Five Floors Up: The Heroic Family Story of Four Generations in the FDNY

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Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app, to Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Up Next An American Story and an Immigration Story featured in the book Five Floors Up by author Brian MacDonald. It’s the story of New York’s Fire Department as told through one family that served the department through four successive generations, the Fian family, from the days just after the horse drawn fire truck, to the devastation of the nineteen seventies when the Bronx was indeed burning, to the unspeakable tragedy of nine eleven and beyond a Fian worn the shoulder patch of the FD and Y. We start the story of this remarkable American family not in the beginning, but on September eleventh, two thousand and one.

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Speaker 2: Here is author Brian McDonald.

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Speaker 3: The family gathering might have been a late summer barbecue. The evening was warm, and the fading summer’s air carried the scent of ocean salt. But there was nothing ordinary about this day in the backyard Billy Fay and cupped his hand over one ear with his cell phone press to the other as F sixteen fighter jets screamed overhead. He and his family had just arrived from Princeton, New Jersey, where they lived. Three police departments, the Princeton Junction, the New Jersey State Troopers, and the NYPD had formed the relay team to escort them to his sister and brother in law’s house in Bell Harbor, New York. It was mid span on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge when Billy had his first glimpse of what was left of the World Trade Center. Even from that time, the enormity of it shocked him. The thick, black smoke seemed to reach a mile into the sky. John Fey and Billy’s brother and Brian Davin, both firefighters, had just returned home from the Trade Center site, still wearing turnout gear. The cement dust that covered them gave their faces a ghostly white appearance, and their eyes were red from the acrid air, exhaustion, and tears. What they had just seen was beyond their understanding. A six inch shroud of dust covered the remains of the mighty World Trade Center. Brian likened it to walking.

00:02:32
Speaker 4: On the moon.

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Speaker 3: But what he remembers most is not the deadly dust the moonscape, or even the twisted steel girders. It is the sound of the firefighter scot air packed pass alarms, hundreds of them, buried under a million tons of cement and steel, that he can still hear in his mind today. On the phone with Billy was Henry MacDonald, his father’s executive officer, sort of an aid to camp. Henry had been the one to call Billy to tell him that his father, Chief William Fihan, had been killed in the attack. Billy wanted to get into the city to see his father’s body. Though Manhattan was essentially sealed to traffic, he knew Henry could make it happen. Seventy five years before the attack on the World Trade Center, Chief Fienn’s dad, William, was the first of the four generations of firefighters. William was born in eighteen ninety one. His parents were Julia and William Fihen Senior, and they had emigrated from Ireland like eight years before. They settled in a part of New York City called Long Island City. It was a rough and tumble, working class neighborhood, and William took on the attributes of the neighborhood in which he grew up. He was a tough kid. He was the youngest of ten children and the only one born in America, but as the youngest, he was especially attached to his mom. After the father left, the relationship with the mother brew even closer, and then Julia got She developed cancer and William would dote on her for the rest of her life. But when she died, he found himself at thirty four, single and without a career. But as luck would have it, or divine into venure would have it, he would meet a woman named Katherine Cashman. Catherine would be the catalyst or the conduit for William’s entry into the fire department. Catherine had a brother who was a priest in a local parish, and her brother was not only a priest at the parish, but he was a part time chaplain for the FDNY. You know, so we took William a long time to find this true calling. Once he walked into the firehouse, he knew what he wanted to do. You know, firefighters have this expression, it’s called chasing fire. Depict is that some firefighters are drawn to the action and danger of the job more than others, and those firefighters are said to chase fire. In fact, I documented at least three times when he was hospitalized from injuries in fires. One time he was actually he was so bad they were that he was given the last rites. When they put him in the ambulance, everybody thought it was the last time they were going to see William. But William would survive, and perhaps miraculously he had. You know, he was a really religious guy. He would go to church every morning and light a candle. And the story goes that when he was in the hospital, the nurse went to take off his scapular medal, and scapular metal is like this little cloth look some Catholics where it’s like a badge of devotion. Nurse want to take Williams off and he practically jumped.

00:05:39
Speaker 4: Right out of the bed. Not all of William’s stories with death defying.

