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Ep061: Tommy Turk from Nevada · 775 Alive

• 0:00
  Crystal - There was a profound blind side to me as far as my understanding of the US and global politics.
• 0:06
  And so for me, that need to understand it was so profound that I made it my minor study was Arabic studies in college.
• 0:12
  Tommy Turk - They locked all civilian EMS flights. We got word from our state office that there was no access to air tankers, no air ambulances, fixed wing or rotor wing.
• 0:25
  Scott - What were the scale of the tragedy? Cuz one of the problems, if I understood our conversation earlier, is they suffer so many losses in the initial response and the actual FDNY teams want to stay on the pile, want to stay doing their job. So, you actually had to handle a lot of the ceremonial functions associated with the remembrances. I think that's one of the things looking back now after 25 years, not just the loss, but some of the permanent changes that have resulted in American approached stuff, daily life, TSA and that type of stuff. [upbeat theme music] Welcome to 775 Alive, a podcast focused on Nevada. From Vegas to Reno to Elko, we decode politics, economics, and critical global issues, offering common sense perspectives true to our Nevada roots.
• 1:16
  I'm Scott Gavorsky, PhD historian. and I'm Crystal Newton, business strategist. Let's get into it. [music ends] Well, welcome back here to 775 Alive. We're joined today with a very special guest, Tom Turk, formerly of the National Forest Service firefighting brigade. So, welcome Tom.
• 1:37
  Tommy Turk - Good afternoon.
• 1:37
  Scott - And part of the reason we asked looking at is the 25th anniversary of 9/11. And Tom's going to be sharing some stories because even though he was based at the time in Elko, he ends up getting called to New York to help with some of the aspects and sort of give us a firsthand look at how Nevada is really caught up within, you know, one of the most pivotal moments in US history, right? Crystal, do you remember what you were doing on 9/11 when you found out?
• 2:11
  I was in high school and the first class of the day that I walked into was US government and history.
• 2:18
  Scott - Wow.
• 2:27
  a profound shift for me because up until then my education system had told me that, you know, we were loved around the world and spreading nothing but good stuff. And I do believe that's true. But it was . . . I got the impression that we didn't have any enemies and that day changed my mind on that perspective.
• 2:43
  Scott - Yeah. Well, I was in my second year of graduate school.
• 2:51
  So we had evening classes, or afternoon classes, at Emory. So I was, you know, doing research and writing papers at home when the first tower was hit. And just in that time period there were a lot of weird FAA problems, small planes going down. There was just a slew of them in the in the months before. But it really was not until the second tower got hit that it sort of struck me that something weird was going on. Of course, I come from the Cold War generation, so a little bit more cynical on how other countries saw the United States at the time.
• 3:26
  But Crystal, you know, one of the things when we first met that was astounding is we've both done Arabic language studies and yours was actually sparked by 9/11, if I remember your interest in the language.
• 3:37
  Crystal - That's right. Yeah. Again, I just . . . there was a profound blind side to me as far as my understanding of the US and global politics. And so for me that that need to understand it was so profound that I made it my minor study was Arabic studies in college.
• 3:56
  Scott - Yeah. And I was studying Arabic I was interested in going into medieval Byzantine and Islamic history. And there in the late 90s when I started looking at graduate schools, I mean, I had the Arabic language courses, but they were killing programs left and right because it wasn't seen as a viable field of studies for the future. So that's how I ended up drifting into French history moreso because that was still very vibrant at the time. And then 911 hits and all of a sudden we're back in the interest in Arabic studies and Arabic world. So just a weird way that those issues happen, right?
• 4:37
  Crystal - Yeah. And of course, I want to hear Tom's story where he was on that day. But before I start, what's so cool about Tom is right after 9/11, they grounded all the planes and they opened it up to first responders, emergency personnel 5 days later. And Tom was one of the first people to get back onto a plane after 9/11 happened. And then he spent a few weeks in New York. Got a great reputation for Nevada. He's known as Tommy Turk of Nevada out in New York because he was so awesome. So it's a really cool story we want to hear about. But first, Tom, what was your recollection of that day?
• 5:14
  Tommy Turk - You know, it was a September morning.
