102 Minutes: The Unforgettable Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers

by Jim Dwyer

The next major disaster that New York responded to was not man-made and it was far away, in New Orleans, where 650 firefighters and police officers arrived in September 2005 to help bail out a city that had disappeared beneath flood waters. Some of the firefighters drove down in a pumper truck that the people of New Orleans and Louisiana had given to a Brooklyn firehouse in December 2001 to replace one destroyed on 9/11. The truck was called “The Spirit of Louisiana.” In the days after the towers collapsed, a group of New Orleans firefighters had traveled north to help out, cooking and cleaning at firehouses while the New Yorkers searched for lost colleagues in the rubble. Now the New York crews were in the south riding to calls with a fire force that had been depleted by the hurricane. Bill Butler of Ladder 6. Sean Halper of Engine 279. Liam Flaherty of Rescue 4. Many of the firefighters were veterans of the towers and the pile, repaying a debt, offering lessons learned, losing themselves and finding themselves in someone else’s catastrophe.