Neighborhood Mourns Its Fallen

By Chastity Pratt | STAFF WRITER

September 20, 2001

Some were on their way home, leaving for the day.

When the call came in, they, too, jumped on the fire trucks headed for the smoking World Trade Center.

When the skyscrapers known as the Twin Towers collapsed last week, the disaster claimed about a quarter of the men who work out of the fire station at Borden Avenue and 68th Street in Maspeth.

A poster hanging outside the firehouse sits amid buckets of flowers, buckets of stuffed animals, balloons and thank-you notes drawn by the unsteady hands of children.

The poster lists the names of 19 men from the firehouse who never returned from the call on Sept. 11.

As neighbors and former area residents came to drop flowers and light candles on the sidewalk, the firefighters stayed inside among the shadows of the fire trucks.

They didn't want to talk about it, they said.

The station houses Squad 288 and the crew of the Hazardous Materials 1 unit, the most specialized hazardous materials workers in the city. The two crews worked side by side. And they will never be the same.

"You could say we're like the Twin Towers," one firefighter said.

Of the 19 who are missing, two are from the hazardous materials' division of training, Jack Fanning and Tom Moody, and another, Pete Brennan, had recently transferred out of the house but was still regarded as one of the guys, said Capt. Steve Bacci.

The remaining 16 were assigned to the station.

Until last week, about 65 men worked out of the station house. For now, replacements are not at the front of anyone's mind at the station, Bacci said.

"It'll be difficult, but somehow we'll make it," Bacci said.

"We want the community to know we're grateful for their support. Everyone has been affected, but the community puts us on a pedestal. We're grateful for everything they've done."

Sean McCarthy, a plumbing teacher at Queens Vocational Technical High in Long Island City who worked cutting steel at the rescue site on Monday and Tuesday nights, brought his three children to the station to pay respects.

He said Ground Zero looked as if "hell opened up and swallowed them."

"What I did was so little for what they do," McCarthy he said of the firefighters, his eyes welling with tears.

Stella Ninodeeguzman, who lives about eight blocks from the station, said she was outside her house watching as the towers smoked, then fell, listening as sirens sounded nearby. Her husband used to work at the World Trade Center for a telephone company, but he retired two years ago, she said.

"I didn't believe it, until now," she said of the tragedy. "I support President Bush. We need to fight back against the people who did this, for the people who died."

A candlelight vigil will take place at the fire station tomorrow night at 7:30.