August 27, 2025 • 35 mins
Timothy Brown was serving as supervisor of field operations in New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's office of emergency management on September 11, 2001. He was already at work near the World Trade Center when terrorists flew the first plane into the North Tower. He was in the lobby of that building when he got word that a second plane controlled by terrorists struck the South Tower. He immediately rushed over there. Less than an hour later, the South Tower collapsed while Timothy Brown was still inside.
In this edition of Veterans Chronicles, Brown walks us from when he heard of the first attack through the horror of the South Tower coming down all around him. He explains what it felt like and sounded like as 110 stories crashed down around him. He also describes emerging from the rubble and getting out of the area just as the North Tower came down.
Brown believes his life was spared in order to share the heroic actions of firefighters and other first responders on 9/11. And he tells multiple stories of those heroes, many of whom were friends he lost that day.
Finally, Brown offers his thanks to the veterans who took the fight to the terrorists in the wars following 9/11.
In this edition of Veterans Chronicles, Brown walks us from when he heard of the first attack through the horror of the South Tower coming down all around him. He explains what it felt like and sounded like as 110 stories crashed down around him. He also describes emerging from the rubble and getting out of the area just as the North Tower came down.
Brown believes his life was spared in order to share the heroic actions of firefighters and other first responders on 9/11. And he tells multiple stories of those heroes, many of whom were friends he lost that day.
Finally, Brown offers his thanks to the veterans who took the fight to the terrorists in the wars following 9/11.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
this edition is retired New York City firefighter Timothy Brown.
On September eleventh, two thousand and one, he served as
supervisor of Field Operations in Mayor Rudy Giuliani's Office of
Emergency Management. When Al Qaeda terrorists attacked the United States.
He was in the lobby of the South Tower of
(00:34):
the World Trade Center when it collapsed, but he miraculously survived.
The morning of September eleventh, two thousand and one started
like any other day as Brown arrived at his office
adjacent to the World Trade Center just before eight am.
He grabbed some breakfast and was scouring the morning papers
for any news that might impact his office when he
(00:54):
learned that a plane had struck the North Tower.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
The power went out in our building, World Trade Center,
modern high rise building with many city, state, and federal
agencies in the building. It was kind of a government building,
and it would be a bit unusual for the power
to completely go out in one of these high rise buildings.
So I knew something happened, I didn't know what. In
(01:18):
that five seconds it took for the backup generators to
kick in and bring the power back.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
The people who were.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Sitting at the front window, the glass looking at the
North tower kind of all at once jumped up and
started running toward the exit. I actually had to grab
one young lady by the shoulders and kind of shake
her back to reality and look in her eyes, and
I said what happened, and she decided a plane hit
(01:46):
the tower because they could see it. I did not
see it or hear it, so this was the first
I knew of it.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Brown immediately headed over to the North Tower to survey
the scene and assessed damage.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I went to the twenty third floor to office, and
I ensured that my peers, two of them, one who
ran our watch command we call it our listening posts,
make sure that he understood or we were doing full
activation of our emergency operations center. He gave me the
thumbs up. I went next door into the emergency operations center,
(02:20):
and the supervisor there gave me the thumbs up. And
it was my job to go to the scene of
the disaster, and not to be the incident commander, but
to assist the incident commander.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I went to my car down on.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
VC Street, opened the trunk, took off my tie and
dress shirt, put on a windbreaker that said Mayor's Office
on it, my heavy leather boots, and they made us
wear these stupid green helmets so people knew who we were.
And we're trained as firefighters that you always try and
look at three sides of a building that's under destruction,
so you have a current size up, and I wanted
(02:52):
to take a minute just to do that before I
went into the building. In order to do that, I
had to go from the street level VC Street up
an exterior staircase to the plaza level that was the
plaza between the whole complex. I ran up that concrete staircase,
and this becomes an important part of the story because
later on, this concrete staircase becomes iconic and it is
(03:16):
the biggest, heaviest artifact in the museum, and they call
it the Survivors staircase because later on in the story,
hundreds or thousands of civilians will run down this staircase
to live. But what I'm doing is what our uniformed
services do, our police officers, firefighters, paramedics, military, We run
toward it.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
And that's what I did. Very early on.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
I looked out over the plaza and it was strewn
with debris, building parts, plain parts on fire, black smoke,
white smoke, and if you remember in the video, all
the paper fluttering down that got knocked out of the
upper floors. So it really did did look like armageddon.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
While debris lettered the grind, Brown was not able to
get a good look at the hole in the North Tower.
From his vantage point, we would soon learn that the
first plane was American Airlines Flight eleven, the first plane
hijacked by Al Kaeda terrorists. For the moment, like most
other people there, Brown assumed a small plane had struck
the building.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
So when I went up the concrete staircase and got
around where I could see more of the North Tower,
I looked up and you couldn't see much. It was
eighty or ninety stories up. It's very far away. I
didn't have binoculars, and you couldn't tell how from my
vantage point, you couldn't tell how big the hole was
where the plane went in. I think what started to
(04:39):
change my mind about the size of the plane, because I,
like me like I was going back to previous knowledge.
Other planes had hit buildings in New York, but aside
from the Empire State building. They were small. They were
helicopters or the small planes. So I was just kind
of imagining that it was assessinaw or you know, the
pilot had a heart attack. But I think when I
(05:00):
looked out over the plaza and I saw all the
burning debris is when I questioned my assumption that it
was a small plane. I still had no idea that
it was a big passenger plane intentionally flown into the
North Tower. I never had that realization until the second
(05:21):
plane hit the South Tower, and you know, once that happened,
we knew, but you know, people watching on TV probably
had a better idea of what looked like than I
did because I was under it.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Next, Timothy Brown entered the North Tower and watched a
surprisingly calm and orderly evacuation. Firefighters had already arrived on scene,
and we're putting on their gear before heading upstairs, and
that gave Brown a fleeting moment of levity.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
I went into the North Tower, which was the first
one to be hit at that plaza level, and I
got inside and I had to go down one level
to the street level where the command post was. There
was an escalator right there, and there were hundreds of
civilians funneling getting onto that escalator to go. They're being
(06:09):
directed that way to go down and down another one
and go underground and then be able to get out
through the underground mall. And I noticed what they were
not doing. They were not pushing and screaming, trampling each other.