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Speaker 3: One of the great joys I had in writing this book was listening to the family stories and the next generations of firefighters. Firefighters are some of the best storytellers you’ll ever meet.

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Speaker 4: Here’s one.

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Speaker 3: After a spate of deadly and spectacular theater fires across the country, mostly caused by the gaslamps of the day. New York City enacted regulations that required a uniformed fireman to be posted at all theater of performances. For a busy fireman, theater duty was a chance to take a breather and see a show. One night in the early nineteen thirties, William volunteered to do fire duty at a theater featuring an up and coming singer named Eli Fitzgerald. Noting their name, he told his pals he was in the mood to hear some good Irish music. On another evening, the detail put him in an uptown opera house. The performance that night was by an Italian composer and set during the days of the Roman Empire. Just before the performance, several of the extras on the show, called in six with the flu The director found himselves in a real bind. When William arrived for work, he saw his way out of it. The local firehouse captain would do rounds each night to check on the firemen who were on theater duty. On this particular evening, the captain happened to be accompanied by his boss at Deputy Chief. When they arrived at the opera house, William was nowhere to be found. As the search continued, the deputy Chief became more and more aggravated. All is the Chief demanded of the captain. It must be somewhere, The captain answered, fans a good man. It was at that point the captain’s eyes fell on the performance. There he is, he exclaimed. Where the third Roman soldier on the left, he said, pointing out the back of a stage, the one with the spear.

00:07:17
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to author Brian McDonald tell the story of the Fiann family for successive generation served in the New York Fire Department. More of the story here on Our American Stories After these messages, liehbib here the host of Our American Stories.

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Speaker 2: Every day on this show, we’re.

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Speaker 1: Bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can’t do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go to Alamerican stories dot com and give and we’re back with our American stories and with author Brian McDonald. His book Five Floors Up is available at Amazon, at local bookstores, or wherever you buy your books. Now, let’s return to the story of the Fians through the Roaring twenties and the birth of their son, Bill, who would go on to lead the ft and why.

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Speaker 4: So.

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Speaker 3: In nineteen twenty nine, Catherine would give birth to a baby boy whom they called Bill, and six years later should give birth again to another boy, whom they named Jim, after Catherine’s brother, the priest Father Jim. Bill, the youngest boy, was seemed ordained to be a firefighter at from the start, but Father Jim had other ideas. Father Jim was grooming Bill to be the next cardinal. He went to a high school called Cathedral in Brooklyn, which was a prep school for a seminary. If you took the special courses offered by Cathedral, you were on a fast track to become a priest. Now, Bill tells you that he would have become a priest. The way he puts it, he said he found out the girls and Bishop McLaughlan High School nearby were a lot more interesting than Gregorian chance and he knew he wasn’t going to be a priest. A very ambitious young man at the time, it was unusual for a middle class kid. He got a four year degree in history from Saint John’s. He could have been a college professor. He certainly could have been a teacher. But something called the Korean War began six thousand miles away. Even though he was a college graduate, Bill join the army and found himself on the Korean peninsula. He saw a lot of death, and he saw a lot of misery and war, but he never ever talked about it. He was of that generation of men who didn’t bear their souls about the thing things they saw in war.

00:10:01
Speaker 4: When he came out of the army, almost.

00:10:03
Speaker 3: Immediately married his lifelong sweetheart, Betty Keegan, and he needed a job. At this point, he went back to his childhood love and wanted to become a firefighter.

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Speaker 4: He wanted to follow his father’s footsteps.

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Speaker 3: However, he needed to wait for the fire department exam, which was given only every four years. Meanwhile, he was about to get married to his love Betty and they wanted to start.

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Speaker 4: A family, so he needed a job.

