Firefighters’ emotional scars will never fade

Sitting on a beach in Cape Cod midsummer, the memories washed over him, jolting him, without warning, back to the horror.

For a moment, he imagined he was back on the pile, perched in all his frailty amongst the wretched panorama of smoke and smells and mangled steel, everything reaching skyward, everything scorched by hopelessness and death.

And he thought of the dead and how their ghosts haunt the firehouse, sometimes inspiring, sometimes unnerving, always there.

And he thought of all the eulogies he has delivered, all the widows he has comforted, all the wrenching decisions he has made trying to guide his men.

And he fingered the copper bracelet on his wrist that once belonged to Carl Asaro – handsome, talented Carl – his driver, his confidante, whom he loved like a son.

Alone among the dunes, the veteran fire chief wept.

And this is what he concluded and what he tells his men: It will always be with us, wherever we go, this terrible scar, these terrible memories, this terrible time.

One year later New York Battalion 9 Chief Joseph Nardone is surprised at the rawness of the memories and the readiness of tears. Many in the firehouse feel the same.

And so, the chief cannot even begin to answer the question he is asked all the time: How is the firehouse surviving, how are the men doing?

“Who knows where we are,” Nardone says, sitting at his desk in the firehouse, beneath a chart that lists the names of those whose bodies have been found, and those whose have not.”We’re still here,” the chief says. “We’re still struggling through.”