In fact, for every person who was obese, pregnant, disabled, injured,
there were four or five civilians helping that person.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
And it gave me hope.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
As I'm going down the escalator, the lobby of the
north tower begins to reveal itself to me, and I
could see hundreds of firefighters in their turnout gear with
their heavy equipment up to one hundred pounds of equipment
that they were going to climb with, in their protective gear,
with the yellow stripes on their coats, and it struck
(06:54):
me as funny and ironic because I had to admit
that the cops were right, and that's hard for a
fireman to do, because the cops called us bumblebees. And
now I could see why, because we had hundreds of
firefighters with their stripes and it looked like a hive,
(07:15):
and the cops were.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Right, While in the North Tower, Brown also ran into
a longtime firefighter friend who was preparing to head upstairs
to risk his life trying to save people he never met.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
I got to the bottom of the escalator and right
next to me was a bumblebee and I looked up
at his face and it was my friend, Firefighter Chris
Blackwell from Rescue three, the Bronx Harlem Heavy Rescue Special
Operations Elite firefighters, and I had worked there with firefighter
Chris Blackwell for seven years, so we were like real brothers.
(07:52):
His gear was all burned up. We were very busy
and responding to fires and emergencies. His helmet was so
burned up, sat a little crooking on his head, and
we didn't really follow the rules that much. As long
as the fires went out and we saved people, Headquarters
didn't bother us. And besides being this badass Bronx Harlem
(08:15):
Special Operations fireman Chris Blackwell, when he went home to
Connecticut where he lived, was a paramedic, so all he
did with his whole life was help other people. In fact,
whenever we had, especially a child patient from a fire,
a building collapse, a car crash, we always tried to
put that child in Chris's hands, because we knew in
(08:37):
his hands that child would have the best chance at living.
And Chris and I always greeted each other the same way,
no matter the disaster. So when I got to the
bottom of the escalator, I saw the bumblebee and I
looked up at his face. We both came right across
from each other, and we both came to attention, and
he made a big, long arc with his right hand,
(09:00):
and he took the unlit stub of a cigar out
of his mouth and he put it back down to
his side, and we both leaned in from our waist
and kissed on the lips, came back to attention, and
he put the cigar back in his mouth, and we
did that for two reasons. We did that because we
loved each other like real brothers. But it also freaked
(09:22):
out all the firemen and the cops around us, and
we loved watching their reaction when we did it. And
after we did that, Chris said to me, Timmy, this
is really bad. I said, I know, Chris, be careful.
I love you. I love you too, And he turned
around and he went in the stairwell and he went
up to save the lives of people. He didn't know why,
(09:47):
because he had taken an oath fifteen years earlier. And
in that oath it says that he's willing to give
his life for his neighbor, his friend, and even and
so in this moment, firefighter Chris Blackwell had the choice
(10:09):
to make whether he would turn around, take off his
helmet and go home to his loving wife and children,
or if he would go up that stairwell. And the
likelihood is that he would not come back. And you
know what he did. He chose to go up this stairwell.
He chose to fulfill the oath he took fifteen years earlier.
(10:29):
That was just words, this is in action. Indeed, Chris
made that choice. And the more I thought about that,
the more I understood what that last act of Chris's
life was. It was an act of the greatest love,
because that's what it says in the Bible. That's what
(10:52):
every New York City police officer, port authority police officer,
New York City fireman, paramedics, some state court officers, and others.
That's what they did that day. Every one of them,
at the end of their life, performed acts of the
greatest love, and those are the stories I want to tell.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
That's retired New York City firefighter Timothy Brown, who served
as Supervisor of Field Operations in Mayor Rudy Giuliani's Office
of Emergency Management. On September eleventh, two thousand and one,
when we come back, terrorist is a second plane to
strike the South Tower. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is
Veterans Chronicles.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
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Speaker 1 (12:37):
This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
this edition is Timothy Brown. He is a retired New
York City firefighter who served as supervisor of Field Operations
in Mayor Ruddy Giuliani's Office of Emergency Management. On September eleventh,
two thousand and one, you just heard how Brown responded
to a plane striking the North Tower. In the ensuing moments,
(12:59):
he rushed to the sea, assessed the situation, and witnessed
firefighters already running upstairs into the fire and smoke to
save lives. But things were about to get much more
chaotic because just seventeen minutes after the first plane struck,
another plane crashed into the South Tower. And, like it
was for most of us, when the news reached the
(13:20):
firefighters in the North Tower, the entire mood and mindset
changed instantly. They knew it was terrorists. Attacking our nation.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
I didn't know that it was a terrorist attack. I
didn't hear the second plane hit or see anything, but
a fireman came running in the lobby screaming to us.
Then another plane hit the South Tower. That's how I
first heard of it. And the mood in the lobby
of the North Tower changed immediately, and it got very
(13:52):
sober and somber. The realization that we were under terrorist
attack was just known. Now have to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
That plane was the United Airlines Flight one seventy five.
Brown was soon on his way over to the South
Tower to size up what resources would be needed there.
It was immediately clear that many more firefighters would be
needed there, and before many other firefighters were able to
arrive at the scene, Brown found himself trying to help
office workers trap in a terrifying predicament.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
And we huddled up like the leadership of the city. Really, police,
fire paramedics got together and we had a little powwow,
and it was decided that Assistant Chief Donald Burns from
the Fire department and myself from the Mayor's office would
go to the South Tower and open up that command
post for the second biggest disaster of our lifetimes. That
(14:47):
was happening at the exact same time as the first
biggest disaster of our lifetimes. Chief Donald Burns forty one
years in the New York City Fire Department. If you
looked up Irish fire chief in the dictionary, it would
be his mug with the red, rosy cheeks and the
piercing blue eyes and the lines of experience permanently etched
(15:10):
in his face from his forty one years of being
out on freezing cold winter nights commanding major fires. He's
a good friend of mine and probably the most respected
fire chief in the New York City Fire Department at
that time. And we ran to the South Tower together
and I asked him Chief what he needed me to do.
He said, Timmy, there's not much you and I can do.
(15:33):
I've ordered a fifth alarm for our building, but the
first five alarms are going to that one, so it's
going to take ours a while to get here, so
we're on our own. Do your best and be careful.
And I saluted him, and a woman came running over
to us screaming that there were people trapped in an elevator,
and so Chief gave me the nod go with her.