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Speaker 3: He joined something called the fire Patrol which was like a stepping stone to becoming a real fireman said it was a very fire, known in history now as the Worcester Street fire curda on Valentine’s Day night, February fourteenth, nineteen fifty eight, while Bill was on the fire patrol inside the building, he felt to Bill like it was melting his skin. The odor surrounding him was a thick, toxic blend of burning rope, wood, torn chemicals. The room he entered contained heavy machinery, large bales of paper, and eight hundred pound rolls of twine. Fire patrolman fee And took his covers and climbed the man roll of twine. At the top. He was only a foot or so from the ceiling. He could see the smoke seeping through from the room above. After he finished covering the Bill, he went down for more covers. By then the street was filled with rigs and firemen. Hoses snaked into the building while water cannons fired at the top floors. On the roof, firemen used axes to hack holes for ventilation. Thick black smoke poured out of the openings they made. In less than half an hour, the blaze had progressed from one alarm to four. Ten minutes later it would go to five. Meanwhile, the temperature outside began the plummet snow blew in icy gusts. Bill went up and down the stairs two more times. He felt the searing pain in his chest from the smoke. As the young fire patrolman started down again. A fireman was standing on the third floor landing, putting on a mask and blocking the stairwell. When he saw a BILLI he stepped out of the door frame. You guys, go ahead of me, he said. The next thing Bill heard was a deafening thunderclap. The last thing he remembered was the floor beneath him falling away. The rush of air caused by the collapse lifted him and blew him down the stairwell. Screams from inside the building were so loud people on the street heard them. So when Valentine’s Day night turned to the next day, and Bill was supposed to be home that morning when the shift was over. He worked the overnight shift and he didn’t show up. She started to really get worried. And this, of course was before cell phones, and he couldn’t get to the phone. Four fire patrolmen were missing.

00:12:34
Speaker 4: In the rubble.

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Speaker 3: Two New York City firefighters were also missing, so Bill had his hands full. He couldn’t get to a phone, he couldn’t call. Search continued for the other missing fire patrolman. The next evening, practically a whole day later, after he had gone to work, Bill finally walked into the apartment and Betty took one look at him and caught her breath, and he went in and took the long hot shower, and then he started getting dressed and walking out of the apartment again, and she goes, where are you going, And he goes, I gotta go back, and she said you can’t, and he said, I have to, And he went back to the scene.

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Speaker 4: And it’d taken another.

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Speaker 3: Whole day before they found the bodies of the other fire patrolman. Bill would later joke that the Holy ghost blew him out of the building. So on August twentieth, nineteen fifty eight, a little more than two months after the Worcester Street fire, Betty awakened in the early morning hours with severe contractions. When they arrived, the hospital lobby was empty save a Catholic nun at a telephone switchboard. Betty was in severe pain. The nun rushed to them. I’ve got her, She told Bill. You take over the switchboard.

00:13:38
Speaker 4: You want me to do?

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Speaker 3: Why, he asked, There’s no one else here, he said, someone has to answer the phone. The nun took Betty by the arm and rushed down the hallway. For a moment, Bill stood there, wondering what had just happened. Then the phone started to ring MS recordier. He said in a voice, A bit unsteady, How can I help you? Betty gave birth that morning to a healthy baby girl named Elizabeth Ann, the third generation of Elizabeths in the Kegan line. After a few years on the fire patrol, Bill retook the fire department’s entrance exam once again. He ate the written in physical parts of the test. When he arrived for the eye examination, the older gentleman administering the test seemed to Bill to be all business.

00:14:19
Speaker 4: When he pressed his.

00:14:20
Speaker 3: Face to the machine, he again had trouble making out the last line at a chart. He squinted as hard as he could to bring the final letter into view. It’s either a C or an O, he said, nervously. It has to be one of them, kid, the man said softly. Bill knew his future as a New York City firefighter hung in the balance. He just turned thirty, and the next time the test came around he might be too old to take it. Throughout his career in the FDN Y, he would tell the story of that eye test often. He could never remember, however, which letter he picked, nor could he be sure that the letter he chose was actually the correct one.

00:15:01
Speaker 4: Betty and Ville were very social.

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Speaker 3: They used to like to get all dolled up and go into Manhattan to see a show or a play and have dinner at a nice restaurant. Betty also had a group of close knit friends that she grew up with in stay close into adulthood, and she had a quirky sense of humor, very outgoing, was always the life of the party. As a mom, too, she could be very adventurous. She was a horrible driver, but that didn’t stop her from taking the kids on these extended road trips. She’d find the destination of some odd event happening and should put the kids in the car and drive them all the way to Jersey. One time, they want to see how police dogs had trained, and she had to go all the way from Queens to New Jersey, which is an arduous trip. After she got pregnant with Liz, she developed postpartum depression and it kind only works with each subsequent pregnancy. We got so bad by the time she had Taro, who was the fourth born child. She had to be hospitalized. And somehow Bill, even though we had a big job, you know, he was already climbing the ladder of the department. He had cooked dinner for the kids, or dropped them off at the grandparents, or bring them to soccer or twirling practice, and then go, you know, be a captain in a very busy firehouse. And he somehow kept it all together. But then an event had that really sent Betty into an incredibly dark downward spiral. She had a baby they named Michael. When he was about four months old, he developed a condition that needed an operation.

