File No. 9110458

WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW

FIREFIGHTER TIMOTHY BROWN

Interview Date: January 15, 2002

Transcribed by Laurie A. Collins

T. BROWN

CHIEF LAKIOTES: Today's date is January 15th, 2002. The time is approximately 9:20. My name is Battalion Chief Art Lakiotes, safety command, New York City Fire Department, conducting an interview with --

MR. BROWN: Tim Brown, OEM, detailed out of Rescue 3.

CHIEF LAKIOTES: Pertaining to the events of September 11th, 2001.

Q. Tim, if you would, just take me to when you first heard about it and then how did the day's events unfold for you.

A. OEM's offices are in Seven World Trade Center, so we were there when the first plane hit. I was on the third floor. I was eating breakfast. The electricity went out in the building for about three to four seconds, and then it rerouted and came back on. I knew something major had happened, although I did not feel any vibration or hear any crash from where I was sitting.

The folks that were in the cafeteria where I was that had a window seat all got up pretty much at once and started running. I asked them what happened. They said a plane just crashed into the tower, which was the north tower.

So I ran down the escalator to the lobby level, where I saw my direct boss, Calvin Dreydon, who is the deputy director for operations for OEM, going down to the street level. He told me to go up to our office on 23 and make sure that we were getting our EOC up and running and that our communications was being properly supervised. We call it our watch command.

So I went up in the elevator to 23. First I went to my desk, got my portable radio. It's a police radio, fire radio and OEM radio. I went into our watch command. The supervisor, Mike Lee, was there running operations, so we were fine there. I went into the EOC. We had the supervisor, Mike Berkowitz, there running that, so I was comfortable that we were doing our job properly.

I went down to the street level. There was a lot of debris falling in the street, which is Vesey Street. My car was parked on Vesey between the federal office building, the post office, and Five World Trade. I went to my car to take off my tie and my shoes, put on boots, helmet, and a Mayor's office jacket.

I went back to the corner of West and Vesey, where the police department was calling mobilization. Our car two, John Odermatt was there. I told him that I was going to go through Six World Trade into One World Tower to the fire command post.

I walked in the walkway between five and six to get a three-sided look at One World Trade Center to see what it looked like. The whole plaza area was burning debris, plane parts and bodies; a lot of fire in the plaza area.

I communicated with a Port Authority cop who yelled at me and told me to get out of there, it was too dangerous. Of course he was standing there. I don't know who that guy was. I went into the lobby of One World Trade Center. A lot of people were self-evacuating very orderly, quickly. People were helping each other, and they were streaming out as quickly as they could. The one thing that was limiting their escape the most was probably the size of the escalators. They were bottling up at the top of the escalators, trying to get on the escalators, trying to get down. But it was orderly.

I believe you have to go down a level to get to the fire command post. So I went down that level. I went past the core of the building where the stairwells were. There were a lot of firemen there. By "a lot," I would probably say 30 or so firemen there.

The people I remember seeing were Terry Hatton and Chris Blackwell.

Terry Hatton from Rescue 1 and Chris Blackwell from Rescue 3. I gave them both hugs. Terry said to me, "I love you, brother. It might be the last time I seeyou." Then he went in the stairwell.

Then Chris Blackwell looked at me and said, "This isn't good, Tim." That was the last I saw him also. Those are the two guys that I remember seeing, although there were a lot more people there. From there I went to the fire command station where my boss was, Calvin. I believe at this point Rich Schirer was there. I think I saw the Commissioner there. I think we had a tape, kind of, of the people that were there.

Q. Yes, I think so.

A. Yeah, I think the tape came in after I left.

Q. Yeah, it could be.

A. I was probably there for three minutes at most. We did right away -- one of the thoughts that crossed my mind almost immediately was to get air cover from the military. We weren't sure this was a terrorist attack, but we knew there was a good possibility that it was.

So we had sent that message pretty quickly back to our communications folks to try and get in touch with the White House and with FAA and try and get some help.

