Speaker 1: He said to me, Timmy, this is really bad. And
Speaker 1: that is for us to say that to each other
Speaker 1: is significant because we do bad every day. And he
Speaker 1: was saying, this is exceptionally bad, right, And I said,
Speaker 1: I know, Chris, be careful. I love you, and he
Speaker 1: said I love you. And after he said that, he
Speaker 1: turned around and he went in the stairwell and he
Speaker 1: went up to save the lives of people he didn't know.
Speaker 2: Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
Speaker 2: I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
Speaker 2: I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach and
Speaker 2: Inner City Memphis. And the last part it somehow led
Speaker 2: to an oscar for the film by our team that's
Speaker 2: called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems are never going
Speaker 2: to be solved by a bunch of fancy people in
Speaker 2: nice suits using words that nobody ever uses on CNN
Speaker 2: and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks.
Speaker 2: That's us, just you and me, deciding hey, maybe I
Speaker 2: can help. That's what Tim Brown, the voice you just heard,
Speaker 2: has done. Tim is a nine to eleven firefighter who
Speaker 2: saved lives that faithful day, but he doesn't view himself
Speaker 2: as a hero. Tim lost one hundred friends on nine
Speaker 2: to eleven, each of whom chose to save others, knowing
Speaker 2: it would likely be the last act of their lives.
Speaker 2: I cannot wait for you to meet Tim right after
Speaker 2: these brief messages from our general sponsors. Well, first of all,
Speaker 2: I want to say, welcome to a lived recording of
Speaker 2: an army of normal folks. What is as Alex number
Speaker 2: six we've done to these loved ones, maybe six or seven.
Speaker 2: Alex has no idea, he's we're at a brewery and
Speaker 2: he's already had his first beer. So the production, the
Speaker 2: production quality just went through the basement. But anyway, we
Speaker 2: are here in Memphis and have a very special guest.
Speaker 2: But first I want to say to everybody who came
Speaker 2: down tonight to meet our guests.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much. Give yourself a round of applause.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, So as you can hear, we've got
Speaker 2: a number of folks here our guest today, Tim Brown.
Speaker 2: If there's anybody in this room who listens to this
Speaker 2: man for the next little bit and doesn't get a
Speaker 2: lump in their throat or tearing their eye, you've missing
Speaker 2: some of your humanity. Tim was a firefighter with the
Speaker 2: FDN WIF for over twenty years. Tim responded to World
Speaker 2: Trade Center bombing in nineteen ninety three as a member
Speaker 2: of Rescue three, which is the Fire Department New York
Speaker 2: Fire Department's version of the Navy Seals. To say that
Speaker 2: Tim is high speed would be an understatement. In ninety five,
Speaker 2: Tim joined New York Task Force one, which is a
Speaker 2: FEMA urban search and rescue team, with whom he responded
Speaker 2: to the Oklahoma City bombing that same year. In ninety eight,
Speaker 2: Tim was detailed to the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management,
Speaker 2: which was headquartered in seven World Trade Center. While Tim
Speaker 2: helped to save the lives of many on nine to
Speaker 2: one one, he does not view himself as a hero.
Speaker 2: This man sitting next to me lost over one hundred
Speaker 2: friends that day, including many Fire Department brothers who each
Speaker 2: chose to save others, knowing, as you will hear soon,
Speaker 2: that they went up the stairs expecting to die. During
Speaker 2: this interview that we're really going to benefit from, Tim
Speaker 2: will beautifully pay tribute to his heroic friends and share
Speaker 2: a series of miracles, honest to goodness, miracles, y'all that
Speaker 2: help this man survive hurricane force winds in a firestorm.
Speaker 2: Before I say thank you and let him start, I
Speaker 2: want to say something a little bit off script. I
Speaker 2: think there's three occasions in our country's consciousness over the
Speaker 2: last hundred years that we cannot forget. Certainly Martin Luther
Speaker 2: King getting shot in Memphis, the Kennedy assassination, the Oklahoma
Speaker 2: City bombing. Things like that are etched into history and
Speaker 2: our memory, and they matter, But I don't think they
Speaker 2: are transformative in the way that the three things that
Speaker 2: I think are. One is the stock crash. It led
Speaker 2: to the Great Depression, that led to countless suicides, and
Speaker 2: today the Federal Reserve acts on economic princes taught to
Speaker 2: us by the Great Depression of the crash one hundred
Speaker 2: years ago.
Speaker 3: It's transformative.
Speaker 2: It's etched into the ethos of our American selves. The
Speaker 2: second would be the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It's etched
Speaker 2: into the ethos of ourselves. It could be argued that
Speaker 2: our country would never have been in World War II.
