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December 23, 2024 119 mins
For the final show of 2024, Battalion Chief Phil Parr who served 25 years in the FDNY and has gone on to an equally successful career in government work most notably with FEMA, joins the program for Volume 65 of The Best of The Bravest: Interviews with The FDNY’s Elite.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
You're listening to the Bike Did You Even? Podcast hosted
by media personality and consultant Mike Glow. You're listening to

(01:02):
the best of the Bravest Interviews with the fdnys, a
week two show of the year, and we end it
with an FDNY interview. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen to
this episode three hundred and forty eight of the Mike
the New Aven Podcast, Volume sixty five of the best
of the Bravest Interviews with the fd and Wives Elite,

(01:23):
And I just wanted today a quick thank you to
everybody it's tuned in this year, and I'll talk about
it more at the end of the program, but just briefly,
it's been another great year for the show. Ever since
the show returned from a mini hiatus, and last year
we came back in June of twenty twenty three after
it took six months off, it's been full steam ahead
and it's been a great run. You know, I've thoroughly
enjoyed doing this show for two reasons, well really three.

(01:46):
One the great work that producer Victor has done behind
the scenes, and I'll mention him more towards the end
of the program as well. Too, obviously the great guest
that we've been able to end on the program who
make the show what it is and just as important
as the guests, as I've said before, or are you
the audience? And it's really two and two A and
they're both interchangeable. Without you, guys, the show isn't what
it is. And I've said that before and I'll say

(02:08):
it again. If you're going to do anything involving any
sort of media, you need an audience, and I'm very
fortunate that I have a great audience in you guys.
You've given a lot to this show and you're the
reason why I keep on doing it. So things will
be a little bit different coming up, which i'll talk
about the end of the show. There'll be another hiatus soon,
but not for a bad reason, for a good one,
and you guys should probably guess what that is. But

(02:29):
in the meantime, just wanted to say thank you very much,
and once again, this has been a banner year for
the program, and it was a banner year because of
each and every one of you. So we will run
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thick and thin with this program since the get that
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If you need an elite PI, look no further than
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(04:16):
if you need a PI, look no further than Bill
Ryan and the Ryan Investigative who a proud supporter and
sponsor of the Mike de New Haven Podcast. Quickload to
John Costello, Matt Shirley, Darren dea Friese, and Don Gonzalez.
My next guest is retired FD and Y Battalion chief
whose story career spans over two decades of service to
both New York City and FEMA, where he played a
pivotal role in some of the nation's more significant disasters,

(04:38):
which we'll talk about, most notably the September eleventh, two
thousand and one terrorist attacks. Spent a lot of his
career between Brooklyn and Queens, held a variety of different
ranks in the lead up to Battalion chief. And that
is someone who I heard are our mutual friend Steve
Curse podcast a little while ago. I poached Steve's guest.
Now he's here for this volume sixty five at the
best of the bravest interviews with the fdny's elite. It's

(04:58):
retired fd and wib Italian chief Phil Parr Chief. Welcome.
How are you?

Speaker 3 (05:03):
Thanks Mike, I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
I appreciate having you. So before we get into anything
involved in your career, as I ask every guest, where'd
you grow up and was there an early inclination towards
civil service?

Speaker 3 (05:14):
Interesting? So I grew up in East Flatbush, Knati and Brooklyn.
I didn't really know what I was going to do.
The last thing I thought I would ever be was
a firefighter. I never thought about it. I had one
friend who saw them as a firefighter, and at seventeen
and a half which is about I think I passed
a min of them made by about two weeks. He said,

(05:37):
let's take the test, and it was I guess one
of the four weeks in my life, I was a
phenomenal shape and did well and was hired. So it
was just kind of it was just kind of. It
was interesting. It's something I never really thought about, but
couldn't think of a better career.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
Absolutely, as we'll talk about. And for those of you
in the audience that have any questions, as you all
know by now, submit them and hello Lincoln. Reformer guests
of this show retired out to rescue three of the Bronx.
With that being said, you know, and I've talked about
this before with guys that came on late seventies, early eighties,
you came on seventy nine. The Warriors are generally regarded
this from sixty four to seventy eight, but it's not
like the fires went to put overnight and stopped happening.

(06:16):
Still a lot of fire duty during your generation as well.
And people tend to think about the Bronx in Brooklyn.
Yes they were burning during the Warriors, but that's not
to say the other boroughs didn't have their fair share
of work. So start now in three to ZHO two
in South Jamaica, Queens a lot of fire duty or
was it more other types of emergencies.

Speaker 3 (06:33):
I would say three h two was an extremely busy
house in South Jamaica. You know, it didn't get the
notoriety of the Bronx. You had mostly two story private dwellings.
I'm not going to say we did as much as
they did in Halem or That'stire or those places, but
it was a pretty busy area. Again, you know, the
specific kind of fire doesn't look great on the news.

(06:54):
It's not a sixth story, you know, building with fire
blowing out the six story window, so you don't have
the news there certainly don't have the concentration of people,
at least I was told at the time, which that
to what was interesting and this is not something to
be proud of, but it just shows the amount of
fire duty that area of Queens, South Jamaica led the

(07:16):
nation and buy debts for many, many years. And again
I never looked at statistics that said that, but that
was commonly spoken about in the companies that worked in
that area, and.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
I was gonna in line with that ask you, and
that's an education in and of itself. The guys that
are working there for a long time know that every
probe has somebody or multiple people if they're lucky, that
they can lean on to show them the way in
those earlier seventy nine to eighty one, which encompasses the
entirety of your tenure at that specific company. Who do
you look back on all these years later as having
really tought it?

Speaker 3 (07:50):
I was really really fortunate. It's interesting. Most of the
guys I worked with worked in the Bronx, worked in Brooklyn,
worked in Manhattan, a significant number of world you know,
all through the Some of them worked in the fifties,
the sixties. We had a couple of World War Two vets,
which is interesting because my father was too young to
be in World War Two. I can't think of one

(08:12):
person that I worked with in that house that was
not a mentor for me. I was a young man.
I was twenty one years old. It was once they
see you were willing to do anything, they guarded you
like kind of you know. I had fifty fathers, and
sometimes it was a little you know, when you're a

(08:32):
young man, you get a little upset that everybody's telling
me what to do, but all of them had my
best interests at heart. They were a phenomenal group of guys.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
Now busy house, as you said, But he ended up
leaving for Canarsie in nineteen eighty one. What led to that?
What was the reason for that particular transfer.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
So it's a great, great question and really goes back
to what I was talking about. Before. Everybody was the
same age as my father, or almost the same age
as my father. I think there were two or three
of us that were in our twenties. Some houses, there
was a huge turnover in the FPMY in the late seventies.
Test hadn't been given since seventy three. Seventy seven, they
started hiring again. I think between seventy seven and eighty two,

(09:13):
probably sixty percent of the job changed, and so there
were some houses that had twenty young guys. I went
to a house that had older firefighters, or only two
or three of us that went there. That house didn't
go undergo a major change until the eighties. But I
remember getting detailed to seventy five, another great firehouse, and

(09:34):
everybody there was young. Everybody was in their twenties. We
had a job in the morning. We came back in
the afternoon. We played football, we played basketball, and I
was like, wow, this is a lot of fun. And
there was no slight to those men in three or
two and a lot of one fifty five phenomenal mentors.
They taught me a huge amount. But I wanted to

(09:56):
go where the guys were a little younger, and I
ended up in the neighborhood. I grew up in enough,
which is two five.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
Not counting your time as a fire officer, of course,
strictly as a firefighter prior to that, that was where
you spent the most time. You had the two years
of course in three zero two, then you had the
six years here. And like I said, CANARSI, it's not
just where you're working, which is high intensity enough and
high octane enough with two five, seven and one seventy,
but you had other truck companies in the surrounding area
that were very high before you had one oh three,

(10:27):
you had one seventy four, you had one twenty. So
I don't know if you had the distinction of working
in both if you went across the floor, but if
you did, let's talk about well, well, first we'll focus
on engine work. What did you love most about engine working?
What was the position you were most commonly on?

Speaker 3 (10:42):
So interesting, So I'm going to talk about so my
first three years that I was in the engine. First
I was in three ZO two, then I transferred to
two fifty seven, and the next year I'm going to
course the floor to one seventy. Uh In my career,
I would say, there is nothing more satisfying than putting
out of fire. That is, and I was really fortunate
again the older guys they had been through the war years.

(11:03):
My captain in three to zero two, who I did
my best to mimic when I was a captain, gave
me the nozzle every tour I worked for with minus
one every tour I worked for two years, and it
was just it was just a phenomenal experience in doing that.
It was, you know, we had a lot of work.

(11:27):
And again, there's nothing like putting out a fire. Fact
to see, you guys hated when I was working because
they knew I had the novels. They wanted the novel
that that you know tells you about somebody has twenty
or thirty years on the job. Wasn't interested in standing outside.
He was interested in being right at the noomen but
Captain said, you had your fires, it's his turn. And

(11:47):
you know, it was a great.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
Experin absolutely, especially in a place like that, and that
it lines up with what I wanted to ask next
fire volume in a week. Let's just say, how many
box alarms does it comedy get?

Speaker 3 (11:59):
That's you know, remember might your estimate to go back
forty five years when I was in three ZHO two,
So it's when I was in three h two. We
went through periods like every you know, fire duty is
not generally speaking, it's not at least when I started,
it's not all right, we're going to a fire. I
mean you might come to two or three fires and

(12:19):
one night, certainly two depending on the time of the year,
and then for two or three weeks you might not
be doing much. And so I think in both the
companies have worked in particularly in three h two, you
had a lot of fire duty. One seventy we did
a lot of running. We had a good amount of
fire duty. We did a lot of running, but we
went through periods where you know, you go to a

(12:40):
lot of lulls and then you you know, then it's
then it's you know, one or two sometimes on a tour,
one every set of tours. But you know, you might
go to a level for a month, you're just going
to emergency. You're always doing something. It's rare, and all
of the units I've worked in, you're never just sitting around.
One seventy, believe it or not, had the distinction at

(13:03):
one point at being the busiest truck in the fifteenth
division for runs not in occupied structural work, which was
the metric we used at the time to determine how
busy you were. We weren't, you know, there were plenty
of trucks that are more occupied structural hours than we did,
but we ran a lot and we had a huge
area to cover as well.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
And when you talk about emergencies, are we talking medicals? MBAs, shooting, stabbings,
those are the typicals you're talking about.

Speaker 3 (13:28):
Yeah, a lot of So when I was in three
or two, I guess both companies both companies in near parkways.
Both happened to be near the Belt Parkway as a
matter of fact, and you know, you go into a
lot of MBA. We've always done medical runs. Interesting, even
though when we got EMS, which was much later and
we officially got a MS. My whole career of responded
to medical runs. So i'll give you I don't know

(13:50):
if you want, I'll give you a but I consider
a funny story. When I was in two fifty seven,
so before I started, I had one friend that was
and he was a tenant in EMS, which was still
health in hospitals at the time, and he says, hey,
you're going to be a firefighter. I'm going to put
you in the EMS school. So you've become an EMT.

(14:11):
You know you'll be a firefighter, you'll know some medical
So I actually was an EMT before I became a firefighter,
but I wasn't working as an EMT. I just took
the class and got my car. In any case, so
I'm on about a week. A couple of weeks, we
go to a call where somebody is apparently dead. We
start mouth to mouth. I don't remember what it was,

(14:31):
but I'm saying, hey, listen, I'm the junior guy. I'm
a certified EMT. I just got an EMT school. There's
a lieutenant who I found out later. Boy, I want
to say, his name is McCarthy. A legend, a legend
in the job. And it's been again over forty years
since I've seen him. He literally pushes, physically pushes me away. Said,

(14:55):
I got a kid and he saw Sue mouth to
mouth on this guy, and so I go get the airway.
And when I put the airway in, the guy was
not breathing, but he still had the gag reflex. He
projectile vomits up until the yeah, projectile vomits up into
the lieutenant's mouth. And I'm standing there, I'm twenty one

(15:15):
years old. Yeah, I see your face, and I'm saying
this for a reason. I'm telling this for a reason.
And this is what I saw. The lieutenant literally spit
it out, wiped it away, and then he did something
I don't think I can do. He went back down
and started giving the guy mouth to mouth again. Now
I'm going back to the years. This is before we
use the bag valve. There was no you know, there

(15:36):
were no you know, there were no there was no
bag valve. You gave mouth to mouth resuscitation in nineteen
seventy nine. When I started in the early eighties, there
were no mechanical airway devices or anything like that. And
when he went back down on that guy giving him
mouth to mouth, I was like, I don't think I
can do that, But you know what, I tell that

(15:57):
story because that told me the men that I worked
with at that time, and I say men because that's
what it was at that time. And you know, obviously
women came on later and they did the job. But
the men that I came on with at that time,
they did what it took and it didn't matter what
it was. And so you know, it was funny, but

(16:18):
it was a lesson that was to be repeated many times.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
Absolutely. Chris abden't who was working in New York City
EMS back then. He's asking if you're talking about Chris McCarthy.