There were a lot of people streaming in and out, a lot of firemen coming in. The second plane hit. Again I did not feel that. We did not know that happened until a fireman came into the lobby and told us that another plane had hit number two, the south tower. Calvin directed me to go to the command post in the south tower to help the Fire Department with their operation there and to let him know everything that was going on.

I'm not exactly sure how I got there.

I remember going out through a broken window and running I believe south along the West Street side of the complex as fast as I could so I wouldn't get hit by anything.

I remember running across a parking lot. It was across from the hotel, which would have been the southeast corner of Liberty and West. There's a parking lot there. It was near the pedestrian walkway and all that.

Q. There's a large parking lot.

A. Right.

Q. The building that was up there, would it be a Church?

A. It was gone from there.

Q. Yes, obliterated.

A. Okay, okay.

Q. It was just a very huge parking lot, black top.

A. Right, okay. I was over there.

Q. I was a lieutenant in 10 and 10. That's why I remember a lot.

A. Okay. So this is your neighborhood, then.

Q. Yeah.

A. Okay. So I remember running across a lot of debris. I didn't have on fire gear, so I remember trying to avoid the fire as much as I could. I ran into the doors of the Two World Trade on the Liberty Street side. I saw Chief Burns inside there. He was the first fire personnel that I saw in the lobby. I asked him if there was anything I could do to help. He was like, well, it's just like -- there was nothing anybody could do except try and get people out.

So we tried to encourage -- I remember seeing a six-person team from ESU in that lobby. I directed them to wait. I directed them to wait and not to go upstairs until they reported in to Chief Burns so we had some accountability of who they were and where they were going to go. They finally did communicate with Chief Burns, and then they went upstairs. Again, an orderly evacuation of two. A lot of people were leaving. We finally set up -- prior to this I believe it was the west side of the core of the building there were elevators. Someone had come to me and said that there were people trapped in one of those elevators.

So I ran around the corner, and the hoist way doors were open, but the elevator car was only showing about two feet at the top of the door. You could see all the legs of the people that were in the elevator. I would guess there were about eight people in the elevator.

The elevator pit was on fire with the jet fuel. People were screaming in the elevator. They were getting smoked and cooked. There weren't a lot of firemen there at the time. I grabbed some of the Port Authority employees and asked them where the fire extinguishers were and told them to get as many fire extinguishers as they could so we could try and fight this fire. As they were doing that, firemen started showing up, and I started asking them to get big cans,let's try to put this fire out.

I turned around, and I came face-to-face with Mike Lynch from Ladder 4, who I knew. I worked for Ladder 4 for a year. He was one of the young guys there then. I knew Mike was a very competent guy. I said to Mike, "You've got this?" He said, "I'll take care of it." I left the elevator knowing that he would take care of it.

I went to the command board -- which before this I went to the phones which were in the southeast corner of Two World Trade in the lobby area, trying to call the White House and trying to call Albany and trying to make sure that we had some kind of air cover and some kind of help in the air.

I could not get through to Washington because of the things that were going on. I did get in touch with S.E.M.O. up in Albany, and they said they were already ahead of us and they had already spoken with people, trying to get us air cover.

So being comfortable with that, I went to the command board which they were setting up right next to the doors on the Liberty Street side, the south side of Two World Trade, inside the lobby. At that command board were Chief Burns, Chief Jack Fanning, and I remember seeing Carl Asaro also there. So at this point I just stayed in the background, because things were crazy.

Someone, a fireman, came in through the lobby, through the doors on the Liberty Street side, and told us that there was already a fireman who was killed on the Liberty Street side by a jumper, a guy from 216. Although we knew it was serious, we knew that disaster was beginning to happen.

Now the people coming down the stairwells were not so healthy anymore. A lot of people coming down were burned very badly. A lot of people were broken and bloody. There were people helping people, like carrying people.

We had been directing people to go to Seven World Trade where we had set up a triage area, and I was directing them to go underground as much as they could to get to seven. But a lot of these people that were coming down now were not ambulatory and overwhelmed. So the lobby started filling up with badly injured people, people that were dying.