• 5:21
  Fall had started to ring around the country up here and I was in my uniform getting ready to head out the door for the office actually. And we've had a month or two of you know go fast large fires across the couple counties that we worked in. We were pretty keen that you know we've been using air tankers and everything all through the months. And as I was getting ready to head out the door, the news was on in the living room and we seen a airplane strike one of the Twin Towers and it caught my eye and I stopped for a moment and it's like that of course all the news was we don't know what size of aircraft. We don't believe that it was an accident at this point because of the nature of the strike. There was a lot of supposition by the newscasters, the anchors and it was it was catastrophic to say the least just from the very first few minutes on the first tower. So, it really kind of shocked me. And of course, they're showing on the ground, they're showing all the responding units within minutes from the FDNY and the CSU, from the F, uh the NYPD and such. So, I thought, okay, well, I'm out the door on to work. So, but while I'm going, I'm listening to the radio news and they're saying, 'oh my gosh, the second tower has been struck.' And so I get the office and the news is on the radio on our phones, you know, we always have a news channel on there. And everybody's, the whole office was a buzz and
• 7:06
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: 00 office people hadn't come in yet, but the fire people were all there and administrative staff and we all picked up real quick, grabbed our daily notes and stuff and headed to the conference room where we had a TV and turned it on. And there was just a dead silence in the office for for quite a while. And that morning evolved quickly. But I'll never forget, you know, that lock step into the doorway and and hearing that, seeing it on TV at home and it set things in motion I could have never envisioned for myself, for our agency, for the Nevada Forestry, and for the future. Scott - Now, if I remember right, you come from a long, long family of firefighters, right?
• 7:54
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Tommy - I do. Yeah.
• 8:01
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Nevada, particularly wildfire season, of course, big deal out here, in part. But if I remember correctly, right after the strikes when they ground flights across the country, that even impacted the emergency support flights out here in the West, didn't it?
• 8:23
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: by direction of I believe the president and his security people, they locked all civilian flights down and and including wildfire agencies, EMS flights. We got word from our state office that there was no access to air tankers, no air ambulances, fixed wing or rotor wing. There was going to be no reconnaissance flights. We couldn't contract El Aero, for example, which was a local FBO, fixed base operator, and any of their private aircraft to go up and look for lightning strike holdovers for example. We were literally stuck on the ground with anything we needed to do and that there was an unknown period of time that would last. So I think it was 24, 36, almost 48 hours before they unlocked those for us.
• 9:19
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: wildfires being blind like that to a certain extent, it can be devastating out here. So sort of another example, I think, of these deep impacts.
• 9:31
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: more policy changes after that. I think we had a lot of changes at the airports and I think we've had some federal policy implemented that's changed everything, really.
• 9:38
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Scott - Yeah.
• 9:45
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: one of the things to go with that as well was the we typically had access to the military aircraft in Nevada through the National Guard to fly troops up to the line, our firefighter troops up to the line, or do bucket drops for us or help us with reconnaissance. And those were pulled back for all missions. Any military aircraft was pulled back for their primary mission. Of course, the entire country was under basically a military lockdown for possible future attacks.
• 10:17
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Crystal - So, it was 5 days later that you found yourself in an airplane on Elko's airport ready to take off to New York. How did that happen? Was there like a couple days later they asked for volunteers or did you go banging down the door saying send me there?
• 10:30
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Tommy - Well, the very day of the attacks, another person that I worked with, Sam Hicks and myself, we're both, you know, hardcore firefighters, if you will. And Sam was raised in a family of firefighters in Eureka, Nevada, his dad being a longtime volunteer firefighter there. And we both approached our administration in Elko at the headquarters for division. And we know we're a long ways away from New York City and there's a lot of fire departments and firefighters in between, but if there came a chance that we could offer our assistance in some way, go help, put our names in, please. And our management did so. They sent it up to Carson City to our state office. And on about day five, my boss came in and said,"Well, you asked, you got it. your your number was chosen if you want to go or can go. They've got an assignment for you. So I said, "Well," swallowed really hard, "And I need to talk to my family real quick and let them know." So I did so and I told him and so on day seven I had my flight paperwork sent to me and I was at the Elko Airport boarding a plane and the little flight out of Elko, Sky West to Salt Lake wasn't bad. It's when I got on the big plane and going through the airport and all, and they told me to fly in uniform, and when I got to the airplane and boarded the flight attendants pull you aside and they said, "Well, we're still pretty uncomfortable with our flights. We just don't know who's getting on our planes even though we've done all these checks and we're watching passports. We're doing all this. If something happens on the plane during flight, can we come ask you to help us with the emergency?" Well, of course. anything you need, I'm here. I mean, I'm yours to whatever you need. And of course, I was an EMT, so it could have been a medical in nature. It could have been. And they assured us that there were flight marshals . . .
• 12:30
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Scott - Air marshals.
• 12:35
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: them. They left them to their, you know, their own secret or civilian attire and such. So, then the the civilians were starting to fly mainly for business. I think there weren't a lot of families and that on the flights. People were getting back somewhat to business travel on that. So, that was a little bit of an unnerving thought that something could still happen, you know, 7 days later. And so . . . and then how that happened, Steve Robinson, our state forester, was affiliated with the board of the National Firefighter Fallen Firefighters Foundation, which was tapped by the Department of Justice to administer grant dollars and stand up a counseling unit in New York to work with the Fire Department New York and their counseling unit.
