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by Michael Daly
Fire Chief of Department Peter Hayden went up the City Hall steps at 9:50a.m. yesterday under a sky the same perfect blue as on that morning four years ago when he took command at the stricken north tower of the World Trade Center.
A French filmmaker videotaped Hayden in the lobby doing as much as any chief could at the epicenter of the single worst attack in American history. He remained preternaturally calm and focused, operating with less information than anyone who was watching the TV coverage athome.
Then the towers fell and the perfect day went black. Those of us who were at West St. and Vesey St. can remember Hayden materializing as the air began to clear.
"Out of the dust," retired Uniformed Firefighters Association President Jimmy Boyle recalled yesterday.
Boyle remembered Hayden saying, "They're all dead, everybody's dead." I recall him saying that the dead included Fire Chaplain Mychal Judge. My knees buckled, which should not have surprised me, for Judge was the one many of us turned to after something terrible had happened.
"I loved Mychal Judge," I blurted, as if my personal feelings amounted to something amid so much death.
"A lot of people loved Mychal Judge," Hayden said.
The blue eyes under the brim of the chief's fire helmet were red from the grit, but absolutely steady. Hayden already had proven in the north tower that he was the one to turn to while something terrible is happening. He continued to demonstrate this as he led a moment of silence that steadied the stunned survivors. He then began dispatching teams to search for others who might still be alive, and to fight pockets of fire.
On the other side of Vesey St., a fireboat had joined the yachts in the boat basin. A group of firefighters stretched a single line toward what had been the twin towers less than an hour before.
"Armageddon!" a uniformed cop called out.
The cop was one of a group of officers being assembled by a police commander who was no less steady than Hayden. Chief Thomas Purtell took a count of the survivors, and you could see for just an instant his shock on seeing how many were missing.
In the next moment, Purtell was also exactly someone you would turn to when something terrible is happening. I admired him no less than I had Hayden as I watched him marshal the surviving cops.
In the days that followed, we all heard story after story of individual firefighters and cops who had been uncommonly selfless. Police Officer Moira Smith led a civilian to safety and then returned to help others, only to perish. Firefighter Michael Lynch threw his turnout coat around a civilian in a desperate attempt to protect her as the debris rained down.
And against all that bravery, despite the presence of such magnificent commanders as Hayden and Purtell, there was the stark and searing fact that the NYPD and the FDNY had not been working together in the critical moments before the towers fell.
Hayden was left convinced that a fair number of firefighters might have survived had there been better communication and interaction between the FDNY and the NYPD. He has spent the years since then focused on not allowing that to happen again. He fears that Mayor Bloomberg's new protocol would allow a repeat of the failures of 9/11.
Yesterday morning, five blocks from where he commanded operations in the north tower, Hayden testified against the new protocol at the risk of losing his job as chief of department. Even some of those who disagreed could not help but admire his latest demonstration of courage.
Hayden returned to the day with the perfect blue sky having done exactly what he thought was right. His step was nearly as light as that of the pretty little girl who scampered across the plaza in front of City Hall in a pink dress and new patent leather shoes.
The girl's name is Terri Hatton, and her family was at City Hall because Bloomberg was signing a bill renaming a stretch of W. 43rd St. after her father, Fire Lt. Terry Hatton. He perished in the WTC's north tower, where Hayden was in command, eight months before little Terri was born. She will be 3 on Sunday.
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