The Journal News.com: http://www.thejournalnews.com/9-11/02wtc5.htm A day of duty at a New York firehouse Two months after the Sept. 11 attack, staff writer Leah Rae visited a New York City firehouse to learn how the firefighters were handling the loss of their colleagues while still doing their dangerous jobs. One year later, she returned to the same firehouse to answer the same questions. This is her original report, published on Nov. 11, 2002. By LEAH RAE THE JOURNAL NEWS (Original publication: Nov. 11, 2001) It will be a long time before life returns to normal inside New York City's firehouses. Since Sept. 11, firefighters are coping day to day. Here's how a fire company in upper Manhattan recently spent one day. NEW YORK, OCT. 30 — It's the image of empty shoes lined up on the concrete floor that has stayed with Lt. Domenick Caleri. When firefighters respond to a call, they step into their boots and leave the shoes sitting in pairs until the truck comes back. At some firehouses in New York, half the men never came back from the rescue at the World Trade Center. Their shoes would have been sitting there when the survivors returned. "It's devastating," Caleri says, looking around at his own firehouse. The feeling of loss hasn't let up at New York firehouses, two months after 343 firefighters died trying to save people from the burning towers. The men spend their days maneuvering between the work at hand and the grief over lost friends. Families of the lost firemen visit for lunch, volunteers come to talk, and neighbors stop in with gifts. At times it's like a family wake, where lighthearted conversation smooths out the sadness. But the firefighters don't sit still for long. Alarms sound, building inspections are carried out, and the oil is checked on the rig. This morning, a fireman is up in the bucket putting black bunting over the red doors at Third Avenue and 124th Street. This firehouse lost two chiefs in the terrorist attack. Joseph Marchbanks and Fred Scheffold worked upstairs as chiefs of Battalion 12, covering this house and several others. A retired captain, Frank Bernard, comes in to talk to the men. He worries that firefighters will face a tougher time down the road, when they are no longer distracted by recovery efforts and heightened workloads. "The thing is, I can go to Florida," Bernard says to Caleri. "You guys are going to live with this when it's all over. When all this all comes to a halt, then you're going to have to sit and think about it." Caleri can forget about the disaster only briefly, when he's home in Somers with his wife and two children. "I know a lot of people that died, and I lost friends," he says. "But I have all my family." An alarm sounds, and the ladder and engine companies step into their boots, pull on their black coats and board the rigs. About 50 men work out of the firehouse, home to Ladder 14 and Engine 35. Thirteen men are on duty at any given time. John Hunt drives the ladder truck over the Triborough Bridge to Ward's Island as Caleri calls out the details, working the siren pedal. They've noticed the same thing as other fire companies: Cars are moving out of the way faster these days. At the scene, a psychiatric facility, they meet up with Engine 58, the crew that lost Lt. Robert Nagel. On Sept. 11, Marchbanks rushed to the World Trade Center along with Scheffold, who was just coming off his shift. They and Nagel sacrificed their lives trying to save people from Tower 2 before it collapsed. This morning, firefighters check a problem with the sprinkler system at the Wards Island facility and head back to Manhattan. Caleri notices a little boy saluting them from the sidewalk as they drive by. In the days since the terror attack, people have cheered, applauded and offered blessings. "I almost feel like we don't deserve it," Caleri says. "We didn't die down there." • • • The bunting operation is interrupted again by a call at a housing complex. As firefighters check out the trouble, a clicking stove, children from the playground notice the truck. The children run to the iron fence as the firefighters come back out, and they smile and wave as the truck pulls away. The East Harlem neighborhood covered by Ladder 14 and Engine 35 is a mix of tenements, brownstones and high-rises. On the way back to Third Avenue, the ladder company stops for groceries. Members of the Marchbanks family will be joining them for lunch, and Hunt is in charge of the menu. They troop into the grocery store as one firefighter spot-checks a nearby construction site. A square, wooden table takes up half the firehouse kitchen. Around it the walls are covered with notices and news clippings and sympathy cards. Messages have come from all over the country. In the stairwell are handmade cards from a Girl Scout troop. In the garage is a wall-hanging from Orlando, Fla. In the kitchen is a note sent by a 13-year-old girl from Canada: "Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. This is how you can make every day count. React well. Whatever you do make sure it's the right thing and do it with your heart." The men are discussing the latest anthrax rumors and whether they should take their children trick-or-treating. "My son's still trick-or-treating," Frank Morrisey says. "He's Mickey Mouse, man." An announcement comes over the speaker in a monotone, drowning out The Rolling Stones. "Signal 5-5-5-5. It is with regret that the department announces the death of the following member; firefighter Carl Bedigan of Engine Company 214, which occurred on September 11, 2001, as a result of injuries sustained while operating at Manhattan Box 55-8087." Such announcements come every once in a while, when a firefighter's body is found. Each begins with the code indicating someone killed in the line of duty. Other announcements remind the firefighters that medical examinations are available. Firefighters around the city have reported breathing problems from the smoke and dust at Ground Zero. A new call takes the company to Second Avenue. They head into a brick tower to look for Apartment 9S, on a report of smoke. "There is no 9S," Caleri says, coming out. There was a slight odor in the stairwell, probably incense, but the smoke had dissipated. Back at the firehouse, the men get ready to serve lunch. Like a family expecting guests, they prepare the chicken