So watching all the confusion, I always try to think of what I can do to help. I said, well, we have no EMS in the lobby, and we're going to have to move these people or everybody is going to be stuck in the tower and we're not going to be able to evacuate.

I told Chief Burns that I was going to go find EMS and bring them back into the lobby, which is something that saved my life. I went out to the Liberty Street side. I saw Mike Lynch again at Ladder 4's rig, which was pulled right up next to the building, taking the Hearst tool off the rig. He yelled to me to help him get it off the rig and carry it in, so I started running toward him. Before I could get to him, another fireman had come up and started helping him. So I said, "Are you all set?" He said, "I got it."

I ran to continue my mission to find EMS. I found EMS staging underneath the pedestrian bridge at West and Liberty. I saw my friend Charlie Wells. I got under the pedestrian bridge where they were standing so we were protected, and I said to Charlie, "We need you guys in the lobby of number two." He looked at me like I was crazy. He said, "All right. Just give me a minute to get helmets on people, and we're going to go in with you."

So I waited I'm thinking around two minutes there. He got two paramedics, himself and me. I said, "Okay. Follow me." We ran to the south side of the hotel to stay close to the building, trying not to get hit. We ran along the edge of the hotel. When we ran by the southwest corner of the hotel, I noticed that the doors to the Tall Ships restaurant were wide open and there were people inside there. As we ran towards the rear, which is the three side of the hotel, and rounded the corner to go into Two World Trade Center, in the doors, we heard the roar above us. I know I never looked up. I don't think anybody ever looked up. But there was no question what it was. It was a very tremendous sound, which I think we hear on the tapes.

So we just turned and ran for our lives. Now it was the flight/fright thing, because everybody knew we were all going to die. We ran back along -- I knew right from the start that I was going to go into the lobby of the hotel to try and get protected. As I ran by the medics, I yelled at them to follow me. Charlie and one of the medics, who I don't know their names, followed me into the lobby of the hotel. The other guy ran back toward the pedestrian bridge. Charlie tells me everybody lived of that group.

We ran into the lobby. No sooner did we get into the lobby of the hotel, which was crystal-clear when we went in, then it went completely black in an instant with the dust. The roar was just getting louder. The dust started blowing in our faces. I'm guessing around 30, 35 miles an hour the wind was.

Everything started blowing toward us that wasn't nailed down. You could not any longer run into the wind because you were getting pummeled by stuff. You couldn't see anybody to communicate.

You couldn't hear anything. It was becoming ourgrave.

So I turned around and started running back toward the door where I came in. Intellectually I knew we couldn't go outside, because we would get killed by the steel. So now I knew we were trapped. I wound up crawling onthe floor as the wind got stronger and the roar got louder.

I found what I'm guessing was a 12 by 12 boxed out steel column, which I tried to become one with. I got as close as I could to it. I hugged it, hoping that anything would tent over me. I just held onto it.

I had a helmet on. The helmet got blown off by the wind. I'm no meteorologist, but I'm guessing that the wind at its height was around 70, 75 miles an hour. I had to hold onto that steel column with all my might so I wouldn't get blown out into the street, not realizing it was probably all over, thinking about my brother and things like that. I thought it lasted four minutes.

Somebody told me it lasted a much shorter time than that. But it stopped. You could hear an eerie silence at first, and then you could start to hear people starting to move around a little bit, people that were still alive. I was amazed that I was alive.

You still couldn't see anything. I went back toward what I thought was the door where we had come in from Liberty Street. As I got over there, I ran into a truck with its lights on. By the front of the truck, I thought it was a box truck. I did not recognize it as a fire truck, although it could have been. I thought it was a bomb. The headlights were still on, very eerie.

I turned around and ran the other way, thinking that it was a bomb, telling everybody to run the other way. We ran into a steel rolldown gate that was down. Someone had said we can get out this way, so now there were more people around.

