File No WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW FIREFIGHTER LOUIS GIACONELLI. Interview Date: December 6, Transcribed by Nancy Francis

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Transcription:

File No. 9110257 WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW FIREFIGHTER LOUIS GIACONELLI Interview Date: December 6, 2001 Transcribed by Nancy Francis

2 BATTALION CHIEF KENAHAN: Today's date is December 6, 2001. The time is 6:52 p.m. and this is Battalion Chief Dennis Kenahan of the Safety Battalion of the Fire Department of the City of New York. I'm conducting an interview with Louis Giaconelli. Q. Please tell us anything you remember about the events of September 11th. A. I reported in for work before the change of tours and I was already ready to drive. I was assigned chauffeur that day in Engine 53. I was upstairs in the bunk room when the first plane hit the first tower. I heard some of the other firefighters talking about it. I slid the pole, made sure I had all my gear on the rig and made sure that the rig was full of fuel. Then the second plane hit the second tower. I was pretty sure after the first plane had hit the first tower that we'd be going down there, and when the second plane hit, I definitely knew we were going down there. Then we were assigned on the second fifth alarm to the second tower that was struck. I started to drive down there. I went on various streets. I do remember going down Lexington Avenue to 97th Street, I believe, and then I went down 5th Avenue to the 90th Street entrance to Central Park,

3 and I went down Central Park Drive on the east side to 72nd Street, across 72nd Street, and I got on the West Drive and came out of the park by Tavern on the Green on 66th Street, I think, and Central Park West. I went down Broadway to 57th Street, made a right, and I went to 11th Avenue, where we started to pick up radio transmissions that we were to respond down 11th Avenue because the police had opened up lanes for us or they had corridors open for us. So I went down 11th Avenue and, sure enough, we picked up a few police cars in front of us or vans and we made it down there pretty quick. When I got there, there were already a significant amount of rigs there, and I found a parking spot along the right-hand side, along the west side of West Street, and I actually was close to a hydrant that I could have hooked up to if I had to. I noticed that rigs were parked on both sides of the street and that there was a lane open straight down. So when we got there, we were driving down, obviously, we had a clear view of the towers. We knew that both of them were on fire. There were thousands of people running up West Street when we were driving down, thousands of people. So I parked the rig.

4 Everybody got out, got their masks on, and I yelled to my officer, I said, "I'm not going to stay here with the rig." I said, "I'm going to come with you guys." He said, "Yeah, definitely." So I had all my bunker gear with me and I had a spare mask. So I put it all on and I went down with the company. We walked down West Street and we reported in to the command post staging area. As we were walking down, I was just looking up and I saw it was a lot of smoke, but it was up high. It was a crystal clear day and there was a lot of stuff in the air, in the sky, floating around, and I was trying to get my bearings. I saw something weird coming off the building and I looked up and I didn't know what it was and I was trying to get a sense of what was happening, if things were falling on us, but it turned out they were bodies. There were people jumping off the top of the buildings. So then I realized how bad it was up there. We got in to the command post staging area and my officer Reported in and tried to get us an assignment. So we stood in the staging area, which was in the driveway to an underground garage going into the World Financial Center. We stood there for a few

5 minutes and made sure we had all our gear on, and we were trying to figure out what was going on and it was a calamity. A lot of smoke, a lot of debris coming down, bodies coming down, landing right in front of us. So while we were waiting to get our assignment, Captain John Sudnik, who I knew from 23 Engine, I think, was giving out the assignments and he asked my officer if we could move some rigs to make sure the lanes were clear coming down to the World Financial Center. So it was myself -- I wasn't the only chauffeur working. I know Kevin McGovern was working, too. He was a chauffeur. Eddie Cachia was working also and he was a chauffeur. So we had those two guys and two probies with us. So between the three of us, we dropped our masks and all our gear, we kept our bunker gear on, though, and we walked back up West Street to see if any rigs had to be moved, like he asked us to do, and we found one or two. I know I myself moved one or two, I don't recall, that were blocking the path a little bit, and I got them out of the way. Then we got together again and we all started walking back down West Street. I remember passing underneath that north

6 pedestrian bridge, and I was just about to get back to the entrance to the driveway to the staging area and I heard this sound, and it was like a train, like a huge train rumbling, and I knew that something was coming off the building, but I didn't know what it was. So I think Lieutenant Doherty and Eddie Cachia were in front of me. We were kind of walking in single file, and I think those two guys were in front of me and I was third or fourth. I don't recall. I know the two probies were behind me and I think Kevin McGovern was a little behind me, too. So I remember Lieutenant Doherty and Eddie Cachia went for the driveway and I said to myself I wasn't going to make it, but I knew I had to find someplace to ditch. So I looked to my right and a High-Rise 2 Unit, which I didn't notice at the time what it was, but I figured out later a High-Rise 2 Unit was parked on the grass to the right of the staging area driveway and just in front of the entrance to the big glass atrium going into the World Financial Center. I didn't think I could make it to the entrance of the building. I think that's where Kevin McGovern went, and I don't know where the probies went. So I just dove underneath the High-Rise 2