• 13:28
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: We were to put together counseling teams, support the families, and help coordinate the funerals and and memorial services and all that entailed for the fallen firefighters.
• 13:45
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: you doing a day when you got there or were they doing?
• 13:51
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: 10 services a day. And if they had remains, they would do a a funeral service. And if there were families that just needed to get some form of closure, something working for them and their families, they would do a memorial service until they such time they were contacted about receiving remains and at that time they would move into a regular funeral service for closure.
• 14:19
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Scott - When you . . . So when you arrive here to help with this, right? Very necessary. But this is still a very dynamic situation right there. We're still, there's still digging through The Pile. If I remember right, by that time the question of survivors was starting to look very grim. But there's still a lot of operations going on. How was it? How was the experience coming in there? How was it coming into a FDNY environment that had been hit so hard over the past week?
• 14:51
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: I guess, I think perhaps talk about my greeting at the airport with a gentleman by the name of Vinnie Brennan. Vinnie was he knew, he picked me out right away probably because of my uniform and he was a fireplug of a guy, literally flat top haircut. He was a Marine, retired FDNY--'Fidney'-- firefighter. He used to be a tillerman in the back of the ladder truck up in the doghouse and he also worked on the marine fireboats. He was retired. He says, "Oh, there you are. You're Tommy Turk from Nevada." I'm like, "Oh, hi. How are you?" He says, "I'm Vinnie. I'm here to get you back to the hotel." So said, "Okay." And he helped me out all my gear. They told me to take all my gear with me. So that meant all my firefighting gear so that if we went down to The Pile, we would be prepared to, you know, proper PPE to to work down there. So we really didn't know what all this was going to entail. So Vinnie, we get into a sedan with all the lights and sirens and stuff. And here's Vinnie, retired FDNY. He's a liaison from the fire department to the counseling unit that's set up there. And he lights them up. Code three. We were driving from LaGuardia down to upper Manhattan to 57th and the Westside Highway and I mean there's limos parking on the sidewalks.
• 16:18
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: There's people running for cover and I'm like, 'holy cow Vinnie!' You know, I'm, this is day seven. I'm I'm not anybody special here. I'm not a VIP. Oh no, you're Tommy Turk from Nevada and I got to get you down there. So my eyes must have been like dollars looking at this. So he gets me down there, we park, we go in and I get introduced to the group. I get me my stuff to the room and that up above cuz we were staying in the same hotel that we were working out of. And my first introduction to Vinnie was very memorable. And in a few short minutes after we got checked in, we were off to the side while everybody was working and I was kind of waiting for an assignment. I said, "So Vinnie, what's your, what's your hook other than being a liaison?" He says, "Well, I'm retired." And I said, "Uhhuh. I understand that. And he says, "My brother's missing on The Pile. He was on Rescue 4 that day and we haven't had any news on where he's at or if he's been recovered at this point." And by then the news was coming in that the only thing they were finding in some of these firefighters that were in the stairwells and that were just the D-rings off their turnout coats, the metal or maybe an ornate particular tool like a Halligan tool which is a solid piece of iron used for prying doors and that has a hook on one end and a point and a pry bar and they know those because they had a welded name on them or an initial or something they'll find. That's that's the only way they know kind of where they were in the Towers because the jet fuel went down. So, Vinnie just, you know, he was up every day on shift with us, met us. What a great guy. So, that was my introduction to New York. And somewhere, I don't know how it happened, but somebody had come up with the thing, the punchline that Tom Turk had never been east of the Mississippi. And that was a little bit of a fallacy because I was when I was a young man, a young boy, we lived in Nashville, Tennessee for a couple of years in my youth.
• 18:24
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: My stepdad worked for a big large worldwide construction company. So I was back there in second, third grade. So, but nobody asked, but we rolled with it anyway. Made for a good headline.
• 18:38
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Scott - And I guess, if you feel comfortable sharing, you know, what were some of your duties here in trying to deal with the scale of the tragedy. Because one of the problems, if I understood our conversation earlier, is they they suffer so many losses in the initial response and the actual FDNY teams want to stay on The Pile, want to stay doing their job. So you actually had to handle a lot of the ceremonial functions associated with the remembrances.
