Coping with an Unbearable Burden

No one should be forced to bear the immeasurable burden that rests heavily on the shoulders of our brothers and sisters in New York City.

Never before in the history of this union, the fire service and our two nations have fire fighters had to deal with the extraordinary and horrific carnage that was wrought upon lower Manhattan and the Pentagon by those terrorist bastards.

Never before has a union or a fire department suffered such an unthinkable loss or faced an incident of such magnitude.

And never before have IAFF affiliates - or this International - had to face the daunting and overwhelming tasks of caring for the devastated families of so many fallen brothers or ministering to the grievous wounds that sear the hearts and souls of our FDNYmembers.

Although more than three weeks have passed since that fateful morning that cost thousands of lives at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon, and in a field outside Pittsburgh, it is still Sept. 11 for our IAFF members in New York City and for the families of our 343 fallen heroes.

Day after day and night after night, members of Uniformed Firefighters Association and Uniformed Fire Officers Association work beyond exhaustion at the grim task of searching for the battered bodies of our brothers and innocent citizens. Relentlessly, they dig in the pulverized rubble and twisted steel that the media calls "Ground Zero," but our people simply call the site, the dig, or the hill.

Others diligently perform their duties at firehouses across the city's five boroughs, but their thoughts and prayers remain focused on the site. They watch the clock and wait for their tour to end so they can get back to the job of removing our brothers from that hellish place.

Our New York presidents - Kevin Gallagher of Local 94 and Pete Gorman of Local 854 - and their board members dig at the site alongside their members, race across the greater New York area to attend multiple funerals and family memorials for our fallen brothers, visit with grieving families, and, somehow, continue to perform their vital work as union leaders.

Our New York brothers and sisters are hurting beyond belief. Their personal pain over the loss of their brothers is beyond comprehension. But they continue to grapple with the overwhelming tasks at hand with a single-minded determination that defines who they are - FDNY fire fighters.

Along with the rest of America, we watched with astonishment as the events of Sept. 11 unfolded.

We knew instantly that life would never be the same for any of us.

Across our two nations, the collective hearts of our 245,000 members and their families ached with grief, but we could not allow our gut-wrenching sorrow to paralyze us. We knew that - for our two New York locals and this International - our work was just beginning.

In a matter of hours, this International was on the ground at the Pentagon, just over a mile from our headquarters, ensuring that our members were safe as they battled the wall of flames fed by thousands of gallons of jet fuel. Only hours later, we drove to New York to establish our operations in Midtown Manhattan and immediately met with our local union leaders. We placed the united arms of all IAFF members around the shoulders of our local union officers and, together, we looked ahead at what had to be done.

In a show of unity unprecedented in our union's history, hundreds of IAFF affiliates and thousands of IAFF members reached out to offer their sympathy and their help. In less than 48 hours, this International and Locals 94 and 854 had established a fund to provide for the families of our fallen New York brothers - and our IAFF affiliates, citizens and corporations responded immediately with an outpouring of generosity, support, and unconditional love.

We prevailed upon Congress and the Bush administration to expedite PSOB benefits for our New York families - and they answered our call. We set up and equipped offices in the Sheraton Hotel. We put staff on the ground there and in the offices of Locals 94 and 854 to assist our two unions in their time of need. And we put together the command structure for a Critical Incident Stress Management operation, in conjunction with our New York locals, FDNY, and FEMA. The program has brought hundreds of trained IAFF members from across our two countries into the city to help our New York brothers and sisters cope with their grief and their pain.

In the weeks following this tragedy, the American people and the media have heralded our fallen brothers and our members across New York as heroes - and they are. This International is a union of heroes - and it has been since 1918.

But those words go unsaid among our own. We know that none of the brave men we lost on Sept. 11 viewed themselves as, nor wanted to be, heroes. That is not why they were there at the World Trade Center.

Our fallen brothers and all New York's fire fighters did what they had to do on that fateful day because they answered the higher calling that is the hallmark of our profession. They understood that words like duty, courage, bravery, selflessness and honor aren't empty slogans.

They placed themselves at risk to save tens of thousands of lives that would have otherwise been lost. They did their job, they did it well, and that is why 343 of our brothers are never coming back.

In the coming weeks and months, the funerals will continue and Presidents Gallagher and Gorman, along with this International and our affiliates will do everything we can to ease the pain felt by New York fire fighters and provide security for the families of our brothers who died.

At the appropriate time, in the tradition of our union and the fire service, our fallen heroes and their families will be honored in a memorial service, so that our two nations and the world will never forget them. And the names of our fallen brothers will be engraved in walls of marble and granite.

But this International is also committed to creating a living memorial to our New York brothers who epitomized the best our profession has to offer society.

In their name, we have created a foundation to continue providing counseling services and support to our grief stricken brothers and sisters, and our families in New York. This foundation will live on to help our members cope with the aftermath of future crises for generations to come. And they will know that this critical resource will carry with it the memory of FDNY's bravest of the brave.

In their memory, we are reaching out to Congress to authorize federal funding for 75,000 new fire fighters across the United States to meet the mandates of NFPA 1710, allowing our members to do the job more effectively and making the job safer.

And as a tribute to their service and sacrifice, we are demanding that Congress, the Administration and public officials across North America recognize that fire fighters and paramedics are our nation's domestic defenders and first responders to all disasters and emergencies, including terrorist attacks. We will not rest until fire fighters in New York and elsewhere have the training they need to deal with the barbaric terrorist attacks our enemies will surely launch against us in the future.

Sept. 11 is a date we will always remember with heavy hearts and mournful souls. But it will also be remembered as the day that our union and our 2,700 affiliates proved we are strong, proved we are compassionate, and proved we are united as one.

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