Firehouse: Chief Nigro said they made a collapse zone and wanted everybody away from number 7� did you have to get all of those people out?
Hayden: Yeah, we had to pull everybody back. It was very difficult. We had to be very forceful in getting the guys out. They didn�t want to come out. There were guys going into areas that I wasn�t even really comfortable with, because of the possibility of secondary collapses. We didn�t know how stable any of this area was. We pulled everybody back probably by 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon. We said, this building is going to come down, get back. It came down about 5 o�clock or so, but we had everybody backed away by then. At that point in time, it seemed like a somewhat smaller event, but under any normal circumstances, that�s a major event, a 47-story building collapsing. It seemed like a firecracker after the other ones came down, but I mean that�s a big building, and when it came down, it was quite an event. But having gone through the other two, it didn�t seem so bad. But that�s what we were concerned about. We had said to the guys, we lost as many as 300 guys. We didn�t want to lose any more people that day. And when those numbers start to set in among everybody� My feeling early on was we weren�t going to find any survivors. You either made it out or you didn�t make it out. It was a cataclysmic event. The idea of somebody living in that thing to me would have been only short of a miracle. This thing became geographically sectored because of the collapse. I was at West and Liberty. I couldn�t go further north on West Street. And I couldn�t go further east on Liberty because of the collapse of the south tower, so physically we were boxed in. But you could see the fires burning in 4, 5 and 6. They became fully involved. We had fire on the 15th floor of one of the high-rises. I gave a battalion chief two companies. I said go up there, put this fire out. I told him, don�t call for any help, don�t give any signals, just put the fire out and come back and tell me when the fire�s out. This is all you�re getting, put it out. Fortunately, you know, it wasn�t large, it was out one window. At some time that night, it was dark and I had had it. I went down and I got my eyes washed out. They took me to the eye station and then they took me to Bellevue. I had my eyes washed out and then I met up with my brother, who�s also a firefighter.
