From the August 2002 Firehouse MagazineBattalion Chief Tom VallebuonaBattalion 21 - 29 years
Firehouse: You are assigned to Staten Island. Where were you when the planes hit?
Vallebuona: We had just had a run. It was a beautiful day and one of the guys came walking down the stairs and said, Chief, I just a got a phone call from my wife on her cell phone, she said there was an explosion in the World Trade Center. So we took a ride down to Marine 9, which is right by the Navy pier, where you can see right across the bay.
Firehouse: Is it close to the firehouse?
Vallebuona: It’s 10 blocks away, in the Stapleton Park. A guy was just coming off the boat, Marine 9, and he had binoculars. I had my binoculars and we were looking at the building. It took me a while to realize this. I was looking and it looked like a little outline of a wing or something going into the building. We were looking at the south end of the building, and I just saw a little bit of smoke coming out. I don’t know if I saw fire at that time.
I remember telling him, oh, we can put this one out. I thought he said that a small plane had gone into it. The plane had hit the north side and we were looking at the south side. I called up the dispatcher and I told him I wanted to go to the fire and I was complaining because I told him I was working the day of the last one (the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center), that he had stopped me at the 32 Battalion and that I wanted to go this time. As soon as I got to Brooklyn last time, they trapped me in Brooklyn. After I hang up the cell phone, a plane came over our heads. I watched it sort of lumber around on a turn. It was almost over our heads.
Firehouse: Did it come that far south?
Vallebuona: I don’t know if it was quite over our heads or coming over Staten Island. So the plane seemed to come, but it was in front of us, really close. You couldn’t get the perspective of the size of the plane because I saw two engines. It seemed to make a turn and it was coming over our heads, and it seemed to go slow and I’m saying to the aide, Steve, what’s going on, what’s that plane doing because it still hasn’t registered. We were there for a couple of minutes.
And all of a sudden, it was like it just took off across the bay. I couldn’t believe how fast it went. At first, I thought it was just somebody trying to take a look at Manhattan. And it just went right across right into the building. It looked like it got sucked into the building. You couldn’t even see it disintegrate. It just went so fast and it looked like it just disappeared in the building and I heard it seconds later. I got that sick feeling in my stomach and, sure enough, the computer in the car went off.
I was looking at the cell phone, thinking, hmm, you want to go, but you don’t want to go. I’m doing this too long – you want to be there, you’re not going to back down, but boy, you’re saying, hmm. And, sure enough, then we got to relocate to the 32 Battalion in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Firehouse: Did you think about the last incident?
Vallebuona: If I told you I was kind of glad we were going to the 32, in a way, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to go, but this is so bad I can’t believe it. You knew people were dying by the hundreds. I didn’t anticipate a collapse at that time so quickly, but it was a different story when you saw the second tower get hit.
Amazingly, by the time I got to the bridge, it was already closed. They had us waiting over there. It was amazing how little on the way there you’re looking at the tower. I think when you look at the picture of Ladder 118, those guys really knew what they were going to. People would never realize how much a firefighter, especially if you got some time in now, especially a chief in a way, how much other things you’re thinking about.
You don’t necessarily have a chance to look. You’re trying to figure out what’s going on and you’re talking on the radio. I remember Rescue 5 asking to go. I remember giving an urgent to the Staten Island dispatcher when the plane hit. I don’t know what good this would do to tell the Manhattan dispatcher another plane just went into the another tower.
Firehouse: You told them that?
Vallebuona: Yes.
Firehouse: What did you say?
Vallebuona: 21 Battalion to Staten Island urgent, another plane just went into the other tower of the World Trade Center. I don’t know what else I said. I remember calling up Teddy Goldfarb of Division 8, telling him you better start calling guys in, they better do a recall or something right away. I don’t know why I would say that. Rescue 5 wanted to go. They didn’t want them to go. I remember telling dispatch you better let them go, they’re going to need all the rescues they could use.
We ended up in the 32. When I got to the 32 – I got there pretty quick – and as soon as we get there, the 32’s car was PMP’d (preventative maintenance program). They were out of service and we got a call from the Brooklyn dispatcher to bring them over to the command post at Vesey and Broadway. We had the guys put a bunch of cylinders in the rig, whatever they had. We took the chief. None of us felt too good about this, I tell you that.
Firehouse: Just one chief?