• 19:10
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Tommy - Yes, our counseling unit that was stood up. We were tasked with putting together a family counseling unit in each of the five boroughs where any family member, or how they were related, could get together at that location where they we set them up with fax machines, phone lines and . . . I don't remember some of them were at church parish halls or at maybe a community center or senior center and they were open 24/7. They were staffed by volunteers and we would support them with paper for the copers and fax machines and that's where the notice would go because some people were not home anyway. But that way it would be to someone that knew somebody from that borough and possibly one of the firehouses there and that we helped stand those up. Working with this, I had some very unique tasks. nothing more special than anyone else there, but ones that I found to be at the same time rewarding, but also very challenging. And I looking back and what I was told was the reason they picked me was that I had a unique way of accepting and completing challenges or tasks. And they said, "Here's your task. Go down, find a way to get a hold of 10 gross of white dress gloves." So, you know, there's 144 pair in a gross, right?
• 20:39
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: I think that is 12 dozen. So that was a lot of gloves in various sizes because at each service the honor guard or color guard would throw their gloves in if it happened to be at a grave site when they were done with that particular service. So they were expendable or consumables. So I went down to the concierge at the hotel we're staying at the Sheraton. at 57th on the corner and said,"Hi, I'm so and so work upstairs and I've been given this task." And he says, "Well, you know, I think I can help you out. There are a whole lot." Because we were very near Broadway where all the on-Broadway shows and that were being held and they had tons of people that would come in and need tuxedo rentals. So all of those stores or shops were right nearby and the concierge just happened to have the phone number for about a dozen of them. He said, "Let me go to work on this for you." And they had been dying for an opportunity to lend their help because they also were feeling the pain just being up upstreet up town from the Twin Towers. So, two days later, the boxes were rolling in of dress gloves, all sizes, and we got those shuffled over to the ceremonial. The Fire Department of New York was so large. I believe it was 13, 14,000 members in their fire service. They were like a small army and they had their own ceremonial unit. They had their own clergies. You know Father Michael Judge and such we'd spoken of earlier and before.
• 22:32
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Anyway, we helped them get all the stuff lined up and and somebody asked me, "How in the heck did you think about doing that that way?" And I said, "Well, I I flew a lot as a kid, you know, we lived in Nashville as a kid, so we were on planes going back and forth often and stayed in hotels. And when I was in freshman in high school, we went to Europe and got to ski overseas. And my mom had taught me about things like concierge and what they did and how they helped you when you couldn't find something. So when you don't know, go to the concierge." And they were stellar. They were outstanding. They made me look like a shining star. So that was one of them.
• 23:16
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: The next one was the Fire Department always kept on hand handsewn applique stitched on Fire Department of New York flags, official flags of the Fire Department that really were casket drapes for the fallen firefighters if they ever suffered a loss. And they were made, produced by a flag company up in Dover, New Jersey, US Flag Company. And it was US, or national US, I believe, was so they hooked me up with them, a gal named Ann Marie Marian and the owners the Seelegs, which were on site every day. They, I drove up there, met with them face to face. They showed me their operation. Well they burned through the first dozen in the first day. And the, you know, it takes a long time to produce, even with as many seamstresses as they had working to produce one of those flags with all the appliques. So they switched over to a silk screening process and I think I sent some pictures to you folks to look at. They're amazing. Long tables, silk screen, big fans rolling. Once they got them hung back up to dry, then they went to the next overlay process. Those flags were very difficult to tell apart from one that was handsewn and original and those that were later had the fringe sewn on the edge. And the Fire Department was ecstatic because they met their tasks and we were able to help get that done. And then of the 300 plus firehouses in the five boroughs, 61 of those suffered one or more losses of firefighters and command staff in the Towers. And we were approached by the ceremonial unit on behalf of the firehouses that needed, wanted and was tradition. They were allowed to hang up purple and black bunting over the doors of their firehouses and then on the front of their apparatus when they had a loss of firefighter or more. We had 61 houses and of course all 300 wanted bunting for their doors and apparatus and there was no way. We were managing a budget basically and Chief Ron Siarnicki, who was the head of the Fallen Firefighters Foundation and CEO, if you will, he was a retired fire chief and his last assignment before he retired took over the Fallen Firefighters Foundation was Prince George's County Fire Department there in Maryland. And he was a just a great human being, great leader, inspired people to do good things and heart always in the right place. So, he came to us and he said, "Look, we're getting these requests. There's no way we can do all 300 houses. We're going to have to, we're gonna have to pare this down and get the actual numbers." So working with the flag company again, I got the actual numbers from the ceremonial unit in the department. They had 61 houses and were able to negotiate with them to make sure that the 61 houses. The rest of departments they were able to do whatever they could do to show their houses were. So what they did is they put together collages of FDNY firefighters that had family, because you know a lot of brothers. Knoworthy was the oldest one, or the oldest active firefighters in the service still fighting fire, was on Rescue One. Joe Angelini Sr. and Joe Angelini Jr. who was on believe it was Ladder 4 out of 9th Battalion Headquarters, not too far, right there on Broadway. And it was Engine 4, 54 Engine and 4 Truck, ladder truck, and they lost 15 guys, including the battalion chief out of that headquarters that day.
