Danny Jones Podcast - #72 - New York Firefighter who Survived 9/11 | Tim Brown

Episode Date: January 22, 2021

Tim Brown is a retired, decorated 20-year FDNY firefighter, a survivor of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, a first responder to the 1993 attack on the WTC and a veteran of the New York Urban Search & Rescue Task Force team that responded to the 1995 attack on the  Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City. Tim lost 93 of his friends on Sept. 11th, including his two best friends.  When Tim shared his experiences on the ground during the 9/11 attacks on the WTC… you stop breathing because It really makes you understand the real human experience of that day and the effect it still has on survivors like Tim almost 20 years later.  What Brothers Do: https://amzn.to/2JZBAHU  Join Koncrete on Patreon: https://bit.ly/koncretepatreon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're going to start posting each podcast episode that you see on YouTube a week earlier on Patreon. So feel free to join for early access to all episodes. Plus, we're going to start doing bonus podcast episodes every week. So if you want to join Patreon, it's patreon.com slash concrete videos. Next week's episode is already posted there. So feel free to go check it out. Hello, world. Today, my guest is Tim Brown.

Tim is a retired, decorated 20-year FDNY firefighter, a survivor of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, a first responder to the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and a veteran of the New York Urban Search and Rescue Task Force team that responded to the 1995 terrorist attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City. Tim lost 93 of his friends and fellow firefighters on September 11, including two of his best friends. when Tim shares his experience on the ground during 9-11 during the attacks on the World Trade Center you stop breathing because he describes it so vividly as if you're there with him.

It really makes you understand the real human experience of that day and the effect it still has on the survivors like Tim almost 20 years later. I must warn you this conversation isn't for the faint of heart. It's extremely vivid and intense. Please welcome the amazing Tim Brown. Awesome. Tim Brown. Thanks for coming down here and joining the show, man. I appreciate it. Hey, Danny. So for people listening, can you just give yourself sort of a brief intro to what your

background is and what your story is? Yeah, I live in New York City still. And when I was a kid, I around 15 years old, wanted to be in New York City Fireman. That's when I figured it out with a couple of young buddies of mine, and by 1984, that dream came true. And I moved to New York City. It became a fireman in the South Bronx, and I did that for 15 years, winding up in special operations in the Bronx Harlem Fire Department, we call it. And then I went to work for Mayor Giuliani. He became a good friend of mine back then. And he had created something new called the mayor's office of emergency management. So instead of wearing the helmet, the fireman helmet, I was now wearing a tie and representing

the mayor at the scene of emergencies, major emergencies in New York City. Our office was Seven World Trade Center on the 23rd floor. So that's where I was on the morning of September 11th, 2001. So if you think about it, the first plane that hit the North Tower, Flight 11th, American Air, Airlines Flight 11, flew over the roof of our building. Our building was 47 stories. It hit the tower in the 80s. So it flew right over the roof of our building, hit the tower.

At the time, I was in the third floor mezzanine where our breakfast area was. So I was just having some Cheerios. I did that every morning. And I read the newspapers because back then we didn't have smartphones, right? So I was reading the newspapers, making sure I was up on all the things that were happening that day, and the power went out in the building. And this is a modern high-rise building in New York City, very unusual for all the power to go out. And then five seconds later, the power came back on. And I knew because of my experience that that meant we lost a feeder cable, electrical feeder cable, and that our backup power had kicked in.

This was in one of the two towers? This is in seven. So it's direct, seven World Trade Center. There were seven buildings in the complex. Ours was number seven. It was directly across the street from the north tower. Got it. Okay.

And so I didn't hear it or anything. All I knew was the power went out in the building. And at the same time, all these people who were sitting at the glass window facing the north tower, jumped up and screaming, started running to the exit. And I was like, what's going on? And I had to grab one girl by the shoulders and kind of shake her back to reality and say what happened. And she said, a plane hit the tower. And that's the first I knew that that had happened.

And we had had this happen before New York City. It was a major thing, but, you know, it was not something that had never happened before. Plains have hit buildings in New York City before that? Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you go back to World War II, a B-52 bomber hit the Empire State building. Oh, shit. I didn't know. I had no idea.

Yeah. So, and I mean, that was the biggest example. But there were examples of people in small planes who maybe had a heart attack or something and flew into a high-rise building. I'm just saying that we had, we had heard of that before. It wasn't something completely unprecedented. So when I shook her and said, and she told me that the plane hit the tower, and I was like, okay, game face, going to work now. This is a big deal. You know, the fire department, the

police department, they're all getting 1,000 911 calls all at once right now because everybody's reporting it. I don't have to do that, but I have to get ready to do my job. And my job was to go to the scene and assist the incident commander as a representative of the mayor with anything he needed. In this case, it would be the fire chief. And anything he needed other than fire department, he would turn to me or my colleagues in OEM and say, get me this, get me that, and we would help him. And we would support, we weren't the incident commander because we weren't the experts of that, but we were the ones that could help him carry things out smoothly, right? So I went up to the 23rd floor to get my radios, police radio, fire radio, OEM radio, to ensure that our watch

command, which is our listening and communicating hub, was doing a full activation. A full activation means we have to contact 150 local, state, federal, and private partner agencies to get them to come into our emergency operation center. Our emergency operation center had 150 stations in it for, like state police. for communications Verizon, for different people, partners who could help mitigate, manage this emerging disaster. The, both of those were ready to go. Both supervisors were on board doing what we train and train and train and train to do. My job was go to the scene. So I went down, I went to my car on V.C. Street, like an undercover police car kind of thing. I opened the trunk.

I took off my tie in my dress shirt, and I put on my mayor's office jacket with heavy leather boots and a stupid green helmet they made us wear to identify us. And they train us as firefighters that you always try to look at three sides of a building that's being compromised before you go in it.

So you have a good size up in your head. So that's what I wanted to do. In order to do that, I had to go from the street level up an hour, outdoor concrete staircase to the plaza level, which is one story up, the World Trade Center Plaza. And I went between one World Trade Center and six World Trade Center, which was next door. And I went out and I saw the plaza. And if people can remember that, there was a big sphere there.

It was the World Trade Center. So there's a big sphere, a golden sphere of the world there. And I remember seeing that. And around that on the plaza was debris. and fire and black smoke and things, pieces of the building crashing to the ground. And the paper, all the paperwork from the offices was fluttering down amid the smoke. And that's when I kind of said in my head, this is maybe more than a little plane. Because you had no idea what kind of plane it was.

No. I mean, we just kind of, I guess everybody just kind of assumed it was. an errant private aircraft. Yeah, exactly. The guy had a heart attack. He flew a big tower, right? Our immediate thought was not that this is a terrorist attack and there's more coming. That's for sure.

That was not even in my mind at all. At that level, I went into the North Tower, which was the first one to be hit, to go to the fire command station, which was in the lobby at the street level. In order to go down from the plaza level to the street level, there was an interior escalator. And there were hundreds of office workers like a funnel trying to get onto an escalator to go down so that they could get out of the building. And I noticed in that moment what they were not doing. They were not pushing and screaming and kicking and trampling each other. In fact, these regular office workers for everyone who was obese or pregnant or injured or disabled

if anyone had that problem, there were four or five office workers helping that person. So it was the opposite of panic. It was something that I was very proud of, that humanity is good in general. Even with this evil that was unfolding in front of our eyes, people were helping each other. And that's the truth of humanity. that by far people want to love and help each other. I got into that funnel of people and started going down the escalator.

And as you came down the escalator to the ground level, the street level, lobby, you look out and there were hundreds of firemen in their turnout gear with the yellow stripes awaiting their assignment to go up. and I laughed inside my head because I completely understood why the cops called us bumblebees

because when we get together in the hundreds like this, it looks like a hive when you're kind of watching it from afar. And that's exactly what it looked like. It looked like a hive of bees, except these were firefighters awaiting their assignment to go up the stairs. I got to the bottom of the escalator

and right in front of me was a bumblebee. And this bumblebee's name was Chris Blackwell, firefighter Chris Blackwell. My friend from Rescue 3 in the Bronx, I worked with him for six years. In the elite, special operations rescue three that covered the Bronx in Harlem. And he was my friend.

I work with him all the time. We live together. We almost died together. you know, did all these things together. And I, with all my heart, I loved this man. And not only was he a badass Bronx, Harlem, fireman, he was also, when he was off, a paramedic in Connecticut where he lived.