7 Unit. I dove underneath there, and just as I got underneath there, the first building had collapsed. I didn't realize the whole building had collapsed. I knew something significant had come down, but I didn't realize at the time that it was the whole building. So I dove under the rig and there was another guy underneath there with me. It turned out he was a fire patrolman. He wasn't a firefighter. But we were under the rig and the next thing I knew, I heard the crash, I felt the impact, and it went from day to night. We couldn't see anything. I couldn't see anything, and then, of course, we couldn't breathe anymore, and the guy next to me starts yelling that he couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe. I had my hood around my neck and I was able to get it up over my nose, and between breathing through my hood and into my coat, I was able to breathe for a while. I just laid there for a few minutes and tried to stay calm and get the other guy calmed down and I just waited until I thought everything was safe again. So after a few minutes we were able to see some light again, and I started to crawl out and I dug myself out and then I poked my head out from under the rig. The other guy came out with me and we stood up

8 and kind of shook each other, made sure we were okay. I said, "Are you all right?" He said, "Yes." He said, "Are you all right?" I said, "Yeah, we're all right." So with that we kind of went our separate ways, and I just took a quick look around and I don't recall ever looking up. I don't really ever recall looking up. Not that there was anything to see. It was all dust and debris and there really wasn't much to see. So I made my way back just a couple of feet into the driveway and I went looking for my mask and I found it. It was right where I had left it and it was buried, but I was able to dig it out. Most of our equipment was still all there and everybody was clearly shook. I don't mean shook that they were scared. They obviously had been affected by the impact of this thing, and we were all covered with dust and dirt and debris and you couldn't breathe and that stuff. So I got my mask on, but by the time I got it on and hooked up, I didn't have to put it on my face. I was able to breathe normally. I made my way down into the entrance of the underground garage and into the World Financial Center.

9 So we decided to make our way up the stairway of that basement of that building up into the upper floors. When I got into the building and we started finding our way in there, we were kind of strung out and I was still with Lieutenant Doherty, I think, and Eddie Cachia. Kevin McGovern and the two probies, I don't know where they were. I remember trying to find my way through this maze down there and I finally found a staircase and made my way up. Somewhere along in that process I came across the members of Ladder 16. Danny Williams was the officer I remember and I know Stevie Wright was there, Joe Petrich, Oscar Davila, and I can't remember who else. But they had an EMS worker, I don't know if he was a New York City EMS worker, but he was definitely an EMS worker or EMT, on a stretcher, not a board, not a back board, a stretcher, and they asked me if I could help them carry this guy out. I kind of said, "Well, what's wrong with him?" They said, "We think he has a broken leg and a broken arm." So he was kind of a big guy and they were having a really tough time trying to get him up the stairs because it was a real tight staircase and this guy was big and we had all our gear on. I mean, I had

10 all my bunker gear on and my mask, and we were trying to carry this guy up. I think there were about four or five guys from Ladder 16, me and maybe one other guy, I don't recall, and we struggled to get this guy up these stairs. We struggled so bad that even at one point I asked the guy if it was possible that he could walk because we were having such a hard time with him, and the guy said he didn't think so. Anyway, we wound up carrying him up. I don't know how many flights of stairs it was, but we got him up. I think it was probably at least three, maybe four flights, and we popped a door and we wound up in the huge atrium or lobby of the World Financial Center. We carried him out and I made it through the building and came out on the back side of the building. So now I was in I think it's the harbor area. I don't know what it's called. Q. Marina? A. The marina area, I guess. So that building is 2 World Financial Center. That's the Merrill Lynch building, I guess. So I came out on the other side and I found Lieutenant Doherty from 53 and Eddie Cachia from 53 and they were searching around there, and we talked for a

11 few minutes and made sure we were okay and tried to digest what had happened to us. We started searching around, and I was curious or worried about what had happened to Kevin McGovern and the two probies. Somehow or another they went in one direction and I went in the other. I wound up going into, looking at the map here, it says the Winter Garden, which was this glass atrium that I was in. So I went into the glass atrium and I started working my way to the front of the building. When I was in there, it was pretty desolate. I didn't see any other firefighters and I really didn't see any other people, except I do remember seeing a few civilians walking around and they looked like they were workers from the building, not us, but maintenance workers that had semi-uniforms on. So I started working my way to the front of the building and I got to the front door of the building. When I got to the front door of the building, I took a quick look up and I saw that the north tower was directly in front of me, still burning, and I don't really remember looking for the south tower, but my view might have been obstructed at that point because the Winter Garden door was a little set