• 27:26
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: The single largest life of any of the houses out of the 300 houses. And on the top of their engine, it says never missed a performance. And you know, the tradition there is like Hell's Kitchen.
• 27:39
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: They'll have symbols, logos, um, and sayings on their engines and that because they all are are so steeped in amazing things, stories and that that go on, on and on. But unfortunately, the Angelini family clan lost their patriarch and their, one of their favorite sons. So, that one struck very hard and then there are a lot of stories about others, Paddy Brown and those guys.
• 28:04
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Crystal - So, you know, I think you did more intensely than most of us, Tommy, But we were united in a way we had never, we probably hadn't been united since World War II, and we're coming up on the 25-year anniversary.
• 28:26
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: And so, in 25 years, we've gone from more united than ever to almost more divided than ever.
• 28:35
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: And I know that your experience is in fire and you just want to care for people and probably don't give much thought to this type of macro analysis, but is there anything in particular that's caught you off-guard or do you have any thoughts on what's happened since 9/11?
• 28:48
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Tommy - We had a chance to talk before this, over the last couple days, and one of the stories was when I got home and it really resonated because back there the divisions went away after 9/11. We were truly in my lifetime at that point I was 30-some. I'd never seen the unity like we had where the divisions were basically all gone. Congress was standing hand in hand. I mean, people were opening doors just, you know, and so the one that hit me was when I got home within the first week, I believe it was, the Country Music Awards were on and Alan Jackson sang for the first time in public. Was it he rolled this song out,"Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning?)." And he talked about all those things about where were you and did you hold the door for a neighbor? You know, did you stop and say hi and thank you and address people and you know, all the things that we had never done or hadn't done for a long time. You know, we were one as a country, one as a nation. And it was amazing. It was as good as one could ever hope for. And then didn't take long, month, maybe two, and people were getting back to their ways. you know, they I guess it's a selfish nation, self-motivated nation, what's in it for me, and it, you know, just doesn't take long. And then, of course, the political divisions always rear their ugly heads and you know the all the laws about how we were going to take care of immigration and visas and you know all that.
• 30:49
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: And then, of course, the screening at the airports and if you see something, tell somebody. And you know, we had kind of forgotten and let our guard down. We'd become complacent when we were hit on 9/11, 2001, because it wasn't too long before really in the big scheme of things. In 1993, we were hit again in the Towers by a bomber in the basement in the parking garage underneath.
• 31:19
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: And that was run also by a person that, and an organization that, disliked America a great deal.
• 31:27
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: And so they attacked us what they thought was going to be a bigger bang. And of course with 9/11 there was a lot of credence given to Osama bin Laden. We said, 'oh my gosh, we got a lot bigger bang than we planned on out of these two aircraft that hit the Towers'. Let alone the the aircraft at the Pentagon in our guts there and then the one that went down at Shanksville when the passengers rose up and took it down before it could get to the White House. That one was headed right for our presidency. So now bring it forward, we've had our good days, we've had our bad days, over those years in between. Took me 17 years to go back to the memorial for the first time. Just wasn't something I was could muster up and was going back to DC with my wife and said let you know it's time let's go back and see it. What I found amazing in the memorial, at at the 9/11 memorial in the museum, and that was how many nationalities and foreigners were going through the memorial and were hung on every little video. Their children and their children were kind of wild actually. They probably weren't as in tune, but the families because how many different nationalities were hit at 9/11 in the Towers that worked in those different companies? Cantor Fitzgerald. I you know, gosh, I can't even think right now off the top of my head how many big, large multinational companies were housed in the Twin Towers and how many nationalities were hit and suffered losses. Not just Americans and not just any one particular race, creed, religion, it was something else. And so we were really good for a long time and then we've had our ups and downs. Now, like you said in your introduction, I think we could be considered as divided as we've ever been. There's a few really sensitive topics that bring our country together. It takes some kind of catastrophic loss, like loss of military, big loss of firefighters, loss of children, you know, and some big event, unfortunately, and where they hit us right in the gut and that kind of wakes everybody up a little bit, but it's usually short-lived. And you know, firefighters, law enforcement, EMS, a lot of our military, we're in it for a reason, and it's because we just like to do what we do. We like to help people, like you said. And . . .