So all this guy did with his whole life was help other people, save lives. 24-7, that's what he did. And we weren't the Manhattan. guys. Like the Manhattan guys were all clean-shaven and had the tie on the firemen. You know, they were all, you know, follow the rules. We were the opposite of that. We were the badasses. We didn't shave. We didn't wear the cowboys. We were the cowboys. We were the cowboys. And we were busy. I mean, we had tons of fires and emergencies. We were very busy. We were

the real deal. And if you were in trouble, you wanted one of the Bronx firemen, one of the cowboys to come get you. And that was Chris. When we had a fire or car crash or building collapse where people were really badly injured, especially children, whenever we rescued them, the first person we looked for was Chris to put this person, to put this child in his hands. Because we knew in Chris's hands they had the best chance at life. The best.

That was my friend firefighter Chris Blackwell. And Chris and I were jokers, right? And we had this way we always greeted each other because we loved each other. And we would come to each other like this face to face. We would come to attention like this. we would both lean in and kiss on the lips and then go back straight up like this

and we would do this no matter what you know like snoddy smoky disgusting faces you know with the snotts coming down over your lips it didn't matter we always did that we did it number one because I love this man and he loved me but we also thought it was very funny to gross out all the firemen when we did it

that's incredible man That is fucking amazing. And we did that in the North Tower before Chris said to me, I love you, brother. This is really bad. I love you. And I said, I love you, Chris. Be careful.

I love you. And Chris turned around, and he went in the stairwell, and he went up. And he never came back. One example of the courage, inherent. heroism, bravery, selflessness of one of the 343 New York City firefighters murdered on September 11th by Islamic terrorists. Chris knew it. He said it to me before he did it.

He still did it. He still turned around and went up those stairs. He knew he was not coming back. That's an American hero. Someone yelled my name across the top of the bumblebees, and I could hear it. In fact, there's a video that you actually hear him yelling it. And he yelled my name, Tim Hey! And I looked over, and across the top of the bumblebees,

I could see my best friend, Captain Terry Hatton, Captain of Rescue 1, because he was 6'4, so he towered over everyone else. And I ran to my best friend, Terry. And he had the Halligan. He was the Manhattan Rescue One captain. Oh, okay. Right. The heroes of Rescue One, the elite of the Manhattan Fire Department.

You know, he was the perfect fireman, the clean-shaven guy, his tie was on. He always followed the rules. He, like, all that stuff. And we were best friends outside the fire department. We were best friends outside the fire department. And Terry had the Halligan, the big pry bar on his hand, and the light, the flashlight in his other hand. and he just put his arms out like that and went like this and just,

I just kind of disappeared into his chest because he's just this huge guy. And he squeezed me hard to his chest. And he kissed me on the cheek right here. And he said, I love you, brother. I may never see you again. And he was the smart guy, right? He was the Manhattan guy. I was just the Bronx dope.

And so I kind of blew him off. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we had seen so many bad things together before. We had been in so many life and death situations before together. And we always came out of it. We always came out. We always survived. We were invincible a bit, you know?

And that's how I was feeling, but he was not. He was saying, this is probably it. And he was right and I was wrong. And I said, I love you. He said, I love you, and he kissed me on the cheek. And he turned around, and he went into the stairwell with his men. And he went up the stairwell. I found out later that Terry and the men of Rescue One, who all perished,

made it to the 83rd floor of the North Tower. Not positive how. We think they got an elevator working that took them at least part of the way up, where they were fighting the fire and saving people's lives at the bottom of the impact of the plane at the North Tower. The 83rd floor. That was where the plane impacted the building? That was kind of a couple floors below.

Okay. But the jet fuel had drained down and set everything on fire. And how did they know they reached that? Did they have radio communication with them up there? There was, I didn't hear it, but some other guys who survived, who I spoke with years later, told me the story of Terry calling for help on the radio because they were trapped in an early localized collapse. Okay.

So part of the floor collapsed on them and trapped them. And Terry was screaming in his radio, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Rescue One is trapped. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, 83rd floor. and one of his firefighters was able to disentangle himself and made it down to the lobby without a helmet his head was full of blood and he was begging guys I didn't see any of this or I would have been upstairs

and I would not be here talking with you but David Weiss, firefighter David Weiss made it down to the lobby and was begging firemen to go back up with him to help disentanagan Rescue 1 to get them out. So some of them went up, some of them went out. All the guys that went up perished. And then the guys that went out later told me in the story of the heroism of my best friend, Captain Terry Hatton and his men of Rescue 1.

So back in the lobby, when Terry's in the lobby with me, And we say goodbye to each other. He goes in the stairwell. The second plane hits the South Tower, United 175. I didn't know it right away. We knew something happened because all the debris was coming through our lobby, the dust and stuff. And things were just like a snowball going downhill, getting worse,

and worse and worse. It was just the disaster, which was really bad in the first place, was just expanding, expanding, expanding, expanding, getting worse and worse. And now we had the second worst disaster to ever hit the city of New York happening at the exact same time.

The first worst disaster was happening right next door to each other. and so the leadership huddled up and decided that Chief Donald Burns from the fire department and myself would go to the South Tower to open up that command post to manage that disaster. So Chief Burns and I started running from the North Tower to the South Tower. He was my friend of many, many years.

Chief Burns was the caricature of Irish Fire Chief. Like if you looked it up in a dictionary or something, it would be his red rosy cheek, Irish face, 41 years in the New York City Fire Department, had seen it all. One of the most highly respected fire chiefs, probably in the world. And you could see every one of those 41 years of his experience

by the lines in his face from standing out there at a four-alarm fire on February 20th in the cold blizzard trying to help people. Those lines were etched in his face. And he was from the outer borough. So he talked with a thicker New York accent than most people, right? And he talked, only one side of his mouth worked for whatever reason. This side didn't work.

Only this side worked. So he talked out of the one side of his mouth. and he talked really fast and we're running over to the South Tower together and he says to me not much you and I can do I've ordered the fifth alarm for the South Tower

but it's going to take them a long time to get there do your best and be careful and when he finished saying that to me a woman came out of kind of out of nowhere an employee of the Port Authority who owned the buildings and she was screaming there are people trapped

there are people trapped in the elevator over here, over here. And Chief Burns gives me the go, gives me the nod. He went to the command post. I followed the lady. And she took me around to where the elevator lobby was in the South Tower. And she took me to one elevator car specifically. And the horseway doors were open so you could see into the shaft.

But the elevator car had not come down all the way. So just at the top of the opening, there was maybe six or seven or eight inches where you could see into the bottom of the elevator car. And all these people were trapped. You could see all their feet. And I specifically remember the men's suit jackets and dress shirts because they were reaching kind of under the top of the elevator opening. Right.

Trying to pull the car down. It's hard to describe, but I hope people can. understand what I'm saying. They needed to increase that six or seven or eight inches to 12 or 15 or 24 inches so that they could slide out of that opening. Right now they couldn't slide out. They were trapped. What I didn't know until later was that car, that elevator car,

free fell 70 floors because the plane, United 175, snapped the cable when it crashed into the building. So these people had taken a 70, story free fall in an elevator car thinking they were dead. Jesus Christ. But the elevator car, the brakes, you know, they design elevator assemblies for this kind of thing. So the emergency brakes grabbed onto it and stopped it before it hit the concrete pit.

So the elevator emergency brakes worked the way they were supposed to. Slowed the elevator down so they didn't have some like abrupt impact. Yeah, they would have been dead. Right. For sure. There's a concrete pit right below it, you know. But it works. You know, it worked the way it was supposed to, and it saved all their lives.

But now those brakes are locked onto that car, and you're not moving, nobody's moving that car. That's, like, that's it. They're stuck there. So, they're screaming because of that, but also because the elevator pit right below them was full of jet fuel. that was on fire, and they were right above it. So right in front of my eyes, they were getting burned. They had taken this free fall for 70 floors to be saved by the brakes, but now being burned.

So burning to death is one of the worst things that could ever happen to you out of all the worst things, right? I mean, what were the flames, were the flames, like coming out from everywhere all over the round all around the elevator yeah below it so it's it's like it's like being sitting on a barbecue right you know it's just it's a terrible terrible thing and here's big brave hero fireman tim completely useless it's because at that moment i was not a fireman i worked for the mayor so i didn't have my gear on i didn't have my fire protective gear on I didn't have my tools and equipment.

I had nothing. And I'm looking at them wondering, how the heck am I going to help these poor people? We used a couple of fire extinguishers to try and put the fire out, but it was a jet fuel fire. You don't put that out easily. And I turned to my right just to see if I could see something to help. And when I turned, I hit something, and I looked over, and it was a bumblebee. and I looked up and it was my friend Mike Lynch

who I had worked with in Times Square in 1990-91. Mike Lynch was another big guy who was 6-4 also. And he was a brand new fireman back then in 1990-91 and one of the most competent young guys who Terry, my best friend and I knew. In fact, Mike was being groomed to go to red. Rescue 1 to work for Terry because Terry thought that much of him that Michael could work with the elite of Rescue 1. And all of a sudden here's Michael Lynch from ladder four standing next to me and he puts his hand on my shoulder because he saw what I saw.