Speaker 2: Our island, protected by the Atlantic and Pacific was at
Speaker 2: that time unreachable, and we were sucked into that war
Speaker 2: as a result of Pearl Harbor. And I will tell
Speaker 2: you that the relative peace we've lived in the last
Speaker 2: seven decades a result of winning World War II and
Speaker 2: our military and infrastructure being intact because all of Europe's
Speaker 2: was destroyed, and our navy remaining intact, so as a
Speaker 2: maritime power, the only maritime power, it was the time
Speaker 2: after World War II that enabled the country, our country,
Speaker 2: to be the world's sheriff, which led to what we
Speaker 2: all recognize now or feel now is normalcy of globalization.
Speaker 2: That doesn't happen. The world doesn't change without Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 2: And I think that's etched into our memory. But you know,
Speaker 2: you got to think about nineteen forty one. That's fifty nine,
Speaker 2: seventy nine, eighty.
Speaker 3: Three years ago.
Speaker 2: If you were nine years old during Pearl Harbor, you
Speaker 2: are today ninety two. If you're eighteen, you're one hundred.
Speaker 2: There's very very few people walking the face of this
Speaker 2: planet anymore that can tell us the realities of Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 2: We live them through history, we live them through books,
Speaker 2: we live them through documentaries, but we can't really talk
Speaker 2: to anybody who knows it and feels it and understands it.
Speaker 3: And if we.
Speaker 2: Forget the lessons of the stock market crash, we're certainly
Speaker 2: to repeat them in our banking system and are the
Speaker 2: way we handle the FED. If we forget the lessons
Speaker 2: of World War two, we're certainly going to pay for
Speaker 2: that geopolitically one day. With that as a backdrop, If
Speaker 2: we forget the lessons of nine to eleven, we will
Speaker 2: certainly live to see it again. And it needs to
Speaker 2: dawn on you that this may across our country. There
Speaker 2: will be countless seniors graduating college. Who are the young
Speaker 2: adults that are going to form the next three and
Speaker 2: four decades of our policy and how our country works
Speaker 2: that weren't even born on none one one. It doesn't
Speaker 2: even feel that way to us, because we were all
Speaker 2: alive as that's in our memory, but only a generation away.
Speaker 2: Ask anybody twenty years younger right now, who sings your
Speaker 2: favorite songs from the eighties, and they won't be able
Speaker 2: to tell you. Ask who was in Saint Almo's Fire
Speaker 2: and who was in Raiders of the Lost Arc and
Speaker 2: these twenty something year old they won't even tell you.
Speaker 2: And everyone in here knows the answer to that. Ask
Speaker 2: them what happened on nine to eleven? And they won't
Speaker 2: be able to tell you, and that is scary. It
Speaker 2: is why Tim's story matters. Lest we forget, history will
Speaker 2: repeat itself. And it is men like this who have
Speaker 2: been through hors that most of us cannot imagine, that
Speaker 2: will sit up here and courageously recount this for you,
Speaker 2: not to be sensational, not to garner attention to himself,
Speaker 2: but because men like him do not want you to
Speaker 2: forget his friends who died in the service of their
Speaker 2: fellow man. And it's men like him that don't want
Speaker 2: us as a public to forget. Well, we must remember
Speaker 2: lest we repeat it. Tonight will have a couple of laughs.
Speaker 2: You will hear some somber stories. Most importantly, I hope
Speaker 2: you're challenged to make sure we never forget Tim.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Memphis, Thank you brother. Happy to be here,
Speaker 3: my first time, your first time.
Speaker 2: Yes, well you got a beer.
Speaker 3: You're a New York firefighter. I think beer is part
Speaker 3: of the diet. Well we're at a brewery, so yeah,
Speaker 3: that's it. Here we go here in Memphis. That's it.
Speaker 3: There is.
Speaker 2: I am typically very engaged conversationally, and I'll interject when
Speaker 2: I'm like, hold it, what I don't understand, because I
Speaker 2: think maybe our listeners might not understand something you said.
Speaker 2: I typically open army and normal folks, So tell me
Speaker 2: where you came, come.
Speaker 3: And all that. We're not going to do that.
Speaker 2: One thing I got to say is when Tim and
Speaker 2: I finish our discussion, we have a microphone out here
Speaker 2: and the floor is open for questions, and I hope
Speaker 2: you guys have them, because you're not going to get
Speaker 2: many opportunities to talk to a hero, So you all
Speaker 2: have an opportunity to speak up. And if you do, Hey,
Speaker 2: you're going to be on a podcast and thousands of
Speaker 2: people are here you so you might as well ask questions. Tim,
Speaker 2: maybe give us a little background, just a little on
Speaker 2: your time in the fire department, how you ended up
Speaker 2: in the position you were in and reading the paper,
Speaker 2: and from that step forward the events of not eleven.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me here in Memphis. It is my goal.
Speaker 1: We said never forget right every firehouse in New York City,
Speaker 1: every fireman's car on the bumper was a bumper sticker
Speaker 1: that said never forget. That is our mantra after nine
Speaker 1: to eleven, and I live that every day of my life,
Speaker 1: and I think it's very important that we continue, as
Speaker 1: you said before, to live that mantra and pass it on,
Speaker 1: especially now to the next generation.
