Captain
Frederick Ill Jr.
Ladder 2

9-11-2001

Vigil for the Brothers
Eleven days after the collapse, N.Y. firefighters keep hope alive for their missing.
By Diana Marcum
The Fresno Bee
(Published Sunday, September, 23, 2001 7:30AM)

NEW YORK -- Even now -- with 10 of them missing and the others telling horror stories so surreal they have trouble believing their own words -- they still answer the call of the fire alarm. They still polish their rig and their shoes.
They still kid one another: All those clothes that strangers donated to the station this week -- didn't Sankey take the finer apparel? What, he's going high-fashion?

Even now, 11 days after terrorists leveled the World Trade Center, and with the mayor admitting there's almost no hope of survivors, the firefighters at Engine 8, Ladder 2 Company in lower Manhattan say digging through the rubble is a rescue mission.

And they always use the present tense when they talk about Mike, "Mugs," Dennis, Dan, Tom, Carl, Rob, George, Capt. Freddy Ill and Chief Tom D'Angelis.

Fred Zvinys, 42, has been a firefighter for 16 years. He'll tell you he's not book smart, not good at taking the tests that make a guy a lieutenant or captain.

"But without bragging, I'm a good fireman."

He was in a car with his wife, Lois, in midtown Manhattan when he heard on the radio that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

"I knew right away that my guys were in there," he says. "When the second plane crashed, I knew it wasn't an accident. I said to my wife, 'This is the end of the world, at least as we know it.' "

Lois begged him not to go. But Zvinys told her it was his job, that he knew the guys in there.

He had to drive her home to Long Island, where the maple trees in big front yards are just beginning to turn gold, before he could make the 55-mile trip to lower Manhattan.

By the time he got to the scene, both towers had collapsed. The air was filled with the smell of burning plastic and steaming mangled steel "like nothing you could ever imagine." Everything was covered with thick, white dust.

He saw a woman's arm sticking out of debris under a listing tepee shell of the building's beams. A wedding ring was on her hand. Zvinys and three other firefighters dug around the body until they could see her face.

"Those beams are 200 pounds per linear foot. They were afraid they were going to fall on us. We couldn't get her out. But the guys were real sweet about her. They covered her with body bags, real gentle."

After that, he ignored the body parts around him. He was there to rescue the living. He started digging. He started digging and didn't stop until 9 a.m. the next morning. His legs were buckling. A few times he fell asleep standing up, catching himself just in time so he didn't fall into the rubble.

"The funny part is, I'd have my coat over my shoulder and I'd be thinking, 'I swear I'm going home now.' But then I'd see these guys digging with bare hands, and I'd throw down my coat and start digging again."

There's a chalkboard sign-in at the firehouse that hasn't changed since Sept. 11. Each of the missing men scribbled his name in front of the position he took on the engine that morning. In boyish script, Mike Clark, the youngest in the company, signed himself into the roof position. Taped on the chalkboard is a note: "Do Not Erase."

Zvinys and Clark are about 20 years apart. They were the only two who asked to transfer into a firehouse that handles so many calls that it makes other guys want to transfer out. Zvinys, king of the Ladder 2 pranksters, plagued Clark more than anyone. If you mess with a guy, see, it means you love him.

There's a manhole cover on 52nd Street in front of Engine 8, Ladder 2. Older firefighters often stand in the doorway for a smoke, then nonchalantly flick their butts into the cover's central hole. One day, Zvinys saw Clark try to do the same. He'd toss his cigarette, miss, look around to make sure no one was watching and then try again.

"I was going to have some fun with that one," Zvinys says. "Mike wanted so much to fit in. And he did fit in. He was respected."

Zvinys has more he wants to say, but he has to go. The fire bell is ringing. There's a call. That's why Zvinys had been joking around with the guys, trying to lift their spirits. You can't go on calls teary-eyed, he says. You have to show strength. He throws on turnouts and gets into the truck. He waves as they leave.

John Tota, the one they call "Pretty Boy," is the only firefighter left in the station. He's assigned to light duty. His eyes -- gray blue with long black lashes that must have something to do with his nickname -- are scratched. Doctors tell him the scratches on the left eye are superficial. But the dust from the pulverized buildings caused partial, but permanent, damage to the other eye.

The guys who are missing from the 50-person station were on duty that morning. Clark was filling in for Tota, who was in Brooklyn for his annual physical. When the first plane hit the World Trade Center, Tota, 36, acted like a true New Yorker who wanted to get somewhere: He took the subway. It got him to East Broadway in Manhattan. He started jogging to the downtown area, but in linen shorts and a T-shirt he was constantly asked for identification at police lines. He ducked into a nearby fire station, changed clothes, grabbed turnouts and jumped on an engine.

Summer warmth has lingered in New York this year, so the engine was still open-roofed to let in a breeze. As they screamed to a stop at Broadway and Wall Street, a few blocks from the World Trade Center, Tota heard a rumble over the radio. He thought a bomb had gone off. A black cloud raced toward them. He grabbed a hood and a flashlight and curled into a ball. When he opened his eyes, it was pitch black. He thought something had fallen on the engine, but it was dust so thick it blocked all light. As he jumped to the ground, he heard a voice crackle over the radio: "Central, there's been a complete collapse."

He started calling for people. "Anyone need help?" An off-duty police detective's voice came through the eerie, acrid fog. "Over here. Help me get these people off the subway."