Speaker 3 (16:28):
No, No, I don't remember. His first name for me
was Louke, so I called him lieutenant. So it was
it was mccaffee. The lieutenant who was giving mouth. The
mouth was a fire lieutenant, not any lieutenant, and I
guess it was confusing. One of my friends was a lieutenant.
The m mess that got me into the EMS school,

(16:49):
into UH to become an EMT.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
Gotcha a load of Chris Burke and the chat sis but.

Speaker 3 (16:54):
Anything was sitcom and some folks still remember him, but
you know he was he was around for a while
back in the day.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
I mean, listen, that takes guts in fortitude. There's a
guy that you could tell he's seen way worse if
he's able to just casually brush that off and keep going.
Because I don't. I'm with you, Chief, I don't think
I could do that.

Speaker 3 (17:11):
But again, if again, the lesson wasn't you know the lesson?
Once he did what it took, it didn't matter, right,
did that happen?

Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah, of course he kept on going. He kept on going,
that's for sure. So I did want to ask about
from this standpoint, fires that stick out. But before I
get to that, I did want to talk about truck
work with you. We talked about engine work earlier. Truck
work anywhere is interesting if you're working in a busy
enough city. Truck work in New York City is a
league of its own, and especially during that time in Brooklyn,
it's really enjoyable. Yes, the engine's valuable, the nozzles valuable,

(17:42):
but the truck has its functions too, especially at boxes
where searches are required. So, having worked in one seventy
for the period of time that you did, what did
you most enjoy about truck work?

Speaker 3 (17:54):
You make your own decisions. Work alone. Very often you
work alone, and you kind of you kind of gain
your own measure by knowing, you know, you're you're not
being you're not being directly supervised. And that was the

(18:15):
most interesting thing about truck work and probably the thing
I enjoyed the most. You know, you you you had
decisions to make, and you know, you did the best
that you could. Sometimes you were joined or you at
some point you were usually joined by second truck if
you at the roof, at the O B. But even
if you had the O the irons of the can
when you were assigned to be with you officer, they

(18:37):
may go left and you may go right. And so
there was a lot of autonomy working in the truck,
and I enjoyed that very much. I also enjoyed, I mean,
I was you know, we all have different gifts. I
had that, you know, at the time. I had a
lot of strength. I love forcing doors. You know, you
you you really you physically you know working so but
I think it's the autonomy that you have in the

(18:58):
truck that I enjoyed the most, and the ability to
make decisions.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
We're talking with the retired AFT White Battalion Chief Phil
parts is volume sixty five at the best of the
briefist interviews with the Ft and Wives League from that
time period, either from the engine or in the truck.
Is there a fire that sticks out? Afterwards? You were saying, man,
that was one heck of a job.

Speaker 3 (19:18):
I'll give you two. I'll give you two and one
at least one of the stories I think is kind
of funny. So I told you my captain Jack Daily.

Speaker 4 (19:30):
Was.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
He gave me the speech. And again, you know, when
you first come into the firehouse, he gives you about
a five or ten minute speech what his expectations are,
what he expects from you. And again it's the same
speech that when I gave to the programs that came
into my firehouse when I was a captain. One of
the things he said, because when I came in, we
were just getting to stop four point five my company

(19:54):
for the first literally the four point five wasn't two
weeks old in my house. So, needless to say, most
of the firefighters that I ran in with did not
wear the mask because they spent thirty years going into
fires with no mask. And so my captain said, the
guys here are not most of them are not going
to wear the mask. You make sure you wear your mask.

(20:15):
And he told me all these horror stories about being
in the hospital and smoking relation and all these different things.
So you know, you're you're a kid, and you're you
want to be like everybody else, you know, you want
to be like all these guys. And like I said,
we were pretty busy. And after about six or eight months,
I had been to a lot of fires, you know,

(20:35):
and I remember I can even tell you where it was.
Was on Basly Boulevard and Rockaway Boulevard, and at the time,
it was just an open lot and there was a
guy that sold papers out of a kiosk. It was
like an old think about something about the size of
a tractor trailer, the trailer part of the tractor trailer.
And back in the day, a lot of your listeners

(20:56):
may not realize this, but we used to get newspapers
and actually used to read the paper. And the Sunday
Times was huge, you know, it was, you know, one
hundred pages, one hundred and fifty pages. Yeah, amaything that
we actually used to have ink and paper. So imagine
a Saturday night we had the daily news. All these

(21:17):
papers are stacked in front of this kiosk where this
guy's old papers and a big cutout that he would
stand in and tell papers out of. And this thing
is roaring. I mean, so it's nothing fire. There's so
much fire that there is no smoke. I mean, everything
was burning. The papers were burning, the wood was burning.
So I'm figuring, you know what, we can hit everything

(21:37):
with the line. Now, this is what I'm saying to
myself through this giant opening in this in this kind
of shot, so to speak, no reason for me to
put on my mask because none of these other guys
are wearing their mask. And again, as I said, everything
was burning, there was no the smoke was burning. Everything
was burning. So we must have hit this fire for

(21:59):
about thirty seconds. I'm not even sure if it was
thirty seconds. And my captain, who also wasn't burning a man,
said let's move in. And I was like, like, you
know why, why, But you don't question it. You just go.
And this was when I tell you, I pulled the
half of body's length into this place, and the superheated

(22:21):
air just closes your throat, so you you go like
that where you're choking. And I was ready to bail
out and he's laying on me and he grabs me
and said, I don't know how he's able to speak.
And he says, get in there, move in there. And
I realized I wasn't getting I was going to die

(22:41):
in there if I didn't put out that fire, because
that was the only way it was getting out of there.
And we moved in aggressively and put out the fire.
I tell that story again, Well, actually the story's not over.
So we put out the fire and everything was fine.
And I remember the day I had my you know,
you buy dinner when you when you get off your probation.
And he says he can't. Do you remember that fire

(23:02):
we had and I discover it was and this is
six months late. You know, we've been to plenty of
fire since then. I said, why did we ever? Why
did we ever go into that place? There was no
reason to go in there, And he said, because I
told you to wear your mask, you didn't wear your mask,
and I wanted you to see what it was like.
And it was a it was a lesson. And of course,

(23:23):
at the time, and I'm not recommending this for anyone.
At the time, you begin to get your measure, you
begin to develops. You don't want to develop this. It's
a tolerance for carbon monoxide, which slowly kills you. But
you were able to take more smoke as you're a firefighter,
because your body builds up that tolerance. It's poisoned. So

(23:44):
it's not a good thing. I'm not recommending that for
any guys, but it was. I was even shocked that
he remembered when I walked into that firehouse the first
day to wear my mask. The fact that I didn't
wear my mask, he made sure he taught me a
valuable lesson. So I you know, I got a lot
of lessons like that, But again, it was all part

(24:04):
of the growing experience.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
I think the first I think the first. I think
the first really first, the first really hairy fire that
I went to. I just transferred into one seventy, so
it was I had a little bit more than three years,
and it was in East New York, behind you, behind

(24:30):
Brookdale Hospital, and I remember it actually came in as
an r S no contact box, which is are you
familiar with that. I'm not sure if they still have that.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
No contact box. Not a pull box.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
Pullbox, right, It was an e r S where you
just hit the button, and what people would do sometimes
it's just hit the button and then keep walking down
the street. And usually they would send one engine for
that because it was just usually a kid or somebody
just hitting the button and then they would walk away.
Nobody would speak into the box. And so two eighty
three was they got an ear forso contact. It was

(25:10):
a rainy, misty night, and uh, it was a rainy,
misty night. Somebody get put an ers box. They transmit
the box when they opened up their doors. They transmitted
the box. When they transmitted the box, we were first
to that. One seventy was first too. I think one
twenty was second to that particular location. As soon as

(25:32):
we opened our doors, and we were a good mile
and a half I would say a good mile and
a half away. As soon as we opened the door,
as we knew we had a job because the rain
and the mist and the humidity kept everything down. When
we got there, there was so much smoke in the
street that I didn't know what side of the street
the building was that was on fire. Was so the

(25:54):
only reason I knew, and like I said, I had
I transferred to one seventy was literally almost the day
I got on the job. So this was nineteen, like
November October nineteen eighty two, and it was it was.
I was afraid of getting lost. It was a pretty

(26:16):
big tenement. I was afraid of getting lost, So you know,
I was my mask was off and on. You couldn't
see where you were in the street, let alone in
the fire building. I think it went to a third
or fourth along. It was the first fire that I
had been to where you know, you had fire in
the first you know, on the first floor in the front.
Then there's reports of fire. I had the irons. You

(26:36):
had fire on the third floor in the rear. I
mean it was. It was in the chases, it was
in the I beams, it was moving all around the building.
It was a very long night. It was a very
wrong night. And so it was. It was. I remember
the chauffeur of one twenty got lost, and I knew
it was the chauffeur of one twenty because he had

(26:58):
boy I'm going back for your for your listeners along
a long time.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (27:03):
He had the standard Scott mask, which was it had
a bell system, so four point five was new, and
I can hear his bell going off, so that the
four point five had a vibration that went off. And
my captain wasn't wearing a mask because we had six
guys that night, and he gave his mask to the
sixth firefighter. He didn't go in with the mask, and

(27:25):
again you can cut the smoke with a knife at
this point, and he looks at me and he says,
go get him, you know, go get because the chauffeur
from one twenty was like, I'm lost, I'm lost. I
don't know the way out, and you can hear him
and he looked at me and he said, go get him.
And all I can think of in my head is
the chauffeur is usually this senior guy in a premier

(27:46):
you know, a one twenty is a premier firehouse. He
wants me to go get that guy, and I, you know,
I'm you know, my eyes open up. I took fortunately,
because I had no idea where I was, what's the
layout of the building was. I took three steps and
literally ran into them. And so it wasn't, you know,
it wasn't It's not like I was searching through the apartment.

(28:09):
Literally three steps into the apartment, ran into him, and
he was able to get out and change his mans
But that fire, we were probably there for four or
five hours. That was the first fire where it was
like it was it gave you pause. I mean, it
was a it was a real It was the first
one where I mean, I'd taken beatings with a lot

(28:30):
of fires, but I guess it was the smoke that
was so I hadn't experienced anything like that before and
that was the first time. So that was a very
memorable fire. I mean, there's a lot of memorable fires,
but those are the two that I remember for a
variety of reasons.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
I feel like all of that is definitely preparing you
for what would come in nineteen eighty seven, which was
the promotion to lieutenant. You go through these fires, you
take your beatings, you see how the officer conducts himself,
and it rubs off on you. You take those pointers
with you as that opportunity came about in eighty seven. Now,
I've asked this the guys before, rather to be coming
on the PD or coming on the FT, which is

(29:06):
some guys come into the job thinking I'd like to
be a boss someday. Some guys don't realize that's an
ambition that they have until they are a few years
into what they kind of play it by ear. Did
you know early on that that was something you eventually
wanted or was it something that maybe three or four
years in you thought to yourself, I'll take the test
for lieutenant.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
That's a great question, and it's and I'll try and
go back as much as I can. I think I
think I always knew so most guys had a second job.
I've always said I was too lazy to have a
second job, and so I made my second job study.
And going back to three to zero two, there were
a few guys there that were really studying. And one

(29:44):
of my great mentors, Harold McNeil, was a black firefighter
that was you know, he wasn't playing cards, he wasn't
hanging out with the guys. Every day he came into work,
he went downstairs, he sat at the ping pong table,
and he studied. He said, the test in eighty one,
which I couldn't take, which is, you know, krick thing.