Vallebuona: The chief and his aide in the 32. The 32 is right there at the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. Outside the tunnel they were forming another box, transmit a second and third from there too for a staging area. So we’re going through the tunnel and what a feeling going through that tunnel. There was a truck in front of us. I told the driver, Tony, don’t go too close to the truck, figuring it was going to blow up.
We get out of the tunnel. The Brooklyn dispatcher begged us to come back if we could. You can’t just charge into this thing. You got to figure out what’s going on. And I figured there would be plenty of people there too. So I said I’ll go and I’ll ask. I had the aide stop as soon as we got out of the tunnel on West Street, you know halfway up, just before Liberty. And I saw a couple of guys setting up on the other side of the foot bridge that’s still here, which turned out to be (Assistant Chief and Citywide Tour Commander) Gerry Barbara’s aide, a couple of aides. I thought they were chiefs at the time. I said all right. I got the other guy out. I said wait here, I’ll go up and find out if they want us, if they want me, if they want you here. This literally saved our lives because if I had kept on going … I don’t know why I stopped. I’ll never know why.
Firehouse: Where did you stop? By the foot bridge?
Vallebuona: Just before it, about half a block away. In front of 90 West St., but opposite that on the median. And so I walked up and I started to say something to him, they’re going to need everybody, we’ll just start from here. So I went back. The chief started putting his gear on. I went to grab my gear and stuff and I heard boom, a loud boom, I thought. I looked up, it was a beautiful sunny day, and I heard that crescendo sound.
But something scared me. It sounded like – it must have been all the aluminum on the side, like just shhh, shhh, shhh. I looked up and it looked like a fountain, like a firework. It was the south tower collapsing. I looked up. I said, oh, my God. I tell you I thought I was back in the firehouse asleep. I said this can’t be real. The hotel was in front of the tower. The tower was really halfway up Liberty Street, so I guess I was really a block away. I was on the other side, next to 90 West Street, which I think is an old office building, and I realize I’m not far enough away.
I couldn’t believe it. The stuff, it looked so pretty up in the air catching the sunlight, I guess the aluminum and stuff. I didn’t realize it was coming over our heads. I turned around to run. Stevie, who’s the aide, and me, we both started to run. I don’t think we made it 10 steps before the cloud was there instantly, we saw it coming at us. I was looking around this horrendous-looking cloud, this brownish, reddish or whatever cloud, I couldn’t figure it out. I had no idea what it was.
This is going to light up, I figured, we’re buying it. And I was hunking down. You couldn’t breathe, the old put-your-head-in-the-coat trick. Steve and I were holding hands and we just held up for a while because a breeze came by or something. I’m glad we got down because I don’t know if we would have gotten knocked over or whatever. We could hear stuff around us, landing.
After we collected ourselves a little bit, we started to work our way south down West Street. We got to the next street, went west and still couldn’t see beans. I found a store in the building that would be in Battery Park City. The store was open. I had a light. We started bringing people that are working around to the store. The sound was like a snowstorm, muffled. Everything was muffled– you know how the snow sort of quiets things up? I’m calling out to people. The guy had the store open, bringing people in, trying to figure out what’s going on. You couldn’t figure out what this cloud was. When I was lying up there, I thought it was going to be like Pompeii, we were going to be buried in dust.
When it cleared, we went back to the rig and I saw that Frank Cruthers had just come in. I saw him with a map or building plans or something he was setting up on his car. I saw another guy running up the street, then some other guys running up the street. I said, wait, don’t rush, hold it up, let’s figure out what’s going on. I wanted to get my gear. I don’t know why, but I guess everybody must have figured out that the other one’s going to come down too. To me it wasn’t a guess anymore. I figured if one came down, the other one’s going to come down.
I didn’t want to breathe that again because it just was so lousy. I didn’t feel like I could go through that cloud again. So I put on my fire gear, grabbed my mask and gave Stevie his. He always still says he can’t believe I said this. I said Stevie, take this, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. It was getting pretty clear. I went over to talk to Frank Cruthers, to see what he wanted to do, to start getting guys. Guys were going up the street a little faster than I would like to, but they were doing what they thought was right and I admire their courage.
The next thing you know, boom, same thing all over again. The cloud, I think, probably was worse because it must have been picked up the dust from the first one, but the other one was so bad. It was just bad. You’re running again. It’s amazing the few people that are there and they’re running and you don’t see anybody. I lost Stevie this time. The same scenario just about. I put my mask on. Of course, I forgot that the mask was all full of dust from the first one, so as soon as I got a hit of that, it totally destroyed my eyes. We then worked our way south again a little bit. Things cleared up.