Speaker 3: I was a bad kid. I was a bad kid.
Speaker 1: When I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen, my parents were getting divorced.
Speaker 1: I got lost in the shuffle of five kids, and
Speaker 1: I was lashing out. I guess I had no direction,
Speaker 1: I had no mission. I had nothing that interested me
Speaker 1: until I found out that I could be a junior
Speaker 1: fireman at fifteen years old in Newington, Connecticut.
Speaker 3: And that changed my life.
Speaker 1: I stopped doing the bad things you can imagine, and
Speaker 1: I started focusing on being a junior fireman and emt
Speaker 1: And I say this because I encourage young people to
Speaker 1: take this path, because it will give you direction and
Speaker 1: meaning and mission and purpose, which is what it did
Speaker 1: for me. And I was a volunteer fireman, and I
Speaker 1: was a paid fireman in Connecticut. But then in night
Speaker 1: am I allowed to say how old I am in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four?
Speaker 3: Holy crap, your old?
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty four, I was blessed by being hired
Speaker 1: in the New York City Fire Department. I worked in
Speaker 1: what some people might remember in the South Bronx as Ford,
Speaker 1: Apache That was my first assignment for seven years, so
Speaker 1: you can imagine we were pretty busy there with fires
Speaker 1: and helping people that needed help. I went to Times
Speaker 1: Square for a bit, and then I went back to
Speaker 1: what I call the Bronx Harlem Special Operations Command Rescue
Speaker 1: Company three. We were also the building Collapse company for
Speaker 1: the entire city, so we were very busy with quite
Speaker 1: a lot of emergencies and fires and such. But then
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight, I had become friends with Mayor Giuliani,
Speaker 1: and he convinced me, he and his team convinced me
Speaker 1: to go to his newly formed Mayor's Office of Emergency Management,
Speaker 1: and I took off my fireman helmet and I put
Speaker 1: on a tie, and I went to seven World Trade
Speaker 1: Center on the twenty third floor, which was our office,
Speaker 1: and I became a supervisor within.
Speaker 3: That group and our job.
Speaker 1: Our job, my group was to respond to major disasters
Speaker 1: and emergencies in New York City and represent the mayor.
Speaker 1: So that's a very quick summary of how I got
Speaker 1: there to the more of September eleventh, two thousand and one.
Speaker 2: Along the way, you lived with these guys, you eat
Speaker 2: with these guys, You bathed with these guys. You literally
Speaker 2: become brothers with firefighters. And even though you find yourself
Speaker 2: in the mayor's office with a snazzy tie, you're still
Speaker 2: at the heart of yourself, you're a firefighter. Give us
Speaker 2: a sense of the relationships that exists. So I think
Speaker 2: you nailed it there a bit. Like we did everything together.
Speaker 1: We went to horrific emergencies, fires, building collapses, car crashes.
Speaker 1: We carried our own out of these disasters, our own
Speaker 1: who heroically went in and got injured badly, and we
Speaker 1: carried them out. We carried out little kids, you know,
Speaker 1: innocent little kids. We carried out innocent grandmas. And we
Speaker 1: did all this stuff together, and we worked together. All
Speaker 1: talk in a little bit about firefighter Chris Blackwell in
Speaker 1: September eleventh, But firefighters like Chris were exceptional, and Captain
Speaker 1: Terry Hatton and Captain Patty Brown who saved dozens and
Speaker 1: dozens and dozens of lives. And we would come back
Speaker 1: from some horrible thing and and we would eat together,
Speaker 1: we would sleep in the same room. We would you know,
Speaker 1: we actually built a steam room because the smoke was
Speaker 1: very bad for you. So we you know, we would
Speaker 1: take a steam at the end of work and maybe
Speaker 1: maybe have a beer after work.
Speaker 3: Or from maybe maybe, but.
Speaker 1: You could actually when you sit in the steam room,
Speaker 1: you could actually see the the stream of black soot
Speaker 1: draining out of your body. And and that was the
Speaker 1: poisons leaving the poisons that we're going to give us
Speaker 1: cancer leaving our body. So we would stay there after
Speaker 1: work and we would hydrate and and and let this
Speaker 1: poison out of our bodies, and we would talk about
Speaker 1: the day. I mean, these guys were like my real brothers.
Speaker 1: You loved them, every one of them.
Speaker 2: Everyone. And now a few messages from our general sponsors.
Speaker 2: But first allow me to throw throw an idea out
Speaker 2: there for you guys. If you do a good deed
Speaker 2: one time, or maybe it's weekly service that you do,
Speaker 2: would you consider sharing it on social and including a
Speaker 2: message like join an army of normal folks. Together we
Speaker 2: can solve our problems and tag us in the copy
Speaker 2: At an Army of normal folks. We hope to share
Speaker 2: many of your posts on our accounts. Now, this isn't
Speaker 2: about bragging about what you're doing, because then you'd be
Speaker 2: a turkey person. But it's about sharing the power of
Speaker 2: what normal folks can do so that more normal folks
Speaker 2: can realize that they can do it too, and hopefully
Speaker 2: grow the army. I hope you'll give it a try.
