This article is from page 65 of the 2011-11-01 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 65 JPG
BILL Whelan was at home in Brooklyn on September 11, 2001, when he received a phone call from his wife.
She worked in a bankruptcy court in lower Manhattan and, along with a few colleagues, had witnessed the United Airlines and American Airlines planes crash into the two towers of the World Trade Centre.
She immediately phoned her husband and told him to put on the television.
Bill takes up the story. “So I put it on and watched for about a half a minute and said, I have to go. She said, where you going? I said, I’m going to work. She said, you can’t, you’re off duty. I said, no, we’re never really off duty. It doesn’t work that way. So I got into my Fire House in Brooklyn.”
He added, “My company was already working at the Trade Centre or on their way there. Then we got word just before the towers fell down – one of the first firefighters to die that day was from my company. One of the jumpers (from the Trade Centre) landed on him before they even got into the building. So he was critically injured. Another company got together and packaged him up, got him into the EMT bus.”
Bill and a group of around 100 firefighters were sent to an assembly area about half a mile away from the World Trade Centre.
Speaking in Ennis last week during a family holiday, Bill recalled the events of the day.
He said, “We walked about half a mile away and we came across this bus driver on his normal tour. We said, are you heading anywhere hear the Brooklyn Bridge? He said, yeah, are you guys going to New York? I said absolutely we’re going there. He discharged all of his passengers, put us on the bus and drove us across the Brooklyn Bridge.”
He continued, “And that was some sight. The towers had just come down. It was absolutely horrendous. Tens of thousands people coming across the bridge just to get out of New York and the look on their fac- es was just unbelievable.”
Bill retired from the Fire Department a year later. He said the impact of the attacks is still being felt by families throughout New York.
He explained, “There are three places you’ll find firefighters: one is when you go back to work in your own firehouse, the other is down at the pit at the Trade Centre. They either spend their time there or going to funerals.
“That was it. Three or four funerals a day. The hardest part of that was watching the kids – five, six, seven [years old] – coming out of church not knowing what was going on around them. The young widows. It would break your heart.”