This FDNY hero survived 9/11. He’ll never forget that day

Editor's note: “After Ground Zero: Everyday Americans and the Unhealed Scars of 9/11,” a new book by Mike Kelly, an award-winning columnist for The Record of New Jersey and the USA TODAY Network, traces the lives of survivors, first responders, soldiers, victims’ relatives and others in the years after America’s deadliest terrorist attack.

The book begins as Kelly walks into the rubble of Ground Zero in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. The story then continues for a quarter-century at numerous locations, including Washington, D.C., Iraq, Malaysia and the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In this excerpt, which includes several scenes in the book, we meet Phil McArdle, a veteran of the FDNY’s elite Hazmat 1 unit who survived the collapse of both of the World Trade Center’s 110-story Twin Towers. In between dodging the falling steel and concrete, McArdle, along with fellow firefighter Jeff Borkowski, rescued a news photographer from under the rubble. The FDNY later would award McArdle and Borkowski medals for their heroism.

Now, in the months after 9/11, McArdle faces the emotionally wrenching task of eulogizing his colleagues who died.

The death of a building is never quiet. Steel slams into steel. Concrete crushes…

Original source: https://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/