Firehouse: Where were you when the second tower came down?
Vallebuona: Same place, right back to square one, right at the car, just about a hundred feet below the foot bridge.
I can’t remember if I saw fires the first time. The second time, I saw fires. The rigs were starting to burn. Cars were starting to burn. I’m surprised, I saw a few pictures, I can’t remember. The smoke was starting to bank down pretty good in certain streets around there, even on West Street. It was like really turning into a pretty good fire condition all around us. 90 West St. had at least three floors burning. We had a cellar job there. The roof was starting to burn.
I dropped off my mask. I just didn’t feel I could carry it anymore because it really just was too dusty. I don’t remember if I left my coat on or not. I walked up the street, but I didn’t have any boots. My boots were so full of dust I couldn’t put them on. I walked up under the foot bridge and I saw (Deputy Chief) Charlie Blaich standing on a pile of the building. I looked around. I couldn’t see too many people. Charlie was directing something.
It was pretty clear then. I looked in. I was so shocked and I just said, Charlie, I’m going to go down the street, get some water and we’ll start knocking down the fires. I was not at that time up to climbing up to the top of the pile with what we’d been through and stuff. I just don’t think I could have done it. It was just total despair. The force that I felt. I’d been through the worst collapse in my time in the job. It was maybe the worst time I’ve ever had as a firefighter. I never had such a feeling that everybody was dead in my whole entire life. I felt there was nobody alive. I just couldn’t get rid of that feeling.
I just said, the best thing I can do is just put out some fires and confine the fire, try and keep it. Believe it or not, the objective I had in mind was to keep the fire from going south from that area that was starting to burn in the other building. Some people felt that it would have burnt itself out. I don’t know. So we went back. There were guys there still. Guys were coming on in, but not a lot of people on the scene yet. And I really don’t know what’s going on. I know there was some surface rescues.
We took a look around in that area and we looked for surface people, couldn’t find anybody around there. Never forget seeing a line, I remember the line going up and then after the second collapse the line just going before where the foot bridge had collapsed and just a big pile of rubble on top of it. Where we hunkered down on the other side of us on the other side of West Street was this gigantic piece of the World Trade Center. When we hunkered down the second time, we could hear it, sounds all around us. I don’t know why we didn’t hear boom, anything hitting like that, but it was all like soft stuff and I swear I felt it was people.
It was a day of frustration from that. It was like being at a battle. I tried to remember I was a chief and that you have to take charge or whatever and do something constructive – and I wanted to go home. The chief I brought over broke his shoulder, got hit by something after the second one and he broke his collar bone. I looked at him and I was jealous.
I’m pretty proud of what we did as a group. We did accomplish our objective. My objective in the beginning was that I didn’t want anybody else to get killed and I wanted to confine the fire. That’s why I’ve gone back, just because I would never believe it if I didn’t go back.
We had lines stretched. We had some pumpers hooked up. The mains were shot. What else could go wrong? But things started going right then. They tried. We knocked down the first floor, which was almost an exterior operation of 90. 90 West St. also had next to it a scaffold covering the whole building and with everything we’ve been through with scaffolds, I mean that scaffold would have covered the whole block. We were very concerned about the scaffolding, so we tried to knock down the fire. We knocked down the fire on the first floor and I was saying, where do these fires come from, why are the rigs burning?
I forget what truck was burning and a squad was burning. There were a couple of rigs burning. There were a lot of cars burning. It was really banking down the street pretty good.
We put out the fire. I knew the place was wide open, so maybe we could put it out with handlines.
I also looked at it. There was nobody else there besides me at the time and a lot of guys I knew, but not that many. I said, let’s see, if I showed up at this fire and this was the only thing going on in Manhattan, I would say third alarm, get ready for the fourth and the fifth. And I’d only say third. I wouldn’t even say second. I’d say third because I’ve been battalion chief a long time. I know I can say there’s a third because I know there’s going to be a fifth alarm.
We tried. They had enough water. We were knocking down the first floor. We found a cellar door and we could feel the heat coming out of the cellar. I could feel the air being sucked in at the front door, so I said, that’s it, and we shut the lines. And we had at least three more floors burning above us throughout the building and the roof was starting to go.
I remember we had a pumper go down the street, still no water going further south. I said this to a couple of guys, go down – you wouldn’t think this was going to happen, but you realize with this thing the fireboats are going to be there somewhere. I told them go down to the river and see if you can find a fireboat.
