FDNY
Faces a Loss of Its Top Brass By William Murphy and Roni Rabin
STAFF WRITERS September 13, 2001
As firefighters continued to grapple with the twisted remains
of the World Trade Center yesterday, they also had to face the
loss of many top commanders in the tragedy. Among them was William
Feehan, the first deputy fire commissioner - the No. 2 spot after
Commissioner Tom Von Essen - and a 40-year veteran of the department.
His son, firefighter John Feehan, said in an interview that the
loss of his father and other senior commanders not only decimated
the top brass but were a huge assault on morale. Although he was
off-duty at the time, the whole squad the younger Feehan worked
with is missing. "The department will absolutely never be the
same," he said. "I don't think the department will ever fully
recover from it." In addition to Feehan, the dead included Peter
J. Ganci Jr. the chief of department and the highest ranking uniformed
officer on the force; Chief Donald Burns, the citywide tour commander
at the time, and the Rev. Mychal Judge, a departmental chaplain
who was close to firefighters. Capt. Raymond Downey, known nationally
for developing innovative rescue techniques, was also missing.
He led a team from New York sent to help after the federal building
in Oklahoma City was bombed. There were unconfirmed reports of
other missing commanders, but officials asked that they not be
identified because the system of notifying families was time-consuming.
Many of those who remained missing and were presumed dead were
members of the department's five elite rescue units - one for
each borough - and members of second-line emergency units known
as squads. Those squads were formerly called engine companies,
which usually pump water, but were retrained in recent years to
place a greater emphasis on rescue work and the handling of hazardous
materials. "I don't see how they are going to make up for the
loss of all this senior talent any time soon," said one Fire Department
official, who asked not to be identified. "You have to understand
that this is a hierarchical group that is slow to move people
up the ladder." Also, filling a large number of vacancies in the
specialty squads would require lengthy training that would drain
firefighters from firehouses. In an early evening news conference,
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said 202 firefighters were thought to be
missing. Brian Davan, Feehan's son-in-law, also a firefighter,
picked up a coffee-table book about the worst fires in the city,
and, leafing through it, said a 1966 blaze killed 12 firefighters.
Until now, that was the fire that defined the dangers of firefighting
in the city. The 12 firefighters were killed on Oct. 17, 1966,
when the floor of a drug store near Madison Square Park gave way,
plunging the firefighters to their deaths in the basement below.
"This thing dwarfs it," Davan said. "It's unprecedented." Copyright
© 2002, Newsday, Inc.
Back
to William's Home Page