(30:04):
I only had two years, so I took the next
test that I could take. He said, I'm not going
to make you do it now. But he says, the
day after this test, you're gonna start studying, And that's
exactly what I did. I knew I had a family,
I had already had a child when I got in
the job. My daughter was born. She was one about
when I had six months on the job, and so
I knew I needed to study and I wanted to

(30:28):
and Harold told me again, one of my mentors, Harold
told me, he said, it'll make you better at what
you do. He said, even if you fail the test,
it'll make you a better fire fire study. And so
those are words I always took the heart. When I
went to one seventy. I have three people, yeah, well

(30:49):
four people, well, three people from one seventy that I'm
really close, still still close to this day. We formed
a study group. In that study group, two of us
at the time she two of us are deputy chiefs
what was the fifteenth division commander later on, and as
a matter of fact, one of the folks that joined
my study group later on when we were studying the

(31:11):
lieutenant was Bobby Sweeney, who was the chief of operations.
So I was really fortunate to be with some really
high performing folks as far as the books that we
were extremely competitive when we study, which you know, I
could talk about that, but I think when I got
on I knew I was going to study. I don't

(31:32):
know that I wanted to be the boss. For me,
the studying was the because you studied for so long.
I think you try and explain it and am I
talking too long? Tell me if i'm this is your story,
you tell okay. So one of the things that people
don't understand, and it's not that it's brain surgery, although
some of it. Some of what you study for to
become a lieutenant in the FT and Y is pretty deep.

(31:56):
But what people don't understand is that the promotional exams
and then are competitive, and so you can score a
ninety and not get promoted if everybody else scores a
ninety eight. So the people who get promoted because the
competition is fierce, you have to put the time in
because you're not judged on you're not graded on okay,

(32:19):
you got a seventy and you're going to pass. You're
graded on how everybody else does on that exam. And
one of the things that I loved about the FDNY,
I mean, and I don't know that I've run into
a job since that's anything like that, even though it's
competitive no matter where you go or if even if

(32:39):
you're detailed to another firehouse and there's other folks studying.
Every man and woman on the job that's studying is
helping you. So if you have a question or you
don't understand something, or you want to know something, and
you're in a place a house where maybe you're working
over time or you're detailed too, and you say, hey, yeah,
I'm reading this, and it's on them whatever it is, Pump,

(33:00):
it doesn't matter what the subject is. Somebody will sit
down and tell you everything they know about that and
explain it. And so the feeling of camaraderie, that the
familial feeling everybody is there. For what I've never seen
in the twenty five years I spent in the FDNY
someone who didn't open up and completely helped someone else

(33:23):
where they were having an issue or a problem, even
though that person might be in competition with them.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
That's the way to approach it ultimately, because it is
a brotherhood. At the end of the day, you help
your fellow brother or one hundreds exactly what happened. So
getting that assignment in nineteen eighty seven, it's a wonderful moment.
You're eight years into your career at this point, so
you're a bit more comfortable with yourself as a firefighter.
But now comes the hard part. Because it's been covered before.
The hardest transitions of firefighter who ends up becoming an

(33:49):
officer will have is firefighter to lieutenant, captain to chief.
This is the first of the two that you did
in your twenty five years in the job, because now
it's not just about you, it's about the crew under
You were thinking about them first before yourself. At the
same time, being a newer officer, they're getting to know you, you're
getting to know them. And so you bounced around for
a little bit on coverage assignments until you finally got

(34:12):
to three o eight engine. Now we'll talk about the demographics.
Where was three O eight engine? What was the call
of duty like? And tell me about learning how to
be an officer.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
There real So, so I was a Lunati for six years.
I bounced for four years, as a matter of fact,
and one of the reasons why I knew I was
going to bounced for four years is because I kind
of wanted to, you know, fact, I enjoyed bouncing. I
loved it. I love working in different firehouses. Three O
eight is actually down the road from three to oh two.
It's in the five five two battalion of five to

(34:44):
one battalion all the times, the five oh, the five four,
and I want to say the five one. It might
be the five to two. I forget the three O
weights on. It's right off boy, I want to say,
Jamaica Air you and Leffets Boulevard may not be as
I think. It's Jamaican Leffards and so it's right outside

(35:06):
of South Jamaica Queens. They do again kind of like
three or two three or three one twenty six. Those
are the companies we ran in with. They do a
good amount of work. Again, it's all too storry private dwellings.
But when I got promoted in eighty seven, I felt
pretty comfortable as a lieutenant, even though it is a
definite change in responsibilities, and it's one I took very seriously.

(35:28):
It's one I prepared for for a long time, and
I felt confident. I felt confident in my abilities when
I got promoted to lieutenants. And that wasn't as it wasn't.
I'll tell you later what I felt was the biggest
step that I took. But I felt pretty comfortable. I
felt and I don't think I was overly confident or

(35:49):
anything like that, but bouncing and seeing different places, I
really enjoyed that. One of the things I liked about
three Away, specifically, when I went there was a young
hause and I I was twenty eight, twenty nine, I
guess twenty nine when I got promoted, so I was
relatively young. I had eight years in the job. I'd
gone on about as young as you can be when

(36:10):
you get on the job, and the guys were all young.
We were all about the same age, and it was
it was a lot of fun. You talk about truck work,
when you pull in first do with a single engine,
somebody has got to open the door. So I got that.
I felt like when I was a lieutenant's single engine,
I still got to be in the truck while the
guys were stretching a line. I got to fourth entry

(36:34):
into the fourth entry into the apartment or into the house,
do a search by the fire to look for any individuals,
and then by that time, by the time I did
a Pulmary quick dashaire, the guys were usually have to
do with the line and we go in and put
out the fire. And so that was maybe the most
fun I had while I was on the job because

(36:56):
I felt like I got to do truck work and
I still got to do engine work, and I was
with a lot of young guys. So that was that
was a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
From that snapshot of your career eighty seven to ninety three,
the first leg of as a fire officer, and it
doesn't have to be a fire. Is there an incident
of any sort that sticks out or you came away
thinking afterwards, you know what, Now I feel like an officer.
I think I handled that really well.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
You know, everything is a learning experience, and I want
to say this, so I'll give you one. So you
asked a good question, So I'm going to give you
a couple of stories. One of them was when I
was a firefighter, because sometimes you learn more from the
mistakes that you make. Yeah, So I remember I was
at a fire and I was thinking about it when
I knew I was going to do this interview. And

(37:41):
I remember we had a good job, and this was
sometime in the early eighties, and I didn't feel like I
performed well. I mean, I just didn't feel and I
couldn't tell you what it was. I couldn't tell you
anything about the fire, but I just didn't feel like,
you know, I just didn't feel I performed well and
I was depressed. I was upset. And I went up
to one of the more experienced guys and in one

(38:03):
seventy and I says, you know, Joe, you know, you know,
I feel like I screwed up, and you know, I'm
talking to him and I was really down, and he
told me something interesting and again a life lesson, he said.
Philly says, we've been to, you know, play a fire together.
He says, you're a good fireman. He said, you know
you're not going to be you know. I think he

(38:24):
said something like, you know, some some days, you know,
some day, well how did he put it? Some days
some days you're the fire hyder. You know what I'm saying.
I mean, you know, in other words, some days you're
you're just not performing. He says, the only difference between
now and ten years ago or five years ago is
that we would have gone to two or three more buyers.
You know, we'll go to two or three more buyers tonight,

(38:46):
and you can redeem yourself. He says, you may have
to wait a couple of weeks to redeem yourself. And
I always remember that, so I remember it's about the lesson,
not so much about you know, I really perform well.
But I think the leadership. I think when the men
and women that work for you, you know, when they
respect you, you know, when in a sense, particularly as

(39:06):
a lieutenant. So if there's anybody listening to this in there,
first level supervisor, I know in New Jersey, in some
houses or in other places, first level might be a captain.
But when you're a first level supervisor, there will be
a period where the firefighters that will work if you,
may test you. And that's okay because they want to
know who's leading them. And I went through that. You know,

(39:28):
there's some kind of funny stories in three o eight.
But when they respect you and they you know, they
tell you that, hey, you know, you know, when they
enjoy working with you, you know, when they have confidence
in you. And it's not so much what you can
put into words. Well, I'll give you one. I used

(39:49):
to like to work on the fourth of July because
the fourth of July, you know, you might go to
five fires in one night, and yeah, yeah it's and
so I remember I did I don't know. I did
whatever I had to do to work. The fourth of July,
I was in three aways. In fact, we had they had,
I say they for a reason, three jobs that night.

(40:10):
The first job we had it was a fire in
a kind of like Kylie's mansion, was a vacant building
and they were stretching the line and I was doing
my thing. There was I couldn't get into the door
because there was just so much jump behind the door.
So I tried to crawl through a window and I
didn't put my gloves on, and so as I go
crawl through the window, you know, I take the window,

(40:32):
a shard of glass goes right through my hand. Right. Yeah,
that wasn't a lot of fun. But that kind of
put me out of action for that night. And they
get a covering officer, good guy, you know, nothing, nothing,
but they said, and I guess and this is you
remember I was douncing for four years, so this is
my fifth years of lieutenant, so I wasn't a new lieutenant.

(40:55):
But I'm at the firehouse. You know, I had gone
to the hospital and my hand is swollen and I
got a big bandage around my hand and like I say,
I had to get stitches in my hand. The whole
line and they catch a job in an attic. Remember,
they came back without telling the whole story. Although I
guess the funny thing. You know, Jack Cleehouse, he was
a firefighter and a rescue too. He was a lieutenant

(41:17):
on twenty six. That was the next truck down recovering
lieutenant that they had. I don't I have no idea
who it was, but evidently Jack Cleehouse bails out of
the attic because you know, three weights up woman and
Jack bails out of the attic and he pulls down
and they had to go to towel adders to get
up and put that fire out. One of the firemen said,
he says, Phil, a few of them, he says, well,

(41:39):
a few of the lieutenant. We would have made that
attic and made me feel good. But I said, if
Jack Cleehouse felt out of that attic, we weren't making
the act. So but but I tell that story only
because I really felt proud that those guys had that
confidence in me to say to say that and to
think that, and you feel it kind of when you

(42:00):
when you've worked for a little while. It doesn't mean
you're superman, doesn't mean you know everything, but you have
the confidence of the folks that work for you that
that does feel.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
Good, absolutely, and you've earned their trust. And now they
not only know you as a fire officer, they know
you as a human being, and they'll follow you in
they will follow you anywhere.

Speaker 3 (42:18):
I should say, yeah, it's it's and I'll give you
one of the tests that I had when I first
got there, and I was I've never been a little person.
I've always been a big guy. I've always counted a
lot of muscle, but I can lose twenty or thirty
pounds at any particular time in my life. So we
I don't remember what it was we had. We either
had to we had a hard fire or something, and

(42:41):
it was we can have either driven around or climbed
over a fence. And I'm like, let's drive around and
we'll go do this, and the guy's like, no, let's
hop the fence. And they did it because they're looking.
I'm a new lieutenant three away and they do it
because they want to test you to see what your
physical capabilities are. And so you know, I grew up

(43:02):
in Brooklyn. Hopping fences is something that I've done my
whole life. So i was over the fence in about
three seconds, and I'm telling the guys, let's go, let's go,
let's go, and they were just kind of standing there
with their mouthagate. But my point is is that if
you're a new officer, the guys, the firefighters are going
to attest you. You know, it's because they want to

(43:24):
know your medal, they want to know your caliber. So
it's something that you should expect. It's not something you
should necessarily fight, but you have to perform because you
expect them to perform, and they want to know who
that person leading them in is. Captains don't really go
through that, but lieutenants definitely do.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
I've always made this illustration on the show, which is
I li liken it to a basketball team. I'm a
diehard Knicks fan, right, So the driving force for the
Knicks is Jalen Brunston heeds the point guard, and that's
ultimately I liken that to a fire officer as well.
The fire officer leads the charge and that helps, you know,
much like a point guard with the center, the power
forward the shooting guard and the small forward that's a
lieutenant really, any officer. Yeah, everybody knows what they's got,

(44:04):
what they've got to do. But the driving force and
the tactical approach to it, well, that begins with the
fire officer.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
Yeah, and it definitely does. It definitely does.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
Talking with a retired FI Battalion she Phil. Part of
this is volume sixty five of the Best, the Bravest
You make Captain of ninety three. That transitions a little
bit easier because now it's more been there, done that.
You stick around in Queens, you bounce around a little bit,
but you end up once again in an Engine two
ninety nine and Fresh Meadows call vol You have the
same type of busy house, a little bit.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
Different, No, it's different. So I bounced for about six
or I want to say, six to ten months in
the twelve division. There's no more twelve division. That's the
area between and it happened to be And again I
remember I'm a Brooklyn boy, so you know I know
the area. It's the area from Flop at the time,
Flappish Avenue where King's Plaster is on up to approximately

(44:56):
the arizontal bridge and its deepest project park. I think
they you know, they sliced stuff to Staten Island, the
fifteenth and the eleventh. You know, everybody take a piece
of the twelve. I lived on eastern Long Island, and
you just can't get there from here. I had three kids,
I think one of whom is listening to your broadcast

(45:17):
right now, which I'll talk a little bit more about
him a little later. But I had three kids and
I literally, you know, I couldn't get home. My family
was always very important to me, and so long story
show up. I took an assignment in Engine two ninety nine.

