H Names Firemen's Oral Histories

Hayden, Peter Chief (F.D.N.Y.) 10/23/01 Division 1

"I was in my quarters at the time of the events. At this point in the event, I heard a plane passing overhead extremely low. I ran to the window to see what I could see. The building line obscured my vision, but I did hear a large impact."

"Chief Pfeifer was in control. We responded in. We tried to gain control of the building systems, meaning the communications systems, the elevators. None of the building systems were working. The elevators were all out of service. The communication lines were not working."

"The initial orders were to try and get the elevators in operation. We met up with the fire safety director from number One World Trade Center, Jim Corrigan, who is now deceased, and we told him of our problems, what we needed to do, what we needed from them to gain control of the building systems. He put his engineers to work on that."

"There were numerous distress calls coming in from the dispatcher and also coming in directly to the lobby of people trapped in elevators, people burned in different areas of the building, people needing wheelchairs and unable to get downstairs. There was one report of a blind woman. So there were numerous distress calls and numerous people in the area in need of assistance."

"A: It was Chief Pfeifer and his aide, a number of -- Chief McGovern coming in. He was in the 2nd battalion. I can't necessarily recall the order of these arrivals and response. Chief Ryan also came in. Chief Palmer came in from 7th battalion. And Chief Ryan was in the 4th battalion."

"Shortly thereafter a number of the uniformed and civilian staff of the department arrived in the lobby, Commissioner Von Essen, Commissioner Fitzpatrick, Commissioner Feehan. The tour commander, who was Joseph Callan arrived on the scene."

"He [Callan] asked me at some point in time if we were thinking of collapse. I said yeah, we have to, a plane just struck the building...So the potential and reality of -- or possibility of a collapse was discussed early on."

"There were numerous discussions in the lobby. The chief of safety came in. He discussed his concern about the collapse. His advice to us was to let the building just burn, you know, get the people down and get out. We said that's exactly what we're planning to do. He said okay, do you want to get some of the apparatus moved back. I don't think that was ever accomplished."

"I really didn't get involved with that because early on we realized that a number of the companies were coming in and were not reporting to any staging area we established. So we were losing some control of the companies coming in.

There was also some communication problems later on with companies coming in, units responding to the second alarm after the other plane hit. They weren't sure which was World Trade Center One and World Trade Center Two. So that became confusing.

Of course off-duty members were coming in, and they were reporting directly upstairs. So at one point in time -- I want to say that Chief McGovern was still in the lobby -- we had to account for everybody that was going upstairs. It became a critical issue.

We discussed with Chief Downey the operations, and that continued for a while. We were making a concerted effort to get the elevators down and answering all the distress calls. We were working with the engineers.

We were working the intercom in the lobby between the elevators, trying to get an idea what floors they were on. The engineers told us we have people on this floor, that floor, 66th floor, 71st floor, stuck in the elevators. We answered as many of the distress calls as we could.

We concentrated on trying to get some type of hand line hardware communications. We attempted the repeater system. The repeater system was not in service. The repeater system wasn't working. So we were at a distinct disadvantage because we had none of the building systems to work with."

"Then at some point in time we were told there was another event. We were in the lobby of the north tower. We weren't sure exactly what it was. We were told another plane hit the south tower.

Shortly thereafter we met in a little conference, myself, Chief Callan and Chief Pfeifer. Shortly after that discussion, we started to evacuate the north tower. We started telling everybody come on down. That was repeated a number of times. However, we didn't get a lot of acknowledgment off of the handy talky communications.

The latest report -- the last report we had from anybody at all was that there were people that were heading up around the 48th floor. That was several minutes prior to this collapse. So we had people as high as the 50th floor while we had communications. I think that's about as far up as anybody got.

We were calling people down on a number of occasions, but we weren't getting -- except for the lower floors, companies coming down, they weren't coming down. They were being directed north.

Companies there, I don't really recollect what exactly the companies were in the lobby area there. We lost the board after the collapse, so we couldn't go over the assignments.

Companies there, I don't really recollect what exactly the companies were in the lobby area there. We lost the board after the collapse, so we couldn't go over the assignments. My aide was there and Battalion 18 was there. Chief Karletta was there. So there was about at one point at least a dozen people in the lobby there. Some of them even left. Father Judge was in the lobby....

"It was pitch-black in the lobby after that. We gave an order to evacuate the building. Everybody in the north tower was ordered out.

We found Father Judge, who was dead. We moved out of the lobby. We went up the escalator to the -- I guess that's the concourse level up there, worked our way through six, around the outer part of six. Then we proceeded down a stairway and escalator down into the -- this is on the Vesey Street side. We proceeded down to the street level. We were at West Broadway and Vesey.

We turned father Judge over to EMS. Then we proceeded south on Vesey towards West Street to find a command post."

When I arrived at West and Vesey, I met up with a number of chiefs. There was Chief Stack, who is now deceased or among the missing, Chief O'Flaherty and Chief Cassano who I ended up talking with.

"the chiefs I remember more so than the firefighters that were assigned from the command board. Chief McGovern and Chief Ryan were there. Chief Cassano was another one and Chief Barbara. Chief Burns was in the lobby also. I remember after the first strike we were talking. After the second plane hit, we conferred. It was Chief Callan, myself, Chief Pfeifer, Chief Burns and Chief Palmer."

"A: They went over to the south tower, Chief Burns and Chief Palmer."

"Q: Did you see Chief Ganci or Commissioner Feehan?
A: I never saw Chief Ganci there, in the lobby. I heard him on the radio. Commissioner Feehan was there. In fact, I discussed a number of the issues that were going on at the time with Chief Feehan, Commissioner Von Essen and Commissioner Fitzpatrick. Commissioner Feehan, Fitzpatrick, Deputy Commissioner Tierney were there. Ray Goldbach, their exec, he was in the lobby. OEM representatives Kevin Cully was there. He was alive. Richie Schirer was in the lobby. Who else? There were a lot of people."