FDNY Faces a Loss of Its Top Brass

By William Murphy and Roni Rabin | STAFF WRITERS

September 13, 2001

As firefighters continued to grapple with the twisted remains of the World Trade Center yesterday, they also had to face the loss of many top commanders in the tragedy.

Among them was William Feehan, the first deputy fire commissioner - the No. 2 spot after Commissioner Tom Von Essen - and a 40-year veteran of the department.

His son, firefighter John Feehan, said in an interview that the loss of his father and other senior commanders not only decimated the top brass but were a huge assault on morale.

Although he was off-duty at the time, the whole squad the younger Feehan worked with is missing.

"The department will absolutely never be the same," he said. "I don't think the department will ever fully recover from it."

In addition to Feehan, the dead included Peter J. Ganci Jr. the chief of department and the highest ranking uniformed officer on the force; Chief Donald Burns, the citywide tour commander at the time, and the Rev. Mychal Judge, a departmental chaplain who was close to firefighters. Capt. Raymond Downey, known nationally for developing innovative rescue techniques, was also missing. He led a team from New York sent to help after the federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed.

There were unconfirmed reports of other missing commanders, but officials asked that they not be identified because the system of notifying families was time-consuming. Many of those who remained missing and were presumed dead were members of the department's five elite rescue units - one for each borough - and members of second-line emergency units known as squads.

Those squads were formerly called engine companies, which usually pump water, but were retrained in recent years to place a greater emphasis on rescue work and the handling of hazardous materials.

"I don't see how they are going to make up for the loss of all this senior talent any time soon," said one Fire Department official, who asked not to be identified. "You have to understand that this is a hierarchical group that is slow to move people up the ladder."

Also, filling a large number of vacancies in the specialty squads would require lengthy training that would drain firefighters from firehouses.

In an early evening news conference, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said 202 firefighters were thought to be missing.

Brian Davan, Feehan's son-in-law, also a firefighter, picked up a coffee-table book about the worst fires in the city, and, leafing through it, said a 1966 blaze killed 12 firefighters.

Until now, that was the fire that defined the dangers of firefighting in the city. The 12 firefighters were killed on Oct. 17, 1966, when the floor of a drug store near Madison Square Park gave way, plunging the firefighters to their deaths in the basement below.

"This thing dwarfs it," Davan said. "It's unprecedented."