12 back from the World Financial Center entrance. So I took a few steps outside the entrance of the building onto the stairway there, and the High-Rise 2 Unit that I had been under when the first building came down was parked right there on the right-hand side on the grass. I took a few steps and I was looking around, and the next thing I knew, I heard the same sound that I'd heard when the first building had come down. So I didn't have to look up. I knew what the sound was. I didn't have to look up. It was the same sound I had heard when the first building came down. So, again, I was caught out in the open and I didn't really know where to go. I guess instantly I decided not to go under the High-Rise 2 Unit. I decided to turn and try and run back into the building. So that's what I did. As I ran through the door, I remember saying to myself close the door behind you, close the door behind you. But, of course, I didn't really have time to do that or even attempt it. I just tried to run as fast as I could, and I didn't get very far. The building came down and, of course, the concussion from the impact blew me down and knocked me down and blew my helmet off my head and sent me flying down I guess it

13 was the hallway of the main entrance of the building. There was a tremendous crash and glass and then the same effect that had happened the first time. It went from day to night. A huge, huge blast of hot wind gusting and smoke and dust and all kinds of debris hit me and blew me over and covered me, and the same thing. I just tried to get my head down into my hood and my face inside of my coat where I could try and breathe again because it was the same thing. I couldn't see and I couldn't breathe. It was just a repeat of the same thing that happened to me the first time. So I waited, it seemed like an eternity, but I waited a few seconds, and then, of course, I remembered that I had my mask on my back this time. So I reached back and turned it on or made sure it was on, I don't recall, and grabbed the face piece. Of course, I blew into the face piece like you're supposed to do and it didn't make any difference. The face piece was full of debris and dust and who knows what else. I took a couple of quick hits off it and I got two mouthfuls and nosefuls and my eyes all full of stuff that was in the mask and the stuff that was all around me.

14 Eventually that cleared up and I was able to wear the mask. I got my mask on and, of course, I started hearing some screaming and yelling around me. So there obviously were some other people around, and then I remembered that I had seen a few civilians or these maintenance workers in the building to my right as I had walked in, so then now they were to my left. So I started crawling along the floor because I couldn't see anything, and I was right alongside the wall and I got my right hand on the wall and started following the wall along, and I found my helmet. Hard to believe, but I found my helmet. It had been blown down the hallway a distance and I came across it and I was able to get it on my head. I had also had a flashlight. So I just crawled along the wall, crawled along the wall, and I heard a guy screaming in front of me and, sure enough, I eventually came to him and found him. I grabbed him and told him he was okay, and I just said, "Stay with me and we'll find our way out." As I started going along, I came across the other people that I heard yelling or screaming in the atrium. So I got them all together and I had them all hold on to me or follow me along the wall and somehow or another I saw light. Even though it was pitch black

15 where I was and we couldn't see, I saw light coming from somewhere. I said, "Let's go. Let's see where this light is coming from." It turned out that it was a storefront and the light was coming from another atrium that was behind the store that was in the atrium. I don't remember if the door was open or whatever. I didn't have to force the door, but we were able to open it. Maybe it just swung open. I popped in there and it was clear as a bell in there. We could see and we could breathe. So I got all these people in there. What these guys were doing, and I give them a lot of credit, these maintenance guys, they had a woman, a black woman, I remember, and she was kind of large also and they, much to their credit, were trying to carry her out of this building. They were inside the building, but they still got impacted by the collapse of the north tower. So I got them all into the storefront and got them all calmed down. They were pretty excited and nervous. I got them all calmed down and I said, "Okay. We're okay here. Just stay here," I said, "and I'll find a way out and then I'll come back and get you. So just stay here. I'll find a way out and

16 I'll come back and get you." I put my mask back on again and I had my flashlight, the same thing, just followed along the right-hand side of the wall, worked my way around. I went through the whole glass atrium and I found an exit door and I popped out, and again I popped out onto the harbor side of the World Financial Center. So then I got my bearings and I left the door open and I retraced my steps back to the same store that I had left the people in and got them out. I counted heads and I made sure I had, I believe it was seven people. I made sure I had seven, and I said, "Okay. Let's just follow me and we'll just follow our way out." I just followed the wall all the way back and they followed me, and I got them back to that exit door and got them out into the harbor area and that was it. That was the last I saw of them. Then I started looking around, and it was pretty desolate down there. There was really nobody around. Off in the distance I saw my Lieutenant, Bobby Doherty, and Eddie Cachia from 53, and they had been down by the seawall when the second tower had come down. They said they had wedged themselves up against it and still got blasted there, too, tremendously. I