00:16:37
Speaker 4: It wasn’t that.

00:16:38
Speaker 3: Severe of an operation, but it would require him to go under general anesthetic, and Michael never woke up on the operating table.

00:16:46
Speaker 4: Betty devastated.

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Speaker 3: Bill was so devoted to his wife, he waited on her hand and foot, but he had no answer for this depression. His wife was in and the pressure on him was so severe he developed these headaches that were so intense that he would vomit from them. He had somehow he kept the family together and continued an unprecedented climb up the ladder at the FDNY.

00:17:13
Speaker 1: And you’re listening to the story of the Fiann family as told by author Brian McDonald, and his book is five Floors Up.

00:17:20
Speaker 2: Pick it up.

00:17:21
Speaker 1: It is one heck of a read about New York City history, about Irish immigration, and also about this thing called the New York Fire Department which now fields eleven thousand firefighters. When we come back, more of this remarkable story, the story of the Fiann family here on our American story. And we’re back with our American stories and with author Brian MacDonald. His book Five Floors Up, The heroic family story of four generations in the FDNY is one heck of a tale. The nineteen seventies were a tough time in New York City. Let’s find out how it affected the FDNY.

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Speaker 3: The nineteen seventies in the New York City Fire Department are known as the war years. You might have heard the expression of the bronx is burning. Well, that’s when the bronx was burning. During the war years. And it wasn’t only the Bronx, it was Harlem, it was the Lower east Side, it was parts of Brooklyn, all inner city neighborhoods that were laid waste by arson, neglect, malfeasance on the part of city leadership. I interviewed Tom van Essen, who was the fire commissioner during nine to eleven, but he was a firefighter in the South Bronx store in the seventies, and he told me the dispatch used to warn the fire trucks out on a run not to stop but other fires on the way to the fires they were sent to fight in Harlem because of the equipment shortage and everything. The expression was all you needed was sneakers in a raincoat to be a firefighter in Harlem. Bill’s firehouse was no different. The neighborhood that his firehouse was lined with these five story tenement buildings. If you ask a New York City firefighter, they’ll tell you that the fires and tenement buildings the hardest to fight. Wooden structures, narrow hallways, lots of windows, lots of people usually, and they’re made out of wood. So the tinder boxes they go up like a matchbook. Firefighters and Bill’s engine companies used to say every time they got a call in a tenement fire, it was always on the top floor and the way in the back of the building like the hardest place to reach the crew. So they came up with this expression, five floors up in fireroom state. That became rallying cry and the title of my book five floors up, because they go anywhere the fire took him. Like most firefighters with families, Bill had the moonlight. No firefighter could raise a family just on a firefighter salary, and Bill was no exception. For most of the beginning of his career, he taught in the New York City school system. He was a great teacher, but in the early seventies. In the late eighties, the New York City ran out of money and they stopped the substitute teacher program and Bill was out of a moonlight job and he needed one badly. Had three kids in college at the time. His neighbors in Flushing was a man named Eddie Brady, who was a detective in the New York City Police Department, and Eddie was working hotel security for Harry and Leona Helmsley, owners of, among other things, the Helmsley Palace in New York. Now years before Donald Trump, Harry Helmsley was the pre eminent real estate mogul in New York City, but it was Leona who would wrestled the Donald for the front page of the New York Post. Page six dubbed her the Queen of Mean. She was so notoriously bad to her employees that a staff at her mansion in Connecticut would call the staff at the hotels when Leona had left for the city to warn them. Right in time, he would realize that Leona was just a sad, sad, lonely woman. Bill would end up working for Leona for twenty years old. The fie and kids would work for her as bell hops and waitresses in the hotel restaurants. Bill would often remind them that it was Leona who paid their college tuition. After twenty years of working for Leona Helmsley, she Threwhm a cocktail party. Things didn’t work out as nicely for her in her later years. Rudy Giuliani was then the US Attorney in the Southern District of New York, and he prosecuted her on tax invasion and fraud. She ended up spending eighteen months in jail. It was sentenced seven hundred and fifty hours of community service, which belonged to nine hundred hours of community service after the judge found out that Leona was using their staff to do some of the court ordered work. Bill saw a lot of changes from the nineteen fifties to the nineteen nineties, including the first female firefighters as well as the first African American commanders. He would always say, it wasn’t brawn or even brains that were the main ingredients of a good firefighter, but heart. When Bill had time to get home and see his dad, the two of them would sit and talk fire as they called it. Bill loved and revered and respected his father. Sadly, William Patrick Fian, Bill’s dad, died on February second, nineteen seventy five. Emphysema was as the cause of death on his death certificate. He never smoked in his life. In the nineteen eighties, crime was out of control and New York took on the name Fierce City. Police and firefighters became targets as they ran towards the disaster, whatever it might be. Bill continued his rise through the ranks and on August nineteenth, nineteen ninety one, Mayor David Dinktt promoted to chief of the department. He was only the twenty fourth man to hold that position. Two years later, on February twenty third, nineteen ninety three, two Jordanian nationals drove a rental truck filled with thirteen hundred pounds of urea nitrate into a sub basement garage of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. They blew a sixth story crater in the building. It would be a harbinger of what was to come. On June fourteenth, nineteen ninety six, Bill stood in the kitchen of his house and flushing with the rotary phone in his hand, his eyes shone with tears. Outside the kitchen window, the first light of the day began to filter through the leaves of the oak tree that stood next to the house. For months, Betty had been in and out of the hospital, progressively getting worse. By then, the kids were out of the house and on with their lives, and aside from the squirrels, Bill spent much of his time there alone. Clicked the cradle on the phone and dialed his best friend, Henry McDonald’s number. Betty’s gone he said into the receiver. Bill’s wife had spent her last days in Saint Clair’s Hospital in the Hell’s Kitchen section of Manhattan. Had fussed over Betty so many times when she was hospitalized, making sure she had what she needed and that her room was tidy. Sometimes he’d go to see her alone, but other times he came with the children. Afterwards, he’d take the kids to the Woodside steakhouse in Queen’s where the Irish waitresses flushed over them.