The next thing I know, guys were coming up the street. It seemed like so quick I couldn’t believe it. They were coming up the street with 31¼2-inch lines and firemen from New Jersey were with them. It was unbelievable. So I said, you know what we’re going to do, we’re going to supply the standpipe in the hotel. It’s salt water, but that’s the way life is with this thing, Anything goes with this thing.
I said get a deck gun, take it to the roof and hook up to the manifold. We’ll start knocking that thing down and we’ll put other lines throughout the building. We’ll do it like they used to do.
And they must have found the engineer in the building to get the pumps going too. We got some pretty good streams going out of there. We had 15 Truck, I think. It was a tower ladder. I didn’t want him to go up the street. I was the biggest coward in the world that day. I was waiting. I thought every other building was going to collapse in Manhattan, I really did. I couldn’t get rid of that feeling like everything is going to collapse. 7 World Trade Center – I couldn’t even watch that. I said that’s enough. I refused to watch that. I took R-and-R. I said you guys can watch that one. But they got streams and they contained the fire. I mean, the objective was nobody else got killed, the fire did not jump the street.
Firehouse: Would it have jumped the street?
Vallebuona: I don’t know. How long you can let that type of building burn, how much content was in it? I don’t know, but it was contained. It’s just so hard to believe that a battalion chief would be thinking like that, let’s keep the rest of Manhattan from burning.
Deputy Chief Bobby Mosier come in. There were a lot of people showing up. Even before Bobby came in, guys were coming from the ferry. A lot of firemen were coming in from the ferry and most of them I knew. Guys were coming who were from certain units, like SOC (Special Operations Command), units that I knew. I knew all the guys from Rescue 5.
I tried to make guys form into teams, an officer with five firemen, which they were doing pretty well. The guys were very cooperative and they really worked hard, unbelievable.
What went on at that pile that day, I don’t know. We’d have people running down the street and then they wouldn’t be running down the street. I tried to keep people away and eventually move the tower ladder up. The engineers were initially worried about the scaffold.
Firehouse: Were crews able to get the pump going at 90 West St.?
Vallebuona: The Marriott, the hotel. It was unbelievable that you could pump water from the Hudson and get a good stream going off the top of that building. I mean, that was pretty impressive. It was a newer building, so the pipes – I saw an aerial picture of the 90 West. From the street you couldn’t tell, but it was C shaped. It had a courtyard in there. The other building was going next door too so we really didn’t have much of an effect on that.
Guys were up by 10 and 10, climbing into that pile. That wasn’t my day to do that, it just wasn’t. I’m not ashamed of that. Obviously, I could have done more, but you run twice. This has been a couple of collapses for me. My only concern was to keep anybody else from getting killed. It took me forever to get over that. Amazingly, even just the stuff they did, when you really needed something, people would come through somehow. Then they’re relaying the water to some pumpers. I mean guys are really doing stuff you didn’t think we would to be able to do anymore.
I could relax, other people were showing up. And all of a sudden, a guy says, Chief, we’re running out of diesel fuel. What else can go wrong? I mean, you know that’s it.
I said to a guy, we need diesel fuel. He said, I’ll see if I can find some. I don’t know how he did it. He went down to the Marine Unit, they got a Coast Guard boat or something and they got diesel fuel.
Then you start saying, oh, things are going right. I took a little R-and-R then for an hour or so and I went down and relaxed. A lot of guys were down on the corner, where there was a little restaurant-type place. We thought 7 World Trade Center was going to fall and push the side of the World Trade Center that was still standing, and then it was going to go into 90 and I thought the scaffold was going to fall and cover the block and kill another 30 people. As silly as it sounds now, if you were there at that moment, I wasn’t the only person thinking that way.
During that day – it was in Dennis Smith’s book too – there was a guy, I’ll never forget this, he was standing on top of a torso and he didn’t even know it. The only reason I knew that the guy was telling me the truth was because of the places I’ve worked and I’ve stood on top of people. It’s like standing on a mattress. And I realized, oh, yeah, you’re right and I start looking, but I couldn’t see it. A chief on the top of the Marriott called down to Bobby Mosier and said there were body parts all over the place, a lot of body parts were on top of a 50-story building a block or two blocks away.