(15:54):
He went to the command post. I followed her to
this horrific elevator scene where the hoistway doors were opened
so you could see into the shaft, but the elevator
car had not come down all the way, and just
at the top of the opening, you could see the
bottom of the elevator car like six inches. You could
just see in, and you could see all the people's
(16:15):
feet who were trapped, and I remember seeing the men's
suit jacket and dress shirts as they were bending down
trying to open that six inch gap up so that
they could get out.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Brown soon learned more horrifying details about what the people
on that elevator had just been through and what serious
dangers they still faced while they were trapped. He also
shares the story of heroism from another firefighter who came
to help rescue those people.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
They were screaming for two reasons. I didn't know the
first reason that elevator car had free fallen seventy floors
because when Flight one seventy five came in and snapped
the cable, and so these poor people had just taken
this ride thinking they were dead when it hit the
concrete pit, but the emergency brakes locked on and stopped
(17:06):
it before it hit the concrete, just like they.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Were supposed to.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
But now those emergency brakes are locked onto that car
and they're not going to let go, and there's no
human strength that's going to move that car. In addition
to this, the elevator pit below them was full of
jet fuel that had fallen down the shaft, and the
jet fuel was on fire, and so they were getting burned,
and they were desperately trying to get out of this elevator,
and what they needed was a real fireman, not a
(17:33):
Mayor's office guy. In my horror at what I was seeing,
in my frustration that I couldn't fix it right away
for them, I turned to my right and I hit
a bumblebee, and I looked over and I looked up
at his face again, and it was Firefighter Mike Lynch
from Latter four, who I knew, and I think he
(17:54):
saw what was happening, but he also saw the look
on my face, the look of horror that I had
in my face, and with great confidence, he squeezed my
right shoulder and he said, Timmy, I got it. I
later tell Firefighter Michael Lynch's widowed Denise, this story, and
I tell her when he said, Timmy, I got it
(18:16):
to me. He may as well have had angel wings
coming out of his back, because he's the angel that
just appeared to save the lives of those poor people.
Firefighter Michael Lynch. The angel winds up saving three women
out of that elevator, using.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
The spreaders for the jaws of life.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
To separate that opening up, and there are three women
who identify his photo. Was saying, Yeah, that's the guy
that saved me before the South Tower collapsed and killed
him and the rest of them.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
That's retired New York City firefighter Timothy Brown, who served
as Supervisor of Field Operations in Mayor Rudy Giuliani's Office
of Emergency Management. On September eleventh, two thousand and one.
Still to come, Brown takes us through the horror of
being inside the South Tower as it collapsed, his miraculous survival,
the collapse of the North Tower, and much more. I'm
(19:12):
Greg Corumbus, and this is Veterans' Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles.
I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest is Timothy Brown, a retired
New York City firefighter who served as supervisor of Field
Operations in Mayor Rudy Giuliani's Office of Emergency Management on
September eleventh, two thousand and one. Brown says, after the
(19:34):
terrorists flew the planes into the towers, Mayor Giuliani asked
whether it was possible for the buildings to collapse. The
fire chief addressed that question and offered a grim assessment
of who could and could not be saved in the
twin towers.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
So the Mayor actually asked Chief Downey, our chief of
Special Operations, his opinion, because Chief Downy was an expert
in America on these kinds of situations, and in our
experience previously, high rise fires can burn up a number
(20:10):
of floors and then the fire goes out, the building
doesn't collapse.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
That's kind of what we thought.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
The chief told the Mayor, we can rescue everybody below
the point of impact, and then there was a moment
of silence as everyone realized that what he was saying
is we probably can't get the people at or above
the point of impact. In fact, he was right about that.
(20:37):
The North Tower, no one survived at or above the
point of impact because all the stairwells were compromised. Eighteen
people in the South Tower lived at or above the
point of impact because of a young twenty four year
old civilian trader named Wells Crowther who found a stairwell
(20:58):
that was open, and because he he was a volunteer firefighter,
he laid in the stairwell and didn't run and he yelled, people,
if you can hear my voice, come to me, and
he got eighteen people into that stairwell and helped them
get out. So basically, almost everyone at or above the
point of impact was lost.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
As we all know now, the chief was wrong about
whether the towers could or would come down. Less than
an hour after the second plane hit the South Tower,
that tower collapsed with Timothy Brown still in the lobby.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
There were so many people around me that were so
close to me who didn't make it. I hear stories
about different firefighters and it's amazing how similar the stories
are and how they line up. I'm a highly trained
collapse rescue fireman. I went to lots of building collapses
(21:53):
in New York City and we learned from them and
we put it in our training. I know two things.
I know that you can never outrun a building collapse.
It happens too fast. It will catch you and kill you.
So what they teach us is you need an immediate
cover over your head, structural cover. And I knew that
(22:15):
I had just myself in three paramedics. Who were the
paramedics or the reason I was going back in. I
was bringing them back in because we had lots of
patients in the lobby of the South tower. We had
just run by a door in the adjoining Marriotte Hotel
three World Trade Center. The door was to the tall
Ship's restaurant, which was the restaurant in the lobby of
(22:37):
the hotel, and I know we had just run by
that door. It was the closest door in an adjoining
building that I knew of, and so I yelled to
them follow me, and we went right in that door
because I wanted to get that building over our heads
to protect us.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
We ran in that door.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
It was as clear as a bell, and immediately, like
snap of your fingers, the hotel is now collapsing because
the tower is collapsing on top of the hotel, as
you can see in a video.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
And now the.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Hotel is collapsing around us, and everything that wasn't nailed
down was blowing in our face. I hit the ground
started crawling. You couldn't hear, you couldn't see. I compare
the noise to like being on the sitting on the
tarmac at Jfkare Report, surrounded by seven forty sevens that
(23:29):
are full blasts, and every time you thought it was
the loudest thing you've ever heard in your life, it
would increase by ten. You couldn't see, you couldn't breathe.
The dust was so thick, and all I can think
is it's over. But I'm going to try to survive.
I don't want to die.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
I want to live.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
And I know that if I can find a vertical column,
that's what I'm going to hold on to as hard
and tight as I can. And so I'm crawling on
all fours and I found a column. Or I'm a
faithful guy. I think I was led to the column
and it was really big, and I wrapped my arms
(24:12):
around it, and the wind was so strong that it
lifted me up off the ground. My helmet blew off
my head, and I'm trying to hold on to this
pillar in this wind tunnel with all my strength. And
this was my moment, This is the moment I had
(24:32):
my conversation with God, and I said, I'm not afraid
to come to you. In fact, I look forward to
it one day, but please, please, please not now. I
just want to tell I want to hold my family
one more time and tell them I love them, and
then I'll come sit by your side. But please, And
(24:56):
within seconds the wind stopped. I was alive. I bounced
around in there a bit, but the building was collapsed now,
so nothing was what it was. There's no exit, there's
no there's debris everywhere, you can't see, choking on the dust.
