Tim Brown was having his Cheerios in a little restaurant on the mezzanine of 7 World Trade Center, where he supervised field operations for the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management, when the power blinked out and came back seven seconds later. People at the front window came running toward him, screaming. He grabbed one woman by the shoulders and asked what happened. “A plane just hit the tower.”
That’s where the second episode of our three-part series begins. The call you don’t see coming doesn’t announce itself; by the time you know what it is, you’re already in it.
“I Got It”
In the South Tower lobby, Tim stood in front of an elevator car of trapped, burning survivors – the pit on fire with jet fuel, every extinguisher they brought him dead. In his frustration he turned and hit a shoulder: Firefighter Mike Lynch, one of his buddies’ from his Times Square firehouse days. Lynch put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Timmy, I got it.” Tim says at that moment “he might as well have had angels’ wings.” Five weeks later they found Mike in the rubble with the jaws of life, next to the people from that elevator, and a woman who survived still tells the story of the fireman with the red 4 on his helmet who got her out.
What He Carried Home
In the lobby of Tower One, his best friend, Captain Terry Hatton of Rescue 1, wrapped him in a hug: “I love you, brother. I may never see you again.” When the South Tower fell, Tim rode it out clinging to a column inside the Marriott as winds a scientific study later measured at 185 miles per hour tried to pull him into the street. He survived both collapses; 93 of his friends did not. In the years since, he helped win federal health care legislation for responders sickened at Ground Zero — because, as he says, “those terrorists are still killing us.”
Listen to Episode 2
Missed Part 1? Hear retired NYPD Detective Sergeant Joe Blozis here: [link]. The final episode with Joe and Tim together arrives next week. Full series announcement here.
Never forget.