The six-man crew on FDNY Ladder 118’s truck raced across the Brooklyn Bridge toward the twin towers of the World Trade Center as thick black smoke poured out of their upper floors on the otherwise bright, clear morning of September 11, 2001. Less than 90 minutes later, they were among the 343 hero firefighters killed in the al Qaeda terror attack that would reduce the towers to piles of rubble, blanket lower Manhattan in an inches-thick ash of concrete, asbestos, glass and remains — and claim the lives of 2,743 innocent people. Afterwards,an eerie silence fell over the usually bustling financial hub of New York City.
It was “quiet as a church,” recalled Ladder 118 veteran John Sorrentino, speaking to The Independent at his Staten Island home last month. The Personal Alert Safety System, or PASS, devices are automatically triggered when firefighters stop moving for more than a minute while using their oxygen tanks. I saw what everybody else saw,” he said.
Sorrentino immediately got dressed and went out to his car, where he “could see the two towers burning” in the distance before driving to his firehouse on Middagh Street in Brooklyn Heights, about 10 miles due north on the opposite end of the borough. There, he collected his gear and got a neighborhood resident to give him a ride across the Brooklyn Bridge — the same route traveled by the Ladder 118 crew, as captured in an iconic photo that later appeared on the front page of New York's Daily News. It was a perfect fall day.
But leaving Brooklyn, entering Manhattan, it — it turned into a science fiction movie, you know? It was dusty,” Sorrentino said. They're not answering the radio.
I'm telling you, they're gone.” There was initially some confusion about which firefighters were on the Ladder 118 truck because the terrorists struck around the shift change in the firehouse, which is also home to Engine 205, Sorrentino said, but it soon became clear who they were. Sorrentino, who in the aftermath of 9/11 became the firehouse's de facto spokesperson, said he delivered about 20 eulogies in the next few months. During his interview with The Independent, Sorrentino easily recalled memories of his fallen comrades, who all died while evacuating people from the Marriott Hotel when the adjacent South Tower collapsed.
Robert Regan, he said, was a father of two from Queens and a “big sports guy” and “great athlete” who coached his son's Little League team and played left field and batted clean-up for the Middagh Street firehouse’s softball team. Although he was an officer, Regan “was just another one of the guys” and a “sweetheart” who “fit right in” with the rank-and-file firefighters, Sorrentino said. Unlike in most firehouses, Sorrentino said, everyone at Middagh Street “stayed in the kitchen — morning, noon and night.” “Guys didn't disappear down to the TV room,” he said, adding that “even the officers would hang out in the kitchen.” “It was constant ball-breaking and, you know, a lot of noise in our kitchen.
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