(25:20):
I wind up finding a bunch of people, civilians and
firefighters who they were rescuing, who were trapped behind a metal,
rolled down gate, and so we lifted that gate up,
and that group of people and myself stayed together. And
one of the ladies in the group saw a fireman
(25:41):
on the outside waving his flashlight because it was still
pitch black with the dust, and he was waving his
flashlight because he saw us in the rubble, and so
we all went toward his light and we lived.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
After living through such an incredibly traumatic event, Brown wasn't
sure just how accurate his memories of the day actually were,
but now he believes those memories are spot on thanks
to meeting so many other people with very similar stories.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Anyone who was in that group, if they hear this story,
will nod their head and say I was one of
the people in that group, because they would have the
same story. I came across a firefighter whose.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Chief father.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Was in that space also, and his father relayed the
story to him. He subsequently dies from nine to eleven illness.
But when his son heard ME tell the story, he
was incredulous because it was the same exact story his
father told. And I never met this young man before,
and I never talked to his father about it, but
(26:49):
the stories were the same, So I have some confidence
that I'm rightly remembering most of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
After weaving through the rubble with some others who had
miraculously survived the collapse of a one and ten story skyscraper,
Brown staggered away from the World Trade Center, not yet
thinking clearly at all. But that changed as the North
Tower suddenly fell.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
I mean, I think I don't know the time of
the time between the collapses. I think it was fifteen
or twenty minutes when I got out of the rubble
of the South tower, collapse. I was in that fight
flight mode and I wanted to live, and for some
crazy reason, I thought it would be a good idea
to run to the Hudson River and jump in and
(27:33):
swim to New Jersey. That's never a good idea unless
you're a Navy seal. Maybe, but it's never a good idea.
But you know, your mind isn't thinking at this point,
and I wanted to live. I had an opportunity. Like
I thought, I was dead in there, but now I
had a chance. And I remember trying to go through
one of the buildings to get to the other side
(27:55):
of it to get to the Hudson River, and the
doors were locks, and it was thick, thick glass, and
I was smashing on the glass trying to break it,
and I found a chair and I was trying to
smash the glass, and I was out of my mind.
But on my radio I heard my boss, Calvin screaming
for help. He was trapped in the rubble, and that
(28:16):
snapped me back to reality, and so I ran up
the West Side Highway to where he was trapped up
around V C Street and they already had him out
of the rubble. The fireman had gotten to him before me,
and he was sitting on a piece of steel, and
he was a dark skinned black man, and he was
the same color as me. It was an interesting thing
(28:38):
that day that skin color didn't matter at all, because
we were all gray, you know, And that's how I
remember him. The paramedics were already with him, and so
his boss, one star NYPD Chief John Odermatt said, Timmy,
he's okay, Mayor wants us to get with him.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
We've got to go. The p have him.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
So John and I started running north up West Broadway,
and the woman behind me, as everybody's running, she started screaming.
And I turned around and I saw the antennae of
the North Tower. It just kicked over a little bit
(29:24):
and then went down, and I knew that's where hundreds
of my friends were, my colleagues. Everyone kept running because
we wanted to live. And then the next thing was
the you know that cloud like you see on the video,
that rolling cloud of dust and debris is just rolling
(29:46):
at us like a monster. And then we started getting pelted,
and I was able to sneak around the corner to
get out of the main debris field. I definitely survived
the South Tower collapse. I wouldn't say so much to
the north. I got overrun by that cloud and debris
(30:07):
and stuff, But I really wasn't in the middle of
the debris field, I guess.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
And then I know.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
At eleven sixteen am, I found a landline that worked,
and I called my younger brother to tell him I
was alive, because he thought my family thought I was dead.
And it winds up on the front cover of the
Providence Journal in Providence, Rhode Island, when they interviewed me,
and the quote is I'm alive, but everyone else is dead.
(30:36):
And one hundred of them were my friends, including my
two best friends, Captain Terry Hatton and Captain Patty Brown,
and Fireman l Lynch the Angel, and Fireman Blackwell, who
fulfilled his oath, and the list of names goes on
and on and on.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Brown firmly believes his life was spared to tell the
heroic story of New York City firefighters and other first
responders that day.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Every firefighter they responded that morning, to the North Tower,
to the South Tower, even firefighters who were on medical leave.
Every one of them wanted to run up those stairs.
I wanted to run up those stairs. It was not
my job. My job was to stay in the lobby.
I'll give you an example of one of the firefighters
(31:27):
who was on medical leave that morning, and he was
sitting in our medical office in downtown Brooklyn across the
Brooklyn Bridge, right across from the World Trade Center. There's
a little TV in that office. And when the firefighters
who are on medical leave in that office saw what
was happening, they all went and signed back in full
(31:48):
duty and they ran across the bridge to help. Firefighter
Pete Beefeld from latter four to two in the South Bronx,
who was my friend, went into the local firehouse. He
borrowed another firefighters gear and he took off all his valuables,
his wallet and everything, and he wrote a note that said,
this is firefighterte be Filled from latter four to two.
(32:10):
I borrowed your gear. These are my valuables. Please tell
my family I love them. And he left that note
in the little cubby hole and he put on the
gear and he ran up the stairs of the South
Tower and he didn't come back. He knew it. That's
why he wrote the note. That's why he took off
his valuables, and that's why he wrote in the note,
please tell my family I love them, and you know what,
(32:32):
he still did it. He was on medical leave. He
didn't have to participate at all. And there were a
lot of guys that did that. Every firefighter that jumped
on the truck, whether they were the night tour or
the day tour. Because that happened right our change of shift,
our Special Operations Command was wiped out that morning. Because
(32:53):
every one of those firefighters from the rescue companies, the
squad companies, our elite firefighters, one hundred of the three
hundred and forty three were from our Special Operations Command.
Every one of them ran up the stairwells. That is
the commitment of the FDNY.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Brown shared his story with us at the twenty twenty
four American Veterans Center Conference. He says he came to
that event to thank the veterans who served and sacrificed
so much in the wars following nine to eleven.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
I came here to tell the stories and thank the
vets who have fought for us, who have volunteered to
put on the uniform, A lot of them because of
nine to eleven, nearly eight thousand of the global war
and terror vets gave their lives for us, for my brothers.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Many came back.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Without arms or legs, with brain injury, with post traumatic stress.