So all the men -- I couldn't tell you if they were civilians or firemen. It seemed to me there were a lot of civilians here. Our fingers were going underneath the door. We tried to lift it up. After we got it up two inches, you could see all the fingers coming the other way, because there were people trapped on the other side of it.

We got that door up about two feet, and there was a girl behind us that said we found a way out. So everybody formed a chain. There was a fireman that knew he was already outside in the rubble, but he was okay. He was screaming at us to come toward him, "Come this way. Come this way."

So we went that way, which was the West Street side of what was left of the building. We went across. Then I just wanted to get away from the building, so I ran across all the rubble over to the American Express building, where I went in the lobby there. I just wanted to get to the river and to be able to get a view of what was going on.

I went into that lobby, and all the doors were locked. I couldn't get through those doors. I tried to break the glass doors, and I couldn't break them. I had the police and fire radios in my back pocket, so I did not hear what was going on, really, on them. I had the OEM radio in my hand, and my boss was calling for help. He was trapped. That's what brought me back to reality.

I went back out to West Street, ran north on the West Street side over the rubble, trying to find him, thinking that he was dying, trapped in the rubble. I went by Chief Feehan, who I know for a long time, shook his hand. He said "Be careful, be careful," to me. I kept running. I remember him being on West, north of the American Express building. He was alone atthe time.

I went up to Vesey Street and made a left going west on Vesey Street toward the river.I found Calvin at four World Financial Center. A fireman had already rescued him and pulled him out. He was with EMS. Then my other boss, car 2, John Odermatt, grabbed me and said, "Timmy, we have to go and try to reestablish city government. You've got to come with me. Calvin is okay." So we left Calvin in the hands of EMS and went back north on West Street.

At some point -- I'm not sure where -- I either went in Barclay Street or Murray Street over to West Broadway and trying to find our command bus, which was a little bit further north on West Broadway. I started walking north on West Broadway when number One World Trade Center started to collapse.

I looked back over my shoulder. Everybody started running. That collapsed. I knew that my friends were in there. I just ran north on West Broadway. I used a telephone, a land line, because I couldn't use the cell phone to call my brother to tell him I was still alive.

That phone call was made an hour and 42 minutes after the first plane hit. So I know that's the time line. Then we wound up just up at 24 and 5 with the Mayor and other folks up there. I saw Terry's wife up there. I had an unhappy encounter with her.

Basically that's it. We just tried to regroup after that. That's everything I remember.

Q. A lot of guys that were in the --

A. Lobby.

Q. -- restaurant, 131?

A. 131 Truck?

Q. Yeah. I was wondering if you ran into them.

A. They were in the lobby and they were --

Q. I guess the gate was between the restaurant and the hotel lobby. When they closed the restaurant, they use the gate to segregate the restaurant from the rest of the building.

A. Oh, okay.

Q. They said that they got that up. They went out to Liberty Street on the corner.

A. Oh, okay. So they were coming toward me as I was coming toward them.

Q. Right.

A. You couldn't tell who was who or anything like that. Did any of those guys die? Mostly everybody that was in that lobby area --

Q. In that general area of the lobby, the guys got out.

A. Further north than the lobby.

Q. North and south. It seemed like you were in the middle.

A. I think I was in the south end of the lobby. That's that part that's still standing.

Q. I'm saying, if you were on the south side or the north side, it looks like you --

A. Lived.

Q. -- survived.

A. In the middle where two came down, it sliced it in the middle. You have guys that were in the north part that lived also?

Q. Yeah, Tommy Gallagher was in the north part, and Brian, when the first collapsed.

A. Right. Then the second one. I heard there's videotape, actually, of number two -- of the hotel in between the collapses. So you have two parts of the hotel standing, and the middle is gone.

Q. Yeah.

A. You can see it?

Q. Photos, not video.

A. Okay. Photos.

(click here see the photo of the Marriott Hotel between the collapse of Tower 2 and Tower 1)

CHIEF LAKIOTES: That concludes the

interview. It is approximately 9:45.