salad and put out a set of unmatched plates. Some sit reading copies of a story from The Aspen Times. It's about their former chief, Marchbanks, written by the fiance of a family member out West. In the article, Tom Egan describes how he and his fiancee, Doreen Clavell, drove to New York to be with Doreen's sister, Teresa. Teresa is Joe Marchbanks' wife, who lives in Nanuet. Egan describes driving back East, eventually joining a bucket brigade at Ground Zero. Joe is irreplaceable, Egan writes. "But as someone who came through and left a mark, as someone who made and helped make memories for other people, as someone joyous and generous and giving, and as someone who will continue to live in my heart and head, Joe will always be here. "And I think that ability to stay alive, even without the shell we're given in this life, is the measure of a truly great man and someone I am proud to continue to call my friend." • • • Soon, Joe's 14-year-old daughter, Lauren, is in the kitchen along with Tom Egan and Doreen Clavell. Lauren is wearing an FDNY pullover with her father's name and battalion number. Capt. Bernard has been assisting them as a Red Cross volunteer. They are greeted like family, and the conversation is light. Egan talks about the skiing in Aspen, and the firefighters take an interest. "How do you feel about visitors?" Hunt asks. Clavell asks how she can thank Charlie Archul, a firefighter who lives in West Nyack and has helped the family with everything from closing their pool to fixing a water pipe. Lauren has visited the firehouse before. Marchbanks used to switch shifts so that he could be at Lauren's softball games. A freshman at Nanuet High School with ginger-colored hair, she takes out the wooden urn. It is in the shape of a small cup, with "09-11-01" carved on the side. This will be one of many mementos for the Marchbanks family; another is a football jersey signed for Joe by his beloved New York Jets. As lunch finishes up, a young woman appears at the kitchen door with a black forest cake as big as a firefighter's helmet. Everyone cheers. The woman, Trina Irving, works at a nearby bakery called Baked in the Hood, run by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Caleri invites her to stay, but she leaves after a brief chat. "God bless you baby," she tells Lauren. "God bless you. And God bless all of you, cause you're all doing a very good job." • • • Today is fairly typical, Caleri says. Between the calls and the work, people visit, someone walks in with a cake, and the men in the house carry on their usual banter. As Fred Scheffold used to say: "This job is too important to take anything seriously." Humor is a coping mechanism in a job that holds so many dangers, the firemen say. "It kind of died for a few days," Caleri says. "Came back slowly though. ... It's everybody's nature in a way. Maybe us more than others." When Charley Garbarini was working out of the firehouse, his own brand of humor stood out. Garbarini lived in Pleasantville with his wife and two young boys. He had been trying for a position at Ladder 14, but was covering for a lieutenant at Engine 23 the day of the terrorist attack. "Funny guy," firefighter John McGurren says. "Never at a loss for words. Sharp. 'Sharp as a marble ...'" "... As he would say," Caleri adds. John Hunt, the driver, remembers going out on a call with Garbarini the second time Hunt drove the rig. They were called uptown, and arrived at the wrong place. "Uh, 14, you guys are on the wrong block," a chief told them by radio. They were at 136th Street instead of 135th. Hunt was beating himself up for the mistake, but Garbarini ordered him back on the truck. "How many blocks you think there are in Manhattan?" Garbarini said to him. "I think there's probably like 220 to 230. You gotta look at it like this: You were off by just one." • • • Caleri gets a call from his wife about a good friend, Vinnie Halloran of North Salem, another of the lost firefighters. He learns that Halloran's wife is expecting a baby. A part of Vinnie will live on. Caleri is handling paperwork in the afternoon, seated at a desk facing Lt. Tom Fitzgerald of the engine company. The experience of digging through the ruins of the Twin Towers — 110 floors of offices reduced to a smoldering pile — is still fresh in everyone's minds. "Everything was just pulverized. You wouldn't find a stray chair, you'd find, like, the little wheel," Fitzgerald says. As they worked in the rubble, their minds swung back and forth between a sense of determination and a sense of failure. "Every night when you walked out of that place when you were done, whenever your tour was over, it was the same thing: Walking up West Street, feeling down, like you didn't make any difference," Fitzgerald says. "In the first few days when there was still hope, there was a real hard feeling walking away from that pile. You were exhausted, you couldn't work, and your tour was over. But you feel like you're walking away from your friends who need help." That feeling has followed them back to the firehouse, Fitzgerald says. "They're coming to our door praising us. 'You guys are great, you're heroes.' And meanwhile you're feeling like a loser, 'cause you can't get your friends back." Stories continue to be exchanged about what happened to those friends. One is about a man who was trapped in his rig, talking to the dispatcher until he lost consciousness. The expressions of sympathy have helped, Caleri says. Counseling has been available to the firefighters. Everyone is working through the grief in his own way. McGurren wonders aloud how counseling could help those who witnessed the horrific scene after the two towers were hit by hijacked planes. People were jumping from the windows. "You couldn't tell that to any counselor cause then they would have to go to counseling." The men from the firehouse still hope to recover the bodies of their two chiefs. They will be called down to the scene when the bodies are found, Caleri says. None of them seems to have any second thoughts about their line of work. Dennis Albrechtsen, a 52-year-old firefighter from New City, was planning to retire in six months after 24 years in the department. Sept. 11 changed all that. "It made you want to stick around," he says, "to be a part of it." 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