And what I want them to know is we are
grateful and thankful to them for picking up that flag
and saying to us, I'll take it from here, because
we were in the rubble and they came to our side,
(34:14):
and they picked up that American flag, and they served
justice for us all around the world. And a lot
of people in the intelligence community who work in the shadows,
who have done work for us that we will never
hear about and we'll never know who did it, and
(34:35):
so we are thankful to all of them for serving
proper justice.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
For us.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
That's retired New York City firefighter Timothy Brown, who served
as supervisor of Field Operations in Mayor Rudy Giuliani's Office
of Emergency Management. On September eleventh, two thousand and one.
I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this
(35:09):
is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles,
a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information,
please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You can also follow
the American Veterans Center on Facebook and on Twitter We're
at AVC update. Subscribe to the American Veterans Center YouTube
(35:30):
channel for full oral histories and special features, and of
course please subscribe to the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you
get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and please join
us next time for Veterans Chronicles
Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
this edition is retired New York City firefighter Timothy Brown.
On September eleventh, two thousand and one, he served as
supervisor of Field Operations in Mayor Rudy Giuliani's Office of
Emergency Management. When Al Qaeda terrorists attacked the United States.
He was in the lobby of the South Tower of
(00:34):
the World Trade Center when it collapsed, but he miraculously survived.
The morning of September eleventh, two thousand and one started
like any other day as Brown arrived at his office
adjacent to the World Trade Center just before eight am.
He grabbed some breakfast and was scouring the morning papers
for any news that might impact his office when he
(00:54):
learned that a plane had struck the North Tower.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
The power went out in our building, World Trade Center,
modern high rise building with many city, state, and federal
agencies in the building. It was kind of a government building,
and it would be a bit unusual for the power
to completely go out in one of these high rise buildings.
So I knew something happened, I didn't know what. In
(01:18):
that five seconds it took for the backup generators to
kick in and bring the power back.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
The people who were.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Sitting at the front window, the glass looking at the
North tower kind of all at once jumped up and
started running toward the exit. I actually had to grab
one young lady by the shoulders and kind of shake
her back to reality and look in her eyes, and
I said what happened, and she decided a plane hit
(01:46):
the tower because they could see it. I did not
see it or hear it, so this was the first
I knew of it.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Brown immediately headed over to the North Tower to survey
the scene and assessed damage.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I went to the twenty third floor to office, and
I ensured that my peers, two of them, one who
ran our watch command we call it our listening posts,
make sure that he understood or we were doing full
activation of our emergency operations center. He gave me the
thumbs up. I went next door into the emergency operations center,
(02:20):
and the supervisor there gave me the thumbs up. And
it was my job to go to the scene of
the disaster, and not to be the incident commander, but
to assist the incident commander.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I went to my car down on.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
VC Street, opened the trunk, took off my tie and
dress shirt, put on a windbreaker that said Mayor's Office
on it, my heavy leather boots, and they made us
wear these stupid green helmets so people knew who we were.
And we're trained as firefighters that you always try and
look at three sides of a building that's under destruction,
so you have a current size up, and I wanted
(02:52):
to take a minute just to do that before I
went into the building. In order to do that, I
had to go from the street level VC Street up
an exterior staircase to the plaza level that was the
plaza between the whole complex. I ran up that concrete staircase,
and this becomes an important part of the story because
later on, this concrete staircase becomes iconic and it is
(03:16):
the biggest, heaviest artifact in the museum, and they call
it the Survivors staircase because later on in the story,
hundreds or thousands of civilians will run down this staircase
to live. But what I'm doing is what our uniformed
services do, our police officers, firefighters, paramedics, military, We run
toward it.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
And that's what I did. Very early on.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
I looked out over the plaza and it was strewn
with debris, building parts, plain parts on fire, black smoke,
white smoke, and if you remember in the video, all
the paper fluttering down that got knocked out of the
upper floors. So it really did did look like armageddon.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
While debris lettered the grind, Brown was not able to
get a good look at the hole in the North Tower.
From his vantage point, we would soon learn that the
first plane was American Airlines Flight eleven, the first plane
hijacked by Al Kaeda terrorists. For the moment, like most
other people there, Brown assumed a small plane had struck
the building.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
So when I went up the concrete staircase and got
around where I could see more of the North Tower,
I looked up and you couldn't see much. It was
eighty or ninety stories up. It's very far away. I
didn't have binoculars, and you couldn't tell how from my
vantage point, you couldn't tell how big the hole was
where the plane went in. I think what started to
(04:39):
change my mind about the size of the plane, because I,
like me like I was going back to previous knowledge.
Other planes had hit buildings in New York, but aside
from the Empire State building. They were small. They were
helicopters or the small planes. So I was just kind
of imagining that it was assessinaw or you know, the
pilot had a heart attack. But I think when I
(05:00):
looked out over the plaza and I saw all the
burning debris is when I questioned my assumption that it
was a small plane. I still had no idea that
it was a big passenger plane intentionally flown into the
North Tower. I never had that realization until the second
(05:21):
plane hit the South Tower, and you know, once that happened,
we knew, but you know, people watching on TV probably
had a better idea of what looked like than I
did because I was under it.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Next, Timothy Brown entered the North Tower and watched a
surprisingly calm and orderly evacuation. Firefighters had already arrived on scene,
and we're putting on their gear before heading upstairs, and
that gave Brown a fleeting moment of levity.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
I went into the North Tower, which was the first
one to be hit at that plaza level, and I
got inside and I had to go down one level
to the street level where the command post was. There
was an escalator right there, and there were hundreds of
civilians funneling getting onto that escalator to go. They're being
(06:09):
directed that way to go down and down another one
and go underground and then be able to get out
through the underground mall. And I noticed what they were
not doing. They were not pushing and screaming, trampling each other.
In fact, for every person who was obese, pregnant, disabled, injured,
there were four or five civilians helping that person.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
And it gave me hope.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
As I'm going down the escalator, the lobby of the
north tower begins to reveal itself to me, and I
could see hundreds of firefighters in their turnout gear with
their heavy equipment up to one hundred pounds of equipment
that they were going to climb with, in their protective gear,
with the yellow stripes on their coats, and it struck
(06:54):
me as funny and ironic because I had to admit
that the cops were right, and that's hard for a
fireman to do, because the cops called us bumblebees. And
now I could see why, because we had hundreds of
firefighters with their stripes and it looked like a hive,
(07:15):
and the cops were.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Right, While in the North Tower, Brown also ran into
a longtime firefighter friend who was preparing to head upstairs
to risk his life trying to save people he never met.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
I got to the bottom of the escalator and right
next to me was a bumblebee and I looked up
at his face and it was my friend, Firefighter Chris
Blackwell from Rescue three, the Bronx Harlem Heavy Rescue Special
Operations Elite firefighters, and I had worked there with firefighter
Chris Blackwell for seven years, so we were like real brothers.
