings contained massive gaping holes and
furiously burning fires.
The area was promptly labeled ground zero, a term previously used
to describe the devastating destruction found at the epicenter of a nuclear
attack.
Because Engine 54’s firehouse is in the center of one of
Manhattan’s biggest tourist areas, typically the doors are left wide open.
After Sept. 11, people from all over the world came to the firehouse to show
their support and pay their respects.
My cousin told me, “I feel like I’m at an unending wake; I’ve
never been hugged so much in all my life. Even the hugs are pulling me down; I
just can’t stand it anymore.”
He described a pervading sense of numbness, as if the firemen had
been anesthetized. He knew more than 60 firemen who died and he asked, “How can
you lose so many friends in one swift swoop?” I had no answer for him.
There was no relief from the sorrow. Funerals and memorial
services occurred in a constant stream. After many weeks, the wife of one of
his comrades spoke as if her husband might still be found alive. My cousin told
me how painfully heartbreaking it was to hear her clinging to this hope once
he’d been to ground zero and had seen firsthand the minuscule particles that
remained.
Because the word “off” was penciled into my cousin’s schedule for
Tuesday, 9/11, most people defined him as one of the lucky ones. Yet, I know
firsthand that he never recovered from this devastating loss. It appears that
his life blew up along with those majestic towers. The overwhelming anguish he
suffered led to severe post traumatic stress syndrome and his mind still
contains an indelible picture of a hell known as ground zero.
Mary Beth Buchner lives in Latham.
