New York City's Fire Chief's Account

Sept. 20, 2001 -- The son of a fireman and a 32-year veteran himself, Daniel Nigro was promoted to chief of the New York City Fire Department replacing his friend, Peter J. Ganci Jr., who died in the World Trade Center attack.

ABCNEWS' Diane Sawyer spoke with Nigro about the men the NYFD lost, the lessons learned, and moving on.

ABCNEWS' Diane Sawyer: Do you remember the morning last Tuesday?

Daniel Nigro, New York City Fire Department Chief: Sure. Beautiful day. We heard it, and then we saw it. I saw it from the office … I responded in the same car with the Chief of Department Ganci and recall telling him this will be the worst day we ever have. It was … We could see from the Brooklyn Bridge that we would need just about everything the fire department could send down there … At that point, soon after we got there, people began jumping.

Sawyer: You saw them.

Nigro: In large numbers. So that, alone, would have made it the worst, the worst day we'd experienced, if it had ended just at that, but it didn't.

Sawyer: Did you want to say to some of your guys and women don't go, don't go in there?

Nigro: Geez, I'd like to think now that I could have said that, but I don't know if anyone would have listened anyway. They're trained to do that. When there's people in there in need, they're going to go up.

Sawyer: Tell me about Chief Ganci.

Nigro: I guess he was somewhat my alter ego. He was more gregarious, and he was the short one. We were always together, a good friend, golf buddy, and real, just a friendly, warm, everybody liked him, from the people at the security desk to the boss. He's that kind of person. He treated everybody like a friend … For the last 10 years, I guess, we've been together a lot, and there were a lot of good days, a few real bad days, and then one real, real bad day.

Sawyer: What did you admire the most about him?

Nigro: Honesty, I think, integrity. That's something you can't learn. You either have it or you don't. So if he said something, that was it. You never had to wonder. … Nobody worked harder here. Nobody. … He worked harder for the department than anyone.

Sawyer: How did you hear about Chief Ganci?

Nigro: I wasn't hearing anybody on the radio and feared that just about everyone I could think of that I saw when I left the command center was gone, including Chief Ganci. And then when I got back to the command center, people told me who was missing and who obviously wasn't, who was there or who was injured. But it seemed that very few people were injured. It was extremes. … You were either gone, missing or you were OK, physically. It was not hundreds of firefighters with broken legs and lacerations. This was not the type of collapse that causes a wound.

Sawyer: What do you now know about the chief and what he did?

Nigro: He did what he should have done. He moved the command post, or he was in the process of moving it north and getting it out of harm's way, but instead of going with it, he went to supervise rescuers in the South Tower, of what was left of the South Tower. He survived the first collapse by, like everyone did at the command center, going underground in the World Financial Center. And when they were able to get themselves out, Pete sent everyone north to set up the command post out of harm's way. And then he and Bill Fehan and Ray Downey, and I'm sure a few others, went south on West Street towards the scene of that collapse. So it placed them in a position that when the North Tower collapsed, they had nowhere to hide, and they were taken down … He knew how to put out fires. He could put them out and hold a conversation with you at the same time. But if they were starting to get the better of us, he got real mad, so he'd get on, he'd get mad at the fire. Well, he was really mad at this fire. And so it was beyond that serious face. It was, you know, "I'm going to get you" face, but it didn't work out that way.

Sawyer: We read a report that was written back in 1993 that said that anyone who works in a skyscraper and is above a floor where a cherry picker can reach, cannot count on surviving a fire.

Nigro: I think you're more at risk of dying at a fire in your private home in middle America, statistics will say. Sure, it is a risk. It's been a risk over the years, but there's 11,000 heroes here that will still today put the fire out and get you most of the time. We get most everybody out. It's a difficult fire. It's the most difficult fire that we face. We know that. That's why we send so many people to them. I certainly wouldn't be an advocate of everyone moving back to seven-story buildings. We can do this. We can't do it if people fly airplanes full of gas, of jet fuel into us, but under normal conditions we can do this.

Sawyer: Somebody said, "If I worked in a skyscraper, I'd give parachutes to every single person on my floor if it was at the top of a skyscraper." … Is that a crazy idea?

Nigro: I think it is. I think what we'd have is people making their own assessment that something was more dangerous than it was. I mean, I've seen people jump needlessly out of buildings when firefighters were within 50 feet, of fires that were being extinguished, and try to slide down cloth when they shouldn't have. So I certainly wouldn't advocate anything like that.

Sawyer: Have you heard the reports that on some floors people were told to go back and stay in place?

Nigro: I had heard that people in the — and I have not verified it — people in the South Tower were told that, but certainly, if there's chaos in one tower and no one at that point was aware that this was an act of terrorism, people were safer in the building than they were in the plaza … With debris and everything else that was going on.

Sawyer: Do you still believe in your heart there's someone there waiting to be found?

Nigro: It gets harder to believe each hour.

Sawyer: How do you get through the day?

Nigro: Try to focus each day on rebuilding … Well, we have two jobs to do. We have the site, the World Trade Center site, the rescue action, and the rebuilding of the fire department, the people. The remaining people deserve it. They love it. We're going to rebuild. We'll come out of this someday.