00:24:32
Speaker 4: Right to the end.

00:24:33
Speaker 3: Bill was crazy about Betty and she was crazy about him. Ultimately, there was nothing he could do to save her.

00:24:40
Speaker 4: Betty was sixty two when she died. It was a great.

00:24:44
Speaker 3: Loss to Bill, and he threw himself into his work. There was always the work, the firefighters and the department. Meanwhile, his son John took the test for the FDNY on January seventeenth, nineteen ninety five. I’ve an astat becoming a valedictorian of his academy class. First Deputy Commissioner Bill Fie handed his son the award. Bill knew the sacrifice and risk it took to become a New York City firefighter. He had to write far too many obituaries for foremen firefighters. In one, he wrote, the truth kind of love is to lay down your life for another, But the purest form of love is to cherish each other every day. Never leave a moment’s doubt that you loved with your whole heart and soul. While First Deputy Commissioner Dill was instrumental in getting better and safer equipment, refitting firehouses, upgrading computer systems via data sharing, and overall improvement of the quality of life for as firefighters, he once said, no matter what we do, no matter how well we train, no matter how good our equipment is, no matter how hard we try, no matter what the time will come when we will lose another firefighter. Even before September eleventh, two thousand and one was a deadly year for the New York City Fire Department. The fire in a hardware store in Queen’s on Father’s Day killed three elite firefighters. Then on August twenty eighth, two thousand and one, and twenty seven year old Proby firefighter named Michael Grumba would die of a heart attack during a fire and an order shop on Staten Island. Firefighter Garumba’s would be the last line of duty death before nine to.