And he puts his hand on my shoulder and he says, Timmy, I got it. Three words. I got it. between firemen who knew each other, who had worked together, that meant that he had the training, the experience, the tools and equipment

because he was wearing all his fireman gear and he brought a whole fire truck of tools and equipment with him and the intestinal fortitude to save the lives of those people. He was the real fireman that those poor people needed in that moment. In that moment, over my radio, urgent, urgent, urgent, confirmed by the FBI, third plane incoming, it's ours, impact imminent,

take cover, take cover, get into the stairwells. I said, Mike, I got to go, you got this, because I had to go to the command post. I got to the command post, I found a landline that worked, and I picked it up, and I dialed zero for operator, and she picked up right away, and I said, I'm with Mayor Julianne, in the World Trade Center, I need to talk to the White House immediately. And she tried to get through to the White House. And she couldn't get through. And I said, then I need to talk to the Pentagon.

And she said the Pentagon's under attack also, which we didn't know. It's the first we heard it. Okay, then I want to talk with New York State Emergency Management Office. So she got me through there. I spoke with them. They promised me that the fighter jets were coming to protect us. because we needed air cover. You know, we didn't know how many planes were coming for us.

You know, as far as we knew, there was a dozen or whatever, and they were just going to keep coming in and crashing into us. Okay, mission accomplished. Chief Burns. Timmy, go out and get the paramedics, get them in here. What had happened was the people who were in the stairwells in the South Tower coming down. all the elevators were out so they have to go down

70, 80 floors and these aren't maybe people that are in the best shape they're not athletes and so they're going around in the concrete, wet, smoky wet because of the jet fuel wet because of all the pipes that broke

when the plane came in there was water everywhere oh really? Yeah it broke all the water pipes up top and then it will go down. So they're coming down and they're sloshing and it's cold and it's smoky and dark and scary as shit for people who are not used to that kind of thing, you know? And so they're going down and down and down and down 70 floors around and around and around. And imagine when you get to the lobby door and you like bust the door open and all this

light, all of a sudden you have all this light and it's not dark and smoky and wet. How do you feel? You feel like I made it. I made it. I'm alive. Like a whole relief comes over you. And you're injured. So what do you do?

You're getting a lobby. And you're like, firemen, policemen, boom, down on the ground. They'll save me. So we had all these people all over the lobby of the South Tower. who were injured and laying all over the floor. And unfortunately, what that did is it impeded the egress of other people. And now the stairwell was backing up. I mean, we had hundreds and hundreds of people.

People would just come out and collapse at the exit. So Chief Burns said to me, Timmy, go get the paramedics in here, start getting these people out of here. And that's why I left the South Tower. I went out on Liberty Street on the South. side of the south tower, to start looking for the paramedics. There was stuff crashing down to the street. The first thing I saw, which is burned in my visual memory and my brain forever right there, is a dead fireman in the middle of Liberty Street with his buddies, yanking at his what was a live

body, which is now a dead body, yanking at him. It had just happened one second before I had gone out there. And a woman who had jumped, landed on him and killed him. And now their two bodies were one. And his buddies were yanking at that. And it was the first fireman killed on September 11th. and over there to my left someone yelled my name

and I looked over and it was Mike Lynch the fireman who was at the elevator with me and he was yelling for help and so I started running toward him he was taking the motor for the hearse tool we call it the jaws of life that you use in the car crash

that motor is really heavy and you need two guys to manage it. So I started running toward him to help him, and another fireman got there first to help him. And Mike waved to me, and I waved to Mike, and that's the last time I saw a firefighter, Mike Lynch from ladder four. Going back to the elevator scene now, Mike took the spreaders from that equipment.

To try to open that gap. Exactly. Exactly. Try to spread that gap. And we know that he saved the lives of three women because three women identify the guy with the red four in his helmet as the guy that got them out before the whole building comes down and kills all the rest of them,

including Mike. And I told them, I told the guys that were searching there in the South Tower and the weeks afterwards, you're going to find Mike, firefighter Mike Lynch from Latterford with the Hurstool. with the people in the elevator. That's where he was,

and that's exactly how they found them a couple months later. In the subsequent weeks, it became necessary, without going too much into it, it became necessary for me to go out to Mike's home to speak with his widow, Denise. And I went out there, I drove out there,

I sat down in their living room. She had two little boys, a two-year-old and a six-month-old. and I sat down and I said there are some rumors out there about ladder four that are false I want you to know that you heard it from me that I was with your husband

in his last moments of his life and he died an American hero selflessly staying in harm's way to save the lives of people he did not know the oath we take as firefighters and police officers and military, right?

When we all join up, we all go like this, and we say, in that moment, for my career, I am willing to give my life for people I don't know. We don't know if you'll ever fulfill that. We don't know if you'll ever be called to fulfill that. But in that moment, you've already taken that oath. And in this moment, firefighter Mike Lynch fulfilled it. I told his widow Denise that when Mike said, Timmy, I got it. He put his hand on my shoulder, Timmy, I got it in front of that elevator.

He may as well have had the angel wings coming out of his back because he was the angel sent to save the lives of those innocent human beings. So the last time I saw Mike was at the rig, ladder four, and he didn't need me. We waved at each other. He went inside with the hearse tool and the spreaders. I went off to find the paramedics under the south pedestrian walkway that went across the top of West Street. There is a triage, a paramedic triage area set up. So I found it. I ran over there, it was the special operations paramedics, the best in New York City, because I knew

them. And I said, Captain Charlie Wells, I said, Charlie, we have to take you guys inside. That's not normal. Normally, they would wait outside for the firemen or policemen to bring them the victims. Right. But because everyone was going up the stairs, the firemen, the policemen, were going up into the towers. We had to move everybody forward. So we had to move the paramedics forward. So Charlie was like, give me a second. They got ready. They got their helmets.

They got everything on. We put, we loaded a stretcher up with, I call it doctor stuff because I don't get it. Because that's not how I'm trained. But we loaded it up with all their stuff and myself and three paramedics, Charlie Wells and his guys, ran with the stretcher. So go back into the South Tower lobby. As I said, pieces of the building, bodies were crashing into the street from people who had to make the choice of burn to death were jump, and they chose jump. So we're going along as close to the building as we can, a three-world trade center, which adjoined the South Tower, two-world trade center. Three-world Trade Center was the Marriott Hotel, which attached.

to both towers. Okay. Right? It was about, I guess, like a 50-story Marriott Hotel. And so we're going right along on Liberty Street. We're trying to stay as close to it as we can. Close to the building. Yeah.

Because there's so much stuff falling. Yeah. How far away would it fall from the side of the building? Maybe 10 or 20 feet out. I mean, not too far. But if you stayed really close, you could hopefully avoid getting crushed like the first fireman did. Danny, sir. I shouldn't say the first fireman.

and the tower was set back on the sidewalk a bit. So when you came around the corner of the hotel, you kind of had to go deeper into the sidewalk to get to the door of the South Tower. And we made that turn, and we were about 20 feet from the door going into the lobby of the South Tower when the building collapsed.

We were still outside. If we had stepped over that threshold and went inside, we never would have, heard it. But because of where we were, we're still on the sidewalk, only 20 feet, but we're still outside. The steel broke first. A piece of steel snapped because you could, you could hear it clearly. It was such a loud kind of explosion as it snapped that it echoed through the canyons of lower Manhattan. It was loud, like an explosion, man. And just one, loud one loud boom and then what we call progressive collapse as each floor boom boom boom boom

and i it's hard to explain how loud that was to someone that maybe didn't experience it or never experienced it so so you're at you're 20 feet away from the entrance to the marriott to to no to the south tower to the south tower so you're you're literally underneath the South Tower as it's collapsing. Correct. We are underneath it. It was so loud that it was obvious what was happening.

We're trained as firefighters that you can never outrun a building collapse. It happens too fast. That you need to seek immediate cover if you have any chance at living. And I knew that it was the building. I knew the building was coming down. And

as unbelievable as that sounds. And we had just run by the doors to the Marriott Hotel to go inside the hotel. And my immediate thought was get in the hotel. Let that structure protect you. And so I yelled to the paramedics, follow me. And we ran right back and like right into the door of the Marriott Hotel. And the door we ran into was the, the restaurant in the lobby,

which was called the Tall Ships Restaurant. What was the distance from the Marriott Hotel to the South Tower? Next to, I mean, adjoining. Adjoining. So, I mean right there. So we went into the Tall Ships Restaurant, and it was as clear as this room is right now, and then snap of a finger, it was pitch black.