(45:39):
Relatively now. It's a slow house. It's right off it's
in Freshmanows, right off to Tokyo Parkway. I said, you know,
I'll work here for a couple of years. I'll work
here for a couple of years, and then you know,
I'll go someplace busy again. That's really what I love.
And I will tell you the caliber of firefighters that

(46:01):
I worked with I probably didn't appreciate as a captain.
Great guys. I just went to Letter one fifty two's
one hundred year reunion. I went there about that. We
just had it about six weeks ago, and it was
it was a slower one of the slower houses in
the city. And might I say one of the slower

(46:21):
houses slow at relative I mean, there's houses that are
a lot slower than they are. But boy, what a
great bunch of guys. A lot of those guys got
promoted also. Still, I was relatively young as a captain
that was in my early thirties when I first got there.

(46:41):
Those guys were also in their late twenties and early thirties,
so we were relatively close in eight. I had much
more time on the job than they did. But it
was really nice to see, you know, when I went
to one fifty two, one hundred year anniversary, it was
really nice to see that several of them, lieutenant captain,
several chiefs, they really had accomplished careers. And you know what,

(47:06):
it was nice that some of them had thanked me,
and you know, they felt they got promoted because of
the example that I set. And I'm certainly not trying
to blow my own horn, but it was a it
was at the time, I didn't appreciate what I had
when I went there because they didn't have the background.
They didn't have, you know, the guys that had gone
through the warriors in that house at that time, so

(47:28):
you were kind of the captain and the senior man.
They didn't really have the senior man that had a
lot of experience, and so you kind of had. It
was kind of like being you know, in the military,
the officer, the lieutenant of the captain has a role
and the sergeants, you know, the first sergeant or you know,
the company first sergeant has a role. I felt like
as a captain, I had both of those roles and

(47:49):
that was okay because it were a great bunch of guys.
They were always willing to learn, and again, it really
was a pleasure to see these guys. Any of them
had got promoted over the years. And I value my
I really value the time that I spent there now
probably more than I did that and I loved it. Then.

(48:12):
It was just I just kept saying to myself, Oh,
I got to go someplace busier. I got to go
someplace busier. But those guys are great. Those guys are great,
and I'm glad I spent the time here that I did.

Speaker 1 (48:22):
And you saying that brings me back to something that
the late David Weiss said. David Weiss was a firefighter
rescue one gave his life on nine to eleven in
an interview in the television show The Bravest, where he's like,
a word of praise from our brothers is worth a
million dollars for a job well done. So those guys
telling you I became a boss because of you, I mean,
that's worth any whatever promotion you get. That's just as good,

(48:45):
if not better.

Speaker 3 (48:46):
Hearing that from them, it was. And again I enjoyed
being here, but I wish I'd valued my time there
instead of because a good part of it. You know,
it's funny. Their motto was caught in the web, and
I mean says, so I'm going to get out of here.
I'm going to leave, but you know, you get caught
in the spiders. Well, you get caught in the spiders, well,
and you don't really go. But we got some work,

(49:08):
I mean they weren't. You know, we got some work. Again,
not as busy as companies I had worked in previously,
but it was a great bunch of guys, great experiences,
and you know, almost died there a couple of times
because we had yeah, almost you know, caught in the
back draft at a tie store when I was a captain,

(49:30):
and when I say caught, I was We actually had
two fire fighters court in the back in the buildings
that had the back draft. You know, you hear about
that draft, but to experience one is very different than
watching it on TV. So we've had some pretty hairy
experiences there. It was a great house and a good

(49:50):
bunch of guys and will and will willing to learn,
willing to work.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
Nineteen ninety nine, you get the role of Italian chief.
And this is the other hard transition because the playing
field doesn't necessarily level, but it sure does widen. And
this is not even including the Y two K planning,
which we'll get into. But being a battalion chief tell
me about that transition and just trying to learn a
whole different level of being an officer because like I
did mention just now, it's so much more intricate, it's

(50:18):
so much more wider in terms of the array responsibilities
that you have.

Speaker 3 (50:22):
So that is the biggest So I mentioned before, for me,
the role from lieutenant to firefighter. For firefighters, lieutenant was
that seemed to be an easier transition, and lieutenant to
captain was almost seamless. Although and I'll say this for
those folks who are going to their second level of supervision.

(50:43):
There's subtle differences, but differences. Nonetheless, even if you're covering captain,
more is expected of you, More as expected of you
from the firefighters that are working for you, and more
is expected of you from your chiefs or your bosses,
your supervisors. Going from captain to chief was a it

(51:04):
was a huge step. It was a casum because as
a firefighter in New York City, a lieutenant and a captain,
you think tactically. As a battalion chief, you have to
start thinking strategically. So I got promoted at nineteen I
think I had nineteen years, and so think about it.
For nineteen years, you're stinking tactically, all right, You're used

(51:25):
to doing not directly. I'll give you a what I
thought was a humorous story. And I was actually not
a chief yet. I was ABC captain'stue chiefs overtime. So
when a chief is out, a captain will be acting
battalion chief. And that's ABC. We have a job. It's
nothing big. Everybody's staying out in the street and I'm

(51:48):
getting my ADHD is kicking in and I'm like, I'm
not getting any reports, but these guys do. And I'm
literally moving and I noticed I'm just kind of moving
into the building instead of standing outside waiting for the report,
as a good chief would do. And I got to
see what was going on, and the area I was
working wasn't particularly busy. Maybe the guys weren't particularly a

(52:11):
death at something. They were having trouble forcing the door,
and I just kind of, you know, went in and
took the tool. The I'm the I'm ABC, I'm you know,
I'm not supposed to be doing this, And I take
the tool and I'm like, you open the door like this,
and I and I start working on the door with
the guy, and I think the silence was screaming. I mean,

(52:34):
you know, usually there's a lot of noise, and the
silence was deafening. It's the word I'm looking for. And
then I realized everybody standing by the door was looking
at me, and I realized this was a huge faux pop,
and so I literally gave the tool back to the
guy and I just slunk outside and just stood up

(52:55):
there and held on to the rig and I realized,
you you're not You're not at this, at least at
this particular case, you're not at hands on first. You're
supposed to be making more strategically and that is something
you know, that was a big and that was a
hard lesson for me if I had achieved that. You know,

(53:18):
if he says, hey, Phil, I want you to you know,
wash down, I want you to know, open up the
second floor, let me know what you have, you know
for washing down, I would be insulted if you came
in to look. You know, when you're a new chief,
that's one of the things that you do because you're
not necessarily not because you're questioning the officer that you've
given the instruction to, but because you're unsure of yourself.

(53:41):
You're used to seeing it for yourself, you're used to
doing it. So there's a period of time. There's a
period of time before. There's a period of time before
you're comfortable with relying on other people. And that that
that took me a while to learn. There's a period
of time when you know a line is being stretched,
when you say stretch a stretch a line for the

(54:02):
second floor, there's that waiting. You know, it feels like
it takes forever. You know, nobody's lollygagging, but you know,
you think it's going to be done in seconds. It
takes time to actually slow your heart with down, back up,
and let people give you the reports that you need.
And that was maybe one of the biggest transitions for

(54:24):
me going to the rank of battalie chief. It was
a great job. I loved it for the year or
so I was in the field, but it was that
was I think the hardest step for me to take,
to go from thinking tactically to strategically and making that transition,
by the way, it helped me much later on, well

(54:46):
actually not that much later on going to OEM and
the becoming a National Emergency Manager working for Homeland Security
as well, so you know, making that giant step, but
those were kind of lessons that you had to learn.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
That was what my next question what was going to
be Because I mentioned earlier the playing field widened upon
becoming a battalion chief. It flips here when you go
to OEM because OEM you're in the field, but you're
not in the field that makes any sense in that
agency that combines both resources from the NYPD and resources
from the FD and Y, but you're primarily working downtown.

(55:19):
You're not so much responding to these emergencies anymore unless
something significantly large scale. Was that a struggle for you
or were you ready for something different at this point,
twenty years into the job.

Speaker 3 (55:29):
So I'll give you the story I intimated to you
before we started that I had a little story. So
about eight months, eight or nine months after I was
promoted to battalion chief, I was surplus one day and
they said, ooh, you got to go take a medical.
I just taken a medical eight months before this, literally
right after I got promoted. I mean, right just before
I got promoted to the chief, I just taken a medical.

(55:52):
I go and take a medical and they find to
have a heart blockage. I have one hunded artery. Wow.
At this point, I was probably in the best shape
I had been in twenty years. I mean, I'm now
in my early forties. Well I got some more to
just but I'm just about forty. I was back in
the gym. I was running three miles a day. I

(56:14):
was benching almost four hundred pounds at the time. I'm
doing the stairs for forty five minutes. I mean, I
just you know, I was so much I was really reinvigorated.
You know, I was working in the Bronx, really reinvigorated
and effectively. I was told in one day, literally, and

(56:36):
it's even hard to say it now, I was not
going to be able to work full duty again as
a matter of fact. That was as a matter of
fact I had when they picked up the accluded artery.
Well they didn't know it was that at the time,
there was a difference in my EKG. And you know,

(56:58):
you go through the process where I literally had had
a when you pulled it again with a stick the
camera in, well I didn't have They didn't put a scent.
I didn't need a stent, but no, they it's when
they go and take a look, they usually put a
stent in. But I didn't need to scent. They scoped me.

(57:20):
I'll think of what the word is in a minute.
And I had one of my tertiary adies was one
hundred percent included, which is a typical firefighter thing. And
again I was in phenomenal shape at the time. You know,
I had been in bad shape, and you know I
just that last year, I turned myself around and I
went back to the doctor and the surgeon who was

(57:41):
not a you know we have the heart built surgeon
who was not a fire department doctor says, yet you
got a Blockagize like, oh, did you put a stent in?
Because I knew that was the end of my career.
He says, no, you don't need a scent your You
know your heart's one hundred percent great, you have good
coloud block flow. Blah blah blah. You can do anything
you want. Uh not according to the fire department. Uh.

(58:02):
But so when I went to the doctor, when I
went back to the medical officers, Now, I mean this is,
this is over a period of two months, I was
bouncing as a chief, having a great time. My my
turnout gear, my bunking gear was still in my car.
I had never taken it out of my car. And
there's two or three month hurries, and I'm going to
Wolby tests and and I don't know why. I can't

(58:24):
think of the exam that they give you where they
stick it, they stick the scope up your your femeral
lottery and they take a look. I just can't think
it but what it is, Yeah, yeah, it's because it's
really bothering me that it's what they usually do when
they put on it. When they when they do a
sense and I've had a few cents, then I'll let

(58:44):
you do that.

Speaker 1 (58:45):
I keep talking while I do that, storry.