• 34:05
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Scott - Can we go back a bit? Because one of the things we talked about that was interesting. So, you told the Alan Jackson story, and if I remember right, you were actually involved in a tribute on ABC's 'Good Morning America' with Carole King, right?
• 34:23
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Tommy - Yes.
• 34:23
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Scott - And, but also you had here in these months afterwards, you already talked about some of the people pulling off to the side when they hear the sirens. But you also told a very poignant story about what it was like going out to eat in the evenings in New York right afterwards.
• 34:41
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Scott - So how do you juxtapose those two things? Tommy - Well, during the assignment back there, because we were in charge, I guess we were the keepers of the department flags for FDNY, they had received a request for two of the flags to go down to a one of the morning shows, Good Morning America, with, oh goodness, I'm going to do it again. Charlie, draw a blank on his last name again, Diane Sawyer and Tony Perkins, I believe it was, the weatherman, and they needed two of those flags to hang up in their background for honoring, paying a tribute to the FDNY. Carole King, the famous singer, and her daughter were going to be there live on stage and they brought in an engine company from, it was Engine 65 and their crew. They were parked out front. You could see their engine out the window. And so Vinnie and I were up early. We went down . . .
• 35:47
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Charlie Gibson, I believe it was, was his name, the anchor of that. In that morning, they signed us in. We had all our credentials. We went through and they, we kind of were hanging around a little bit. They did their thing and they had us off the side and we got to meet all of them first and of course they signed our programs for us, you know, because it, that's a big honor for little Tommy Turk from Elko, Nevada, you know, and we got to be there and then they interviewed us live about what our mission was and the flags and that Matt and Benny got to talk about his brother being missing on The Pile still. And this is probably the, at least the second week, that I was back there, maybe the start of the third week. So, we were pretty well into this. Maybe the third or fourth week on The Pile those guys were digging. And I'll go back to that. You'd asked me and I kind of glossed over it. Anyway, the mission was that Carole King sang on the piano with her daughter singing back up and her band to some FDNY guys and a lot of field promotions had taken place. This was a fairly new lieutenant that was there with his crew. And let me tell you, there wasn't a firefighter there in New York that wanted to have the light shined on them because they were so humble. They, the field promotions were not what they wanted.
• 37:15
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: They wanted to earn it the good old way of being promoted through earning it. And they lost at one time. I knew the numbers off the top of my head, but they lost their chief of department and and chief Peter Yancey. They lost multiple deputy chiefs, division chiefs, their battalion chiefs, their captains out of their stations and their lieutenants off the different apparatus. And they had to basically do field promotions on the fly in order to keep their engine companies with hierarchy in there so they could operate. And there's no doubt the people they promoted were qualified, but they were promoted with maybe three to five years instead of 10 or 12 years worth of experience and they measured up. They rose to the task. And Carole King was so humble.
• 38:05
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Her dad was a firefighter on Long Island and that's why it hit her so hard with the losses and she was there to sing to them. I she was very kind and and signed a CD of "Tapestry" for me. That was her big famous CD as well. Had all her good songs on it. They were very, very nice people. And it was an honor to be there on stage with them. And then the first few nights that I was there, you know, the hotel wasn't serving any meals, so we had to go out and find our own way.
• 38:44
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: By the first week, people were starting to come back into the city to work and help support.
• 38:50
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: I think it was a might have been a Chili's that we, actually Red Robin or something downtown there, that we could go into and get something to eat every night. And we found a pub down there, O'Looney's saloon, if you will. And Mr. O'Looney was there every night. And we would, we need to after 12-hour days and working and we'd made our own tours down to The Pile and we heard lots of stories when we were there. But you know it wasn't our primary mission. We were sending people out to do those jobs, but they also encouraged us to go down and see The Pile and work and meet some of these guys on the ground and visit with them and hear their stories and be be available to them to vent and get that off their chest if they were stressed out. And the stories we heard is the firefighters stopped going back to the stations after their shift digging on the pile for a while because if they went back the fire department would keep them and not let them go back to dig on The Pile for their brothers, sisters and that was very painful for them. So they would just find a door well in front of a business and that and fall asleep in there for a few hours and then if they happen to be injured they'd find a medic out there on the street and have them stitch them up or help them with whatever their little boo boo was and that way they never had to go back to the firehouse. And I think eventually they all had to go back at some point. But those guys, those people. And let me tell you the again, we talk about unity, you know, there's a lot of pride between the fire department. You know they have a hockey team, they have a, fire department has a hockey team, the PD has a hockey team, there's a lot of pride and vigor between them didn't matter what color uniform you wore. whatever. The iron workers were real heroes out there, those were the guys that were slinging the big cutting torches, the the liquid oxygen driven. You saw those great big long hoses and the cages with those torch tanks hanging on them. And those guys were down there helping us cut, helping them cut. And the effort, bucket by bucket load, because they didn't know if a bucket could have remains in it. As they sifted and sorted as they came out of The Pile, you'd see great big long trains of hand-to-hand bucket brigades. And I took a lot of pictures back there and I was very careful not to take pictures of faces of anyone down there working.