Speaker 2: We'll be wiped back. What's that to stay morning look like?
Speaker 3: For me?
Speaker 1: So I go into work seven World Trade Center, and
Speaker 1: I go in a little early, you know. I got
Speaker 1: in around seven forty five or eight am. And I
Speaker 1: always our office was a seven twenty third floor, and
Speaker 1: I always went to the third floor first, and that
Speaker 1: was our cafeteria floor. So I would go there into
Speaker 1: the cafeteria, get my cheerios, my orange juice, and my
Speaker 1: hot tea, and I would I would I say this
Speaker 1: when there's a lot of young people in the audience.
Speaker 1: We used to have something called newspapers back in the day,
Speaker 1: because you couldn't get your information from anywhere else. You
Speaker 1: didn't have a smartphone, And so I would have all
Speaker 1: the local newspapers and I would sit there and eat
Speaker 1: my cheerios and go through all of that, all those papers.
Speaker 1: The power went out in the building all at once,
Speaker 1: a bit unusual for the for a modern high rise
Speaker 1: building in New York, and I knew something big had happened,
Speaker 1: but I didn't hear or see anything. So the power
Speaker 1: went out, and within five seconds the power came back on,
Speaker 1: and I knew our backup generators for the building had
Speaker 1: kicked in. And the people who were sitting at the
Speaker 1: glass windows facing the North tower of one World Trade
Speaker 1: Center all at once like jumped up and started running
Speaker 1: toward the exit, running by me. And I had to
Speaker 1: grab one young lady by the shoulders and like shake
Speaker 1: her back to reality and look her in the eyes,
Speaker 1: and I said, what happened is? She said, a plane
Speaker 1: hit the tower. And that was the first that I
Speaker 1: had or knew of it. You know, we call it
Speaker 1: the big One. You know, we'd try to do our
Speaker 1: best to train and drill and prepare as much as
Speaker 1: we can for the big one. This one turns out
Speaker 1: it was something you could not really prepare for. I
Speaker 1: mean a little bit, but you could even imagine it
Speaker 1: when you first hit it, when it first happened. And
Speaker 1: you're there, are you thinking small plane, helicopter? I mean
Speaker 1: you're not thinking. No, it's not even you can't even
Speaker 1: fathom what's what we now know? Right, So what's going
Speaker 1: through your head?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Small plane, maybe a helicopter.
Speaker 1: We had had that happen in New York City before,
Speaker 1: and you know, you see now it still happens. So
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody initially imagined that it was a
Speaker 1: passenger jet, and so that's what I was thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, it's a big thing, but we're
Speaker 1: going to be able to take care of it.
Speaker 3: So what do you do? So it's my job to go.
Speaker 1: To the command post, not to be the incident commander,
Speaker 1: but to support the incident commander who is the fire chief,
Speaker 1: and support him with all things other than kind of
Speaker 1: his primary focus, which is the firefighters and stuff like that, right,
Speaker 1: so anything else he needed, the utility companies, the ems
Speaker 1: a little bit, but you know, there's all kinds of
Speaker 1: people we need when something like this happens. And so
Speaker 1: it was my job to kind of stand there at
Speaker 1: the command post, and the incident commander would turn to
Speaker 1: me and say get me ABC, D and E, and
Speaker 1: he would not have to worry about it, and we
Speaker 1: would take care of it. What does command posts look like?
Speaker 1: So there's an actual structural command post in the lobby
Speaker 1: of both the North and South Tower, which the Fire
Speaker 1: Department frequently uses and frequently practices and drills with a lot.
Speaker 1: Because there are two hundred and ten story buildings. We
Speaker 1: go to a lot of alarms there, we go to
Speaker 1: a lot of emergencies. Each floor is at one acre big,
Speaker 1: so that's one hundred and ten acres each tower. And
Speaker 1: so you can imagine the number of people and the
Speaker 1: number of emergencies and the number of problems that we
Speaker 1: would go there for every day.
Speaker 3: I guess what I hear that.
Speaker 2: But if you have an emergency management center, there's got
Speaker 2: to be I'm imagining maybe I've watched too many movies,
Speaker 2: but I'm imagining about a thousand of those TVs and
Speaker 2: cameras and connections and communications, almost a hub of information.
Speaker 1: So it's two different things. There's a command post inside
Speaker 1: one World Trade Center, which is in the lobby, the
Speaker 1: people setting up doing the work. Yeah, and right, the
Speaker 1: fire chief, the incident commander says, one in the north tower,
Speaker 1: is one in the South tower. Our oem command center
Speaker 1: is what you're talking about with it's Star Wars. It's
Speaker 1: five hundred screens, it's five hundred computers of workstations, and
Speaker 1: that is to support a citywide emergency or disaster, in
Speaker 1: support of the real incident commander in the end, who
Speaker 1: is the mayor? Right, so everyone reports to the mayor.
