|
|
 |
 |
by null
For Bronx firefighter Jon Henderson, New Orleans is still the magical city that has captured his imagination for years - after all, it's where his New York City firefighter father Tommy Henderson met his mother.
"It's my second city," says Henderson, 33, who lives in Throgs Neck and who has been on the front lines for almost a week battling fires as head of a water supply unit, shoulder to shoulder with firefighters from the embattled New Orleans Fire Department.
Some of them, like Capt. Billy Shanks, are his close friends. Many of them came to New York to work alongside Henderson after the Twin Towers were destroyed and some stayed at Henderson's home.
Several have opened their doors to him when he visits their city, always carrying eight large, frozen pizzas from Louie & Ernie's on Crosby Avenue in the northeast Bronx.
"I have a deeper feeling of respect now for these men here," said Henderson in a phone interview yesterday morning from New Orleans, where he is housed at a command center in Our Lady of the Holy Cross College in the Algiers neighborhood.
"They are the real deal. They stayed to help when a lot of other people turned in their badges and decided to leave, because it was so dangerous."
I talked to Capt. Shanks, 40, yesterday afternoon at the home of friends in Houston who invited him and his wife, Flora, and their two children, Jessica, 9, and Josh, 4, to stay with them. Shanks says his home is still under 10 feet of water and that his wife was out as we spoke, looking for a place for the family to live for the time being.
"I am going to return to New Orleans," he said. "This city is going to come back bigger and better than it was. I plan to rebuild our home there in a few years and some of the New York guys here told me to call when I do and they will come down and help build a new home."
Shanks said he met Henderson during the Super Bowl at the Superdome in 2002. "He pulled up into a parking lot outside our firehouse and asked if he and a buddy could come in and wash up.
"I told him it was OK and asked where he was staying."
"In the van," he said. "No, you can stay in the firehouse," said Shanks and that was the start of a friendship that has blossomed since.
Henderson is one of 350 or so FDNY firefighters who responded to the call for help from a city that needs all it can get. The flood that overwhelmed the city also knocked out many of its fire hydrants.
"I am in a water-supply unit and I drive a water tender, a tanker that we fill with water before we go out to fight the eight to 19 fires daily we're encountering," says Henderson, who knows the city's streets almost as well as he knows the streets of New York, where he is a chauffeur on a fire rig out of Engine 72 in the Bronx.
Henderson confirmed reports that arsonists are setting fires to homes, even leaving empty gas cans at the sites. He fears that arson will increase when power is restored and more people return to the city to get their possessions. "You can expect things will spark up," he says.
But in the days since he arrived Thursday morning after driving a van in a 35-vehicle convoy that left New York the day before, Henderson says things have improved considerably. "Our responses to fires are much quicker now than they were a few days ago," he says, "but there are still big hurdles to overcome.
"Standing water is one of them," he says. "About half the city is still under water. "I have open blisters on my feet, so I make sure the water doesn't lap over the top of my boots and infect those blisters."
Henderson, who spent several months at the "hole" in lower Manhattan, first looking for survivors and then helping with recovery units, attended a memorial Mass on Sunday morning, where he recalled some of the 52 firefighters he personally knew who died there.
As bad as 9/11 was, that tragedy doesn't equate to the one in New Orleans today, says Henderson.
"About 60 percent of the firefighters here lost not only their homes but things as priceless as their wedding pictures. They have nothing, so this is an absolute tragedy and it extends over miles and miles of the Gulf Coast. It is something I can hardly fathom."
I talked to his father, Tommy, yesterday, a firefighter of 28 years, starting in 1962.
"My son has a big heart," he says, "and I stood behind his decision to go there. He loves that place and so do I, and I am going there in a few days to do what I can to help, work in the hospital or whatever.
"I love my boy and I want to be near him," he says.
 |
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
