Firehouse by David Halberstam Page B

information—including the wrong departure times for the rigs, which had given families perhaps too much hope early in the crisis.
    Now it was Kotula’s very delicate job to deal with the appalling truth—that there was almost no hope for anyone—and to do it in a humane way. It was comforting to the families that only one man, someone who was extremely sensitive and knew them personally, someone with more than nineteen years at 40/35, was handling their calls. Kotula quickly developed a sense of how candid each person calling in wished him to be, and he tried, without ever being dishonest or offering too much hope, to bring as much humanity to the job as possible. Some family members called every half hour wanting updates. Was there anything new? Were there any voids? Did he think they might find voids? Kotula felt himself pulled by the need of the families for hope, and, though he rationally knew better, he too began to believe that there might be a possibility of survival. Everything he said was tempered by the darkness he sensed descending on everyone, but he would not close off all hope. But hour by hour and then day by day, it got harder, like a battery that was getting weaker, and he could hear in the incoming calls, as Wednesday passed into Thursday and then Friday and Saturday, the flickering and dimming of all hope. In time, calls from wives were replaced by those from other relatives, as the wives wore down and became shakier. Finally, Sunday morning, Mike Kotula hung up the phone. He went to the bunk room, but he could not sleep, and so he headed over to P. D. O’Hurley’s, a nearby pub that was a favorite of the men, and he had a few drinks. Only then could he sleep.

FIVE
    Kevin Shea was found unconscious by Todd Maisel, a photographer from the New York Daily News , and some rescue workers. Some of what happened after the first collapse was related to him later by those who saved him. His own memory is fragile—he suffered a concussion and a broken neck among other severe injuries, and he was very lucky to be alive. Perhaps if Maisel had not found him, he might not have lived, and it was true that when Maisel first saw him lying there, covered with debris, he thought that Shea was dead.
    Maisel, forty-one, had been up in Harlem on West 125th Street covering the New York mayoral primary that morning when the call had come in about the first plane. He rushed down to the World Trade Center to find a scene unlike any he had ever witnessed in his more than twelve years of photographing on the streets—a kind of hell on earth all around him. The first thing he saw were the jumpers—he looked around just as one landed on and killed a thirty-seven-year-old fireman from Engine 216 named Danny Suhr. Other firemen were trying to drag Suhr’s body back. Later, Suhr’s wife, Nancy, said that she believed that he had saved several of his colleagues’ lives by keeping them from entering the towers.
    At that moment, feeling too close to the epicenter, Maisel started moving back, heading toward Liberty Street. But there was one photo he knew he wanted: The Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church stood nearby and Maisel wanted to frame a shot with the cross of the church in the foreground and the smoking inferno of the south tower in the background. But even as he focused on the tower, it started to collapse. Maisel started running as fast as he could, hoping desperately to be fast enough to escape it.
    He dove into the lobby of 90 West Street just as the tower collapsed. The exact time, it would be determined later, was 9:59 A.M. Then the ceiling and the walls of 90 West began to come down. The air was so thick with dust that it was almost impossible either to breathe or to see. Maisel was sure he was going to die if he stayed, so he started crawling backward—he could not go forward because there was a wall in front of him. What saved him and a number of others he aided in those