I was in the lobby of seven World Trade Center
when the South Tower came down and you could hear it and it was just
the sound of like a railroad engine.
It was just something it's just indescribable.
Not something you've heard before.
But the antenna for the top of the World Trade Center for the North Tower
was starting to move.
And I watched it come down and I thought, wow, this is
this is the buildings coming down.
Later on, I was at the police academy
and waiting for word from my friends and my colleagues in the fire department,
and I started hearing from my friends that we hadn't heard
from this chief and this chief and this commissioner
when I was told that my mentor, his body was found
and that his remains were at a hospital, that it finally came together.
And I started to realize the just the extent of loss for the fire department.
That was when I was able to go back to the site after the attack
and just see the devastation firsthand, and it was just amazing
seeing pieces of the Trade Center that were still standing intact
and you find debris pile.
And so I came down to the site fairly frequently because I was setting up
those sites for first responders.
I think of us as we worked every single day
because I could think about is my friends are down there working every single day.
And I this is a way I can support them.
So we realize that we're working 24/7.
And it was a large, I think, 14 acre site.
And then how do we make sure that we were able to see people
who are working on the pile?
So we devised a plan to have a feeding
and respite center site on the north side and the south side of the site.
It was basically, you know, as we would respond to anything in terms
of the emergency, I think all your focus and your energy is to help other people.
And so for me, that was the adrenaline.
That was the thing that got me going to it.
So I didn't count the days.
I just wanted to make sure that
every point I was meeting my objectives and trying to get help
and trying to provide as directly as an impact as I possibly could.
So the statue behind me,
it was recovered and the statute had been at the Trade Center Plaza,
and we thought it had been destroyed and it was recovered.
And you can see it's relatively intact.
And I thought it spoke to the resiliency of New Yorkers.
It speaks to the resiliency of people.
And we took that and basically
put it in a memorial area in the Battery Park City.
And that was part of my responsibility to move that and to find a new site for it.
Some wrestling matches my passion.
It's the way that we actually have an impact on survivors,
and that's something that FEMA has is so unique to from the federal agency
that we actually can go out and touch people's lives during that time period.
You saw the best in people,
and that's why I was so struck by during, you know, terrible times.
Ordinary people do extraordinary things.
And for all the folks we work with, they have all said how rewarding it was
that they were able
to have a direct impact on people and that we were saving lives.
And so I think that's I mean, it's the most rewarding career I can think of.