The South Tower was falling on top of the Marriott, and the Marriott was collapsing around us. I hit the ground on my knees. All the debris and stuff was coming at us because the collapse is occurring in front of us. And it was like in our face. Well, I are nothing. It was just me.

I lost every, we all lost each other. You couldn't see. You couldn't see. The dust was just caking up in your eyes and ears and nose. and mouth. And the noise was so loud that I only can compare it to sitting on the tarmac at JFK airport surrounded by 747's full blast. Like just full blasting, you're sitting on a little stool in between it.

That's all I, that's, I don't know how else to describe how loud it was. You couldn't breathe, you couldn't see, you couldn't hear anything except for that, loud. And I knew that we find most survivors in a collapsed building next to vertical columns. Because vertical columns are the strongest part of the building. Concrete? Steel, concrete. Whatever's holding that building up, that's the strongest part of the building. And we had often, over the decades, found people alive in building collapses next to columns like that.

So we, you know, we know that from experience. So in my mind like this, I'm like find a column. So I just started, and this part's a little unclear to me because I don't remember specifically a lot of it. And I'm a faithful man. And I do believe that in these moments, God was not ready to take me. And he led me to a steel column, huge steel column. that was so big I could hardly get my arms around it. And I wrapped my arms around that,

and I held on with all my might because the wind was... My legs were up in the air, my helmet blew off my head. It was trying to blow me out into the street, where I had come from, back out to Liberty Street. And somehow I was able to hold on to that column and live. In those moments, my thoughts were...

I thought it was so unfair that this is how... it was going to end. I thought it was so unfair that I could not say goodbye to my family before I left. And I just waited to get crushed. Some stuff fell on me, but nothing of significance. What was the biggest thing that fell on you? I don't know. Pieces of the building. Nothing that would like injured you? I was not. I was not injured at all. Wow. I even without a helmet my helmet blew off even without having that simple piece of protective equipment i nothing like cut my head open or anything i mean not that i remember my clothes were all ripped up and stuff if you if you had been blown out to the street dead dead i could not let go of this column

that is the only thing only way i was going to live in my mind at the time um And it's unbelievable that I had the strength to hold on to that column just as a man because it was later proven in a scientific study that the wind where I was was 180 miles an hour trying to blow me out into the street. So I don't know how I overcame, other than divine intervention, I don't know how I was able to hold on to that and live. other than he with the capital H wanted me to live. The wind stopped, the noise stopped.

And this was all 20 seconds. I mean, it was so very fast. And I started crawling, I couldn't believe I was alive, and I started crawling toward Liberty Street, but now, toward where the door I thought was, but now the building was collapsed. So there's no door anymore. It's just steel and concrete and glass.

Hitch black still? Yeah. Yeah, pitch black on this brilliant blue sky, sunny day with no humidity. You know, you could see forever one of those days. No humidity, just gorgeous out. And I came to a truck and the motor was running and the headlights were on. It was a diesel motor. And I would think I would recognize it if it was a fire truck and I did not recognize it as that at all.

And all I could think of in my, maybe not in my right mind at the moment, was that it was a truck bomb. Now they drove a truck bomb into the building. Shit. So I turned around and started crawling back the other way. The dust was starting to lift a little bit so you could start to see shadows of people. And I was yelling, follow me, follow me, it's a bomb, follow me. And I came to a metal roll-down gate.

you know, that you put down at night or up at the front of your business or whatever. And all I knew is that I wanted to go that way. I wanted to go through that gate. I'm not going back there where I thought the bomb was. And so I reached down underneath the gate. I got my fingers under it, and I lifted. And when I lifted it up, all these fingers came from the other side of people. And so together we lifted it up.

and about 15 people were trapped on the other side of this roll-down gate. And I said, we have to go that way. And they said, there is no that way. It's gone. Right behind them, they were on a ledge, maybe four feet wide, between the metal roll-down gate and where the collapse went through the hotel, which is a seven-story drop. Underground?

Below ground. So first floor, then they had six levels underground. So they were trapped. Half the firemen and civilians who they were rescuing were stuck on that ledge and the other half were killed as the collapse came through right where they were. And so we couldn't go that way. So we turned around and went back the way kind of toward the mom. And a person came, a fireman came through over the rubble from the outside with a really bright flashlight.

and one of the females I was with saw it and she started screaming, he started screaming, come this way, and we went toward him, and we all got out of the rubble. So I'll stop. There's a lot more that happened, but I'll stop the story there. That's how I lived.

That's how I survived. That's the story of some of the heroes. The New York City Fire Department lost 300, 43. The Port Authority Police Department lost 37 and the New York City Police Department lost 23. And the word lost is not exactly correct. They were murdered by radical Islamic terrorists, intentionally murdered by radical Islamic terrorists. The largest loss of life for the New York City Fire Department prior to that was 12 in a supermarket collapse. in Brooklyn.

The 37 Port Authority Police officers is the largest loss of life for law enforcement in American law enforcement history in one incident. And the Port Authority Police is a small police department. So they, percentage-wise, they lost more of their force than the fire department did. The New York City Police Department number was 23.

out of that 23, 14 of them were their elite, like for the fire department, it's rescue companies, is the elite. For the police department, it's NYPD, it's the emergency service unit.

And 14 of their guys were murdered. 14 of their guys did the same thing the firemen did. They went up the stairs knowing they likely were not coming back. These are the kind of, heroes who I want to talk about, who I want to point out, who fulfilled their oath when they became police officers and firefighters. And that's why when you see a police officer or a firefighter

in your community or you see someone from the military who is or has served, we all, we owe all of them a debt of gratitude and their families because the families are left, you know, without kind of their leader, right? Many of these widows, most of them were men from the, from police and fire department. Most of the widows raised their children by themselves. Like Mike Lynch's widow Denise, who raised that two-year-old and that six-month-old, boys by themselves, you know, by herself. And God bless them for being able to do it.

The effect of these line of duty deaths doesn't stop in the first week or two. It's for the rest of these families' lives. Michael's older son named Michael Lynch Jr. has now become kind of, I guess, my nephew. And I've been helping mentor him. He's 22. Yeah. And he's doing some amazing things.

But that's because his mom raised him very well. And he wants his dad to be proud of him in his life and what he does in his life. So he's going to join the military. And he's going to go fight for freedom in America. And there are thousands and thousands of the children of 9-11 who are doing amazing things like this. I can't imagine what the days after that were like realizing once you come to realize what the story was behind the whole thing. Like experiencing that first person, like being there in that moment and then getting removed. removed from it and then seeing the media's response to it.

Yeah. What was that like? So I guess I don't know much about the media's response. I was so in the middle of it. But that morning, on the morning of September 11th, I finally was, because all the cell phones went down, if you had a cell phone. Right. Because they were new then. But all that went down.

And I finally found a landline around 11, 15 a.m. Eastern time, where I was able to get through to my younger brother, Chris, who I was very close with, and tell him, and my words to him were, I'm alive, but everyone else is dead, because all my friends were killed. Over a hundred of my friends were killed. All my, you know, they were all my buddies. You know, they were men I loved. And so those were my exact words. So in the days after, I still work for the mayor. You know, you don't stop because something bad happened.

You're still at work. And we're waiting for more terrorist attacks to occur. Like, we are scared out of our minds about, what's going to happen next, right? And the military is coming in, and all the cops are in the street, trying to make sense of things. What were your orders immediately after that?

Like, what were you, what was your job? Set up a Ford Command Post, mayor's command post, kind of. We were trying to get a handle on all the incoming help. Everybody got in their police cars and their fire trucks and their military vehicles

and drove to New York City. So we had this influx of help. It's the beauty of America and the beauty of humanity, right? Everybody wanted to help. But we don't know who's who. There's no organized process. For all we know,

that ambulance is driving into ground zero is full of a bomb. You know, we don't know. And we're genuinely scared that something else is going to happen. And so our first job was to try and manage the incoming people and equipment and to try to vet it somehow and not send down to the scene what they need, not what they don't need.

