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by Amanda Farinacci
The appropriately named Engine 911, which was unveiled at the South Street Seaport Sunday, is a restored 1962 Ford F-600 fire truck that started with the dream of fallen firefighter Eric Olsen.
Olsen is one of fourteen firefighters from Engine 4, Ladder 15 who died in the World Trade Center attack. A self-proclaimed car buff, Olsen purchased the then badly beat-up truck, and planned to use it while working his side-jobs.
“He would park the truck in the parking lot,” recalled fellow firefighter Steve Fucile, “and there's a homeless guy who's probably been across the street as long as I’ve been in this firehouse, and he started using this as his house. So every morning Eric would go across the street, start the truck, wake him up. He'd take his stuff out, and Eric would go to work. And this was just an ongoing thing. If he thinks he's sleeping in this thing now, the rent's gone up.”
In a restoration project that began in October 2002, firefighters from the Milford Township Fire Department in Pennsylvania took on the task of fixing up the truck. They added new compartments, welded new steel and painstakingly hand-painted every word on the old rig.
On the back is a bell of remembrance in honor of the six fallen firefighters who were members of the FDNY Viking Society. The truck is meant to educate about fire safety and to tell the story of the September 11 attacks.
“Time is passing so quickly and people are forgetting,” said Larry Roeder, one of the Milford firefighters. “And it's important to put together tributes like this and bring them back in time to give people a reason to remember, to give people a reason not to forget.”
“It's a really great thing that they did,” said Carolann Larsen, whose husband died in the attacks. “It's a nice remembrance for all of them to have their names on it; i think it's great.
The truck will make its temporary home at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island, with the hope that it will one day go on display at the Fire Safety Museum.
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