(07:52):
His gear was all burned up. We were very busy
and responding to fires and emergencies. His helmet was so
burned up, sat a little crooking on his head, and
we didn't really follow the rules that much. As long
as the fires went out and we saved people, Headquarters
didn't bother us. And besides being this badass Bronx Harlem
(08:15):
Special Operations fireman Chris Blackwell, when he went home to
Connecticut where he lived, was a paramedic, so all he
did with his whole life was help other people. In fact,
whenever we had, especially a child patient from a fire,
a building collapse, a car crash, we always tried to
put that child in Chris's hands, because we knew in
(08:37):
his hands that child would have the best chance at living.
And Chris and I always greeted each other the same way,
no matter the disaster. So when I got to the
bottom of the escalator, I saw the bumblebee and I
looked up at his face. We both came right across
from each other, and we both came to attention, and
he made a big, long arc with his right hand,
(09:00):
and he took the unlit stub of a cigar out
of his mouth and he put it back down to
his side, and we both leaned in from our waist
and kissed on the lips, came back to attention, and
he put the cigar back in his mouth, and we
did that for two reasons. We did that because we
loved each other like real brothers. But it also freaked
(09:22):
out all the firemen and the cops around us, and
we loved watching their reaction when we did it. And
after we did that, Chris said to me, Timmy, this
is really bad. I said, I know, Chris, be careful.
I love you. I love you too, And he turned
around and he went in the stairwell and he went
up to save the lives of people. He didn't know why,
(09:47):
because he had taken an oath fifteen years earlier. And
in that oath it says that he's willing to give
his life for his neighbor, his friend, and even and
so in this moment, firefighter Chris Blackwell had the choice
(10:09):
to make whether he would turn around, take off his
helmet and go home to his loving wife and children,
or if he would go up that stairwell. And the
likelihood is that he would not come back. And you
know what he did. He chose to go up this stairwell.
He chose to fulfill the oath he took fifteen years earlier.
(10:29):
That was just words, this is in action. Indeed, Chris
made that choice. And the more I thought about that,
the more I understood what that last act of Chris's
life was. It was an act of the greatest love,
because that's what it says in the Bible. That's what
(10:52):
every New York City police officer, port authority police officer,
New York City fireman, paramedics, some state court officers, and others.
That's what they did that day. Every one of them,
at the end of their life, performed acts of the
greatest love, and those are the stories I want to tell.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
That's retired New York City firefighter Timothy Brown, who served
as Supervisor of Field Operations in Mayor Rudy Giuliani's Office
of Emergency Management. On September eleventh, two thousand and one,
when we come back, terrorist is a second plane to
strike the South Tower. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is
Veterans Chronicles.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
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(12:17):
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Speaker 1 (12:37):
This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
this edition is Timothy Brown. He is a retired New
York City firefighter who served as supervisor of Field Operations
in Mayor Ruddy Giuliani's Office of Emergency Management. On September eleventh,
two thousand and one, you just heard how Brown responded
to a plane striking the North Tower. In the ensuing moments,
(12:59):
he rushed to the sea, assessed the situation, and witnessed
firefighters already running upstairs into the fire and smoke to
save lives. But things were about to get much more
chaotic because just seventeen minutes after the first plane struck,
another plane crashed into the South Tower. And, like it
was for most of us, when the news reached the
(13:20):
firefighters in the North Tower, the entire mood and mindset
changed instantly. They knew it was terrorists. Attacking our nation.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
I didn't know that it was a terrorist attack. I
didn't hear the second plane hit or see anything, but
a fireman came running in the lobby screaming to us.
Then another plane hit the South Tower. That's how I
first heard of it. And the mood in the lobby
of the North Tower changed immediately, and it got very
(13:52):
sober and somber. The realization that we were under terrorist
attack was just known. Now have to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
That plane was the United Airlines Flight one seventy five.
Brown was soon on his way over to the South
Tower to size up what resources would be needed there.
It was immediately clear that many more firefighters would be
needed there, and before many other firefighters were able to
arrive at the scene, Brown found himself trying to help
office workers trap in a terrifying predicament.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
And we huddled up like the leadership of the city. Really, police,
fire paramedics got together and we had a little powwow,
and it was decided that Assistant Chief Donald Burns from
the Fire department and myself from the Mayor's office would
go to the South Tower and open up that command
post for the second biggest disaster of our lifetimes. That
(14:47):
was happening at the exact same time as the first
biggest disaster of our lifetimes. Chief Donald Burns forty one
years in the New York City Fire Department. If you
looked up Irish fire chief in the dictionary, it would
be his mug with the red, rosy cheeks and the
piercing blue eyes and the lines of experience permanently etched
(15:10):
in his face from his forty one years of being
out on freezing cold winter nights commanding major fires. He's
a good friend of mine and probably the most respected
fire chief in the New York City Fire Department at
that time. And we ran to the South Tower together
and I asked him Chief what he needed me to do.
He said, Timmy, there's not much you and I can do.
(15:33):
I've ordered a fifth alarm for our building, but the
first five alarms are going to that one, so it's
going to take ours a while to get here, so
we're on our own. Do your best and be careful.
And I saluted him, and a woman came running over
to us screaming that there were people trapped in an elevator,
and so Chief gave me the nod go with her.
(15:54):
He went to the command post. I followed her to
this horrific elevator scene where the hoistway doors were opened
so you could see into the shaft, but the elevator
car had not come down all the way, and just
at the top of the opening, you could see the
bottom of the elevator car like six inches. You could
just see in, and you could see all the people's
(16:15):
feet who were trapped, and I remember seeing the men's
suit jacket and dress shirts as they were bending down
trying to open that six inch gap up so that
they could get out.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Brown soon learned more horrifying details about what the people
on that elevator had just been through and what serious
dangers they still faced while they were trapped. He also
shares the story of heroism from another firefighter who came
to help rescue those people.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
They were screaming for two reasons. I didn't know the
first reason that elevator car had free fallen seventy floors
because when Flight one seventy five came in and snapped
the cable, and so these poor people had just taken
this ride thinking they were dead when it hit the
concrete pit, but the emergency brakes locked on and stopped
(17:06):
it before it hit the concrete, just like they.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Were supposed to.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
But now those emergency brakes are locked onto that car
and they're not going to let go, and there's no
human strength that's going to move that car. In addition
to this, the elevator pit below them was full of
jet fuel that had fallen down the shaft, and the
jet fuel was on fire, and so they were getting burned,
and they were desperately trying to get out of this elevator,
and what they needed was a real fireman, not a
(17:33):
Mayor's office guy. In my horror at what I was seeing,
in my frustration that I couldn't fix it right away
for them, I turned to my right and I hit
a bumblebee, and I looked over and I looked up
at his face again, and it was Firefighter Mike Lynch
from Latter four, who I knew, and I think he
(17:54):
saw what was happening, but he also saw the look
on my face, the look of horror that I had
in my face, and with great confidence, he squeezed my
right shoulder and he said, Timmy, I got it. I
later tell Firefighter Michael Lynch's widowed Denise, this story, and
I tell her when he said, Timmy, I got it
(18:16):
to me. He may as well have had angel wings
coming out of his back, because he's the angel that
just appeared to save the lives of those poor people.
