Reports from the scene mention
the damage:
Deputy Chief Nick Visconti
Division 14 - 34 years
Visconti: So now I was
in contact with Jay. I found out what kind of shape he was in and I
kept getting reports back from people that we're not there yet, we're
working our way, there's a collapsed area in 6. I'm standing not too
far from Frank Fellini. He says, Nick, I'm really worried about this
building. We were all worried because there was a lot of fire in it
and we were concerned about the building collapsing. We weren't sure
that it was stable enough that it wasn't going to collapse.
Firehouse: Which building
was that?
Visconti: Building 6.
So I had put a battalion chief with each of the groups that went into
6. I kept trying to talk to him, walking over there, walking down a
little bit into the ramp they went down, the door they went down into
and how are you doing? You know we're trying, we can't find it.
I don't know how long this was going on, but I remember standing
there looking over at building 7 and realizing that a big chunk of the
lower floors had been taken out on the Vesey Street side. I looked
up at the building and I saw smoke in it, but I really didn't see any
fire at that time. ...
 |
Now, World Trade Center 7 was burning and I was thinking to
myself, how come they're not trying to put this fire out? I didn't
realize how much they had because my view was obstructed. All I could
see was the upper floor. At some point, Frank Fellini said, now
we've got hundreds of guys out there, hundreds and hundreds, and that's
on the West Street side alone. He said to me, Nick, you've got to get
those people out of there. I thought to myself, out of where? Frank,
what do you want, Chief? He answered, 7 World Trade Center, imminent
collapse, we've got to get those people out of there. I walked out
and I got to Vesey and West, where I reported to Frank. He said, we're
moving the command post over this way, that building's coming down.
At this point, the fire was going virtually on every floor, heavy
fire and smoke that really wasn't bothering us when we were searching
because it was being pushed southeast and we were a little bit west
of that. I remember standing just where West and Vesey start to rise
toward the entrance we were using in the World Financial Center. There
were a couple of guys standing with me and a couple of guys right at
the intersection, and we were trying to back them up and here goes
7. It started to come down and now people were starting to run.
http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/visconti.html