Speaker 3 (58:47):
So in any case, I went to the medical officer
and he saw the results of this and he said, yeah,
he says, I'll figure anyway you can look it's a
it's not it so it's it's okay. But I didn't. So, yeah,

(59:09):
they catch you, but they and they usually put the
scent in when they cast you, but I didn't. He
didn't put a scent or a balloon in because I
was fine except for the blockage. In any case, I
went back to the medical office. I said, the doctor says,
I'm fine. He says, you're never going back to full duty.
And I and again I for this two or three
month period, I had all my stuff in the car.

(59:30):
He says, as a matter of fact, I was like
to the at the time, he says, I'm making you LSS,
which at the time was a Department LINGO for permanent
life duty. And I was and I said, you're telling
me I can take my gear out of my car.
And this is exactly what I said to the doctor.
And he said, it's boy, this is twenty five years ago,

(59:52):
and I almost want to growing out and he said,
you'll never wear it again. And when he said that,
tear rolled down my eye and he said, I've seen
guys cry. He said, I've seen guys cry when I
tell them that. And I wiped the tear away and
I said, I wouldn't give you the satisfaction. And I

(01:00:13):
got off and walked out. And so now I have
a and again that was ninety nine, nineteen ninety nine,
and so you can still see this is twenty twenty four,
almost twenty twenty five. That was It's still does something

(01:00:34):
to me because I love the job. You know, this
job that this job that you know, I never wanted
as a kid, but it became who I was as
a man. And he's telling me I'll never do it again.
So in any case, now I had to figure out
what I was going to do. So I went to it.
So I was called into the Commissioner's office and at

(01:00:55):
the time, the commissioner was Tom on Essen and he said, Phil,
you're going to be the new CEO officer for the
Fight Department. And I said, no, I'm not. I'm not
going to do that job. And he says, you can't
tell me no, and I said, I'm telling you no,
I'm not going to do it, and I'm won't get
into the whole conversation. So we had a battle. And

(01:01:16):
you know who am I am? You know this newly
promoted the time chiefs. You know in the FDNY, the
time chiefs, while in my opinion, they are the workforces
of the sdn Y. It's you're you're you know, you're
just another bottle cap, you know what I'm saying. And
so I, you know, I wanted to do more of

(01:01:37):
my and and by the way, when I say I
didn't want to be the EEO officer, I'm not. I
am not degrading or denigrating anyone who is an EEO
officer or people opportunity deployment. Also, it's an important job,
it's a necessary job, and it's one that has to
be done. It just wasn't one that I was interested in.
And not only was I not interested in that, you know,

(01:01:58):
I was still going through the emotional trauma that I
had of not being able to work in operations, not
being able to work in the field, not being able
to work full dusty, And so we were having he
was I was. He was threatening to me. It was nothing.
You know, if I was full duty, there's nothing he
could have done to me. But the fact that I
was LSS limited service, he could actually retire me, and

(01:02:21):
again without you know, against my will. And again I'm
without getting into all the political back and forth. I
was assigned by the Chief of Department, Pete Nancy, who
you know who I loved. What a leader he was,
What a what a man he was. Excuse me, I

(01:02:42):
apologize allergies, no worries.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Is that time of year?

Speaker 3 (01:02:47):
Yeah, you have been dealing with them too. Yeah. In
any case, Uh, he says, Phil, we got we have
a Y two K committee at the time. Again, this
is twenty five years ago. A lot of folks don't
remember when we went, you know, when we would change
going into the century. Nobody knew it was going to happen.
The computers were all gonna self working, the wady's going
to have water, the actrivity is going to go out.

Speaker 1 (01:03:08):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:03:08):
And he says, I want you to go on this committee.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
This is the White Who King Committee. And what and
what it was was each the agency had to come
up with a plan in case we lost all power
in the fire department. You know, if the firehouses, the
electricity went out, if the dispatch system wasn't working, we
had to come up with a plan. So they were
about the seven or eight battalion chiefs. John Norman was

(01:03:32):
one of those chiefs. By the way, John Norman was
in my provy class as well. Yeah, and so and
so was Jimmy Leonard. Jimmy Leonard and John Norman were
my proby class. We had a very successful proby class,
uxtremely successful provy class. But John Norman South Cassano was
the deputy chief that was leading the class. Uh, and
so effectively we came up with the plan for what

(01:03:55):
would happen if the fire department kind of went back
into the dark age and we had no more ability
to you know, the dispatch system couldn't reach us if
we were isolated. Uh, you know generators, which actually served
to be really the first coup plan of continuity of
operations plan for the fire department. So what so each

(01:04:17):
city agency had to do that. Then the city agencies
had to go and and and combine that plan together
at OEM. OEM was putting together all those plans to
create an integrated city plan and so I would attend
those meetings. You know, we needed one person from our group.
I don't know if I volunteered for it or somehow

(01:04:37):
I got to be that person from our group to
kind of communicate that plan to OEM along with the
other city agencies and they you know, I met with
Jerry Howard at the time, who was a legend in
the emergency magic community. Yeah, he I owe a lot

(01:04:59):
of thanks to him. And the bottom line is, and
I'll say this, the definitty director for Planning. And this
is by the ways, when OEM was a was a
mayoral agency, it was not a charter agency, so it
was still part of the Mayor's office. They hadn't had
a vote on it yet. The director for Planning was

(01:05:21):
a battalion chief that was a covering captain when I
was in three too two. And he also among the
sea of mentors that I had was a mentor. I
hadn't seen him for twenty years, Bill nagel Is, and
I remembered his name because he taught me some very
very valuable lessons for the two weeks that he was
covering in THREEO two. He remembered me. I hadn't seen

(01:05:44):
him for twenty years. He remembered me, and I remembered him.
One story short, I was born into OEM as a
deputy director. As one of the directors, I became the director.
I called myself the utility deputy director. Anything the other
directors didn't want to do, I got. So it was

(01:06:06):
I couldn't spell emergency management. I didn't know anything about
emergency management. The only reason I was made one of
the directors is because of my rank in the Fight Department.
So since firefighters lieutenant to captains and the equivalent ranks
from the police Department were being detailed there, I was
the ranking Fight Department member at the time I was
there being detailed to OEM, and it was, you know

(01:06:31):
what a giant That was the second giant week in
knowledge that you know that I had to overcome because
you're completely lost, You're like a babe in the worlds.
So that was a huge learning experience, a huge learning experience.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
And I feel like to that point in your career
as a lieutenant as a captain, you're looking at things locally.
There's local emergencies in the area you're responding to and mitigating.
As an officer needs to there as a battalion chief.
And then now, of course being an OEM, you're looking
at a city wide scope in terms of how to
mitigate emergency. So it makes you think, as you said earlier,

(01:07:12):
more along the lines of strategy as opposed to tactics,
and that would segue well into the career that would
follow upon your retirement. So as besides that, what do
you think are the biggest lessons you learned from that
little chapter in your career that still guide you now?

Speaker 3 (01:07:29):
So so big thing I learned in OEM was again
you're talking about someone who knew nothing about emergency management.
I you know here this peripheral stuff. And not only
are you an emergency manager, but I am an emergency
management in the toughest city in America, maybe the world,

(01:07:49):
arguably me in the world. I believe me. I'm with you.
You know, the things that we consider everyday occurrences in
New York City, and I know this because I worked
on the national stage. What we consider everyday occurrences in
New York City are monumental challenges in other cities, including
logic cities in the United States. And so after about

(01:08:11):
three or four months, I realized that as you're drinking this,
your eyes start to open, the curtains start to open,
and you start to say, Okay, I can do this.
Little by little you'll learn. The biggest lesson I learned
from that is just take a deep breath and you'll
get it. So I realized if I can get it here,

(01:08:33):
I can get it anywhere. And that took it. And
don't get me wrong, that didn't happen the first day.
It probably happened in the sixth or eighth month. When
you're dealing with you know, you know, when you're dealing
with something that you never thought you would deal with.
But little by little, as you're taking a step at
a time and you apply the lessons that you've learned
in other fields, but you're applying to what you're doing now,

(01:08:56):
that was maybe the biggest lesson, and that's I think
the jump that I made the FEMA was less of
a jump because I had that ability to go from
literally knowing nothing to being able to work in the
most complicated city maybe in the world. Also, the other
thing I'll say about being an emergency manager is you're

(01:09:20):
no longer in a command control place, so you know
you're a chief. You know, you have a definite chief
that you know will give you an assignment, or you
will give companies assignments. You're in a coordination role. When
you're an emergency manager, primarily a coordination role. So it's
not about ordering or directing. It's about achieving buy in

(01:09:40):
and moving together and working with So this whole coordination
piece is an important which is probably more important than
that command and control piece. That coordination piece in this
world is probably one of the most important things that
I've learned that I still try and apply today.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
We continue with that, and I'll of course get to
the events of the eleventh momentarily. You have a few
family members in the chat. Your son paul I commented
earlier he's watching tonight. He says, I'm very proud of
your dad. Thank you for your years of service and
for being a great example for myself and other firefighters
to follow. Nash Mono, who is one of your grandchildren, says, hey,
that's my grandfather, and kat Par says, I'm proud of

(01:10:20):
my brother's accomplishments. And I helped them learn to spell.

Speaker 3 (01:10:25):
She also helped me. She also learned to help me multiply.

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
And your daughter's here too, Natasha, she's watching as well.

Speaker 3 (01:10:32):
Wow. You know, I didn't realize this was going to
be live. And I sent the measures to my son Paul,
who's a captain in the New York City Fight Department.
He's next bouncing in the Bronx. I'm extremely proud of
all of my children, and my grandson, and my brother
and sister. My brother also was a firefighter and fifty

(01:10:54):
eight engine and so we went from a family that
had nothing to do with the fire department to a
family that is. And I think my grandson took the
he just took the last test, so or it's taking
the test that's coming up. So he would be the
third generation par if he gets hired.

Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
We'll see what happens there. So all the best to him.
Hopefully it does go out, work out, I.

Speaker 3 (01:11:17):
Should say, Mike, I'm going to ask, can we you know,
I am an old man, can we take a quick
break for about one minute? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:11:24):
Absolutely absolutely, I'll hold the fort in the meantime while
you do that. Thank you, all right, no problem. This
is volume sixty five of the best the Bravest interviews
with the FD and Wise and the lead For those
of you just tuning in. We're talking with our guest
tonight is Battalion Chief Retired Battalion Chief Phil Park. He
served from nineteen seventy nine to two thousand and four
in the FD and Y with a detail to the
Office of Emergency Management. Now, for those of you that

(01:11:45):
may not know what that was, and Greg Parr, you're
in the chat. Good to see you too, and thank
you for all your service, especially in Engine fifty eight.
Is That was something Mary Giuliani established to really centralize
command between the fd Y and the NYPD. There have
been some incidents particularly where unfortunately some of the rescue
units from both the NYPD, the emergency service units, some

(01:12:07):
of the rescue squads from the FD and why were buttonheads.
So to stop that from happening. It gave more coordination
to delegate which incidents we're going to go to the
police and be under their purview, and which incidents we're
going to be under the purview of the Fire Department.
And it combined representatives from both the PD and the
FD They worked together well and that's still going now.
But that was a Mayor Giuliani creation that started up

(01:12:28):
in the spring of nineteen ninety six. I believe Jerry
Howard led it for a time. Jerry Howard unfortunately since died.
He died of illness about a year or so ago,
but he was a man for all emergencies and a
chief Parer of course was able to work under him.
And again thanks to Chief Parr's family for watching tonight.
I hope you're enjoying the program, and I hope I'm
doing his career justice. He's had a lot of great

(01:12:48):
stories that he shared with me, and we'll hear some
more in a moment. We have yet to chronicle his experience,
of course, in the morning of nine to eleven. He'll
tell me that when he gets back. But I did
want to chronicle everything else that he experienced in those
twenty years leading up to that hell of a career
he had, for sure. And we'll profile again voluntarily once again.
Hello to all you in the chat, those of you
that had tuned in since the interview began. Chris Ebden,

(01:13:09):
I mentioned to you earlier. Patrick Hetzel, good to see
you as well, my friend, you're a regular here, and
Steve Irato as well. The chief part is back. We'll
bring them back to the stage there producer Victor, if
we can please and Chief we continue now. That brings
us into September eleventh, two thousand and one. And even
with all the emergencies you've been to, even with the

(01:13:31):
planning for terrorist attacks that I'm sure OEM was doing,
especially after the events of nineteen ninety three, and I
remember Ray Downey's impetus for really starting up the Special
Operations Command wasn't even just what had happened in nineteen
ninety three with the Trade Center the first time. It
was events around the world, colbar towers in nineteen ninety six,
Oklahoma City in nineteen ninety five, the embassy bombings in

(01:13:52):
nineteen ninety eight, and just the year before, in two thousand,
the coal bombing which killed eleven US sailors. So that
brings us to that morning where even with all the planning,
no one could have envisioned the attack of that level.
And you were there, unfortunately during the brunt of it.
So your experience, and I'll give the floor to you, Chief,
in the morning of nine to eleven.