They don't need hundreds and thousands of people coming down who are going to get in the way. They need people who have skills, talent, training. equipment that's going to help them. In these days and moments, we are still believing that we have many, many people alive under the rubble. So we set up the forward command post at IS89 on the west side highway, and I had the day shift representing the mayor, and we were starting to direct, we were starting to get a a barrier around the neighborhood

that was being manned by first law enforcement and then by the National Guard. So we were starting to be able to lock it down. And so people, they would send people to the gym or cafeteria where I was in the school. And then we had to try to figure out how to vet people, get IDs made up, all that. It was, to say it was chaotic is such an understanding.

statement. There should be some other word bigger than that. I was standing on this. It was an intermediate school, so the chairs were small, little kids' chairs. I was standing on one of them yelling out orders and organizing and trying to be helpful in trying to provide leadership. And a guy comes over to me and like tugs on my shirt and he has an ID. And, He puts it up to me and he says, I'm FBI. See, that's my picture. That's my ID. I am an FBI agent.

I was like, okay. He's like, we have a problem in the room. I need to talk to you. So I get off the chair. He grabs me. He said, there's a guy in this room wearing a blue jacket with yellow FBI letters emblazoned on it. He's not from the FBI. I know everybody.

He's not one of us. I don't know who he is. and he has a backpack. And, you know, we are waiting for someone to blow up a backpack at our command post. Shit. So I grab a NYPD guy and we explain it to him. You know, there's a possible bomber in the room. And so he's like, we got some NYPD undercovers.

We're going to surround him, then we're going to take him down. So they surrounded him with some undercover NYPD guys. And imagine this scene. I'm not making this up. It really happened. The guy's in a FBI jacket, and all of a sudden, a bunch of scruffy-looking guys take him out hard. Out, down, they rip the backpack out of his hand

in case he had a triggering device. And they separate him, they put him up against the wall, they put him in cuffs. And the guy is screaming, I'm FBI, I'm FBI, I'm FBI, I'm FBI. And so we confront him. After the cops took him down and were like the guy with me that's a real FBI agent is like you're not he used some foul language you say it you're not a fucking FBI agent right I'm I know I am this is my ID who the fuck of you we were pissed to say the least and it turns out he was like CIA guy and the dope who puts on an FBI jacket, didn't tell the FBI.

You know, he just, like, walked in there like he owned the joint. And I only, I'm not picking, I'm not picking on anybody. I'm saying that's how paranoid and scared we were. Right. And how everything triggered us because we were afraid of getting blown up again. My younger brother had come down from Providence, Rhode Island.

He was a fireman up there, and he was trying to, to help me in this very, very difficult and challenging time in my life. And by the fourth or fifth day, I couldn't even talk any dust and talking and yelling. I couldn't even. I was trying so hard to communicate. And my brother and another guy, Paul, Fire Chief from Milwaukee, good friend of mine. They, they, like, ripped me off the chair, and they're like, shut the fuck up.

follow us. Like you're done. You're done. And they kind of forced me out of the room. I was the guy in charge of the room. And they were like, no, you're out. You're out. I don't care. You're out. Only your brother and your best friend could, you know, one of your best friends could do that. And they took me across the street to a makeshift, uh, mash medical center. And they took me specifically into one tent. And there was a young Air Force. I call him a doctor. I call him a doctor. I don't know if he's a doctor, but he's a really smart young guy. And they had already briefed him about me and that I would be combative and I had lost a lot of my friends,

but they were scared that I was getting very sick. And he sat me down and he said, look, Tim, you do whatever you want, but I'm telling you, you are very sick right now. you're on the verge of going into the emergency room being admitted for pneumonia you know your lungs are fucked you're everything you're in trouble

you're in trouble you're going to go in the hospital and be admitted or you can do what I tell you and I will fix you in 48 hours I was like that one sounds better and he's like okay go home shower, shower, shower, shower.

Take 10 showers a day. Get this shit out of your system. Drink water until you explode. And take these pills. And he said, I promise you in 48 hours, you will be 100% and you can come back and work and look for your friends.

But you have to do what I said. So I did what he said. I went home and in in you know what the pills were yeah yeah they were I'll think I always lose it but I'll think of it in a second

the stuff they give you for anthrax the orange pills I'll think of the name of in a minute but basically it just cleans your body out of everything everything good everything bad like you're on the toilet you're peeing right you're like it just cleans your system out like nukes you it does

it nukes everything out of your system but then it allows your good stuff to build back up and protect you and um and i and he was right and that happened and i went back to work uh 48 hours later and i and i i don't know who this young air force uh corpsman or medic was but i think the reason that i'm not sick today um nearly 20 years later. I've never had cancer or anything, which is unusual. Most of the guys have developed it is because this guy cleaned my system out with the drug early on. What is the most common type of cancer disease that the first responders that were there with you developed? The most common was probably lung. Long cancer? Probably. It's a common disease in firefighters in general,

but the 9-11 firefighters and police officers that would be the most common but we they've discovered through all these studies now 20 years later that there are many very interesting very different kinds of cancer that only affect us that are very specific to 9-11 responders my friend Mike who's the author of this book and the brother of my best friend Patty Brown, Captain Patty Brown, Mike died of prostate cancer just six weeks ago.

He wasn't even a fireman. He came to find his brother in the rubble. And because of the week or two he spent down there 18 years later, he developed one week. He spent one week Yeah, just one week. He developed this prostate cancer, and it's not a prostate cancer that is known to the medical community. It's a different prostate cancer that is much more aggressive and kills very quickly. And that's what happened to Mike. Mike was a medical doctor himself. And it killed him, I'll say it killed him within 18 months of him, of them discovering it.

And so I was out in Las Vegas holding his hand when he passed away about six weeks ago. But this is happening to us on a large scale. Police officers, firefighters, civilians. Today I read about an FBI agent who passed. I didn't know anything about it, but he passed in the last couple of days from 9-11 cancer. He was an FBI agent down there. it's killing us almost every day now it's killing us so so let's bring it back to who did it

the fuckers who did it you know i wanted to ask you real quick wasn't there another building that collapsed a couple blocks away from that yeah and how long did it take for that building to collapse so i think what you're talking about is seven world trade center which was my office building yes that collapsed that night at 530 p.m So the first tower, to make it simple for people, the North Tower was the first tower to be hit. Number one, it had the antenna on it.

That's how we remember it. Number one, World Trade Center, the North. Number two, the South Tower was the second to be hit by a plane, but the first collapse, right? It collapsed pretty quickly, very unexpectedly. That's the collapse that I survived, the first one, the big one for me. Minutes later, the North Tower collapsed. Oh, yeah, so where were you when that one collapsed?

I was running north. You couldn't have been far. I was not far. I did not get hit with, well, I didn't get hit with any steel, I would say. I got hit with debris, but not steel. But I got overwhelmed by that cloud of dust also. But I was chasing after the mayor. The mayor had said, had ordered.

my big boss, John Odomat, he was an NYPD guy that was working in OEM with me. He was two bosses above me, and he grabbed me and said, Timmy and the mayor wants us to get with him, come with me. And so he and I ran north, and that's when the South, North Tower collapsed. And we were overwhelmed, and then that's when I called my brother at 1115 after that. And then we met the mayor a bit later. but um

geez I don't know you asked me something about the building seven oh yeah thank you so seven didn't collapse till 5.30 that evening uh when the north tower collapsed it collapsed into seven World Trade Center

and made a big kind of rip down the side of the building did it? Yeah and it also set fire to seven World Trade Center what people don't understand is a couple of things. Seven World Trade Center's construction originally was very unusual because it was built over a power plant,

a Con Edison power plant. It was built over the top of it. So the power plant was still there, but this 47-story building was built on top of it. In order to carry that heavy load of steel and concrete, They had to use these transverse, load-bearing transverse things. I'm not an architect, I don't know. Right.

So the building was built unusually in the first place. In the second place, because it was an emergency management building, we also had the feds in that building with us, the federal agencies. In Building 7? There was a lot of backup generators. with the fuel that was hundreds of gallons of fuel tanks that were in that building in case we lost power. So there were a lot of hazards in that building that when it was compromised,

and when the tanks with all this fuel caught on fire, that building had no chance at standing up. And we knew, I didn't say we because I was gone at this point. But the fire department knew that this building was in jeopardy of collapsing. And that's why they pulled everybody out and away from that building. We never, New York City Fire Department never abandons a building fire. I mean, especially a high-rise building like that. But they knew the building was so compromised that there was a chance it would collapse.

And they didn't want to kill any more firemen that we knew had already been done. So they pulled everybody back. And the fire department didn't lose one more fireman after that. which is an incredible statistic. For the people, and I think I know what you're getting at, for the people that say... A lot of conspiracy theories out there.

It's all BS. I've read the scientific reports. I was there. I know what the decisions were. Anyone that is saying Seven World Trade Center was an intentional government. Conspiracy theory, blah, blah, blah, is misled at the nicest

or a conspiracy theorist who wants to make money at it at the worst. And there are those people out there. So there was no plot, there was no government plot, anything that had anything to do with what happened on September 11th.