Firefighter Michael Lynch. The angel winds up saving three women
out of that elevator, using.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
The spreaders for the jaws of life.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
To separate that opening up, and there are three women
who identify his photo. Was saying, Yeah, that's the guy
that saved me before the South Tower collapsed and killed
him and the rest of them.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
That's retired New York City firefighter Timothy Brown, who served
as Supervisor of Field Operations in Mayor Rudy Giuliani's Office
of Emergency Management. On September eleventh, two thousand and one.
Still to come, Brown takes us through the horror of
being inside the South Tower as it collapsed, his miraculous survival,
the collapse of the North Tower, and much more. I'm
(19:12):
Greg Corumbus, and this is Veterans' Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles.
I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest is Timothy Brown, a retired
New York City firefighter who served as supervisor of Field
Operations in Mayor Rudy Giuliani's Office of Emergency Management on
September eleventh, two thousand and one. Brown says, after the
(19:34):
terrorists flew the planes into the towers, Mayor Giuliani asked
whether it was possible for the buildings to collapse. The
fire chief addressed that question and offered a grim assessment
of who could and could not be saved in the
twin towers.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
So the Mayor actually asked Chief Downey, our chief of
Special Operations, his opinion, because Chief Downy was an expert
in America on these kinds of situations, and in our
experience previously, high rise fires can burn up a number
(20:10):
of floors and then the fire goes out, the building
doesn't collapse.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
That's kind of what we thought.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
The chief told the Mayor, we can rescue everybody below
the point of impact, and then there was a moment
of silence as everyone realized that what he was saying
is we probably can't get the people at or above
the point of impact. In fact, he was right about that.
(20:37):
The North Tower, no one survived at or above the
point of impact because all the stairwells were compromised. Eighteen
people in the South Tower lived at or above the
point of impact because of a young twenty four year
old civilian trader named Wells Crowther who found a stairwell
(20:58):
that was open, and because he he was a volunteer firefighter,
he laid in the stairwell and didn't run and he yelled, people,
if you can hear my voice, come to me, and
he got eighteen people into that stairwell and helped them
get out. So basically, almost everyone at or above the
point of impact was lost.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
As we all know now, the chief was wrong about
whether the towers could or would come down. Less than
an hour after the second plane hit the South Tower,
that tower collapsed with Timothy Brown still in the lobby.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
There were so many people around me that were so
close to me who didn't make it. I hear stories
about different firefighters and it's amazing how similar the stories
are and how they line up. I'm a highly trained
collapse rescue fireman. I went to lots of building collapses
(21:53):
in New York City and we learned from them and
we put it in our training. I know two things.
I know that you can never outrun a building collapse.
It happens too fast. It will catch you and kill you.
So what they teach us is you need an immediate
cover over your head, structural cover. And I knew that
(22:15):
I had just myself in three paramedics. Who were the
paramedics or the reason I was going back in. I
was bringing them back in because we had lots of
patients in the lobby of the South tower. We had
just run by a door in the adjoining Marriotte Hotel
three World Trade Center. The door was to the tall
Ship's restaurant, which was the restaurant in the lobby of
(22:37):
the hotel, and I know we had just run by
that door. It was the closest door in an adjoining
building that I knew of, and so I yelled to
them follow me, and we went right in that door
because I wanted to get that building over our heads
to protect us.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
We ran in that door.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
It was as clear as a bell, and immediately, like
snap of your fingers, the hotel is now collapsing because
the tower is collapsing on top of the hotel, as
you can see in a video.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
And now the.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Hotel is collapsing around us, and everything that wasn't nailed
down was blowing in our face. I hit the ground
started crawling. You couldn't hear, you couldn't see. I compare
the noise to like being on the sitting on the
tarmac at Jfkare Report, surrounded by seven forty sevens that
(23:29):
are full blasts, and every time you thought it was
the loudest thing you've ever heard in your life, it
would increase by ten. You couldn't see, you couldn't breathe.
The dust was so thick, and all I can think
is it's over. But I'm going to try to survive.
I don't want to die.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
I want to live.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
And I know that if I can find a vertical column,
that's what I'm going to hold on to as hard
and tight as I can. And so I'm crawling on
all fours and I found a column. Or I'm a
faithful guy. I think I was led to the column
and it was really big, and I wrapped my arms
(24:12):
around it, and the wind was so strong that it
lifted me up off the ground. My helmet blew off
my head, and I'm trying to hold on to this
pillar in this wind tunnel with all my strength. And
this was my moment, This is the moment I had
(24:32):
my conversation with God, and I said, I'm not afraid
to come to you. In fact, I look forward to
it one day, but please, please, please not now. I
just want to tell I want to hold my family
one more time and tell them I love them, and
then I'll come sit by your side. But please, And
(24:56):
within seconds the wind stopped. I was alive. I bounced
around in there a bit, but the building was collapsed now,
so nothing was what it was. There's no exit, there's
no there's debris everywhere, you can't see, choking on the dust.
(25:20):
I wind up finding a bunch of people, civilians and
firefighters who they were rescuing, who were trapped behind a metal,
rolled down gate, and so we lifted that gate up,
and that group of people and myself stayed together. And
one of the ladies in the group saw a fireman
(25:41):
on the outside waving his flashlight because it was still
pitch black with the dust, and he was waving his
flashlight because he saw us in the rubble, and so
we all went toward his light and we lived.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
After living through such an incredibly traumatic event, Brown wasn't
sure just how accurate his memories of the day actually were,
but now he believes those memories are spot on thanks
to meeting so many other people with very similar stories.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Anyone who was in that group, if they hear this story,
will nod their head and say I was one of
the people in that group, because they would have the
same story. I came across a firefighter whose.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Chief father.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Was in that space also, and his father relayed the
story to him. He subsequently dies from nine to eleven illness.