Speaker 3 (01:14:10):
Yeah. Interesting, So I was actually I had spent OEM
at the time, was in Severn World Trade Center. I
had done about twenty months at OEM you burn out.
It's you know, sixteen hour days, five or six days
a week. Went back to fire. It was actually a
fire prevention. It was staying at my sister's house in

(01:14:35):
between toys. She was an Elmont at the time. This
is old Germaine. I'm going in. I was at the
border standards in the Fields, which is interesting again just
kind of well, I can talk about that later. With that,
let me not get all topic if it comes up.
In any case, I was already hitting because part of

(01:14:56):
my regular job on Tuesday mornings was to testify as
an expert at the Border States and the Fields, representing
the Fire Department in for variances in the city, for
construction planning and other variants in the city. It was
at Rectorstry, which is three parks south of the west
of the World Trade Center. At the time, Border Centers
in the Fields was at Rector in West Street, and

(01:15:20):
so I was already heading into the World Trade Center.
One story short, we know we have the bombing. I
shouldn't say the bombing. We know we have the planes
hit the building. I was in a department vehicle. I
put on life ensirments. What happened is each city agency

(01:15:41):
is expected to send a team, depending on the incident,
to the emergency Operations Center. I was the ranking member
at OEM for almost two youth making fire Department member
at OEM for almost two years, so I was licesnsirements
going into going into seven World Trade Center, which is
where the operations center was. As a matter of fact,

(01:16:04):
my daughter, who I didn't know she was going to
be on Who's Listening worked for the phone company at
the time, and no one knew what was going to happen.
I actually called her up and asked her to call
the Fire Operations Center since she was she worked for
phone company, and said, tell them where I am because
nobody would know where I was. There was no way,

(01:16:25):
you know. I gave her the number for the operations
the Fire Operations Center. I asked her a call. Wasn't there,
you know, obviously handling a lot, but I just wanted it.
I know, those calls of tape. I just wanted somebody
to know where I was going, just so somebody would
know where I was. When I arrived, I went in
through the I was on the Bell Parkway. I went

(01:16:49):
in through the the So I say that since she's
on so my family knew I was down there. They knew,
which caused a lot of stress upon them for during
that day that I had that I had arrived before
the towers collapsed. I parked my car right outside of

(01:17:09):
the battery. I walk up West Street. I passed the
command posts going into seven. By the time I got
to seven, they had already evacuated seven. But but ohem
everybody who worked at OEM. I remember I was just
there two months before this, so I knew everybody. But
they were standing in the lobby of seven. We hear

(01:17:32):
his sound in the lobby of seven. It sounded like
to me another plane hitting the building. And so when
you consider the pancake collapse, the air being forced out
of the building sounded like a plane because you have
the air being pushed out like a plane that reverses
its engine. Long story short, we go into the loading
dop the That's the I was in seven when the

(01:17:54):
south tower collapsed. Moved everybody out. Myself and John Perusia,
who was the chief the three start chief of EMS
was there as well. We move everybody out. I actually
at some point I was joined by firefighters. I didn't
learn who they were for about a year, and that

(01:18:17):
was again another story. But I was joined by firefighters
from twenty trucks did it come in? And I didn't
know who they were because they were in old turnout care.

Speaker 4 (01:18:26):
Now I was in my.

Speaker 3 (01:18:27):
Class, as of course my jack wasn't on, but I
was in my class, a uniform, my shirt, my pants
had taken up my tie because I was testifying at
the border centers of the fields. But we actually went
into the North Tower after they evacuated to North Tower,
and I found out that the North Tower. Again I'm
not getting into all the stories. There were about ten

(01:18:52):
of us. We probably moved about fifty or sixty people
out of the lobby of the North Tower. We were
told that they nobody none of us had radios. I
didn't have a radio. The guys I was with coming
from home, they didn't have radios. The command post had
already gone. The firefighters coming down told us. He said,

(01:19:13):
one lieutenant says, hey, Chief World War and we're ordered
out of the North Tower, or everybody's been ordered out
of the building, so we will leave. We kind of
make our way through the you know, it was kind
of running in goldment when we're leaving we're on Vessi Street,
so I literally was on Vessie Street when the North
Tower dropped. And if you remember the North Tower, Vessey

(01:19:36):
Street was the boundary street or the boundary street for
the North Tower, and I credit the Verizon Building if
you know the area. I don't know if it's still
called the Horizon Building, but it was the Hoverizon Building
at the time. The building actually has colonnades and the
building extends over the sidewalk so that when you're walking
on the sidewalk the north side of Vessi Street, you're

(01:19:57):
actually under the Verizon Building, but it's open air. So
we dove into those colonnades and literally literally the North
Tower collapsed on itself and into Vesty Street because a
matter of fact, some of the buildings collapsed into the
Telephone Company building at the time. And it's it's interesting.

(01:20:20):
One of the lessons I learned in three h two
is twenty something years earlier, was one of the guys says, listen, kid,
I was kid because everybody was, you know, so all
they says, if you ever have to bail out of
you ever have to run, don't turn around, look where
you're going, and those words kind of came back into
my psyche because you didn't want to trip on Bessie Street.

(01:20:43):
You'd be dead if you were still on Vestie Street
at least where we were. And so you know, I
ran and like say, we dove into the colonades under
the building in the north tower basically collapsed all around us.
So that was that was an interesting It was a
very interesting time.

Speaker 1 (01:21:03):
I thank you for sharing that story. I know it's
not easy to revisit, but I'm glad that you did
for an audience to hear that, and I appreciate you
doing that. You know, with that in mind, this was
devastating for the Fire Department for reasons well documented. You
can never replace any of those members that were lost
that day. OEM on a secondary level to the lives
lost lost their quarters because later that day, seven World

(01:21:26):
Trade Center collapse at about five point thirty due to
the heavy damage that suffered with the two collapses of
the trade towers. And these were friends, so many friends
that you had that responded that day, performed heroically, paid
a devastating price for their heroism. But nevertheless, the mission
of the Fire Department has to continue the mission of OEM.
Excuse me has to continue, So tell me about soldiering

(01:21:48):
on and just trying to keep your head in the
game when there's so much sorrow and so much uncertainty too.

Speaker 3 (01:21:53):
It's so I lost sixty three personal friends at the world.

Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry to you.

Speaker 3 (01:22:00):
Well, you know, it's it's you don't think about it
much and you think you're over it, you know what
I'm saying. So anyway, or I should say sixty three
people that I worked with and that I knew. That
takes a lot of sense, or another one of the things.
And I hope I can say this without without you know,

(01:22:26):
giving in at when the North power collapsed, the ranking
chief where I was, which was I was on the
north north west side of the building. Everybody has their
own stories depending on where they were northwest side of
the building. Al Tori, and this plays into the question

(01:22:46):
that you asked. Al Tori was a two star chief
of safety at the time. And I almost asked the
dumbest question because it's again, to deal with something like that,
you have to compartmentalize. You cannot if you you know,
I believe that my you know, even being a battalion
chief you have to compartmentalize. You can't. I couldn't try

(01:23:07):
and swallow the whole thing because it would be just
so overwhelming. And so you caught me so down because
you know you have a job. And I said to
I almost asked the dumbest question of my life, of
my life, I said to Al Torri, I said, now,
I almost asked, do you think we lost anybody? And

(01:23:33):
I changed it to many guys? Do you think we're lost? Wow?
I don't know we were going to be going here,
But anyway, he said, I don't know if we probably
lost five hundred guys that night. I was one of

(01:23:57):
the at headquarters. I was one of there were three
or four of us who were calling up well happened
to be the nineties, but calling up every company that
responded our missing hit just about four hundred and ninety
seven or something like that. And Al's words stuck in

(01:24:17):
my head. You know, that's when it really hit me
that night. But I say that because somebody's got to
get them. Somebody's still got to do their job. And

(01:24:40):
you just put one foot in front of the other
and you keep going, and you keep walking, and you
keep doing what you're doing. And so any case, so
you ask that question, I think every person, every firefighter,
every emergency workers that responded there realized, you know, you
can lay that in a fetal position and that's doing

(01:25:01):
the thing, but you can't. You just have to do it,
and so you just put it behind you and you
just do it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:11):
Well said Chief, and thank you. I know again it's
not easy to relive. But for the younger generation like
myself that we don't really remember that day too well.
I was only one years old when it happened. It's
important that we hear these stories from those that were there,
not just that day, but in the aftermath, and it
paints a picture of what you guys went through. And
thank you for what you did and you and your
comrades did that day, because even though there was devastating losses,

(01:25:34):
it's worth noting, as Chief fIF first talked about, and
several others on the police and fireside, thanks to what
the FD and Y did, e MS did, the NYPD,
the poor Authority police did, and so many others too.
Twenty five thousand people survived that day. This is the
most successful rescue operation, not just the century, but ever,
and that's no small part because of what you guys

(01:25:54):
did that day.

Speaker 3 (01:25:55):
Yeah, and also the put THARTI civilians also stay at
the pause. People kind of forget those because they were
not beautiful. There's a lot of people that weren't above
and beyond, as you know, and you do an awful
lot of people that want above and beyond that day
and the time after that, even though it was a
devastating blow to the city, devastating blows his uniform forses

(01:26:18):
and to the loss of life, I've never seen the
city so together. I mean, the city really coalesced as
won and that was You'd never want to see anything
like that happen again, But I would love to see
the city coalesced like it did back then during nine eleven.
I mean, we were just there was one team, one fight.

(01:26:40):
Everything was put behind everyone, everybody was on the same page.
If there was any if there is any silver lining
for me, that was one of the biggest civil liners. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:26:52):
Absolutely absolutely, And those stories of what those gentlemen and
ladies did that day will not be forgotten any time soon.
They'll be told until the end of time, as they
should be. You know, you had other assignments in the
lead up to retiring in two thousand and four, you
had recruitment, of which that was, and I'll ask you
about that in a second, But just as far as

(01:27:14):
wanting to continue with the FD and YAF or something
like that, a lot of guys left in two thousand
and two from both the police department and the fire
department that had enough time. And because of that day,
did you mullet or is it something that you said
to yourself? You know what? This is the furthest thought
from my mind right now.

Speaker 3 (01:27:31):
It's interesting because I had a conversation that day after
the Dallas collapsed while I was working with someone. I
couldn't tell you who it was, but he said, when
this is all over, I'm putting in my papers and retirement.
And I didn't retire them for a practical reason. But
I thought long and hard. And I remember that day

(01:27:52):
when I say long and hard. I thought about it
for about a minute, and I said, I'm not to
let them chase me out. I stuck with my original plan.
I wanted to retired because I wasn't full duty anymore.
So I was gonna wait till I had five years
in rank to retire, or four years in rank to retire,
and I went with the and that's the plan I

(01:28:12):
went with. I wasn't getting out, so that was my
imputus to retire, not the World Trade Center. And I
remember saying, no, I'm not gonna change. I'm they're not
going to chase me out. I'm staying until, you know,
until I get my five years. But again or four years.
You got a little bit more of five years. But
my but my point is is that I thought about it,

(01:28:34):
made that decision then still, not working in the firehouse
was something that I never got over. And you know
that kind of gave me an end date. But that
is what I was. That is what I was sorry to. Uh,

(01:28:55):
that is what I was sorry to. So we was
working in all right, I was working in operations. But
I will tell you if I didn't go like duty,
if I wasn't put on LSS, I would not have
had the experiences in life that I've had. So it
caused me to ripe. Now you mentioned recruitment. I don't

(01:29:16):
know if you want me to move to recruitment.