Speaker 1: So in the end for policy deciding, it was the
Speaker 1: mayor and that's what our twenty third floor command center
Speaker 1: was built for.
Speaker 2: Well at that time in the morning, was everybody at
Speaker 2: a station or did you have no.
Speaker 1: We would call them in. Yeah, so we would manage it,
Speaker 1: but we had to bring them in.
Speaker 2: So at this point the World Trade Centers got a
Speaker 2: fire on it. You think a helicopter something said, But
Speaker 2: it's still a big deal.
Speaker 1: Were so part of the story is that are what
Speaker 1: we call Watch Command, which is our communications hub, has
Speaker 1: to make up to one hundred and fifty or so
Speaker 1: phone calls to bring people in from our federal, state, local,
Speaker 1: and private sector partners to help us manage this disaster.
Speaker 3: And we had done this many times.
Speaker 1: Before citywide health emergencies, West Nile virus and things like that.
Speaker 1: But this is more of an instant shock to the system.
Speaker 1: But we knew the right people to call, we knew
Speaker 1: the right people to bring in, and you know, we
Speaker 1: had people on the world very quickly to come support us.
Speaker 1: My job was to go into the North Tower to
Speaker 1: that command post and assist the incident commander of the
Speaker 1: fire chief there.
Speaker 2: So you're calling everybody in and you're saying, we're go
Speaker 2: I'm coming up, making up.
Speaker 3: Words, but we're all in, all in, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And then once you get that set up at your office,
Speaker 2: you're headed to the trade site.
Speaker 1: They're doing that while I'm doing the while I'm running
Speaker 1: to the World Trade Center. So I go to my
Speaker 1: car and I took off my tie and my dress
Speaker 1: shirt and my jacket, and I put on leather, heavy
Speaker 1: leather boots, a jacket that said Mayor's Office on the
Speaker 1: breast and on the back, and then they made us
Speaker 1: wear this stupid green helmet, which was really embarrassing, really
Speaker 1: embarrassing after wearing my fireman helmet for twenty years or whatever,
Speaker 1: so they could identify us. So I put on the
Speaker 1: stupid green helmet. And we're trained as firefighters when you
Speaker 1: go into a building under destruction, before you go in,
Speaker 1: you try and look at three sides of the building
Speaker 1: to get a current size up of that building. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to take a second that morning to do that.
Speaker 1: So in order to do that, I had to go
Speaker 1: up like one and a half stories from street level
Speaker 1: to plaza level, the plaza that was in between the towers,
Speaker 1: and in order to do that, I had to go
Speaker 1: up a concrete staircase exterior. So I ran up that staircase.
Speaker 1: It's an important part of the story because later that
Speaker 1: concrete staircase becomes the biggest heaviest artifact in the nine
Speaker 1: to eleven Museum. And they call it the Survivor's staircase
Speaker 1: because I.
Speaker 3: Ran up early on.
Speaker 1: But later on in the morning, hundreds or thousands of
Speaker 1: civilians ran down that staircase and ran away to live.
Speaker 1: And I make that point really because it's what we
Speaker 1: do our military, our first responders, our police officers, are firefighters,
Speaker 1: are paramedics and others. When something happens, we run toward it.
Speaker 1: We will run towards the problem because there are people
Speaker 1: in trouble. And and that's how the morning started out
Speaker 1: for all of us, all the firefighters and police officers
Speaker 1: and EMTs and paramedics and and others.
Speaker 3: Authority.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well yeah, all of all of them, you know,
Speaker 1: ran toward this impending disaster. So so I looked out
Speaker 1: over the plaza, and why do you check three corners
Speaker 1: to get a current size up of what's happening with
Speaker 1: the three corners, tell you, well, it's hard, it's we
Speaker 1: would do four, but then you have to run all
Speaker 1: the way around the building and it takes too much time.
Speaker 1: So very quickly you can kind of get three sides
Speaker 1: of a building.
Speaker 2: Are you trying to see if it's structurally sound or
Speaker 2: it's on fire?
Speaker 3: For both?
Speaker 1: So in the end, you know, I had to look
Speaker 1: up like this ninety stories. You can't really see much.
Speaker 1: So it was less helpful to me than it was
Speaker 1: to my best friend, Captain Terry Hatton, who is coming
Speaker 1: down the West Side Highway and rescue one. With binoculars,
Speaker 1: he could see that there were seven or eight or
Speaker 1: nine or ten floors that were already on fire.
Speaker 2: All right, I think this is a question a lot
Speaker 2: of people have. Maybe other people know it, but hey,
Speaker 2: it's my show and it's my question, sar get to
Speaker 2: ask it, and I'm here for you. At this point,
Speaker 2: you've got one hundred and ten story one of the
Speaker 2: tallest buildings of the world with six some stores on fire.