00:26:23
Speaker 1: Eleven and you’re listening to Brian McDonald tell the story of the Fian Family, of the FDNY and William in particular. The seventies were indeed the war years. The Bronx was burning, so it was much of New York City through arson, through Malfeasan’s criminality and just sheer negligence. And then the eighties, well, New York City earned its reputation a fierce murder, was out of control, in violent crime, and the FDNY had to live through all of it. And then of course William, well he faces the loss of his bride. When we come back more of the story of the Fian family and William Fienn in particular, year on our American story and we returned to our American stories and author Brian MacDonald his book Five Floors Up, the heroic family story of four generations in the fd and Y. Nine to eleven was a day that will live alongside Pearl Harbor is one of the darkest days in American history. The heroism of the men who ran towards the devastation will never truly be known. One man, chief of the FDNY, Bill Fihan, at the age of seventy one, had no reason to be at ground zero on that day, and yet nothing could stop him from working alongside his men to try and stop the carnage.

00:28:17
Speaker 2: You would pay the ultimate price.

00:28:26
Speaker 3: When you have a department whose men and women are expected to be ready at any moment to put their life on the line to go to the aid of the stranger, even when it means that you might put yourself in harm’s way, actually in dire peril. I don’t think you could pay people to do that job. There has to be something more than money that makes them do that.

00:28:53
Speaker 4: William mphihan.

00:28:57
Speaker 3: So that day started like any other for Bill Fee. In that morning he had eggs olbreezy at the North Shore at Diner before heading into work. He was looking forward to having lunch with Henry McDonald, who had retired a few months before. He was in his office and headquarters in Brooklyn when United Flight eleven hit the North Tower. From some of the offices and headquarters you could see the trade center clearly. Some reported that the shockwaves from the impact traveled to thirteen miles in an instant and bowed the office windows. Chief Fee and called to his driver to get the car. The second jet hit the South tower just as Chief Being and the other chiefs with him reached the scene. Part of the jet’s landing gear slammed into the street just ahead of them. Peel sections of the airplane, along with body parts rained down on. The trip through the concourse to the North Tower was no less dangerous. People had already begun jumping out the windows from the high floors. A firefighter named Daniel Shurr was struck and killed by one of them. The lobby in the North Tower was controlled chaos. Chiefs had already begun sending fire companies up the stairs as a steady stream of civilians came down. The first fire officer onseene at the trade Center that day was Battalion Chief Joe Pheiffer. The French film crew had been shadowing Fiffer that morning for a documentary. Jules Nada would go on to record some of the most dramatic footage ever shot for any documentary. One of the companies that Fifer sent up the stairs was engined thirty three, where his brother Kevin was the lieutenant. The brothers said a few words to each other before Kevin entered the stairwell it would be the last time they talked, though. The amount of fire officer experience in the North tower was astounding. None of them had ever encountered anything close to what they were experiencing.

00:30:45
Speaker 4: At one point, Chief.

00:30:47
Speaker 3: Ray Downey, a special operations chief and a nationally known collapse expert, looked at Commissioner von Essen and told them that the buildings could come down. Not even Downey, however, expected them to do so as quickly as they would. After some time in the lobby, Chief Fien and several others left looking for a more suitable command center location. Those setting up in the lobby was protocol for high rise fires. The location and the fact that most of the building and into department communication was failing allowed a chief very little awareness of what was happening ninety floors above them. Many in the lobby didn’t even know the South tower was hit by a second jet. They found a suitable location on West Street, the thoroughfare that ran on the west side of the Trade Center. From there, Chief Fien and the others had their first look at the entire scene. What they witness shocked and like a pair of giant Roman candles, The tops of both towers were engulfed in smoke and flame. From the windows of those high floors came dozens and dozens of jumpers who had made the unthinkable decision. As they set up magnetic command boards and handy talking communications, Chief Fien looked up at the South Tower again and saw what he thought it looked like, twinkling Christmas lights surrounding the building. Those lights turned out to be the tall windows, pulverizing as the building began to collapse. Though it later it was estimated that the building came down at a rate of one hundred and twenty miles an hour, it seemed as though the collapse was in slow motion. The implosion sent chunks of steel and cement hurtling outwardly, followed by a deadly wall of debris and dust. In the two thousand and nine documentary nine to eleven Phone Calls from the Tower, the late Great columnists for The New York Times Jim Dwyer called the seventy eighth floor in the South Tower the bridge point between the living and the dead. There was a transferred floor for the elevator banks to the lobby. After the hijacked airliner hit the North Tower, people who worked in the upper floors of the South Tower had massed on the seventy eighth floor hoping to evacuate when United One seventy five crashed into the South tower. The tip of the wing of the jets sliced through the seventy eighth floor like a scythe killing and injuring scores of people. One of the recordings from that documentary was from Chief Oreo Palmer. He had radioed that he encountered another number of ten forty five Code ones, the department designation for civilian fatalities. That would be the last radio communication from Chief Palmer. Meanwhile, the North Tower lobby shook violently. Father Judge, who had always been a rock of faith that fire scenes, walked in a kind of trance, his lips moving in prayer. At some point he looked up at the ceiling that had started to split. Jesus, please end this now, he yelled. The chiefs in the West Street command Post ran into the building, loading dock for cover. With the power of a hurricane gust, the wall of debris practically lifted them off the ground as they did. Some escaped into the building. Chief Fien In Chief of the Department Gansey found their way back out to the street. They looked across West Street in disbelief. The mighty south tower of the Trade Center was gone, and in its place lay one hundred and eleven stories of twisted steel and.