Speaker 1 (01:29:18):
Well, my question to you recruitment, and this is where
it gets interesting for me is after nine to eleven,
you saw a real call to action in terms of
civil service, where a lot of people did sign up
or have an inclination at least to want to do
police work or want to do the fire service work.
But there's also the component of fear too, where a
lot of people were hesitant to let their sons, daughter's,

(01:29:39):
husband's wives sign up for the FD and y seeing
the fact that on the front line for any major
emergencies the fire department and the losses they just had.
So when it came to recruitment efforts and you spearheading those,
was it a mixture. Was it primarily those who really
wanted to serve and applications for coming in left and right?
Was it the latter what I just mentioned or a
mixture of both.

Speaker 3 (01:30:00):
Question, most the people who became firefighters and police officers
who took that call, you couldn't stop them. My son,
who Paul, was one of those. He saw what I
was going through at the time, and I think he
was seventeen or eighteen at the time, and he said,
I'm gonna be a fine you know, he's always wanted

(01:30:21):
to be a fineman. But I figured this was you know,
I was hoping this was knock that right out of
his brain and I said, you still want to be
a fineman? Are you crazy? And he said more than ever?
And that was I think. And so you know, what

(01:30:41):
are you gonna? What am I gonna do? The men
and women that took the firefighter test that I was
the chief, You know that I that I was one
of the driving forces to get them to do that,
and it was really more about open this inviting all in.

(01:31:03):
Bottom line is they wanted to do it more than ever.
I've never seen so much people. You couldn't stop some
people from taking the test, from becoming firefighters, and those
folks really really wanted to public service. Was I don't

(01:31:23):
know that the city will ever again see kind of
an imp the number of folks who were as excited
about being public servants as you did at a nine eleven.
So you have great men and women that came on
at that time that wanted to do the job because
of what they saw, which is amazing. It's a testimony.

Speaker 1 (01:31:42):
And so we're still doing it to this day. Yeah,
absolutely they're doing I'm seeing a friend of mine in
the chat he's tuning in via Facebook. Billy Dennis is
watching tonight work many a tour with Phil, He says,
top shelf guy.

Speaker 3 (01:31:53):
Oh wow, Billy Dennis. He was a fire marshal. He
worked in Billy was in one twenty six or one
twenty twenty six. I'm sure it's I don't see you,
but uh so happy. You're so happy, you're you're you're
you're doing well. We have mutual friends.

Speaker 1 (01:32:12):
Stand up comic too.

Speaker 3 (01:32:13):
Yes, yes, yeah, money guy, I missed, Billy, great guy.

Speaker 1 (01:32:17):
Good man Billy. Thanks Billy for watching that. I appreciate you,
my friend. Of course, you mentioned retiring in two thousand
and four because of what we discussed earlier from the
Ft and Y, And I'll ask you when you look
back on those twenty five years, if you had to
define it in a sentence or two, how would you achieve.

Speaker 3 (01:32:37):
It's the greatest job I ever had. Even though I
never hated going into work one day, I'm glad I
worked on the bad days because I would have felt
bad if I didn't. The men and women you may

(01:32:59):
or may not get along with some of them, but
even the ones you may not like that much, they
commitment to service, and generally speaking, the people of the
city in New York was they were willing to make
the ultimate sacrifice and go to the extra yard. So
does it gonna be matter if you get along with them?
You're working with professionals that and I got and let

(01:33:21):
me please, I got. I got home with ninety eight
percent of the people I work with, great guys in
gal I mean I'm friends with for life with many
of them. It's I would do it again in a second.
The only thing is is I wouldn't have gone to

(01:33:41):
that medical I wouldn't take I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:33:48):
They goodness you did though they found that bloggage.

Speaker 3 (01:33:50):
Well I was so believe it. I mean, on a
personal note, there's nothing that they did for it because
I was in great shape by a good collateral flow.
It was nothing that they like, there's nothing we should do.
Can do what we'll do. You're you're in great shape,
You're in good health. So you know it was uh,
you know, I would have I would have stayed home

(01:34:11):
from work that day I was there if I had
all over it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:17):
Well, we'll touch very briefly before we get to the
rapid fire segment on just your time in FEMA. You
know Dennis, the late great Dennis Smith, author of Report
from Entry Company eighty too I was fortunate to know
him and have him on this program. He said something
so cool a little while ago, not on this show,
but on another one where he was like, I'm f
d and why trained. Quote I'm FDNY trained. I can
do anything end quote. And I imagine that must have

(01:34:38):
been your philosophy for FEMA, even without the tragedy of
nine to eleven, so many other large scale emergencies, twenty
five years in the front line, so many of it
as an officer. I'm not saying FEMA didn't have his challenges.
I'm sure it did, but I'm sure, especially with the
assignment to OEM, it was a lot easier to transition
into something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:34:56):
It absolutely was. Again, I said, if you work in
the York City, you can work anywhere, you know, and
I'm not I'm not trying to put anybody else down.
I'm not trying to put any other city down. I
have met great people from it, from towns where his
six firefighters working, to you know, to to New York

(01:35:17):
City where this eleven thousand firefighters working. But what we
run into, you know, working at FEMA, even though I
knew nothing about the agency, you're now on a national
stage as a national emergency manager rather than as the
emergency manager in New York City. I knew, I garned it.

(01:35:38):
I knew I get it, and I knew that I
wasn't going to I knew I wasn't you know, I knew. Listen,
I don't know it now, but I'll know what tomorrow.
And I had that confidence, and I really appreciated. I
really appreciated that confidence. I'll tell you, I know that.
I told you I talked too long.

Speaker 1 (01:35:57):
We're having a great time tonight.

Speaker 3 (01:35:59):
You know. So if FEMA, I start at FEMA two
thousand January of two thousand and four. Although interestingly enough,
my retirement, my Fisher retirement date the Fight Apartment is
June of two thousand and four. I had that six
month overlapp because I was old time, you know, terminally
even that was old time comp time in fire department.

(01:36:20):
But bottom line is long story short. When they flew
me in, I was I don't know why I was chosen,
maybe because of where I work, but they made the
decision to fly me into the Superdome along with a
small team to get folks out of the Superdome. And
it was believe me, it was not fun, and Trina

(01:36:40):
was not enjoyable. But again, the lessons that I learned
as a firefighter and fire officer in New York City
all lessons that you you just kind of put one
foot in front of the other and you you know
this is bad. But you know, when you have a
giant sandwich, what's the only way to eat it? Familich

(01:37:01):
And that's one by at the time, and you know,
so you have the confidence in knowing that you've done something.
The SDNY was you want to I know that I
know that movie closing down. I want to say a
couple of things. Yeah, I lost my train of thought.

(01:37:23):
But one of the things, let me just may have
taken a note, just give me one second. Oh, one
of the things I wanted to say when I started
with the SDNY, remember that the folks I saw it
in the late seventies, I call it ten minutes of
the seventies. So I spent the last ten minutes I
spent the last I spent ten minutes in the seventies
as a firefighter. But the bottom line is a lot

(01:37:44):
the guys that broke me in, we'll all talked about, Hey, kid,
the job is fire The job is fire. You know,
you don't want to, you know, because that's what the
you know they were doing in seventy seven, I think
they did one hundred thousand structural fires, and it was
probably more than that, which is just unheard of. It
It's ridiculous. How much fire do they were doing? Anybody

(01:38:08):
who's listening to this broadcast who is in the field,
and I work in the field of public safety now
all over the country. I'm part of one of the
homeland security teaching teams. I work for two of the
schools of Excellence LSU, which is the Anti Terror the
Academy for Counter Terrorism, the National Center for Biomedical Research
and Training I think, and then also University of Hawaii

(01:38:32):
does the NCBRT NC I forget the letters, but they
do natural disasters and I work for both of them,
traveling around the country. Take every opportunity you can, whether
you work in a small department, whether you work in
a launch department, to widen out your to widen out

(01:38:53):
and to learn as much as possible. The job is
never one thing. What's expect from public servants today is
a hundred times more than what was expected from public
servants when I first started. You know, you could say
a firefighter. You know what did firefighters do in the seventies,
They went to fires. Now, firefighters and other emergency workers

(01:39:16):
dead jobs have expanded exponentially, and so take every opportunity
that you possibly can to work with other agencies. You
get as much training as you possibly can, to learn
as much as you possibly can, and to be as
smart as you possibly can. I'll talk more about that
if you want to. But you know, I only did
it because I was forced to do it when I

(01:39:36):
was like duty, I had to find a way to
continue working. But now I recommend that that the men
and women who are in that business now look for
the opportunities. Now there is schooling. You know, there was
really no There was really no scholastic way to become
an emergency manager or a scholarly way. Now you can
get degrees in emergency management. There are so many things

(01:39:59):
that you can do now to make yourself a better responder.
Whether you're a first, secondary or tertiary responder, you can
make yourself better by working with others, getting the education
you need, and listening to shows like this. Some of
the folks you've had a phenomen I.

Speaker 1 (01:40:15):
Thank you very much. Chief. I appreciate you saying that.
You know, it's funny. One of the questions I had
for you in the rapid fire was a piece of
advice you give young firefighters or emergency managers. You just
covered it. So thank you very much. That was very insightful,
and I appreciate that. Chief Norman's actually in the chat.
That's why I was smiling earlier. He says, Mike, please
give Phil my best. We were in Provy School. We
were probably school buddies, I should say, a long time
ago in the galaxy far far away.

Speaker 3 (01:40:36):
Yeah, I mentioned John Norman. So John Norman, he was
like the dad of our Proby School. I think he
was one of the older guys at our Proby School.
John Norman. What can you say about John Norman. He's
known nationally. He's a gentleman. He got us through Proby School.
He had a lot of experience before he became before

(01:40:57):
we came into Proby School at her out in Nasville County.
Really interesting story. There were three We were in the
smallest Broby class in the in the Deplotma's history. We
had sixty people in our Broby class.

Speaker 1 (01:41:09):
Pretty smart, I'm sorry, pretty small for the FDNY.

Speaker 3 (01:41:12):
Yeah, well it was. It was sixty A lot of reasons,
budgetary reasons. And so that John a guy went to
kindergarten with Joey Demico, who was in two eighty, I
want to say, and John Norman. Our three sons down
on the job the same day, same class, same time.
So we were in the smallest Boby school, the smallest

(01:41:35):
Poby class in the FDNY, and three of us sons.
In fact, there's a picture I think in the Daily
News of the three of us. So, Joey Demico and
John Norman. Uh, phenomenal guys. Like I said, John Norman
was kind of our It was kind of our mentor
and our daddy in Broby School. So I appreciate, always
appreciated John, always a gentleman.

Speaker 1 (01:41:56):
I know, Chief Norman. Of course she's spent on this
program a couple of years ago. Had to get fortune
chat with him. The family of service. Of course he
was in the job. My brother Dave was an emergency
service cop in the NYPD and truck one. So family
a service definitely runs in the Norman family, that's for sure. Chief.
This has been fantastic and now that brings us into
the rapid fire. So many great stories from you to I.
He answered one of the questions. So it's normally five

(01:42:18):
questions down to forces. You covered one of them pretty well.
And now the first one is anywhere in the city
after a long day of firefighting or even in the firehouse,
favorite restaurant to eat out at, our favorite meal to
have in the firehouse.

Speaker 3 (01:42:30):
I'm going to give you two. Okay, I'm gonna give
you to it I thought about, so I'm gonna go back.
Obviously not my favorite bar. Now there's a place in
Bayseide knew basically my son lives in Bayside now and
it is called I'm giving them a free plug because
I spent a lot of time there. One place is closed,
but it's Bourbon Street on Bill Boulevard. I love going there.

(01:42:53):
Great people is a million firefighters and cops and Bayside.
It was nice relaxing in having a beer or having
a meal with them, and favorite meal. I have to
say Catses when I went down to the medical office.
You gotta stop at Castes and have this from me
on our way back, So you know, Catches is still uh.
I still dream about it.

Speaker 1 (01:43:14):
I've heard so many things about cats. I gotta get
down there next time I'm in the city. I haven't
been down in the city a little bit, but I've
heard so much about it. Favorite firefighter movie or TV.