Speaker 3: That's bad. It's very bad.
Speaker 2: Do you think a small plane or helicopter hit it?
Speaker 2: And you know people are burning and dying and trapped
Speaker 2: and that's bad. What I'm dying to understand is, did
Speaker 2: you ever conceive at that time that this building could
Speaker 2: fall down? Was that even part of the calculus at
Speaker 2: this No. I mean, the question that was asked early
Speaker 2: on was two things, who can we save? And is
Speaker 2: it going to collapse?
Speaker 3: So that was a question. There was a question from
Speaker 3: the mayor that why would they even conceive of it collapsing?
Speaker 2: Honestly, I think part of the collective nation's gasp was not.
Speaker 3: That it was on fire, but the damn thing fell down?
Speaker 3: How you know? Now we know how?
Speaker 2: But I just so you're saying, even then people had
Speaker 2: enough foresight to think.
Speaker 1: But the answer was no. The answer was no. The
Speaker 1: answer was no, we collapse. Well, we've never had that
Speaker 1: happen in a in a steel high rise building before
Speaker 1: in America.
Speaker 3: So it's not going to happen. So well, we don't
Speaker 3: think we.
Speaker 1: We are Our best judgment was that it was not
Speaker 1: going to happen, and and the other the other answer
Speaker 1: was we can save everybody below the point of impact.
Speaker 1: And that was very sobering in the moment, very early on,
Speaker 1: because basically I said that people at are above the
Speaker 1: point of impact, we probably can't help them.
Speaker 2: You just said one guy's name, which which of your
Speaker 2: friends did you say? Was looking through binoculars, Captain Terry Hatton, Okay,
Speaker 2: I have my best friend. Yeah, we'll get to him.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you've checked the three corners. It's on fire.
Speaker 2: We don't think it's going to collapse.
Speaker 1: I looked out over the the plaza and there were
Speaker 1: a lot of building parts and plane parts that were
Speaker 1: on fire and other debris, and I started to doubt
Speaker 1: my initial assumption that it was a small plane, but.
Speaker 3: I couldn't prove it. You know, I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I didn't know, And so I went into the north
Speaker 1: tower at that level, and in order to go to
Speaker 1: the command post at the street level, I had to
Speaker 1: go down an escalator inside the building, and there were
Speaker 1: hundreds of civilians kind of like a funnel, trying to
Speaker 1: get onto that escalator to go down. They were trying
Speaker 1: to evacuate them underground. And something struck me as I
Speaker 1: approached this group was that they weren't doing what you
Speaker 1: might think. They weren't pushing each other out of the way,
Speaker 1: they weren't trampling each other. In fact, for every person
Speaker 1: who was disabled or obese, or injured or pregnant, there
Speaker 1: were four or five civilians, not firefighters or police officers,
Speaker 1: helping that person out. And it gave me hope because
Speaker 1: I said, that's the truth of humanity, of ninety nine
Speaker 1: percent of humanity. If someone if we go outside right
Speaker 1: now and someone trips on the sidewalk, you'll see four
Speaker 1: or five people reach down to try and help them,
Speaker 1: because that's humanity. Is there evil in the world, Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: there's evil, but there's a lot of good in the
Speaker 1: world too. And it gave me hope that no matter
Speaker 1: what happened that day, that we were going to be okay,
Speaker 1: because that's the truth of humanity.
Speaker 2: Kind of the power of an army of normal folks,
Speaker 2: just normal people, right, they just came to work.
Speaker 3: They're just trying to do their job on a tower.
Speaker 1: They're doing that right, and they're and they're they're following
Speaker 1: their heart, and they're they're following their kindness and their
Speaker 1: love of their fellow humans. And and I and I
Speaker 1: like that one example lifted me up. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: firefighters or police officers. I could talk about them all
Speaker 1: all this whole thing, but the regular people were doing
Speaker 1: God's work, in my opinion, when when they were called
Speaker 1: to it, and and I and I got into that
Speaker 1: that crowd, that kind of funnel of people, and I'm
Speaker 1: going down this big, long escalator.
Speaker 3: The lobby was like two stories tall. It was a
Speaker 3: big lobby.
Speaker 1: And as the lobby revealed itself to me and I
Speaker 1: looked out over the lobby, I could see hundreds of
Speaker 1: firefighters awaiting their orders to go up.
Speaker 3: At the command post.
Speaker 1: And they all had their protective gear on with their
Speaker 1: yellow reflective stripes and all their equipment. You know, they
Speaker 1: say sixty pounds, It wasn't sixty. It was more than
Speaker 1: one hundred, one hundred and twenty pounds, because they were
Speaker 1: carrying extra equipment up.
Speaker 3: More way more than normal.
