I watched a documentary Sunday night called “9/11: Ten Years After,” about the first responders to the World Trade Center on 9/11. The creators were two French brothers, Jules and Gedeon Naudet and a FDNY firefighter, James Hanlon. The three set out to make a film about a rookie in the New York City Fire Department, assigned to Engine 7/Ladder 1 on Duane Street.
To choose their subject, they filmed rookies as they told reasons why they had decided to join the fire department and what they hoped to accomplish. The probationary period for new firemen is nine months and the “probie” the crew picked to document was Tony Benetatos. The film begins in the summer of 2001, as the French brothers move into the firehouse. Day after day they document the routines of the station and the menial tasks performed by Benetatos, who reminds you of a pledge in a frat house as he makes the beds and scrubs the pots and pans, while waiting somewhat impatiently for a fire.
One day in July, his wait ends and the men arrive to their destination, a Manhattan sidewalk where something that resembles a burning pizza smolders on the pavement. They do their duty and head back to the station as the camera moves in on the disappointed face of the rookie.
More time passes but no action. Another alarm comes in and this time the crew finds a car blazing on a side street, where once again they put out the flames without incident.
Be careful what you wish for comes to mind and perhaps a bit of foreshadowing as Engine 7 learns the fate of one of their brothers in another battalion, who has been killed fighting a fire. A rookie like Benetatos, the young man had only been on the job seven months; he left behind a wife and two children.
Back at the station Benetatos is told to take the flag to half-mast. He does as he is told, leaning out the window in the night sky to move the flag. He comes back in and announces he hopes he never has to perform the task again. At the funeral for the fallen firefighter are hundreds of firemen and the weeping survivors and friends. You see from the faces of the firemen, especially Benetatos, some innocence lost.
The morning of 9/11 comes. The sun is shown coming up over the Twin Towers, the famous landmark of the largest city in the world’s most powerful nation. At Engine 7, a call comes in around 8:15 about a gas leak near the financial district. Jules rides with Battalion Chief Joseph Pfeifer, to check it out. As Jules films the chief and two other firemen removing a manhole cover, the roar of a plane can be heard growing louder. Jules is still filming the chief, who looks to the sky, then back at the street. But Jules raises his lens to the sky and captures one of only three known recordings of American Airlines Flight 11 as it flies into the North Tower. And the subject of his documentary is changed.
The crew heads to the Tower, and is the first to arrive. Jules keeps the camera rolling and as Chief Pfeifer changes into a fire-protective suit, Jules asks if he can follow him inside. “Yes but stay right with me,” the chief replies. They are inside Tower 1 when Tower 2 is hit and then falls. It is very powerful and affecting footage of our nation’s worst day. As the chief decides on which door to send civilians to safety, the narrator, Hanlon I believe, tells that they were concerned about the falling debris, and of people who were jumping from windows 80 stories above. You hear the sound of bodies as they hit the ground. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that, and cannot imagine what those who lived through it have gone through.
There is much more from that day of devastation and courage; and the follow-up to each of the men of Engine 7 a decade later is both heartbreaking and inspiring. The film is available on iTunes.