There was a clinic set up a block away in the World Financial Center, I don’t know what you call it, a triage station. I walked over there and they tried cleaning my eyes out. The pain was really bad. So the doctor said no, that’s it, and he put patches over my eyes and they took me over to the hospital. I went to Beekman.
Obviously, we know we had some injuries around and people were moved to Jersey and elsewhere. I didn’t know that at the time because I never really got to the waterfront. When I got to Beekman, I had patches over my eyes, but when I was leaving, I saw 50 (medical staff) people waiting (for patients), but nobody’s showing up. And this was probably 8, 9 o’clock at night. I thought it would be like “MASH,” blood all over the place. There was nobody.
It’s sad. I would never call people up and say I’ve got a story to tell, because I know compared to their stories – Patty Mahaney and people like that. I try and be like them a little bit, to have that spirit and that courage and to care about the job a lot. I realized that I was very privileged to have seen something like this and to have been present because he’s jealous of me because he was on the roof of Waldbaum’s with me and you know he’s always been jealous. He’s says I’ve been in more collapses than him and he’s mad that I was there and he wasn’t. And he said that to me. And he said that a couple of tours later. He said you’re lucky. I said, what are you kidding, but he was right. I was privileged.
Firehouse: I talked to Chief Mark Ferran of the 12th Battalion. He was working with 43 and directing them into Jonas and the other firefighters. But when he originally called up and he was talking to the aide in 12. He said, geez, I wish I was working today. He said they didn’t want me to come in. Apparently, Battalion Chiefs Fred Scheffold and Joseph Marchbanks said, ah, it’s only a fire – this was initially – ah, it’s only a fire, tell him to stay home. Ferran said, I’ll never, ever say I wish I was working, ever again.
Vallebuona: A couple of times, I’ve sworn that I wouldn’t pray for them to go to a second. We did that at the Waldbaum’s fire, but you know what, if you’re going to stay on this job, you’ve got to still want to go. The day I don’t want to go anymore is the day I’ve got to quit because there’s no reason.
What saved a lot of units is that they closed the tunnel, so instead of coming in that way, they went over to the bridges. A lot of units from Staten Island would have been there again. I mean Staten Island comes out really fortunate, except for Rescue 5. So I went over to Beekman, and I didn’t walk back. They gave me a ride halfway across and I walked along Broadway, I think, and I was shaken. I felt every building was going to fall on top of me. I couldn’t believe it. I walked by where they had the landing gear or whatever in the street, I mean I’m looking, I’m saying what are you kidding me?
It was like that old Godzilla movie. Everybody says that, but it’s true. It’s like you’re looking around, thinking, what the hell went through this town? I walked down Liberty Street. I couldn’t make it all the way down to Liberty. When I got back there, Bobby Mosier said, Tom, why don’t you just take a set of irons and force a door in the hotel and go get a bed? I said, Bob, that’s not going to work, I’ll see you tomorrow because I’ve got an 11 o”clock ferry boat. I have no idea what time it was, to tell you the truth.
A lot of young kids were going back on the ferry because they were sending them back. Then they decided to do the 24-on/24-off. They weren’t saying much, they sat in the front of the boat as it left. Nobody sat in the back of the boat, which is not the way it works on the Staten Island ferry boat.
Firehouse: Everybody usually looks at Manhattan?
Vallebuona: Yeah, but nobody looked. The kids said to me they thought I was going to jump off the boat. They got off the boat and an official from the UFOA was there who was assigned to the Division, the deputy chief. He looked at me, he says it was really bad, you’ve got to see the pictures of the dust.
I’ll never forget riding back on the bus. Then some guys start joking and I said listen, guys, we lost a bunch of guys there. I wasn’t nasty. I didn’t get mad. I didn’t yell at them and they said yeah and then we went to Engine 116 and later on they said they were sorry.
Imagine that walk home. I had to go home and take 17 showers – my wife saved the stuff. There’s still dust coming out of every part of my pants. It’s disgusting.
Firehouse: Was there one thing that really stuck out in your mind?
Vallebuona: The thing I’ll always remember was looking up and seeing the stuff billowing out of the building when it first started coming down. It was beautiful initially, then I realized it wasn’t beautiful. I was fortunate I didn’t see people coming out. I didn’t see people leaping out.
Believe me, I did not have it as bad as most of the guys had it there who survived. I just think it’s important that we should all be willing to say what we saw. I’m willing to tell anybody because I don’t think there’s going to be one book about this, just like there’s not going to be one book about Gettysburg.