Speaker 1: And I had to actually do something that firefighters are
Speaker 1: very reluctant to do. And I had to admit that
Speaker 1: the cops were right, and we are very reluctant to
Speaker 1: do that. And I had to admit to myself that
Speaker 1: the cops were right because they called us, they called
Speaker 1: us bumblebees. And now I'm looking out over the lobby
Speaker 1: with all these firemen in their yellow stripes.
Speaker 3: They were right.
Speaker 1: It looked like a whole hundreds of bumblebees awaiting their
Speaker 1: orders to go up. As I processed this in my mind,
Speaker 1: I wind up giving it the nickname the Hive of Heroes,
Speaker 1: because that's what I was looking at, at these firefighters
Speaker 1: who were willing to go up and save the lives
Speaker 1: of people they don't know. So I got to the
Speaker 1: bottom of the escalator and I looked to my right,
Speaker 1: and I saw it was a bumblebee. And I looked
Speaker 1: up at his face, and it was my very good friend,
Speaker 1: firefighter Chris Blackwell from Rescue three where at the Bronx
Speaker 1: Harlem Rescue Special Operations Command where I worked. And I
Speaker 1: worked with Chris for seven years on the same shift.
Speaker 1: So as we said before, he was like a real
Speaker 1: brother to me. I love this man with all my heart.
Speaker 1: And we were the Bronx Harlem guys. We didn't follow
Speaker 1: the rules so much.
Speaker 3: We didn't.
Speaker 1: We were very busy. We didn't have time to follow rules.
Speaker 1: But he wouldn't shave all the time, and and and
Speaker 1: and his face was smudge of smoke, and his reflective
Speaker 1: stripes were kind of hanging off of his coat from
Speaker 1: being burned up, and and his helmet would would sit
Speaker 1: a little crooked on his head because of all the
Speaker 1: fires that we went to in our careers. And and
Speaker 1: I love I love this man. I love this man.
Speaker 1: And so when I saw him, he saw me. We
Speaker 1: always greeted each other the same way. And so we
Speaker 1: turned toward each other like this, and we came to attention,
Speaker 1: and he would reach around with his arm in a
Speaker 1: big arc like this and take the unlit stub of
Speaker 1: a cigar out of his mouth.
Speaker 3: This guy, Fault Flowers was a cigar. Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3: It was just an old school it was all. It
Speaker 3: was all part of the character.
Speaker 1: And and and he took it out, and he put
Speaker 1: it down to his side, and we both bent at
Speaker 1: the hips and we leaned in and we kissed on
Speaker 1: the lips. And we came back to attention, and he
Speaker 1: went like this with a cigar, and he put the
Speaker 1: cigar back in his mouth.
Speaker 3: And we did that. We did that.
Speaker 1: We did that every time we saw each other, because
Speaker 1: we loved each other like brothers.
Speaker 3: We really did.
Speaker 2: I imagine people the firehouse are like, y'all are gross. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: well so we also The second reason we did it
Speaker 2: is because it freaked out all the cops en frorement
Speaker 2: around us, and we just loved watching the reaction. It
Speaker 2: was a good it was a good, funny moment, but
Speaker 2: also an expression of true love, you know, and true brotherhood.
Speaker 2: And after we after we did that, he said to me, Timmy,
Speaker 2: this is really bad.
Speaker 3: And that is.
Speaker 1: For us to say that to each other is significant
Speaker 1: because we do bad every day. And he was saying,
Speaker 1: this is exceptionally bad, right, And I said, I know, Chris,
Speaker 1: be careful. I love you, and he said, I love you.
Speaker 1: And after he said that, he turned around and he
Speaker 1: went in the stairwell and he went up to save
Speaker 1: the lives of people he didn't know, right, he had
Speaker 1: free will, right, he said the words to me, Timmy,
Speaker 1: this is really bad.
Speaker 3: He knew that he was possibly.
Speaker 1: Going to lose his life, or even likely going to
Speaker 1: lose his life, but he still turned around and went
Speaker 1: in the stairwell and went up. So why, Like the
Speaker 1: question we ask is why why? Because he took an
Speaker 1: oath fifteen years earlier, as all firefighters and police officers
Speaker 1: and military and others do. And in that oath it says,
Speaker 1: I'm willing to give my life for my friend for
Speaker 1: my neighbor, even for someone I don't know. Firefighters and
Speaker 1: police officers right around here take the same oath. You
Speaker 1: never know when that moment is going to come, when
Speaker 1: that challenge is going to come, right, But he took
Speaker 1: the oath. So Chris chose to fulfill his words in action.
Speaker 1: And indeed, he chose to follow his words to go
Speaker 1: up and hel people he didn't know. He had free will.
Speaker 1: He could have turned around and gone back to his
Speaker 1: loving wife and children and lived. But that's not the
Speaker 1: choice he made. So when I think about this and
Speaker 1: what all these firefighters and police officers did that day,
Speaker 1: they all, as the last act of their lives, perform
Speaker 1: acts of the.