This was an al-Qaeda plot, blessed by Osama bin Laden, carried out by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his band of terrorists who had promised after the 93 bombing, they had promised that they'd be back. They promised it after the 93 bombing. And they made good on that.

What was the 93 bombing again? That was the World Trade Center. So Cleed-shaped Muhammad's family was involved in that also. Okay. So this is all related to radical Islamic terrorists. terrorism with hatred for America. They call America the great Satan and Israel the little Satan. That's all this was.

And so for people to hold on to these conspiracy theories, to give them any credence, angers me because it takes away from the truth of the story. Right. And the truth of the story that radical Islamic terrorists who hate what America stands for planned and executed this successfully. In fact, we believe that the second plane was timed to crash in after the firemen and policemen got there because of the first one. So they actually timed it so that they would kill more firemen and kill more policemen.

And we have some anecdotal evidence of that. Do you get a lot of conspiracy-type people reaching out to you? No. No. You know, I mean, I think they kind of noticed. away from me. Right. I'll,

I'll, I'll wipe the floor with them with facts, you know. Right. It's, it's all BS. I don't even, in the beginning,

I got pretty angry about it now. I'm just like, yeah, that guy's a nut, you know. Right. Whatever.

That's not what happened. I was there. My friends were murdered. You know, I have a reason to know the truth on this. and I promised my friends I would never forget.

There's a bunch of, I noticed there's a bunch of videos online of you having debates with these guys that built, they were in the middle of constructing this. Grasd or Mosque, yeah. It was an Islamic community center. Well, that's what they tried to change it to. Okay.

Is that there now? It is not. Okay. I was asked by some of the families in 2000. 2009 to get involved in this issue. Yeah. Where some people, an Egyptian guy named Shreif al-Gamal, who's a developer in New York, decided he wanted to build a mosque at Ground Zero.

Okay. You know, let's look into us. Myself and one of the family members, Deborah Burlingame, whose brother Chick was the pilot of the pilot. plane that went into the Pentagon. So her brother was murdered on September 11th. Deborah and I teamed up. And we actually went to Shreif Al-Gamal,

and we sat down with him in his fake office. His fake office? Yeah, yeah, fake office. Yeah, there was no papers. There was a couple computers set up. There was no, you could tell it was just there. He was trying to be like he's a big shot developer. Okay.

Whatever. He's a He's a, in the end He was just a New York shister That's right You know Trying to you know He wanted to

He wanted to be a millionaire And he wanted to hang out with And do drugs with supermodels That's what he wanted you know We don't think he was Most people want that I guess His ideology

You know I don't think was as bad As some of the others We dealt with Right Right And when we sat down with him We gave him the opportunity

to tell the truth. And we had done our studying, and we knew what the truth was. And he lied to us. Even worse than that, he would not even directly address Deborah because she was a woman. So she, and she would ask him a question,

and he would turn to me, and he would answer to me. He would not answer to her. And so when we walked out of there, we said this guy's full of shit and he's a bad guy. Because that's their culture, right? Well, he, you know, that's some culture. That's not an American Muslim's culture, per se. Right.

I'm trying to walk a line here. Don't worry about it. But it's what I believe. Okay. So, for example, one of my very best friends now is a guy named Jason Redmond. who's a U.S. Navy SEAL retired, who was, his team was, he was a lieutenant, his team was ambushed in karma, Iraq.

He was shot eight times, including in the face. Jason survived it, and has become one of my very best friends in the last five years. And if you ever said something about Muslims as a broad brush generalization, he would go down your throat. Really? Because he was over there

and he knew the difference between bad guys and good guys between people who wanted to do bad things and people who were innocent. It's the same as being a fireman in Harlem and the Bronx. There's 2% bad people and there's 98% just people who are poor. Yeah, I think that's, I mean,

that's definitely something that's very present in the air right now in the country is there's a very everyone thinks of things in generalizations there's there's no nuance to anything it's either all muslims are bad it's bad that's wrong all americans are good you know what i mean it's neither one of those are true right yeah so what did you i mean did you have a lot of contact did you have a lot of like conversations with with with muslim people when you were in that time period uh i i would say uh i had some conversations. And people, depending on which side you were on, people would try and paint me with this

brush or paint me with that brush. And neither one of them was accurate. I did a lot of media in 2010. It became the biggest news story of the year 2010. It was a huge fight between ideologies. And in the end, they tried to, I was called a Nazi. I was called Islamophob. I was called a racist.

I was called everything. And none of those are true. I've never been that guy in my whole life. But I will defend the memory of my friends at Ground Zero. And if you want to build a much. mosque on top of the grave of my friends, I will come at you and I will fight you. Because not that you don't have the right to do it, but it's very disrespectful and it's very uncaring to our community.

In the end, we ran them out of there. and the building, whatever it is, is still being built because they have no money. To this day, it's still being built. Yeah. If you look at pictures around there, it's a high-rise luxury condo building that's halfway built.

And it's been like that for years and years now. The crane is still there. They're not doing any work on it because they have no money. Because the whole thing was a sham. The whole thing was a sham. And we successfully stopped that from being, that ground zero mosque from being built there, which I would say is a victory. But we brought awareness of radical Islam to America.

And we explained to America what that is and what it's not. you know a good friend of mine she got very angry at me in these years and she's a Pakistani Muslim brilliant American doctor she's a brilliant doctor and I really had to explain it to her

that I that I'm not like Islamophore guy which is a made up word by the way but I will fight for her because Nida and her friends, her family, and the innocent Muslims who come from Muslim countries to escape tyranny, they come to America for for freedom and equality. Right.

Right. And that's what she wanted. She just wanted freedom and equality. That's what, like I said, 98% or 95% I don't know the number, but they just want to live in. peace among Christians and Jews and everyone. Right. You know, and that's what she wants, and that's what I want. And however, that will not shut me up when I find a bad guy. And they don't come after me anymore. I wish they would because I'll crush them again.

Do you still talk to this woman? Oh, yeah. You're still friends with her? The other night, yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah. Explain more about your friend who was a Navy SEAL. You were saying that anyone who comes out, who talks to him or claims that they hate Muslims or whatever, he jumps down their throat.

Why is that? Because he fought in Muslim countries, right? He was injured in karma Iraq, trying to defend innocent Iraqi people from the bad guys, from the bad Iraqi people, from ISIS. slash al-Qaeda. In order for his seal team to survive there, they had to rely on communications with and support of good Iraqi Muslims, including his interpreter, which they call Terp, right? That's the military term.

And his terp was one of the most American loving people he ever met and would wear the American flag and would dream of one day being free in America. And when you paint Muslims with one brush as being one way or the other, it's not true. And you weaken the strength of these people who want freedom. And there are a lot more Muslims certainly in America who want that freedom

than there are Muslims who want to attack us. Right. And I think that's who I fight for. By challenging the bad guys, by going after the bad guys, by prosecuting them, by confronting them in the media,

confronting their lies, the people I'm helping the most are the innocent freedom-loving Muslims. of America. And that's kind of what I'm most proud of, is that we give them, we give the good Muslims room to breathe. And,

and, I'm as proud of that as I am about fighting for the memory of my friends, I guess. I never thought of it that way before, but we have to be able to discern the difference. It's hard. Yeah.

Because they lie sometimes. Imagine that. Yeah, people lie. There was like an overwhelming sense of camaraderie and patriotism in the country after that. What was that like? And why do you think it was like that? And what was your experience with that? It was something that all Americans could rally around.

Right? America was attacked at the Pentagon. on the plane, Flight 93, which they were trying to crash into the U.S. Capitol and in New York City. The attacks were so egregious against America that it united Americans of all stripes. And then we didn't see that again

until the night that we learned Osama bin Laden had been killed. When those spontaneous patriots, American rallies popped up spontaneously all over America. I'm sad that that's what's required. For me... That we need to have an enemy? I guess.

Like a common enemy or something? Yeah, we should be like that more often. You know, we should be like that a lot of the time. Shouldn't take something like 9-11. I hope not. I hope not. You know, I mean, back then, I was in a washing machine just spinning around. I couldn't see anything. I couldn't hear anything. I didn't know what was going on in America. I didn't know anything. I didn't know anything. I knew when we left Ground Zero that when we went out on the West Side Highway, all the people were out there with American flag. and signs and screaming, I love you and thank you. But I was not in a place where I really understood what was happening throughout America. You kind of had tunnel vision.