Tota didn't tell the people in the first three subway cars what had happened. He just told them to hold hands and cover their faces.

"They thought we were leading them out of a dangerous situation to safety, and then they'd step into apocalypse. So the next trip, I tried to prepare them and told them the World Trade Center had collapsed, and those people started screaming," he says, shaking his head with a smile in one of those sometimes-a-guy-can't-win gestures.

Tota's job today is to greet people who are coming by the station with checks -- $50, $500, $1,200 -- and bringing flowers and cards to a sidewalk shrine in front of the firehouse. In one hand he holds a 2-inch stack of children's drawings and paintings addressed to "The Heroes."

A chubby man with a thick Bronx accent walks up.

"Hey, this is probably the stupidest thing in the world," he tells Tota. "But here's tickets for you guys -- baseball, football, hockey -- just in case, you know, somebody might want to take their mind off things for a while."

Tota -- former paramedic, coolheaded charmer -- chokes up for a second.

"I'll try," he says. "But most of the guys are going to funerals."

Inside the firehouse is a corkboard that's the workplace version of a refrigerator door: the place where snapshots live. There's Capt. Freddy and a bunch of the guys at Lido Beach after a volleyball game. That's George Di Pasquale holding a newborn dressed in pink. There's Clark and Dennis "Mugs" Mulligan hoisting beers at a picnic. There also are family snapshots, but it's hard to match the smiling wives and girlfriends in those photos to the ashen-faced ghosts weeping at the memorial in front of the station.

A long table is filled with food given to the firefighters by restaurants and by neighborhood women, some who said they baked all night on Sept. 11 and have felt compelled to cook ever since.

When Ladder 2 returns from the call -- it was a false alarm; there have been a lot of alarm malfunctions because of the dust -- firefighter Steve Riccio starts assembling plates of food. He carries them to the parking lot attendants across the street and to business workers and owners up and down the street.

"Everybody's been so nice to us. I just wanted to do something for them," he says.

He tries to talk 47-year-old firefighter Bill Sankey into eating, but Sankey's not hungry. The sad-eyed widower looks older than his years and he's a little overweight. His wife died two years ago. Father Mychal Judge, chaplain of all New York firefighters and one of the first to die when the towers came down, officiated at her service.

The men start teasing: Did they hear right? Did Sankey turn down a meal?

If you mess with a guy, see, it means you love him.

Riccio, 36, is the human equivalent of a St. Bernard puppy. He gallops around, greeting people, trying to give them food. He was at lieutenant training across the Hudson River when the first plane hit the north tower. His first call was to his aunt, who worked at the World Trade Center. She was OK; she got out. His second call was to his wife. "I love you. Kiss the baby," he said. By then, a second plane had crashed into the south tower.

As he climbed onto the Staten Island Ferry with the others from the training session, black smoke was billowing out of Manhattan. It looked like the entire island was on fire. Thirty firefighters stood silent as they came closer and closer.

On the other side, they marched through a deserted city. They came upon burned-out fire rigs and grabbed whatever tools from them they could.

"My equipment was put together with duct tape and spit," Riccio says. "It was like the city was mine. I'd walk into empty hardware stores and grab rope."

At the colorless, eerie scene around the collapsed towers, firefighters started digging frantically with bare hands, shovels, anything they could find. They shouted information to each other, trying to put together bits and pieces. Someone had seen Mugs on the 14th floor of the north tower. Someone else saw Rob Parro helping someone evacuate. But when? Where? A crew that left the building just before the collapse had passed three guys from Ladder 2 in the lobby.

"We're getting out," they had told them.

"We're right behind you. We're just waiting for our captain and he's on the way," one of the guys from Ladder 2 answered.

Riccio was wearing a Rescue 5 helmet he had grabbed from a rig.

"People would see my helmet and come up to me and say, 'How's my guys? How's my guys?' The word was that they'd lost everyone in Rescue 5. After a while I couldn't take it. I left long enough to go tape paper over the '5' on the helmet."

Late that night, Riccio and firefighter Darren Hawkins found the Ladder 2 rig. They don't even know where they found it. All the street signs were knocked down and everything was shrouded in dust.

They decided to drive it to the firehouse that night.

"It meant a lot to everyone that we brought the rig back," Riccio says.

Capt. Fred Ill, a former Army reservist who always expected spick-and-span, is respected and beloved by his crew.

When Riccio and Hawkins pulled up in the rig with its coat of white and broken windows, someone yelled, "OK, then, we're going to do this Freddy's way."

They took out hoses and cloths and went to town.

Against mounting odds, Riccio says he believes there are people alive under the rubble that covers four city blocks.

"There's got to be pockets and water down there. I truly believe someone is holding out, waiting for us. If there's someone down there, I want them saved. It would make me feel so good.

"Please, God, just give me one."

Riccio has just two things to add:

"Please tell everyone thank you. People from everywhere have been so good to us. Cards, letters, cash -- you name it. And get the names of our guys in there. Get the names of all 10 of our guys."

The missing from Engine 8, Ladder 2:

Chief Tom D'Angelis

Capt. Fred Ill

George DiPasquale

Dennis Germain

Dan Harlin

Tom McCann

Carl Molinaro

Dennis "Mugs" Mulligan

Rob Parro

Mike Clark

The reporter can be reached at dmarcum@fresnobee.com or 441-6375.