17 guess you could say they were kind of far away but really not far away enough, and they were impacted enough that Bobby Doherty said he actually thought he was going to have to jump in the water to get away from it. So then we regrouped, the three of us, and we didn't know what to do really. It was clear that where we had been had been completely demolished and devastated, and we were in pretty bad shape. Our eyes were full of stuff and, of course, our noses and our mouths were all full of debris and we were trying to breathe. Because we knew we couldn't use our masks constantly. We would run out of air. So in the open air we had to breathe the air. We just couldn't use our tanks for any length of time. So we started working our way north around the back of the World Financial Center, and I guess we either went through the back, the glass atrium behind the American Express building, or we went on -- I'm looking at the map here. It looks like maybe North End Avenue. I don't recall how we found our way to Vesey Street. But somehow or another we found our way to Vesey Street, and then we went over to West Street and we started to walk north.

18 We went north about as far as Barclay, I believe, and we sat down along the wall there and we tried to collect our thoughts and figure out what to do and what had happened to us and all that. I don't think we ever really realized that the two buildings had come down. I guess we maybe knew it but we weren't sure. We sat down and, again, we were surrounded by hundreds of people, a lot of cops. Everybody was covered with dirt and dust and debris. I noticed a lot of people had cell phones. So for some reason or another we asked somebody if we could use their cell phone, and Kevin McGovern called his wife and we asked his wife to notify my family and Bobby Doherty's family that we were okay. Then we sat there for a few minutes and we came across a lot of people, but I remember specifically running into Pete Clinton, who was the chauffeur of Engine 22, and Joey Graziano, who was the chauffeur of Ladder 13, and they looked shook, but Pete Clinton was all banged up. He wasn't wearing bunker gear. He was driving. He just had shorts on and a work shirt, and he was all banged up and bruised and covered with dust and clearly distraught. Joe Graziano had all his gear on. As it turned out, they were the

19 only survivors of their company, and I told them to stay with us. They stayed with us for a while, and then we decided to make our way back down West Street back to the site to see what we could do. We didn't stay up there very long, maybe ten or 15 minutes. So we made our way back down West Street and on the way down I started looking for our rig. I didn't know where our rig was. I couldn't remember where I parked it. Of course, the whole landscape now changed, so I had no idea where it was. So we started walking down West Street and I was looking for the rig, looking for the rig, and I couldn't find it. I thought for sure that it had been crushed. So we made our way back down as far as we could and started searching around, and I asked somebody if they knew where 53's rig was and somebody, I don't recall who, said they thought they saw it, it was over on the west side, somebody had moved it. So I told Bobby Doherty, "Let's see if we can find the rig," because, obviously, if we could find the rig, we could get some tools and maybe fresh bottles for our masks and start working down at the site. So all of us took a walk over on Vesey Street and, sure enough, there was the rig. It was hooked up

20 to one of the marine units. It was already hooked up and pumping water. It was relaying water to another engine and they were supplying a tower ladder with water. I guess they were pouring water I think on the Customs Building. We also noticed that 7 World Financial Center was fully involved there, too. We started getting whatever gear we needed off the rig, and there was another chauffeur working on 53's rig and he was supplying water. He asked me if I was the chauffeur of 53, and I said yes, I was. He said, "Would you mind taking over here? I'd like to get back to my unit." I said yeah, sure, I would, and I basically operated for the rest of the day while 53's guys went down to the site. I went over there a few times, but I basically operated 53's rig for most of the day pumping water, relaying it to the other engines and the tower ladder. I did go over to the site a few times to try and help out, but my eyes were very bad and I couldn't really see very well. About 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon, I finally had gotten them washed out once, but it didn't work, and I started going to the triage areas and washing my eyes out, washing my eyes out, and they just weren't getting any better.

21 I wound up staying down there. I was down there from about 9:20 in the morning until maybe 10:00, 10:30 at night, and we wound up going to the main medical facility and they told me my eyes were no good, they had to take me to the hospital, and they wound up taking me and Eddie Cachia and I think Bobby Doherty, too, to the hospital, where they worked on my eyes and checked me out for anything else that was wrong. One thing I forgot to say was, after the second building had collapsed and we worked our way up West Street, I had run into the two probies that I had been looking for all morning, Mike Catalano and Dan Schofield, and they were okay. I still to this day don't really know where they went. I don't know if they ran into the Winter Garden glass atrium or if they just went up north on West street after the first building had collapsed, and I don't know where they were when the second building had collapsed. BATTALION CHIEF KENAHAN: Okay. Well, thanks a lot, Louie. We appreciate your cooperation. The time now is 7:22 p.m. This concludes the interview.