But when his son heard ME tell the story, he
was incredulous because it was the same exact story his
father told. And I never met this young man before,
and I never talked to his father about it, but
(26:49):
the stories were the same, So I have some confidence
that I'm rightly remembering most of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
After weaving through the rubble with some others who had
miraculously survived the collapse of a one and ten story skyscraper,
Brown staggered away from the World Trade Center, not yet
thinking clearly at all. But that changed as the North
Tower suddenly fell.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
I mean, I think I don't know the time of
the time between the collapses. I think it was fifteen
or twenty minutes when I got out of the rubble
of the South tower, collapse. I was in that fight
flight mode and I wanted to live, and for some
crazy reason, I thought it would be a good idea
to run to the Hudson River and jump in and
(27:33):
swim to New Jersey. That's never a good idea unless
you're a Navy seal. Maybe, but it's never a good idea.
But you know, your mind isn't thinking at this point,
and I wanted to live. I had an opportunity. Like
I thought, I was dead in there, but now I
had a chance. And I remember trying to go through
one of the buildings to get to the other side
(27:55):
of it to get to the Hudson River, and the
doors were locks, and it was thick, thick glass, and
I was smashing on the glass trying to break it,
and I found a chair and I was trying to
smash the glass, and I was out of my mind.
But on my radio I heard my boss, Calvin screaming
for help. He was trapped in the rubble, and that
(28:16):
snapped me back to reality, and so I ran up
the West Side Highway to where he was trapped up
around V C Street and they already had him out
of the rubble. The fireman had gotten to him before me,
and he was sitting on a piece of steel, and
he was a dark skinned black man, and he was
the same color as me. It was an interesting thing
(28:38):
that day that skin color didn't matter at all, because
we were all gray, you know, And that's how I
remember him. The paramedics were already with him, and so
his boss, one star NYPD Chief John Odermatt said, Timmy,
he's okay, Mayor wants us to get with him.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
We've got to go. The p have him.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
So John and I started running north up West Broadway,
and the woman behind me, as everybody's running, she started screaming.
And I turned around and I saw the antennae of
the North Tower. It just kicked over a little bit
(29:24):
and then went down, and I knew that's where hundreds
of my friends were, my colleagues. Everyone kept running because
we wanted to live. And then the next thing was
the you know that cloud like you see on the video,
that rolling cloud of dust and debris is just rolling
(29:46):
at us like a monster. And then we started getting pelted,
and I was able to sneak around the corner to
get out of the main debris field. I definitely survived
the South Tower collapse. I wouldn't say so much to
the north. I got overrun by that cloud and debris
(30:07):
and stuff, But I really wasn't in the middle of
the debris field, I guess.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
And then I know.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
At eleven sixteen am, I found a landline that worked,
and I called my younger brother to tell him I
was alive, because he thought my family thought I was dead.
And it winds up on the front cover of the
Providence Journal in Providence, Rhode Island, when they interviewed me,
and the quote is I'm alive, but everyone else is dead.
(30:36):
And one hundred of them were my friends, including my
two best friends, Captain Terry Hatton and Captain Patty Brown,
and Fireman l Lynch the Angel, and Fireman Blackwell, who
fulfilled his oath, and the list of names goes on
and on and on.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Brown firmly believes his life was spared to tell the
heroic story of New York City firefighters and other first
responders that day.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Every firefighter they responded that morning, to the North Tower,
to the South Tower, even firefighters who were on medical leave.
Every one of them wanted to run up those stairs.
I wanted to run up those stairs. It was not
my job. My job was to stay in the lobby.
I'll give you an example of one of the firefighters
(31:27):
who was on medical leave that morning, and he was
sitting in our medical office in downtown Brooklyn across the
Brooklyn Bridge, right across from the World Trade Center. There's
a little TV in that office. And when the firefighters
who are on medical leave in that office saw what
was happening, they all went and signed back in full
(31:48):
duty and they ran across the bridge to help. Firefighter
Pete Beefeld from latter four to two in the South Bronx,
who was my friend, went into the local firehouse. He
borrowed another firefighters gear and he took off all his valuables,
his wallet and everything, and he wrote a note that said,
this is firefighterte be Filled from latter four to two.
(32:10):
I borrowed your gear. These are my valuables. Please tell
my family I love them. And he left that note
in the little cubby hole and he put on the
gear and he ran up the stairs of the South
Tower and he didn't come back. He knew it. That's
why he wrote the note. That's why he took off
his valuables, and that's why he wrote in the note,
please tell my family I love them, and you know what,
(32:32):
he still did it. He was on medical leave. He
didn't have to participate at all. And there were a
lot of guys that did that. Every firefighter that jumped
on the truck, whether they were the night tour or
the day tour. Because that happened right our change of shift,
our Special Operations Command was wiped out that morning. Because
(32:53):
every one of those firefighters from the rescue companies, the
squad companies, our elite firefighters, one hundred of the three
hundred and forty three were from our Special Operations Command.
Every one of them ran up the stairwells. That is
the commitment of the FDNY.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Brown shared his story with us at the twenty twenty
four American Veterans Center Conference. He says he came to
that event to thank the veterans who served and sacrificed
so much in the wars following nine to eleven.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
I came here to tell the stories and thank the
vets who have fought for us, who have volunteered to
put on the uniform, A lot of them because of
nine to eleven, nearly eight thousand of the global war
and terror vets gave their lives for us, for my brothers.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Many came back.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Without arms or legs, with brain injury, with post traumatic stress.
And what I want them to know is we are
grateful and thankful to them for picking up that flag
and saying to us, I'll take it from here, because
we were in the rubble and they came to our side,
(34:14):
and they picked up that American flag, and they served
justice for us all around the world. And a lot
of people in the intelligence community who work in the shadows,
who have done work for us that we will never
hear about and we'll never know who did it, and
(34:35):
so we are thankful to all of them for serving
proper justice.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
For us.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
That's retired New York City firefighter Timothy Brown, who served
as supervisor of Field Operations in Mayor Rudy Giuliani's Office
of Emergency Management. On September eleventh, two thousand and one.
I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this
(35:09):
is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles,
a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information,
please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You can also follow
the American Veterans Center on Facebook and on Twitter We're
at AVC update. Subscribe to the American Veterans Center YouTube
(35:30):
channel for full oral histories and special features, and of
course please subscribe to the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you
get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and please join
us next time for Veterans Chronicles
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