00:34:17
Speaker 4: Chunks of cement.

00:34:18
Speaker 3: In the North Tower lobby, Father Judge’s body lay where he had asked his Lord for help. The collapse had almost completely destroyed the Mariatte hotel adjacent to the tower. Inside, cruise of firefighters were trapped or killed. Chief Fien held one of the few working handy talkies. He began directing a rescue operation for those in the hotel. Chief Gancy and Ray Downey had joined them. Within minutes. The unthinkable began to happen again. It took some time after the collapse of the North tower for the search and rescue teams to climb the mountain of steel and cement to reach the location of the West Street command center. As they searched, the firefighter saw something glinting in a layer of dust. There was a helmet, white with a gold front piece that read First Deputy Commissioner. At one point, when Chief Fihan was still in the North Tawer Lobby, Commissioner Van Essen had approached him and told him he wanted him somewhere safe. Bill was seventy one, about to be seventy two, and the commissioner thought he was too old to be in such a dangerous situation. In remembering the moment much later, Van Essen can still imagine the incredulous look on his first deputy’s face as he said those words. For forty one years in counting, Chief Fien had run into burning buildings not away from him. He wasn’t about to start now. A student of American history, Bill Fihn was a fan of General George S. Patten’s poetry. In the General’s poem through a Glass Darkly, he wrote, so forever in the future shall I battle as a bure dying to be born a fighter, but to die again once more? The kind of hero is am owned by Chief fan And all firefighters who sacrificed their lives on the firefield can’t die. They must live on from generation to generation. And those brave enough to answer the sirens call. Chief Fien was the highest ranking member of the FDNY killed in the attack on the World Trade Center, So a firefighter with a career like few others perished in the rubble of the Trade Center that day, the hero among heroes, the Chief’s legacy would live on in the late nineteen eighties. The Chiefs stored to Taro would meet Brian David. Brian would graduate from the academy just before they got married in September of eighty nine, along with John Fenn. Brian would respond to the World Trade Center just after the Towers fell in the aftermath of the attack, who was promoted to lieutenant, then captain, and finally battalion chief as the department sought to rebuild along the way. He and Tower would have three children. The oldest, Connor, would follow his father’s footsteps into the FDNY. Like his great grandfather William Patrick Fee and nearly one hundred years before, Connor works in an engine company in a very busy house, and like William Patrick, more times than not, when the bell rings, Connor’s on the nozzle, running it into a burning building, and so it goes. For ninety six years in County, the Fans and the Davins have fort fired and lived lives of quiet heroism.

00:37:42
Speaker 1: And a terrific job on The editing and storytelling by David Wilde and thanks to author Brian McDonald his book Five Floors Up, the heroic family story of four generations.

00:37:54
Speaker 2: In the fd NY.

00:37:56
Speaker 1: It’s a piece of New York history, certainly a piece of Fire Department history. It’s an Irish immigrants story too, but in the end it’s a story of heroism and public service, the story of.

00:38:08
Speaker 2: The Fian family.

00:38:10
Speaker 1: Here on our American story.”