• 41:28
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: I mean, not intentionally. If I caught one, it was totally accidental. I took pictures of things that were there. That dust stuck to everything. Any vertical surface was coated in a layer that you could actually take your finger and write in it like a chalkboard, reverse chalkboard.
• 41:46
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: I took a picture one that was RIP, Rest In Peace Ladder 116 and Engine 32, I think it was and in a just an iron girder that was part of a fallen structure nearby. And you know there were five or six structures in, out of the seven, in the World Trade Center compound that were all damaged by fire collapse. We went to dinner. We try to find a place. We got couple places we got to and they got to know us like O'Looney's and that and we'd go in and they were struggling and the management was so apologetic that they didn't necessarily have enough staff to serve us as well as they thought we would deserve or would like to be served. And like, you know what? We're just happy that we can get a meal and you're here. Those people were still scared to death to come into the city. Not knowing like the flights if there would be another attack. And every time an airplane went by overhead from Reagan, or Dulles, or LaGuardia, people were they would just hunker and cringe. They were shell-shocked. And the restaurants, the people were so nice, so humble, and so caring. And you know, we couldn't tip enough for them.
• 43:07
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: you know, they, the managers would be slinging plates and that the cooks would be bringing plates out and they were just . . . they were just so nice. And eventually, the third week, people were coming back in and they were getting their crews back into work in the restaurants and that and but the first couple weeks were a little tedious. They were, you know, you might be an hour waiting on a meal and they weren't and mostly it was it was law enforcement, fire, it was military. You know, when I got there, everywhere you looked, if there was a military, they were packing an M-16 or they were armed. They were military police. They were securing the whole basically lower part of Manhattan was guarded because they you had to have credentials to go in and out down there. And it wasremarkable. And everything was just great. You know, you walk by somebody, you just nod, tip your head and hi, how are you? And hold the door. You know, it's . . . I'm coming a little bit circular here. I'm sorry. You know, the rabbit trail like we tried not to do that, but and I hope I covered those. They're just, there's so many amazing stories.
• 44:08
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Crystal - I'm aware of there's about 441 that died directly from the attack, the firefighters. But what's striking to me is since then, 8,000 have died from being at Ground One, and over a 100,000 have enrolled in the World Trade Center health program for those suffering from health consequences. And I . . . you must be very directly impacted over those decades since then. Just losing more firefighters along the way. Has that . . . it's been almost like a continuing trauma in some ways. How has that been?
• 44:56
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Tommy - Yeah, initially there were 343 identified, Department New York. There were some EMTs. There were some other volunteers that came in and were digging on The Pile or that happened to be in the area that suffered losses or injuries, I guess, that were counted as well, excuse me. But the actual Fire Department New York were the 343. And I, you know, I used to be able, I used to be able to count these numbers and rattle them off from memory and I've, you know, some of them have kind of gone away. But, yes, the numbers you speak of now are the losses due to the cancers post-911. Thank goodness the president signed in perpetuity now the Responders Protection Act, I guess it is, that anyone that was a responder and proven, their medical will be covered forever. And my parting gift from New York was asthma and sleep apnea and some other things I'm treated. I get an annual physical from 9/11 now, the World Trade Center health responder program. It's a good program.
• 46:14
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: It's amazing. I'm lucky that it didn't develop into something else, but just those three weeks back there and around that stuff that was in the air and it just not a great thing, but I'm lucky to be as healthy as I am and all and do what I do. And the losses post-9/11 now from all those diseases and that have been identified . . . it's tragic and it's the thing that's going to keep giving them. The numbers of the civilians that have been identified now, you know, that number is just unbelievable and it's the stuff that was in the plastics and all the stuff that was in those buildings that no one would have you could have never dreamed that up that was a scenario that no one could . . . George Orwell couldn't have come up with that one, you know? I mean, the most creative mind. So . . .
• 47:04
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Crystal - Well, when you said you could draw in that's probably not a good substance to have in your lungs.
• 47:16
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: bad part was those towers were built what in the 60s, I believe, the Twin Towers, early 70s. And you know, asbestos was part of a lot of that construction. And you know, you look at the naval, the construction of the ships and that and the asbestos in the coatings and things there and home construction and that and they're still now before you can tear down or or demolish some of these buildings and that they have to go through and do a remediation program of the products and that in there before they can do issue a permit for final demolition because of that sort of thing. So yeah, it's terrible that end of it.
