Alumnus Stephen Heavey B.S. ’05 M.S. ’12 grew up wanting to be a firefighter. “My father was in the department. He was a photographer back in the day, or what was called a ‘buff.’ We had a scanner radio in the house and if there was a big fire, he’d say, ‘Oh, I gotta take pictures of this.’ At six years old, watching this chaos and seeing these guys make sense out of it, that really appealed to me,” says Heavey, who had worked his way up to New York City Fire Department (FDNY) Fire Marshal by September 11, 2001 and is currently an FDNY Captain with over 27 years of experience. “Maybe it was the flashing lights and the action, but by the time I was eight years old, I said, ‘I have to be a firefighter in New York City.’ There was just no doubt about it.” We sat down with Heavey to learn more about his FDNY career and his memories of that tragic day.
Finding His Way to the FDNY
Heavey may have always wanted to become an FDNY firefighter, but his path toward the department took a little longer than he originally imagined. “I was almost 30 when I finally got the job, but I ended up where I needed to be,” he says with a laugh. After testing out engineering school for a little while, Heavey became an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) and then a paramedic. When a Philadelphia fire department was looking for medics, he threw his hat into the ring, hoping that it would get him closer to his FDNY goal. “Then in 1994, my number was called. I went through the investigations and I was hired by the FDNY. I was actually sworn in on my 30th birthday.”
At the FDNY Heavey found the lifelong mentors and unshakable camaraderie that he envisioned since his childhood. Shortly after walking into the firehouse for the first time, the pressure was on to implement his skills. His truck pulled up to an extremely involved fire that quickly escalated to a third-alarm fire. His battalion had the first-post line and Heavey was on the nozzle. “I was pumped about putting out the fire, but I was nervous as heck because I wanted to do it right. In that moment, I started to wonder, Am I really right for this?” His mentor anticipated what was going through Heavey’s head and he started talking to him. “He just said, ‘Steve hit this. Move this way. Keep moving. Okay, we got it.’ I needed that guidance right at that moment. Now that I’m a boss, I want to encourage my people in the same way.”
Surviving 9/11
In 2001, as an FDNY Fire Marshal, Heavey worked on September 10th straight into the morning of the 11th. “I was in my office in Brooklyn and it was a beautiful day. The sun was just streaming in through the windows and nothing was going on,” he remembers. “We were just tidying up any reports we had from the night before, then all of the sudden the radio started going crazy. They announced a third alarm at the World Trade Center and I turned around and said, ‘That doesn’t sound good.’” Because Heavey had studied fire science extensively, he didn’t believe a small plane or a helicopter had hit the building, unlike many others did at the first news of the disaster. “I’m counting the floors and I see six floors of wall-to-ceiling fire and I knew it was bad. I didn’t know it was a commercial jetliner, but I knew it was big, and with that amount of fuel pumped into the building, I knew that there was no way we could put it out,” he says. “Instead, our goal was to get guys up there with the tools because some of the doors were jammed. Our goal was to bring people down below the fire.”
“I craned my neck up and see that the building is pancaking downward with all this smoke and steam coming out, making this thunderous boom.” —Stephen Heavey
Heavey and his supervisor grabbed a sedan and hit the Brooklyn Queens Expressway to head to the site. As soon as they came out of the tunnel, there were wall-to-wall cars. Before leaving the car and continuing on foot, Heavey put on his bulletproof vest, his firefighting gear, and his weapon. At the World Trade Center complex, his supervisor instructed him to find marshals and bring them to West Street. “It was just chaos. I’m waving guys over and all of the sudden one of the guys said, ‘There it goes.’ I craned my neck up and see that the building is pancaking downward with all this smoke and steam coming out. Then there was this loud boom. I have all my gear on and I’m goose-stepping to keep up with the men in their suits because it was literally running for your life.” Heavey ducked behind a building and was hit by sand and pellets. Then, a huge plume of dust enveloped the entire area and he couldn’t breathe at all. “I had my life flash in front of my eyes. I thought, I’m a Brooklyn Fire Marshal and I’m going to die in a Manhattan high-rise fire.” A few minutes later the dust cleared a little and he put his cheek to the gutter to gasp for a few breaths of air. “I began thinking, we’re gonna make it, and I started using my radio to see where everybody was. I tried to set up meeting points and figure out what we could do. It was just chaos and my eyes were killing me.” After the second tower collapsed, Heavey and his team went into rescue mode. Having extensive paramedic training, he could assess medical situations better than others. Two young firefighters were hovering over their supervisor’s body and frantically signaled for Heavey’s help. “He must have gotten hit by a piece of debris. I wanted to tell them that he was dead, but I knew that they weren’t going to leave him. I helped put him on a board so that they could take him to the river where they were transporting people to hospitals,” he remembers. “I’m not the center of anything, but I felt like I was in hell that day. If there is a hell, I have seen it.”
“I literally had my life flash in front of my eyes. I thought, I’m a Brooklyn Fire Marshal and I’m going to die in a Manhattan high-rise fire.” —Stephen Heavey
Heavey worked late into the night after the attack. “They finally cut us loose at 10:00 p.m. We went to the Flatiron District and somebody handed me a hamburger. I think I took one bite. I just couldn’t eat. I was paralyzed. My mind couldn’t process what I was seeing, smelling, and doing.”
Processing the Trauma
In the days after the attack, Heavey was assigned to the temporary morgue at the site. “Because we carry different radios—the fire department, police department, Port Authority, and FBI all have different types of radios—if we got a torso with a radio on it, we could immediately tell where they came from,” he explains, shaking his head at the thought of seeing the severed bodies of his colleagues. “I was talking to a chaplain there and he said, ‘Listen Steve, you guys are going to be okay now because you’re working on adrenaline, but when this all ends, that’s when the real pain is going to start.’ He was right. September through New Year’s Eve was a blur to me. We worked every day. There was no Thanksgiving, no nothing. Our jobs as marshals never wound down. Then spring hit and there was time to reflect. A lot of guys retired, but I didn’t want to let it beat me.”
“I’m not luckier. I’m not smarter. I’m not more worthy. It was in the cosmos. I’m not overly religious, but it just wasn’t my time.” —Stephen Heavey
After 20 years, Heavey is still processing what he witnessed that day, he’s still going to therapy, and he’s still struggling with survivor’s guilt. He thinks about the men in the department who died and left children behind. He wonders what would have happened if he was in a different place at a different time. “I’m not luckier. I’m not smarter. I’m not more worthy. It was in the cosmos. I’m not overly religious, but it just wasn’t my time.” As we commemorate the 20th anniversary of 9/11, Heavey strongly advocates for mental health services for our first responders and explains why he shares his story. “I want to talk to people about it. I find it cathartic. It helps me because I’m suffering. I’m taking antidepressants and I need to get this out. The smells and the sounds, I try not to let them overwhelm me, but it happened.” he says. “Just like what happened to people in World War II, what happened to people in Vietnam, and what happened to people in Afghanistan—the mental toll is real. September 11th was my time to step up to the plate and I hope posterity will look at me kindly.”