I was just completely overwhelmed, completely. My best friend Terry, the captain, the tall captain. who kissed me on the cheek, we found out within a couple days that his wife was pregnant with their first child and that we were concerned that she might not be able to hold the child because she was 40. We were worried about that. We were trying to find the bodies of our friends who we thought might still be alive. We were talking with the families about, do you want to have a memorial service? What about a wake? What about a funeral? Do you want to wait? Do you want to do it now? How long do you want to wait? And then we had to make decisions about how many memorial services and funerals to go to in one day.

I think one day there was 25. You know, and you had to make the choice of which of your friends you went to say goodbye to. And then try to explain to the family that you didn't go to. Well, I had to go to this one, you know, and try and split our people up. so that there were enough firemen at this line in duty funeral. Because usually we get thousands of firemen in uniform, and now we could get like 25. And we had to make sure that each funeral,

each memorial service, each wake had the right amount of firemen at it. And then, if you remember, we had the anthrax attack within a couple weeks, which New York City was one of the targets. of, and of course, we thought it was all the same terrorist attack coming at us. And then in the first week of November, we had the crash of Flight 587 in Queens. The plane came out of JFK and went right in the ground. Right.

And so we were trying to deal with all those things in addition to the funerals and wakes and the families and digging through the rubble at ground zero. and I don't know how we did it. I have no idea how we did it. I don't know. I don't know how I survived it. My brother and my friend Paul would keep me away from the window

or keep me away from a door to a terrace because they thought I was just going to go out and jump off the building and just be done with it. And luckily I was never that, you know, I never had that instinct in me in my life. So. what what is the level of residual effect from something like this like what i'm sure there's a

tremendous amount of PTSD that one would suffer from that kind of a loss and that kind of an experience i mean i'm i'm not sure exactly how long this this specific chapter of your life was but sort of after that like what did you do like how did you cope with this and transition out of this sort of epoch of your life? It's a good question, and I'm not even sure, but I did do therapy after September 11th. After going through like 10 therapists, I finally found one that I thought understood the depth of my despair and pain, and she was very understanding. and she very much wanted to help me.

With everything in her, she wanted to help me survive it. And one of the things she taught me that I think became the most valuable tool that she taught me was to compartmentalize your grief. So in 2002, I left the mayor's office in New York and on a detail, I went to work for, the Secretary of Health and Human Services to help Secretary Thompson build a command and control

system into health and human services after the anthrax attack. So I was going back and forth to Washington, D.C., and I would fly. And so I would fly from LaGuardia to Reagan Airport just under an hour flight. And I would always get a window seat. and I get on the plane, I'd put the shade down, I'd put my head against the shade, and I'd put on like these, like the Bose noise-canceling headphones. And as soon as the wheels lifted off,

I would put on Andrea Bocelli's voice because he was the voice that spoke to me. His music spoke to me in my heart. And I would put my head against the window and I would cry heavy for an hour. But then when the wheels hit the tarmac at Reagan Airport, I lifted the shade up, I took off the headphones, and I tried my best to move forward and deal with life.

And that worked for me. Now, she didn't say, this is what your compartment is, this is what time of day you do it, She didn't tell me any of those things. But for people that are in difficult places, if you can compartmentalize that pain and that hurt for some time during each day, and for the rest of that day, try and do positive things, it will help you survive the pain and the darkness.

And it helped me get through it. And then in 2009, 2008, 2009, when I got back involved with Mayor Giuliani and with the families, that gave me a strong purpose again. So I survived by compartmentalizing and just trying to get through each day until something else came into my life that I started to feel really passionate about and that I could have an impact. on the family's lives. And that's what really got me strong again, was getting back in with the families and finding out that I had this voice,

which I didn't know I had, and that it would help our community. And it would help us with the mantra, never forget, which we promised after 9-11. We promised everyone never forget. and as long as I have a voice, that's how I'm going to speak. That's what I'm going to speak about. Did you ever experiment with any sort of like PTSD therapies like cannabis or MDMA?

I know there's a lot of different things that people are utilizing, especially Navy Seals. I talked to one guy who did a lot of stuff with cannabis and MDMA, and he said it helped a lot because I know there's a lot, especially people in the combat veterans who commit suicide on a daily basis because of PTSD. You never experimented with anything like that. So no drug therapy. I know it works for them. It was never for me. I've always been a government guy, so I'm not allowed to do, like, not allowed to, like, smoke this or that.

They do random drug tests on you and stuff. I do drink, but that's sometimes not the best thing if you're having a hard time. But back in, I guess around those times, around 2009, 10, I joined this group called Ride to Recovery, ride to the number two recovery. And it's basically it's bicycling with 100 or 200 injured warriors. And, you know, and you do it for. a week. You go out, you do 60, 70, 80 miles a day. And you build this community back and all that. And that helped me a lot. Just being out there, just being with people you could help, people

who could help you, getting to know other people who are as patriotic as I was. So for me, that was helpful without doing the drug therapy stuff. And I left room for new friendships. and new relationships. I said earlier I lost over 100 of my friends. I mean, that was basically my whole life. These are the men I hung out with every day. When I came back to New York, I went on a little tour for a while.

When I came back to New York in 2005, I thought what I needed was to have new quality male friends. That didn't happen. but I wound up without going too long into it, I wound up becoming friends with this group of Brazilian women, believe it or not. Interesting. Random. Right?

How did that happen? I just was going to this Italian restaurant, this another Deborah, different Deborah, was the bartender, and she saw like the look on my face. She was very cute. She was very friendly. Brazilian people are very warm and loving. and she I mean she liked me

but she kind of felt bad for me I think and one night she said I get off at 9.30 what are you doing? I said whatever you're doing and she took me down the block to her friend's house apartment and knocked on the door, open the door up

there's an Irish guy with a baby and he's like come in, come in, come in, come in, come in. we go on. We sit down on the couch. He's like, sit down with me. We're bouncing the baby back and forth.

And his wife, Lorana, another Brazilian girl, puts beers in our hand. And he's like, Matt is like, just wait. And they turn the music up. And the next thing I know, there were about 10 gorgeous Brazilian girls in this apartment dancing. And Matt's like, not bad, huh? And I was like, I like this. That's fucking amazing, man. And so these Brazilian women, you know, got to know my story and they wanted to help.

They wanted to be a part of my life. And they took me to Brazil twice. They took me to their homes where they grew up. I met their families. And it really, like, taught me that I could be happy again in my life and that unexpected things would come into my life. And it also taught me that I'm not in control. Yeah, totally. That he, the big H, I was reminded that he was still in control of my life.

And he also has a sense of humor because I thought I had to meet these quality guys. He was like, how about some quality Brazilian girls? Oh, yeah. I don't think anything can be better than quality Brazilian girls. Drinking and dancing and eating good food? They loved me. They took care of me. They were with me every night.

go here, go there, let's do this, let's do that. I was always invited. I was always a part of their team, and it really brought me back. But that's beautiful, man. It is beautiful. It is beautiful. I'm still friends with all of them.

They live all over the world, and I'm still friends with all of them. But in order for me to have that opportunity, to give that opportunity a chance, I had to get through the hard times. For sure. Every day, every minute of every day. And for me, it was music, Andrea Bocchelli.

For me, it was my family, for sure. My family. I don't know what I would have done. I'm not married. I mean my siblings and my mom and dad. But the compartmentalization, Andrea Boccelli's voice spoke to me and just trying to get through every day the pain of it

and trying to do something good and be strong. I don't know, man. I'm glad I did it in the end because I met these Brazilian girls and then I met a bunch of 9-11 families who I didn't, they weren't fire department families, they were other 9-11 families who I got close with. And look, in the end, I met this amazing, amazing Navy SEAL named Jay Redmond who survived being shot eight times

and is this amazing, positive, warm American hero, right? He is of the quality of Captain Terry Hatton and Captain Patty Brown and fireman Chris Blackwell and fireman Michael Lynch. Like, it took that... That took over 10 years. It's a long time. But I have another man who I admire, respect, who's my friend.

And I feel very close with. And I feel he would have fit in with my friends if they were still around, you know. It's 10 years, a long time to wait. Yeah. A long time to wait. But I'm so happy to be alive. I feel like I have great purpose. I'm still in the game.

I'm still prosecuting terrorists. Yeah, so what are you doing now? What are you currently working on? Well, I'm on a task force, which I can't really talk about, it's national security stuff. Okay. But we are involved with prosecuting terrorists

and ensuring that American justice is done the way America does it, right? We don't just shoot them in the head. If we can capture them, we capture them and we get intelligence out of them, hopefully. And then we prosecute them in a court, an American court. So whether that's a military court or an American court of justice, federal court,

it's still the prosecution, the defense, and the judiciary that develop evidence and allow evidence in or not, and then you're judged by a group of your peers, and they decide whether you're guilty or not, and then they decide, the judge decides what the sentence is, right? So we still do that, I'm proud of being a part of that. We cannot become like some of these other countries are.

we still need to, even with the worst people that do the most egregious things to America and to Americans, we still have to do a fair trial. And I do believe in that. And I'm honored to be a part of it. And so we have some time left in doing this.