Speaker 3: Greatest love, as it says in the Bible.
Speaker 1: And every not one of them said no, not one
Speaker 1: of them turned around and left. They all went forward,
Speaker 1: and they all went up, And every one of them
Speaker 1: deserves that to be known. It is the most courageous, brave,
Speaker 1: selfless act that humanity knows. And each one of them
Speaker 1: did that that day. And I use Chris as then example.
Speaker 1: He's the first one I encountered. I encountered others. My
Speaker 1: best friend carried Captain Terry Hatt and my friend firefighter
Speaker 1: Michael Lynch, and many others who I witnessed.
Speaker 2: I witnessed with my own eyes. I want to hear
Speaker 2: those two stories. Tell me about Dave.
Speaker 1: Woo Yeah, well, Dave Woolley, and I will say this
Speaker 1: plainly because we have to tell the whole truth. Dave
Speaker 1: Willie as all of these heroes and all the twenty
Speaker 1: nine hundred and seventy seven innocent human beings from ninety countries,
Speaker 1: by the way, every one of them was murdered intentionally
Speaker 1: by Islamist al Qaeda terrorists, and that is the truth.
Speaker 1: And all this other nonsense about the government did it,
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory. They blew up, you know, George Bush, blew
Speaker 1: up the buildings. It's all bs. And that angers me
Speaker 1: to no end because it takes away from the truth
Speaker 1: of who did it and why they did it, and
Speaker 1: it's it's just that simple Ismus terras intentionally murdered twenty
Speaker 1: nine and seventy seven people on American soil. So Dave
Speaker 1: Woolley was my captain when I was in Times Square
Speaker 1: for just under two years, and he was also a
Speaker 1: ghetto fireman before he went up the ranks, and so
Speaker 1: he understood my craziness and and my being very aggressive
Speaker 1: in Times Square, which is a very different way to
Speaker 1: fight fires in Times Square. And I got myself in
Speaker 1: trouble one night because in midtown Manhattan there's a lot
Speaker 1: of emergencies that you would never encounter in the outer
Speaker 1: boroughs or anything. So we had a high pressure steam
Speaker 1: leak in a sub basement of a high rise building.
Speaker 1: And a high pressure steam is invisible. It's very loud,
Speaker 1: but it's invisible. You can't see it. And there was
Speaker 1: a report of an employee missing and trapped. And so
Speaker 1: I'm the ghetto fireman.
Speaker 3: So I am.
Speaker 1: I am down down in the sub basement, and I'm
Speaker 1: going for this guy. I didn't understand the high pressure
Speaker 1: steam thing, and and Captain Woolley knew my act and
Speaker 1: he grabbed me by the collar and he yanked me
Speaker 1: back away from the steam.
Speaker 3: Look it was like a jet engine. You couldn't hear anything.
Speaker 1: And he put a wooden hook in my hand, the
Speaker 1: hook we used to pull ceilings. And he said to me,
Speaker 1: if this hook disappears out of your hands, stop and
Speaker 1: turn around, because he knew that steam would chop me
Speaker 1: in half.
Speaker 2: And as I understand it, you can't see it. You
Speaker 2: can hear it, that's right. Well, because you can't see it,
Speaker 2: it's such a strong steam that literally will slice you.
Speaker 1: That's right. It would have chopped my head off. It
Speaker 1: would have chopped my head off. And I had no
Speaker 1: clue about that. And and he saved my life.
Speaker 2: Did the hook disappear? The hook disappeared? No, kidd you?
Speaker 3: Oh and I stopped.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no it he saved my life. And uh,
Speaker 1: the worker got out. There was a back door that
Speaker 1: nobody really knew about it, that he worked there. He
Speaker 1: knew about it, so he got out whatever, but we
Speaker 1: didn't know about it. And but I would have been
Speaker 1: you know, he would have been okay, and I would
Speaker 1: have been dead if it weren't for Captain Woolley's heroic Like.
Speaker 2: How are you not brothers with people that literally cited life. Yeah,
Speaker 2: to just enrich the understanding of the depth of your
Speaker 2: love for one of them.
Speaker 1: I when when I after nine to eleven in the
Speaker 1: in the hours, days and weeks, I had my younger
Speaker 1: brother Chris with me. He was a firefighter in Providence,
Speaker 1: Rhode Island, and my friend Paul Conway, who was a
Speaker 1: chief in Milwaukee, fire department, so they came to spend
Speaker 1: time with me and basically keep me alive after nine
Speaker 1: to eleven, and they would know that I was going
Speaker 1: to hear another name of a firefighter who I loved,
Speaker 1: and they would come behind me under each arm because
Speaker 1: they knew I was going to collapse. And that happened
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 2: And that concludes Part one of my conversation with Tim Brown,
Speaker 2: and you don't want to miss part two. That's now
Speaker 2: able to listen to you together. Guys, we can change
Speaker 2: this country, but it starts with you. I'll see you
Speaker 2: in part two