Speaker 3 (01:43:23):
Show, So I'm gonna Okay. So I thought about this
my favorite movie, that Drift, only because it was the
first movie about firefighters that was that I ever remember.
You know that I that I ever remember. So I
think I took my first email address from one of
the characters in you know ax Man. You know, it's

(01:43:43):
when the internet was new. You know. I'm I'm but
TV show. Some of my friends don't like that I
say this, But what was the Dennis Leary show? Rescue Me,
Rescue Me? I thin I thought that captured the feeling
of camaraderie that firefighters had, and the banter and everything else.

(01:44:06):
I mean a lot of the show, of course, was hype,
but I really thought Dennis Leary and that cast I
laughed every time I saw that show. I loved it.
I have nothing bait to say about it.

Speaker 1 (01:44:19):
Yeah, it was a very good show. I love is
well documented. Third question, the rapid fire second to last,
funniest or most unforgettable moment in the firehouse.

Speaker 3 (01:44:28):
So I saw this. I don't know that I can
talk about that, but this is a family show. One.
Then yeah, let let's pass on that one because I
want to keep this as a family show. So I
don't I'm sure I could think of something, but since
time is out, I'll skip that question.

Speaker 1 (01:44:45):
No problem, No problem. And the last one, since you
covered the fifth one, the fourth one I last year
is most uplifting experience from your career.

Speaker 3 (01:44:52):
Okay, So I'm gonna go back, take a take a
giant step back. And when I was in three or two,
I would say I would say I might know more
about the Well, now i'm gonna I can't say that
I know almost as much about the twenty third Street
fire that happened in nineteen sixty six, the collapse where

(01:45:12):
I believe it was eleven firefighters side. Don't worry. I'm gonna.
I'm gonna on twenty third Street. And I say that
because I probably worked with twenty firefighters. Now, again, I
was a kid, I was eight years old in nineteen
sixty six that were at that fire. As a matter
of fact, my Lieutenant Wilter Clark at that time was

(01:45:34):
the only person that lived from seven truck he was
the shouffeur seven truck. I think it's twenty one engine.
I literally worked with Bob Riby, was the last guy
out in the basement before a collapse. And I heard
every story from every angle, from so many companies about
what happened at the twenty third Street fire one hundred times,

(01:45:55):
I would say once every two months. After dinner, depending
on what groups were, they'd cleared the table and we
had a giant board behind the table, and guys that
start doing diagrams, and you know, you had a different
guy that was here, He says, well, I was here,
and I heard that story from so many different directions,
and I really felt like it was one of the
stories that just maybe fall in love with the guys

(01:46:18):
and with the job. I say that because after nine
to eleven, and this is the thing that happens with
the fire Department, it seemed like every firefighter that moved
out of the city, that went to Florida or anyplace
else came back to the city to share in doing
something or supporting the FDNY after nine to eleven. And

(01:46:43):
I would say eight of those guys from nineteen seventy nine,
when I first started the job at some point a
few weeks or maybe a month after nine to eleven,
they came all came up from Florida to one guy's
house that was still there, and we all had dinner together. Now,
these guys are retired for twenty years, but they still
built that same paraderie, that same love. And the thing

(01:47:05):
that sticks with me is that these guys who had
told me so much about the fire on twenty third
Street sixty six that they were at now had me
diagram and show them my point of view from the
World Trade Center, and I don't know, it just seemed
to for me complete the circle. I don't there were

(01:47:27):
a few things that completed that circle. And I say
that because I work now when I teach, and I
don't teach as much as I used to, but when
I travel, I work with firefighters, police officers, nurses, EMTs
from around the country, and we formed teaching teams where
we do anti terror stuff. And this is what I

(01:47:48):
was getting at before you mentioned Al Pratts, who might
be listening. Phenomenal chief in North Hudson, New Jersey. I
work with a lot of firefighters and chief officers in
New Jersey. We're all in the same family It doesn't
matter if you're from New York City, doesn't matter if
you're from Kansas City. It doesn't matter if you're from Hartford, Connecticut, Stamford.

(01:48:11):
Every man, woman and woman that does this job is
a brother or a sister. Because you may be from
a biggest city or or it doesn't matter. We will
have the same experiences, we will do the same things,
and we need to respect that and support each other

(01:48:32):
as much as we possibly can and share those lessons.
I know John Norman. I know every time I go
out and I deal with them with guys, John's name
comes up, and it comes up because John doesn't say, oh,
I'm John Norman, and he sticks his chest out and
he shows his medals and he says I did this.
He's there supporting every person that he knows. He supports everyone,

(01:49:00):
and that's what we all need to do. Share your experiences.
You have good I don't know what you've told you
your audience. I'm really you know, I really wish you
the best in your career that's upcoming. It's a great job,
it's a great brotherhood and sisterhood. And don't take it

(01:49:21):
for granted. Value every day you work, every day you
work and try and learn something every day you work.

Speaker 1 (01:49:31):
Thank you, chief, excuse me. I appreciate that, and I
appreciate your time this evening. This has been one heck
of a show. Stick around. We'll talk off there, so
don't say goodbye just yet. I'm going to say goodbye
to the audience, but before I do so, the floor
is yours. If you want any shoutouts, or if you
have any shoutouts, I should say to anyone or anything.

Speaker 3 (01:49:46):
Well, I'm gonna so I'll do. Obviously, there's two groups
I mentioned obviously my family. Thank you for coming on.
I had no idea that you guys would be listening.
All of you, from grandson to to to oldest child.
His mother, who, by the way, is that was an
in our nurse in a Level one trauma center for

(01:50:08):
almost ten years. So now she's now, she's living the life.
You know, she's taking it easy, she's I'm only joking,
so that's great. I'm proud of my son who followed
in my footsteps. My grandson's at e MT, like I say,
he's I believe he took the test or is taking

(01:50:30):
the test for the Fire Department. My other son's a
computer guy, my son's girlfriend who, and my wife's and
my wife, my daughter's new husband. I'm wanted to just
thank my whole family and I appreciate everything. I would
be remiss if I had mentioned my study group guys
who I will you know, we studied the lieutenant together.

(01:50:53):
Like I say to two deputy chiefs, I doubt that
they're listening to the time chiefs. So it's foots Brandy's
rocker and all the Danny Butler UH and Bobby Sweeney
joined us. He was in and out chief of Operations UH.
And there's a group that al Pratt is part of
that I work very closely with and we do training

(01:51:13):
and excess. I do training and exercises, and I'm really
privileged to work with UH. The Northern New Jersey Metropolitan
Urban Search and Restry Team. Al Pratt is the He's
on the executive committee now. Rob skie Berger just retired.
He was a chairman there. Phenomenal guy. Brendan Rhodes is

(01:51:34):
the chair now of al Pratts. A. J. Woods is
on the h on the board, a chief of Deputy
chief in Patterson as well as Lou Moyano. These guys,
I still get to have my hand in with these
guys working with firefighters closely. They've accepted me as one
of their family. They're they're basically the rescue squad for

(01:52:00):
northern New Jersey, most densely populated part of the United States,
more densely populated in New York City. Most of who
don't realize that there's eleven companies that have that training.
They just like our rescue, our rescue guys, they volunteer,
they get the additional training, they work really hard. I

(01:52:21):
know part of the group that puts together the exercise.
We do everything we can do to steting these guys
and to have them run into brick walls, and unfortunately
they're constantly figuring ways around it. And so that's why
I just want to say just a phenomenal group of
men and women that do that. The core cities are
Jersey City and Nork, but the seven surrounding counties all

(01:52:47):
contribute to those teams, including the Port Authority. By the way,
Portotharity Police have one of those have a firefighter Urban
Search and Rescue Team Metropolitan Urban Search and Rescue TEA
teams much of ORO specials, and I want to thank
them for letting me be part of their family.

Speaker 1 (01:53:05):
Thank you very much again for your time this evening.
I appreciate it. We'll talk off here. I'd like to
thank everyone who tuned in a night, especially your family.
I hope I did your father or brother's career prout
tonight with our interview and was able to properly document
his history, and I very much hope that you guys
enjoyed the show. Again, thanks to everyone who tuned in
this year. This was a great year for the program.
We got to talk to a lot of really remarkable

(01:53:27):
people on all sides of the coin, from media folks
in New York City's primarily first responders, not just the
New York City area between the NYPD and the FDNY,
around the country. So, you know, this has been an
honor once again to do this program because you guys
make it so much fun to do, and you guys
make it all worthwhile, you know, and as producer Victor

(01:53:48):
says in the chat, we couldn't do it without each
and every one of you guys in the audience. As
far as January, the Chief made mention of it, we
don't know lots up in the air right now because
as you've heard me talk about somewhat. I'm getting to
jump into the first responder world myself as a first
responder myself. I recently received a conditional offer of employment
not too long ago from my hometown fire Department, New Haven, Connecticut.

(01:54:11):
And things are moving fast, and the academy should be
beginning pretty darned soon, and I'll be in it so
when it begins in January, and that hasn't been pinned
down yet, but we'll be away for quite a while
as I go into the academy, go through the training,
and come out of it a firefighter, something I've wanted
to do since I was three years old, and now
at almost twenty five, it looks like that dream is

(01:54:32):
about to finally become a reality. And that's in no
small part to the great conversations I've had over the years,
including tonight's conversation that's motivated me to really pursue that career,
in addition to the desire that's always been there, but
only burn stronger and stronger and stronger with each interview
and each person the fire Service I've gotten to know.
So thank you, and we'll see you potentially in January.
But if we don't, you know where I'll be and

(01:54:54):
hopefully soon on that truck or on that engine somewhere
getting the chance to do whatever always wanted to. So
thank you very much once again, and I love each
and every one of you, guys, and this show would
not be what it is without each and every one
of you, as far as those of you listening on
the audio side for tonight's outro song and nineties New
York City hip hop classics from their nineteen ninety three

(01:55:16):
album Enter the Stage Black Moon with how many mcs
In the meantime on behalf of retired FT and Y
Italian chief Phil Parr. I am Mike Cologne. We will
see you next time. This has been volume sixty five
of the best of the Bravest Interviews with the FT
and Wives Elite. Again a special shout out to producer
Victor and take care everyone, have a great rest of
yourn tek.

Speaker 5 (01:55:44):
Taking the back, come follow me, just see up for real.
MC the mine, the body, body, thanks, the mind is
crazy whatever to get the flow, I'm swazy, Craig, get
you shape.

Speaker 1 (01:55:57):
What happened in buck shot again?

Speaker 6 (01:56:01):
The buller for cool and you think the ball if
they're wanted to take the pool whatever I see I
attacked tack my black black clocking off that the Tamahawks
called the hell.

Speaker 4 (01:56:14):
Look into the eyes of the whole fell. I hit
my head on the concrete to beat the seat.

Speaker 5 (01:56:20):
I know the dead in the streak bullsie direct head
don't miss, But how many of them seized my skin?

Speaker 4 (01:56:26):
This to break it down? Like whatever you want? You

(01:56:51):
want to like this? Given this?

Speaker 5 (01:56:53):
When the pits miss the brock shot rockingnot quick, get off.

Speaker 4 (01:56:58):
My it's I will plot hold them up.

Speaker 6 (01:57:00):
Then shoot them up whatever I clip.

Speaker 5 (01:57:03):
Because I wear my mother and the winter enter.

Speaker 1 (01:57:06):
Stage, cock the gate.

Speaker 5 (01:57:07):
The amfle and then I leave the stage of just
a crazy maniac murder of murder type thinking.

Speaker 4 (01:57:13):
Is your ass thinking? I said, you're blinking.

Speaker 6 (01:57:16):
I wad didn't forget him, never shod the better, but he.

Speaker 4 (01:57:19):
Was to my mess up we had together.

Speaker 5 (01:57:21):
Yep, you can get the fish weather, but how many
of them seize my skin?

Speaker 4 (01:57:26):
This?

Speaker 5 (01:57:48):
I got s through the valego, but the fucking m
is illegal. Pains begin the brain. I'm going to stay
the pound of compstrong, pin your brain quicker to be better.
Every chaddy what to do to try to war the
question if I a cute you're just kid. Let me say,
get on the back, get long. Yeah right, this is

(01:58:11):
about getting blit. In nineteen ninety three, mother, I was
getting kissed.

Speaker 4 (01:58:22):
Excuse me, excuse m.

Speaker 3 (01:58:42):
M m m

Speaker 4 (01:58:48):
Mmmmmmmmmm Up
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