And then at some point, I think I'm going to be done with it all. Yeah. You know, it's 20 years coming up. We have the anniversary coming up less than a year from now. Right. We have some big things planned. One of the foundations I'm proud to be a part of is the Stephen Siller Tunnel the Towers Foundation.

And we have some concerts we've announced some big concerts that are going to benefit the foundation. So I'm proud to be a part of that. And after the 20th anniversary and after this position with the feds I'm in, I think I might just walk on the beach of it. Yeah. You know? That sounds like a good plan. Yeah.

So you can't say who you're specifically employed by right now? Federal government. Just federal government. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. In general, because then it gets into a whole thing, which I can't get into. So.

Are you doing lots of traveling? I do some travel. Yeah. Back and forth to D.C. And then some other places. But most of my work for the job is in New York City, working with the families and the government there. I had a thought I wanted to expand on at the beginning of this podcast.

I know it's kind of like jumping way backwards, but it got me thinking you think of a firefighter in any town in the U.S. And then you think of a firefighter in New York City. Just judging the way you were. describing the job and the type of people, the guy with the wrinkles, all the different wrinkles, 40 plus years working as a firefighter in New York City. Can you explain for people who have no grasp or no sort of concept of what that must be like of being a firefighter in New York City?

What is that like? What is the job description? What is the basic, I guess, elevator pitched job description of a firefighter who works in New York City for a living? A New York City firefighter, as with any firefighter in America, in the beginning takes the oath and says, I am willing to give up my life for someone I don't know, to put myself in a dangerous position to save the life. to save the life of someone I don't know. Sometimes you are called upon to fulfill that. And that's true for firefighters and police officers

and military throughout America. Being in New York City, being in the Bronx or Harlem or some parts of Brooklyn or southern Queens, you need to be ready to get your ass kicked. There's so many variables. I feel like. Like you have the worst crime in the country. Now they do.

I mean, they're in some trouble in New York now. I mean, especially a police. The firemen get a little bit of a break. But the firemen are also a target of being the man, you know. And getting a false alarm called in, and they call it airmail where you drop a bucket off the roof of the building.

You call on a false alarm. the cops get there, the fireman gets there, you have a bucket of cement and you drop it off and try and kill them. You know, that's come back. That used to be in the 60s and 70s and early 80s, and that went away, but now that's back again. So not only you go in a neighborhood

trying to help innocent people, but they're trying to kill you. You know, the bad people in that neighborhood are also trying to kill you. And, you know, they'll take pot shots and stuff at a fire truck going, down the street or a police car. You know, they have these now in the police cars

next to where you sit on the window, they have these little bulletproof pieces of glass so the cop can sit back and hide behind the glass so somebody can't take a pot shot at them. In these smaller cities now, their economies are in trouble, and their fire departments are very busy. like we used to be in the 80s, 70s in the Bronx.

So a firefighter, New York City firefighter, friend of mine, his son is now a Baltimore fireman. They get their asses kicked by fires every time they come in. And all these smaller cities are like that. The Bridgeport, Chicago's, Detroit's, all over America. They know what it's like to be a New York City fireman. because they're getting their asses kicked and they're in danger.

His son already, he's only two years on the job and he already rescued somebody from a fire, you know, young guy, early 20s. Wow. So I wouldn't, the New York City firemen thing,

New York City is the biggest, it's the busiest, you know, all that stuff. You have this, the vertical aspect. I mean, you're fighting fires. And they keep building them bigger. They keep building them taller.

I would. Look, if you're a billionaire or multi-millionaire, good for you. Don't live on the 125th floor. It's a bad idea. We can't get to you. You know, we can't get to you. They've created in the New York City Fire Department, they've created a new signal for like an ultra high-rise.

Really? Yeah. We do high-rise fires every day in New York, every day. What is a high-rise considered? How does that go? I would say, up to 60 or 70 stories. Okay.

And then what we call the super-talls are the ones that are tall. I'm not sure what the numbers. It might be 75 and taller. Okay. But the problem is our response time, if the fire is up top, our time to get there is doubled

because we have to get up there inside the building. Right. You know, and so that fire is going to get even worse. And if you're trapped, we're not going to get to you very quickly, you know. So these super tolls are a problem for us. And they're a problem for the people that live there or their offices are there. They're a problem for them. If you're, I mean, I'm coming at this from a completely ignorant standpoint,

but if you're on like, say, the hundredth floor of a high rise and there's a fire in your building, what do you do? I'm sorry, if you're on the 100th floor. And there's a fire in your penthouse or whatever it is. And it's on your level. What are you supposed to do? Get down. Get down to the stairwell.

Get down. Because the fire only burns up. Don't take an elevator. Just get below, get below the fire. Smoke, heat, all that goes up. Get below the fire. And then if you're there, get out of the building. Even if you have to go down 100 floors in the stairwell, go down.

Yeah. Get out. Don't take the elevator. elevators are a very bad idea in a high-rise fire. The elevators can behave erratically. They could, you push to go down, it could go up, and the doors could open to the fire. It's unpredictable.

So do the stairwell thing. Get down below. If you physically can't get a few floors below and call for help and we'll come get you. Smoke detectors, the most important thing. Yeah. Working smoke. detector. It gives you a fighting chance to get out before it gets bad. I can't imagine having a

job like that. I mean, it's just a completely different world. It's the greatest job in the world. The greatest. The most satisfying, the most heroic, the most fun, you know, because you're working with a group of people who you count on every second for your life. and you live together in a firehouse. You eat together, you sleep together, you're cooked together, you risk your lives together. You know their families, they know your family. You know that if I die, that guy's taking care of my kids forever,

which is what I continue to do now for my friend's children. I told the story of young Mike Lynch, who now wants to go in the military. He was two years old when his father, the angel, was murdered. and I promised a young Mike's mom, Mike Sr's widow, Denise, that I would take care of his children. And now I am mentoring his son.

He's 22 years old. He's going to go in. We hope to the Navy SEALs. We're trying to get him there. And he's like a son to me. And any one of them, if I was killed in 9-11, if I had kids,

any one of them would have done that for me. And that's why being a New York City firefighter, being a firefighter anywhere in America is the greatest job in the world. It's family. You don't get rich. Right. But you can pay your bills. And you grow up doing something very important. You teach your children about what's important in life, the most important things.

And you have a blast along the way. That was super powerful, Tim. Thank you so much for being here. Tell me about your book you brought. Yeah. So just the one book is called What Brothers Do by Michael Everett Brown. Michael passed away about six weeks ago from 9-11 cancer. His brother, if you can see on the back here.

Hold it up next to your face. Yeah, okay. There you go. On the back there, that's Michael with his blood brother, Patrick. My last name is also Brown, but I'm not blood brothers with them. Patrick was one of my two best friends. He was a captain, a legend captain in the New York City Fire Department, murdered on September 11th. Patrick's brother, Michael, wrote this book about our experience.

It is a true, powerful, powerful true story of what we went through after September 11th. And all the profits from this go to the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Tower's Foundation my favorite charity, the one I do the most work for. Stephen Siller was a fireman murder on September 11th. The proceeds from this book will go to build homes for catastrophically injured military or to pay off the mortgages of firefighters and police officers throughout America who were killed in the line and duties. So we go around, we pay the mortgages off.

In the last 36 days leading up to Christmas, we paid 36. mortgages off throughout America. Wow. Yeah, it's the real deal. We're doing some concerts coming up. I don't think I am allowed to say who, but basically the biggest musicians or bands in the world are playing concerts

to benefit the Stephen Siller-Tunnel of Towers. If you buy this book, you get to read our story. The proceeds benefit the Stephen Siller Tunnel the Towers Foundation. The greatest charity I've ever been a part of, and they do the greatest work. over 93% of the end dollar goes to the end user. So they're a gold star charity.

They're the best. What Brothers Do by Michael Everett Brown. Thank you. That's amazing, man. Thank you again. I can't thank you enough for being here and sharing that story. It's extremely powerful. Thanks for having me.

And I'm grateful that you're getting the word out. This is a part of Never Forget. The stories I tell are important for all of your listeners to hear. And especially the young people coming up, right? I'm not getting any younger. A lot of the people who have firsthand stories are dying from 9-11 illness. So the fact that you're helping me get the story out, I'm really grateful for that. So I'm grateful for you being here.

Thank you, Tim. Thank you, brother. God bless.