• 47:54
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Scott - Well, just to wrap up here because you and I talked a little bit and we don't have to go into a lot of detail, you know, how do you think public safety officer training programs have changed since 9/11? Just in general. We talked a little bit about the color coding system, which the US picks up from France after the '94 situation when they had a terrorist group wanted to try to fly an airplane into the Eiffel Tower.
• 48:26
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: But, you know, there was some real effort to try to nationalize some of these practices. Do you think that worked?
• 48:33
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Tommy - You know, the but we do have some pretty major hubs with international-based airports. Reno, Las Vegas, and believe it or not, Elko is a considered an international hub or has access to be able to fly internationally out of there with a destination outside. It's . . . you still have to fly to a connecting airport to get out, but you can originate out of Elko and and fly into there from an outside international hub, I guess. And being a regional duty officer up there in my role, and then working at a higher level in the division through a promotion, I as a state duty officer, we would receive from Division of Emergency Management the national color, you know, the orange, red, yellow, the threat level is what it was called for the day. And sometimes it just seemed like, oh, okay, you know, no big deal. But when they elevated it and there was a purpose and a reason when it went from yellow to orange or orange to red because of an assumed or perceived or confirmed threat. Then everybody was on high alert and it affected us out, like I said, in the rurals which we talked about what that could affect, what access we're going to have to any of the aircraft. Are they going to stand down the firefighting aircraft again? The emergency medical?
• 50:10
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: How would it impact us? Would they close our airspace again? What would, what would happen? And then who could fly in, who could fly out, if we had to send somebody, you know, we flew people out of Elko. Evergreen would happen to be a particular contract aircraft, '80s, '90s that contracted with the National Air Agency Fire Center. They fly into Elko. They would take you would add to a list of firefighters on there that would go to Alaska. They take like a 740.
• 50:39
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Or 37, 737 or 727, full of firefighters up to Alaska when they were burning millions of acres and we would detail up there for three weeks to help them fight their fires and what happens if that was the case and we were at the red and they were going to lay by, immobilize or fly around start closing airspace again? It had an impact, and, you know, I haven't heard that term used till we start talking about it again. And I think they've reconfigured that in a different way. We hear them talk about it on the news, but it's more generic about the War Department or the president's security team has announced that there's a perceived threat today. Or they received a threat or they've isolated this cell or it's more of a generic and a more spot-on threat.
• 51:38
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: to a specific area, topic, or person, I guess. Crystal - Is that the Department of Homeland Security that issues those, or what's the body that issues those?
• 51:52
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: security advisor. In this case, I'm not sure who it is now. Is it Radcliffe?
• 51:58
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: think, I'd have to go back and look.
• 51:58
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Tommy - I think it's chiefs.
• 52:04
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Crystal - Wasn't it 9/11 that started the Department of Homeland Security?
• 52:12
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: TSA, right?
• 52:12
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Tommy - In fact, I think I sent you a picture was moved to DC at the MCI Center. And while I was back there, one of my tasks was to escort some dignitaries or the entertainers up from the green room to the stage. I happen to be able to meet Curt Weldon who was a Congressman. I think it was Senator Steny Hoyer. Joe Allbaugh, who was the head of FEMA, I believe it was. And Tom Ridge . . .
• 52:43
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Scott - Un-huh.
• 52:53
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Director if I remember correctly. And had all four of them together for a photo. Not with me, but got to meet them together and that was the start of a whole new society. The way we address society in this country and all security risks and that as well.
• 53:13
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: of the things looking back now after 25 years, not just the loss, but some of the permanent changes that have resulted in American approach to stuff, daily life, TSA, and that type of stuff. So, well, Tom, thank you very much for joining us today and sharing these stories very personally and working with Crystal and I on this. And it's much appreciated. And we want to capture these stories before we get too much further down the road, you know. So, until next time, first of all, I think on behalf of Crystal and I and Tom, take some time over to the 9/11 celebrations or anniversary memorials, and take a moment of silence to remember all those who were lost in that tragic event. But until next time, I'm Scott Gavorsky.
• 54:06
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Crystal Newton.
• 54:06
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Tommy - Thank you guys very much for having me. Thank you. It's great to remember.
• 54:12
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Yeah, never forget. Never forget.
• 54:12
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: Scott - So we'll [upbeat theme music] Thank you for listening to 775 Alive. Nevada Roots, Global Issues. Subscribe on YouTube or X, and on most podcast streaming services.
• 54:28
  it was, you know, just before 7:00 the 8: You can email us at info@775alive.com or send us a message via carrier pigeon. [upbeat music ends]