Boyle: A little north of Vesey I said, we’ll go down, let’s see what’s going on. A couple of the other officers and I were going to see what was going on. We were told to go to Greenwich and Vesey and see what’s going on. So we go there and on the north and east side of 7 it didn’t look like there was any damage at all, but then you looked on the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors. Debris was falling down on the building and it didn’t look good.

But they had a hoseline operating. Like I said, it was hitting the sidewalk across the street, but eventually they pulled back too. Then we received an order from Fellini, we’re going to make a move on 7. That was the first time really my stomach tightened up because the building didn’t look good. I was figuring probably the standpipe systems were shot. There was no hydrant pressure. I wasn’t really keen on the idea. Then this other officer I’m standing next to said, that building doesn’t look straight. So I’m standing there. I’m looking at the building. It didn’t look right, but, well, we’ll go in, we’ll see.

So we gathered up rollups and most of us had masks at that time. We headed toward 7. And just around we were about a hundred yards away and Butch Brandies came running up. He said forget it, nobody’s going into 7, there’s creaking, there are noises coming out of there, so we just stopped. And probably about 10 minutes after that, Visconti, he was on West Street, and I guess he had another report of further damage either in some basements and things like that, so Visconti said nobody goes into 7, so that was the final thing and that was abandoned.

Firehouse: When you looked at the south side, how close were you to the base of that side?

Boyle: I was standing right next to the building, probably right next to it.

Firehouse: When you had fire on the 20 floors, was it in one window or many?

Boyle: There was a huge gaping hole and it was scattered throughout there. It was a huge hole. I would say it was probably about a third of it, right in the middle of it. And so after Visconti came down and said nobody goes in 7, we said all right, we’ll head back to the command post. We lost touch with him. I never saw him again that day.

We ended up getting back to the command post at Broadway and Vesey. By that time, there were probably 50 officers standing in a row. And I was like, I’m not going to stand on another line like that. So we came down with Fox. I knew Fox was somewhere. So we found out that Fox was over at Cortlandt and Church. They were putting a tower ladder into operation, so we made our way over to there. We ended up helping.

They had no pressure at all off of any of the hydrants from Broadway. He was asking if there was any way that we could do anything at Broadway or West. From Broadway to West westward toward Church Street there was no pressure at all. We spotted one of the squads up on Cortlandt over by Broadway and he was hooked up to a hydrant, and it was running. There was nobody there. I don’t know which squad it was, but you know they were in there. We were just sitting there, so we stretched the line off of him. We relayed it to 274, who relayed it to another engine down the street and eventually we got more pressure. I think it was 22 Truck on Church and Cortlandt and they were operating to number 5.

We did that for a little while. It took a while to get the hose there because there was a White Plains company helping us and they had some different fittings. So we got water to 22, but then that’s when they said all right, number 7 is coming down, shut everything down. I don’t know what time that was. It was all just a blur.

Firehouse: Did they shut the tower lines and remove them from there?

Boyle: No, just left them. Everything was left where it was. Just shut everything down, moved everybody back.

Firehouse: Could you see building 7 again from there?

Boyle: Seven, no. You got a half block away, you couldn’t see it, couldn’t see a damn thing. All we heard was they were worried about it coming down, everybody back away. We ran into the people running around for water for the eyes because everybody’s eyes were burned and I don’t know who they were. I think it was the doctor and some other people. They were just running around, washing people’s eyes out.

We were there about an hour or so until number 7 came down and everything was black again.